Speaking with Others to Know Myself
#291: notes from Chicago, and the relations that are immeasurable, and immeasurably beautiful.
Dear reader,
I spoke with many people this week, which is itself unusual. Some of them are now also readers and paying subscribers of this newsletter. Hello!
This summer has become all about meeting lots of people. An older/younger part of me is made uncomfortable by this, but newer/older me appreciates the value. Last week, chatting with Stephanie Bower (a popular urban sketcher and architecture illustrator) at the USk Chicago Seminar, we touched upon the business of measuring things. Numbers are a convenient abstraction of reality, and a simple assignation of value. How much you have of something. How many hours you worked this week. How many likes you got on your posts. How much you earned this year. How much more than last year. But what about all the things you cannot measure?
Becoming an artist did that to me. I had to come to terms with being unable to measure my time. Was I moving forward or sideways? Was I halfway to something new, or still at square one? Did I need to work more hours or fewer? What was a good week? What was a good month? The journey feels good or seems bad, but largely it operates on faith and instinct. To be happy, I had to unlearn competition. To be content, I had to unlearn productivity. To be successful, I had to unlearn ways of measuring success. Art allowed me to discover how to just be. Here. Now. In my skin.
My environment keeps pushing me back into competition mode but I have to hold on to this feeling. I will see Stephanie again this weekend at Sketcher Fest (in Edmonds, Washington) and maybe we will talk about it again.
Tickets to the Sketchbook Fair (as well as some workshops) at Sketcher Fest are still available. You would have the chance to speak with/learn from many amazing artists and browse through dozens of travel sketchbooks. It’s an excellent deal.
If you are coming to Sketcher Fest already, say hello in the comments? I would love for us to meet.
In today’s post, all these beautiful relations.
The SneakyArt Post is a newsletter of secretly drawn art of the world. Every week, I share the latest pages from my sketchbook and the best ideas from my journey as an artist and writer.
👋🏼 Hello, friends.
Meeting people is another thing you cannot measure for direct value. Last week, I hung out with many people in Chicago - readers of this newsletter, old friends whom I had not seen in a while, artists I admired deeply, and people whose words and images I was delighted to discover for the first time. I learned so much about them. And from listening to them, from allowing myself to listen, I also learned much about myself.
In a relational universe (as per quantum theory), a thing is nothing but its relations to other things around it. If this is how the elementary particles of our universe behave, if this is what defines the trajectories of stars and planets, would humans be different? Are we also nothing by ourselves? Are we also only the reflections that others hold of us?
If so, do you need to speak to people to understand who you are? This changes my world in a significant way, and I am still grappling with the idea.
Reader, what do you think?
📚 I have a book!
In Chicago, I also had the chance to tell many people about my upcoming book. How did I end up writing a whole book? What is it about? Was it difficult or very easy to write a book after being a newsletter writer for so long?
I thought about this note I shared recently:
Make (Sneaky) Art was both simple and difficult. I knew what I wanted to say, and already had many wonderful strings of words ready to go. Easy-peasy. I had no idea how to write for this genre and am naturally averse to instructional books. Tough going.
I think I struck the right balance. This week, the advance copy arrived in the mail, and I held it in trembling hands because it is so beautiful, so much more beautiful than I had thought it could be.
💻 SneakyArt Insiders, I will email you soon about our next Zoom hangout. Maybe time for a book tour? 🥰
Reader, this newsletter is now 5 years old. It is also proudly 100% independent. I could not have imagined having so many readers, and all of it is made possible by the subset of you that choose to support my work. If you like the work I do, and want to help me keep going, consider becoming a paying subscriber?
Earlier this year, we did our first Special Project together: learning to bind our own sketchbooks. I now have a self-bound sketchbook to use, and a journal I write in everyday. The next Special Project with subscribers is to teach myself block printing.
Tap the button to subscribe and become part of this journey.
🌎 The Why of it
As it did at Aspen Ideas last month and in Chicago last week, my workshop at Sketcher Fest this Saturday will begin with this thought -
Why does a city exist? What makes a building a building? How does a cafe become a cafe?
The answer (to me) is human presence. Cities, buildings, and cafes, etc. exist because of human needs. My curiosity to draw cities began with a curiosity for human activity. And so my workshops are about drawing cities, with respect to the people that occupy them.
Are you part of my workshop this Saturday? If you live in Vancouver, Toronto, New York, or Seattle, I may be able to do a workshop near you. Say hello in the comments if interested!
Thank you for reading. It is a privilege to have a space in your inbox, and a share of your time and attention every week.
Nishant, it was a pleasure to meet you in Chicago. You are an artist and a philosopher.
Love your deep thoughts as much as your tiny people.
My best wishes for you.
I'll be following your journey.
Adriana.
Would love to do a workshop with you in Toronto!