In thanks for art

A news story motivated me last week.

It was another story from that world my family and I entered twelve years ago as we worked our coffee shop on University Avenue. The avenue is aptly named the “central corridor” between St. Paul and Minneapolis and in lieu of the “central corridor light rail” that is about to begin construction, a building that housed some of our favorite artists from that five-year sojourn, has been sold. The new owners, with an eye toward the future, plan to develop market-rate apartments. The artists, who considered themselves part of a casual co-op, and part of a community that has dotted the former industrial warehouses with studios, particularly near the area of University and Raymond, are being displaced.

Dan Mackerman, who has been housed there twenty years and who was one of our most popular regulars, told the reporter that he remembered when there used to be two coffee shops (among other businesses). I felt sure that memory referred in part to us, and took it personally. It made me want to say, “Thanks, Dan, for remembering us,” and to feel this catch in my chest, the kind you feel when a casual acquaintance like him is about to disappear after years of enjoying that feeling that you knew where he was – no matter that you never stopped by to visit or planned to.

My cousin Nina visited from Louisiana one year while we were still in business. Mia and I were working the shop. Angie had moved into an apartment over an art gallery a half block up on Raymond and worked there as a part-time receptionist while going to school. My cousin thought we were all “living the life,” that we were sort of bohemian I suppose. We took her to visit the building now condemned to this new fate – the building all the locals call the C and E building, and to see Dan. I was afraid we might be a bother but he was as gracious a host as someone who might have invited us into his living room. He was in his element, just being himself.

Dan did sculpting too and he’d come into the coffee shop a real mess – as dirty as a construction worker at times. Finally I asked him why and he pulled out the Harry Potter head he was carrying from under his arm. He was sculpting a show for a Dayton’s (or Macy’s…or Marshall Field’s) Christmas display – the kind that attract crowds who walk through this enchantment on their way to visiting Santa Claus.

I used to pine over the idea of being like those “small artists” I came to know from the C and E building. They were simply doing what they loved to do and making a small living from it (the reason I called them “small artists”).

There’s something you have, an aura you have about you when you’re doing what you love to do and you even have a little of it when you’ve taken the risk of it and it hasn’t turned out as you’d hoped. (As Cher says, “Mistakes are vastly underrated.”) When you take the risk of expressing yourself, in whatever way moves you, you give yourself a chance to be your own person at the same time that you can find yourself blending into a community of some like folks, so that you are – (even us in our coffee shop) supporting an alternative way of life.

There was, being surrounded by artists, an element of something like surprise. I’ve not been in too many places like it – because it wasn’t just the artists who were unique and surprising but most everyone who came in the door, as if the area bred folks who weren’t so on a schedule that they still had time for the kind of conversation that makes for interesting exchanges and the feeling of a common bond.

Being at the shop was like living in the world in a way I’d never experienced when I was taken care of by a boss and a payroll and was kept, quite literally, sequestered away from the environmental/political/social effects you feel when you’re making your own way.

There are those who say creativity on demand is as much of a grind as anything else, and I suppose they’re right, but it’s a different grind, and that’s what shows. You see it in the eyes. It’s kind of a look that says, “I’d rather be who I am and be poor than live any other way. You can’t do anything to me worse than I’d do to myself by not living my life this way.”

The article included a notice that the artists were having their last open house. I went to see Dan. He’s superbly talented. (www.danmackerman.com) He was so funny. He talked in this ordinary way (when we were conversing) of such profound things, and then ended on the note that the key to being an artist is low overhead.

I talked with Bob Donsker, who is doing a photographic collection of abandoned buildings in the Twin Cities and thinking of a coffee table book. There’s such a story there – full of pathos and history and insight.

I told Dean Lucker, who recognized me (and didn’t…Where do I know you from?) that I thought of him and them as “small artists.” He said, “Then you got it long before I did, but that’s what we are.” He started in his direction, (mechanical art) he said, by taking apart toys as a child – none of them his own. I love hearing that kind of thing.

I guess the main thing certain people, and even areas of town can give you, (until they get sold-out anyway) is a glimpse of another way. I know I shouldn’t romanticize it…like the people did who thought we were “living the life” when we owned the shop, but I still do, and there’s a reason for it. Someone has to keep up the lost art of alternative and artful living.

People who give off that aura of simply being who they are, have figured out a few secrets. Like “low overhead” some of them are practical. But those aren’t the ones that help you keep your dreams and not feel undone by your difficulties. It’s just them; just the people; the individuals. They’re the ones who remind you of what is possible and who keep a certain style of living from ceasing to be.

On this day after Thanksgiving, I’m thankful to all artists everywhere, and especially to these local ones.