#16 - Surviving Lockdown with Mat Let
Last week I spoke about a road-trip (interrupted) to Michigan, and a wabi-sabi approach to art. In this issue, I want to share some recent art + the new episode of the podcast.
I heard the music of Andrew Bird in another world ten years ago. I led a completely different life back then, in a completely different place. Hearing it now gives me visions of that place and time. I feel the slap of cold, fresh autumn air against my face. I see yellow, orange and red leaves of fall. They crunch in a most pleasant way under my shoes. Across from me sits a pond whose surface is choked with green algae. On it, a solitary duck. The sight of this duck takes me to yet another world, where I am looking at the cover of a National Geographic magazine. It is one from a thick stack of magazines that my father has rescued at the clearance of a neighboring bookstore. It had almost gone to the kabadiwala. The magazine in my hand belongs to the 1980s. On the cover is a duck much like this one. It floats the same way on a pond of similar size, choked in green algae.
In Delft, crunching leaves underfoot, I remember myself in Calcutta, staring at that cover, wondering if I would ever get to see something like it. The afternoon sun warms my face, and I consider myself blessed. Then, as the music fades, so does this trip. I am back again at my desk. A train passes by my window, and disappears behind the screen. Like a cruel reminder of the inevitability of time, a cursor sits after the last word I have typed, blinking.
Music can help us time-travel in these little ways. Contrary to expectations, a little bit of time-travel is not hard to do. It takes only a bit of work, like dropping a pin on the four-dimensional map of your life. Do you want to try it? For a moment, as you go about your day, just stop. Blink twice, and regard your world with fresh eyes. Regard it as a fleeting moment in the multi-colored tapestry of a long life. Imagine yourself a year from now, living another life in another world. Say hello.
A Park in Chicago
I made a painting of a park in Chicago’s West Loop neighborhood. The digital medium allows me to work in a completely different style from my “pen and ink” work. I take such commissions as a useful opportunity to break out of my typical routine and think in shapes and colors, instead of shadows and lines. It’s an important distinction, which I discuss in detail in this podcast episode with Shari Blaukopf. If you’d like to see how it plays out in this piece, watch the video below.
The final piece is being printed as a set of Diwali holiday cards for a Chicago-based client, as well as fine art giclee prints for them to frame at home. It’s another useful advantage of the digital medium that I can offer high quality prints at different sizes to my clients. The same piece of work is able to add value to their lives in different, creative ways.
Ep 6 of the SneakyArt Podcast
“Surviving Lockdown with Mat Let”
In this episode, I speak with artist and travel-sketcher Matthieu Letellier about his experience as an artist under lockdown in Paris. Mat has put together his brilliant sketches of lockdown as a self-published, crowd-funded book titled “28 m2” - a reference to the size of his apartment. In a way, this was also the size of his world during lockdown. He records the view out of his window, rues the loss of previously made plans, and finds beauty within his confined spaces. We talk about his love for travel-sketching, and how he came to become an artist while trying to tell stories of the world.
On my blog, I put together some thoughts from this fascinating conversation with show-notes and a summarized transcript. I would love to hear what you think of our conversation.
You can listen to the SneakyArt Podcast on your choice of streaming service. Here are some links - Apple | Spotify | PocketCasts | Browser
To buy a copy of Mat’s book, get in touch with him on Instagram.
Book Signing
I recently made a few book sales. SneakyArt of Eau Claire has won two independent publishing awards this year, and with every copy I send out, I get to put both award stickers on the book jacket. It’s a great feeling!
Every copy goes out with a free portrait on the inside cover. It’s the only piece of non-SneakyArt in the book, and brings a lot of joy to both my customers and myself. I used to do this in person, but COVID has made that impossible. Here is a recent order that was placed on my Etsy store. It’s a holiday gift to a newly married couple in Wisconsin.
Links
Both Mat and I take a great deal of inspiration from French/Belgian comics and cartoonists. Here are some people we discussed:
Jacques Tardi - French comics-artist of WW1 graphic-novel,"It was the War of the Trenches"
Herge, the creator of the Tintin comics
Goscinny & Uderzo, creators of the Asterix comics
Web-comic artist, The Bouletcorp.