Marsha P.: When the Past Becomes Present

I find myself reminiscing about the past more often these days.

I think about Christopher Street and the wonderful life that was lived there. I think about the friends I made, and the friends who became family, during one of the most intense periods in LGBTQ+ history—the AIDS epidemic.

So many of those friends are gone now.

But I still think about them. I remember them. And I think about the wonderful life I have had, and the life I am still having, and how much fun it would have been to share some of this life with them.

Maybe that has something to do with how Marsha P. came into being.

Original black line drawing that later became Marsha P., composed of abstract circles, flowers, arrows, eyes, and a broad smile.
The original abstract drawing—the first stage of what became Marsha P.
Early stage of Marsha P. with pale pink-and-blue washes beneath the original abstract line drawing.
An early stage, as I explored tinting beneath the drawing and bringing areas back.
Marsha P. in progress, taped to a drawing board as deeper blues, reds, yellows, and facial details begin to emerge.
A middle stage of the drawing, as the eyes, smile, and surrounding colors became more defined.
Finished mixed-media drawing Marsha P., featuring an exuberant face surrounded by flowers, circular forms, and richly layered colors.
Marsha P. — finished mixed-media drawing by Bill Hendricks, 2025.

The drawing did not begin as Marsha P. Johnson.

I know that.

It began as a very abstract sort of image. I was working with shapes and lines without any intention of making a portrait.

Then I began to see something.

First I saw the smile.

At this point, I was exploring how to tint underneath the drawing—putting color down and then bringing areas back.

As I worked, I began to see the eyes.

And all along there was a certain joy in the drawing that kept coming through.

I continued drawing, painting, changing things, covering things, uncovering things. The more I worked, the more something from my own history seemed to be coming forward.

My past became present.

Marsha was part of the world I remember.

I don’t mean that Marsha and I were close friends. We weren’t.

She was someone who passed through my life.

But she was a character on Christopher Street, just as I was a character on Christopher Street—working in a gallery among lots of other characters I loved dearly.

There was something about seeing her emerge from this drawing that gave me a way of becoming involved with that world again.

Not simply remembering it.

Participating in it.

For a little while, the distance between then and now became smaller.

The finished work became Marsha P.

For me, it carries more than the image of one person. It carries something of Christopher Street, of friendship, of loss, of survival, and of the extraordinary joy that existed alongside some very difficult years.

Maybe that is why the joy in the drawing matters so much to me.

The work later traveled to New York, where it was exhibited during Pride Month. The original Marsha P. is now available through Collective Z Gallery on Artsy.

But when I look at it, that isn’t what I think about first.

I think about the people.

I think about the life we lived.

Sometimes, while making a drawing, the past finds its way back into the room.

Currently at Collective Z

Collective Z is currently presenting Second Nature, bringing together painters Gwen Yip and Spencer Patrick. Their work considers the spaces New Yorkers move through—from the public world of subway platforms to the private interiors where people retreat.

Second Nature is on view through August 29, 2026, at Collective Z, 325 Broome Street, New York.

Learn more about the exhibition.

Looking Back, Looking Forward: A Follow-Up to “Patterns Emerge”

Maps, patterns, and finding my way

Mixed media drawing framed like a symbolic icon, featuring a stylized central form resembling a letter B or figure, directional arrows, geometric symbols, ribbon-like lines, and soft blue shading — suggesting identity, energy, and becoming.
Metaphysical Being — mixed media on paper, 2026.

Maps, patterns, and finding my way

Metaphysical Being — mixed media on paper, 2026.

Lately I’ve been thinking about how I got here.

I was born in 1953.

In 1969, I remember hearing about Stonewall late one night on KDWB radio. They were interviewing Jack Baker.

I was sixteen years old.

For the first time, I realized there were others. I wasn’t alone.

Looking back now, I realize that moment wasn’t just about being gay. It was the beginning of a lifelong search for direction—for understanding how people find their place in the world and how we make sense of lives that don’t always fit the expected path.

I’ve spent much of my life looking for paths.

Sometimes those paths appeared as maps. Sometimes as diagrams. Sometimes as outlines, websites, or decision trees. Often they appeared simply as ways of organizing what I could see—and finding relationships among things that did not, at first, seem connected.

As a teacher, I spent years making outlines, building websites, drawing wireframes, and thinking in mind maps. I taught Gestalt theory—the idea that our minds naturally seek relationships and organize visual information into meaningful wholes.

Being dyslexic, I think I was already doing that long before I knew there was a name for it.

I’ve often described myself as someone who sees patterns. And I still believe that’s true.

But during one of my daily walks, another thought quietly surfaced.

Maybe what has fascinated me all these years hasn’t been patterns themselves.

Maybe it’s been finding my way.

Patterns are useful because they reveal possible paths. Maps matter because they help us navigate. Even a labyrinth has a pattern—but its purpose isn’t the pattern itself. Its purpose is to help us travel and find ourselves.

That realization feels surprisingly important.

When I look back over my life—from hearing Jack Baker on the radio… to teaching students how we make sense of the world… to designing websites… to creating art… to exploring identity, community, and spirit—I don’t see disconnected experiences anymore.

I see one long journey.

The maps changed.

The questions changed.

The medium changed.

But the journey remained remarkably consistent.

Lately I’ve started calling some of my drawings Decision Trees.

At first I thought they were simply abstract compositions.

Now I wonder if they’re visual journals.

They resemble the maps, outlines, webs, and structures I have used throughout my life—not because I planned them that way, but because they’ve always been part of how I think.

As an artist, I don’t begin with answers.

I begin with curiosity.

Here’s a bit of what KDWB sounded like around that time:
KDWB—Channel 63, January 3, 1970.

Related post: This reflection continues the ideas I began exploring in Looking Back, Looking Forward, where I considered how patterns can help us find our way.

Looking Back, Looking Forward

Video: Looking Back, Looking Forward. A sequence of Bill Hendricks’s line drawings explores maps, branching paths, and emerging patterns. Music accompanies the images, along with a message.

Maps, patterns, and finding my way

During one of my daily walks, I realized something had been quietly growing over the past few weeks.

Looking back over my life, I see a thread I hadn’t fully recognized before.

As a teacher, I wasn’t really teaching maps. I was teaching how people think. Gestalt theory, visual relationships, organizing information, recognizing connections—those ideas found their way into almost everything I taught. Site maps, mind maps, color wheels, design systems… they were never just tools. They were ways of seeing.

Now I’m beginning to notice those same patterns emerging in my artwork.

The drawings began as what I called Decision Trees. Each branch suggested another possibility, another choice, another path.

But lately I’ve started wondering if they’re about something else.

Maybe they aren’t about making decisions.

Maybe they’re about recognizing patterns.

When life becomes uncertain, my instinct is to search for a new direction. Yet I’m beginning to wonder if the path is already there, waiting to be recognized. Perhaps finding our way isn’t about inventing something new. Perhaps it’s about noticing the connections that have been quietly leading us all along.

That thought has stayed with me.

It has even changed the way I look at these drawings. They no longer feel like illustrations of an idea. They feel like evidence of a conversation I’ve been having with myself without realizing it.

I don’t know exactly where this series is going.

That’s the exciting part.

For the first time in a while, I don’t feel like I’m forcing the work toward an answer. I’m simply paying attention to where it wants to lead.

Maybe that’s what artists do.

Maybe that’s what all of us do.

We keep looking back, not to live in the past, but to recognize the patterns that help us move forward.

“Humans are pattern-seeking, storytelling animals. We look for and find patterns in our world and in our lives.”

—Michael Shermer

Source: “Chicken Soup for the Evolutionist’s Soul,” MichaelShermer.com

Carolyn, Where Are You?

Composite image of the former TR's Gallery building at 51st Street and Seventh Avenue in New York City. Carolyn Solomon gave me my opportunity there, and today the space is occupied by a souvenir shop.
The former home of TR’s Gallery at 51st Street and Seventh Avenue. Today it’s a souvenir shop, but it still holds an important place in my story.

We never know the part we’ve played in another person’s life.
— Bill Hendricks

Carolyn Solomon, where are you?

It’s a strange question to ask someone I haven’t seen in more than forty years.

A few weeks ago, while I was back  for The Ordinary at Collective Z Gallery, I walked over to the building that once housed TR’s Gallery. I managed that gallery for Circle Fine Art in the mid-1980s. Today the space is a souvenir shop.

Standing there, I found myself thinking about you.

You may not remember me. I was one of many gallery managers. But you gave me an opportunity that mattered.

A bonus I earned while managing TR’s Gallery helped Michael and me start Desired Printing. Looking back now, I can trace a line from those years in New York, to teaching, and finally back to the studio.

When I returned home, I began looking for you. I learned that Jack Solomon had passed away. My condolences. He was always kind to me. I wasn’t able to learn much more about you.

This isn’t a letter expecting an answer.

It’s a thank you.

We never know the part we’ve played in another person’s life.

Looking back, I can see that you played a part in mine.

Wherever you are, Carolyn, thank you.

Returning to 51st Street

Returning to the former TR’s Gallery connected my first years in New York with my return as an exhibiting artist over forty years later.

Interior of the former TR’s Gallery space at 51st Street and Seventh Avenue in Manhattan, now converted into a brightly lit souvenir store filled with New York-themed T-shirts, mugs, gifts, and displays beneath a large “I ♥ NY” mural.
The former TR’s Gallery space today. The gallery where I managed Circle Fine Art’s TR’s Gallery in the mid-1980s is now a New York souvenir store. Walking inside, it was hard to imagine the walls once filled with original artwork instead of T-shirts, mugs, and postcards.

When I moved to New York in 1980, I knew exactly what I was looking for.

I was looking for a place where I could live openly as a gay man. I was looking for community. I was looking for a life where I didn’t have to explain or defend who I was. Like so many people before and after me, I came to New York searching for the freedom to become myself.

My first job was at Kiss My Cookies. Not long afterward, I went to work at All State Art on the corner of Christopher and Bleecker. From there I moved to TR’s Gallery, one of Circle Fine Art’s galleries, where I eventually became the manager.

This week I was back in New York because one of my drawings was included in The Ordinary, a group exhibition at Collective Z Gallery on the Lower East Side.

While walking through Midtown, I found myself standing in front of the building where TR’s Gallery used to be.

The gallery is gone. The ground floor is now a souvenir store. But the building is still there.

Standing there, I realized that I had come to New York searching then, and I had come back searching now.

The questions have changed.

At twenty-six, I was trying to figure out how to live.

At seventy-three, I’m trying to understand what that life has meant.

Maybe that’s one reason I’ve returned to making art.

The drawings aren’t simply images. They have become a way of looking back, asking questions, and seeing connections I couldn’t see while I was living them. More and more, the work feels autobiographical—not because it illustrates events from my life, but because every drawing carries something of the person who made it.

The gallery is gone.

The search isn’t.