Confidence and Trust

I have confidence in sunshine,
I have confidence in rain.
I have confidence that spring will come again!
Besides which, you see, I have confidence in me!

— “I Have Confidence,” The Sound of Music
Rodgers & Hammerstein

When I was teaching, my students used to get a kick out of the fact that every once in a while I would break into song.

One of my favorites was I Have Confidence from The Sound of Music.

I’ve been thinking about that song lately. I’ve also been thinking about confidence, trust, and résumés.

A résumé can list what I’ve done. It can remind me of exhibitions, teaching, projects, and accomplishments. But confidence doesn’t come from a list of what I’ve already done.

It comes from trusting what I can do next.

I’ve been working on a new series of small drawings and paintings, and I’m pleased to say that some of them will be going to New York in December for Collective Z’s Small Works show.

I’m excited to be showing with Collective Z again. It’s a wonderful small gallery, and I’ve really enjoyed working with Alex Z. Wang.

Will every piece I make be the best piece I’ve ever made? Probably not.

That’s not really the point.

Whatever comes out of that process, it will be the best of me.

Bill Hendricks

 

Three small abstract pen-and-ink drawings with geometric lines, symbols, and machine-like forms arranged on an artist’s worktable.
Three works in progress from the Small Works series, 2026. Pen and ink on paper.

Collective Z is a contemporary gallery and project space on Broome Street in New York, dedicated to artists working in states of transition, tension, and becoming.

— Collective Z

Directions

Directions, pen-and-ink drawing by Bill Hendricks in a decorative found frame
Directions, c. 2023 — pen and ink in found frame, Bill Hendricks

I did this drawing some time ago, probably in 2023.

I found the frame a few years ago and always knew I wanted to use it. I was lucky enough to have the image that was meant for it: Directions.

I think this piece talks about both time and distance. Arrow up, arrow to the right—either works.

It’s a fun little piece, and I’m ready to part with it.

Directions, c. 2023
Pen and ink
Drawing: 3½ × 2¼ inches
Framed: 4½ × 3¾ inches
$350 framed

Available through the ArtChangesLives shop →

Does the Résumé Matter?

The Résumé Doesn’t Matter

I’ve been thinking about behavior.

Abstract mixed-media artwork with a central human-like figure surrounded by colorful geometric shapes, pipes, mechanical forms, and raised hands.
Pipe Fitters, 2026, Mixed media on paper, Bill Hendricks

Maybe it started with something I heard at Meeting this weekend about being slow to anger. The message was partly about animals and how uncomplicatedly they can love us. But my mind went somewhere else.

If you want to be loved, love.

If you want people to be kind to you, be kind.

If you want charity, show charity.

It sounds terribly simple. Maybe too simple. But I keep coming back to the idea that eventually it isn’t what we say about ourselves that matters. It’s how we behave.

Quakers don’t ask each other for résumés before we sit together in worship. We don’t list our accomplishments before standing to speak. At least we shouldn’t have to.

And yet I have a résumé.

I moved myself to New York when I was young and somehow built a life there. I finished my bachelor’s degree and figured out a way to do it for next to nothing. I ran a gallery in Midtown Manhattan and increased its sales. Later, Michael and I had our own business. Michael worked his tail off to help make it succeed.

Then HIV changed our lives.

We closed the business and moved back to Minnesota. Somehow, through that enormous transition, neither of us lost our medical insurance. That may not sound like much today, but at the time it was a feat.

I went back to work.

Eventually I found myself teaching full-time at Minneapolis College. I stayed for more than twenty years. I helped build a department. I earned my graduate degree while working another job to help pay for it.

Woo-hoo.

There. I gave you the résumé.

But none of that is really the point.

A résumé pulls together the pieces of a life. It’s simple Gestalt. You don’t see all the individual pieces anymore. You see the overall shape.

It makes a life look planned.

Mine wasn’t.

There were good decisions and bad ones. Things I worked hard for and things that happened almost by accident. Sometimes I succeeded. Sometimes I screwed up. Sometimes my own behavior probably made things harder than they needed to be.

That’s the life.

And maybe that brings me back to the message I heard at Meeting.

If you want love, love.

If you want kindness, be kind.

If you want charity, show charity.

Who I am isn’t my résumé.

Behavior tells that story.

In the end, which matters more—the résumé or how you live your life?

“I paint because the spirits whisper madly inside my head.” —Attributed to El Greco

Words I Cannot Spell

Isle of Rowlyria, Second Life — August 2026

When I was asked to do a show in Second Life, I decided to go back to an older body of work. I didn’t want to make a new show just for the sake of making something new. I wanted to look again at work that still had something to say to me.

Words I Cannot Spell started several years ago at Hunt & Gather, a wonderful old junk shop in Minneapolis. I saw a pile of letters stacked on top of one another. I stopped and looked at them.

I thought, that’s how I see words.

I started taking photographs.

But the photographs were too perfect. The camera knew exactly where every letter was supposed to be. I don’t always see them that way.

I began to have fun. I jumbled things up to more or less replicate what a page sometimes looks like to me—with a dash of anxiety and confusion thrown in.

That is what interested me about bringing these pieces back for the Second Life exhibition.

I was very appreciative of the opportunity to show this body of work again. The work is older, but the experience behind it is still very much a part of how I see.

Lately I have been doing a lot more writing—articles, agendas, reflections, and writing about my artwork. Maybe that’s why I found myself thinking about those letters again and about how I see words.

Showing this work again gave me another opportunity to give the viewer a little insight into how I experience the world through dyslexia.

Sometimes older artwork just needs another place and another time to speak.

From the series, Words I Cannot Spell. A image by Bill Hendricks
From the series “Words I Cannot Spell,” by Bill Hendricks.

View the Words I Cannot Spell gallery

Hunt & Gather

From Lake Harriet to Christopher Street and Back Again

Remembering the Christopher Street That Held a Community

August 28, 2026

The distance between Lake Harriet and Christopher Street is more than a thousand miles, but memory has a way of collapsing distance without warning.

Not so much about individual people this time, but about the set. That’s what it felt like as I started putting the pieces back together.

There was Allstate Art, where I worked. Kiss My Cookies. Hercules on the corner. The loft a couple doors down. Boots and Saddles. Clyde’s. A Clean Well-Lighted Place, a lovely little gallery.

There was Richard White’s jewelry store. I remember Richard and his lover sitting behind the counters, working side by side. It was a dark little place, nothing flashy.

At Bleecker and Christopher was an Asian fruit stand. There was Paul Bolardo’s place further down Christopher. Across from Kiss My Cookies was a little photography store in a basement.

Then there was the food. Chicken from Jefferson Market for dinner. Turkey legs from the deli. Zito’s Bakery. And Rocco’s, where my favorite was the creamolata. Wonderful.

There were lots of other places, of course. These are simply the ones that stayed with me.

Together they made up this little world where we worked, ate, went out, saw friends and ran into people we knew.

It was a community, but today I was remembering the place that held the community.

And somewhere in the background was Sylvester singing “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real),” probably drifting out of Boots and Saddles—also known as Bras and Girdles.

The drawing here isn’t Christopher Street. But somehow it feels right with these thoughts—pieces connected to pieces, the way memory sometimes works.

Today, for a little while, I could see the set again.

I wonder what part of it I’ll remember next.

— Bill Hendricks

Continue the conversation

For more photographs, stories, and memories of Christopher Street, visit this Facebook group.