Lately I’ve been thinking about what remains of us.
Not reputation.
Not a big story.
Not even the full face.
Just trace.
A shadow on concrete isn’t the person, but it proves something stood in the light.
I keep circling the idea that existence doesn’t require constant visibility. When awareness drops away — sleep, silence, the spaces between — there isn’t spectacle. There isn’t narrative. And yet something remains.
Maybe that’s what a shadow is.
Not the full reality.
Not the whole person.
Just proof that contact happened. That light met form.
Not monument.
Existence.
A human being is only breath and shadow. ~ Sophocles
A Place to Go While Staying Home—Bill Hendricks/Shadowmason
I’m starting the year with this little drawing simply because it makes me smile. I like the strange little world that showed up here — a figure with its arms thrown up like, “Okay, universe, let’s celebrate,” a Ferris-wheel-looking thing, balloons, suns, and those chunky little bug-stick people bobbing around, just enjoying and being present.
Nothing in this really makes sense, but it feels playful and relaxed. I love the variation in the lines and how loose it is. It’s not careful or perfect — it just… happened, while I let my hand wander. In its own quirky way, that feels like “living in the now”: not overthinking, not polishing, just letting something exist because it wants to.
I’m guessing that’s a pretty good way to walk into 2026.
IMG_1712–What a Scandal-1980, Artist: Bill Hendricks (Shadowmason)
I made this drawing in 1980, just after I moved to New York City.
I was a kid from Minneapolis — recently out of college, a couple of years into working — and I had come to a quiet but unavoidable realization: staying where I was would mean living part of my life in a closet, or keeping parts of myself hidden. I decided to check out both Chicago and New York to see where I might land.
Chicago felt hard to me. New York felt open.
Within two weeks of arriving, I fell in love with the West Village. I went back to the Twin Cities only long enough to pack and was back in New York by Halloween. I found a roommate, found a job, lost a job, survived on unemployment — and like so many people before and after me, I found my community on Christopher Street.
This drawing came out of that moment.
I spent a lot of time at a small coffee shop called Kiss My Cookies. It was comfortable, cozy, and ahead of its time — cookies, brownies, coffee, small tables, and long conversations. I was there so often that Cy, the owner, offered me a job. I worked alongside Scott, Ralph, and Carlos, and two beat cops who stopped in regularly. Eventually, I wound up working at All State Art, a gallery just down the street.
Between the coffee shop, the gallery, and the block itself, Christopher Street became a cast of characters: Rollerena (sometimes called the Fairy Godmother), Marsha P. Johnson — often known as the saint of Christopher Street — along with actors, porn stars, artists, eccentrics, sweet misfits, a clown-college graduate, a lesbian manager, the joyful disaster of an owner’s brother, shopkeepers, cops, neighbors, and passersby. It was dysfunctional, funny, chaotic, kind, queer, deeply human.
This drawing isn’t meant to be a perfect architectural record. It’s an act of looking. The signs, the storefronts, the fire escapes, the rhythm of the street — all of it mattered to me. I was learning how to see a city not as a backdrop, but as a living system of people, labor, chance encounters, and survival.
When I look at it now, I sometimes think that stretch of Christopher Street was a sitcom waiting to be written. Not tragedy. Not trauma as the headline. Just life — community, chosen family, humor, tenderness, and endurance — long before anyone called it representation.
The paper has yellowed over time. I’ve chosen to leave it that way. It’s part of the object’s history, part of its truth.
Hi, I am sharing this article I wrote about the condition of our Minneapolis walkways. I hope this helps spark conversations that continue and lead to real solutions for this citywide problem.
I am grateful that the Star Tribune published my commentary. As I grow older, this is becoming a greater concern. After 15 years in NYC, I am a walker. You see so much and learn a lot.
