Category: Uncategorized

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.

Sharing Work from 2020/2021 — The First Steps

These early artwork pieces from 2020/2021 became the first steps in my developing art practice. These pieces became the foundation for the themes I’m exploring today: spirit through art, creativity, identity, and transformation.

Looking back, I can see how curiosity, play, and questions about who we are and how we change began to take shape in this work. Those themes continue to guide me, both in the studio and in how I think about art’s role in my life.

“Serious play is the essence of creativity.”
        — Paula Scher · TED-2008

I appreciate how play and spirit come together in these early pieces. You can see other works from that period in the gallery section.

👇 Let me know what speaks to you.

— Bill

Walking Reflection — November 4

A digital collage blending red, gold, and pink autumn leaves with soft branches and floral forms. The composition feels like a playful romp with color, echoing the joy and energy of fall.
Autumn Layers — digital collage inspired by the color and rhythm of autumn.

Autumn Colors

This fall, on my walks, I’ve been amazed by the color — soaking it in, just appreciating the ability to gaze upon such beauty.

As beautiful as the colors of spring and summer are — spring with its bright yellow-greens and lupines in pinks and violets, and summer with its deeper greens and the bright yellows of marigolds or the reds of geraniums and pinks of coneflowers — not to mention the purples and blues of delphiniums — I love them too.

But autumn colors speak to me differently. There’s an excitement, a passion in them that touches my soul.

I often collect leaves and set them in my studio to inspire me — to try and equal the wonderful harmony of fall colors. This year, I decided to play as the Creator once did, and create an image — a playful collage of color, built from photographs taken along the way.

Bill Hendricks

Started with a Walk and a Photograph

Related: Minnesota DNR Fall Color Finder — a live map of color across the state and information about the 2025 season.

To Be Seen — Mixed Media Drawings 2025

From vision to form, from shadow to light — these works found their way into being.

Mixed Media Drawings — 2025 →

Bill Hendricks mixed media drawing 2025 — expressive watercolor and ink painting honoring the resilience and spirit of Marsha P. Johnson
Marsha P, watercolor and ink on paper, 2025

“History isn’t something you look back at and say it was inevitable, it happens because people make decisions that are sometimes very impulsive and of the moment, but those moments are cumulative realities.” — Marsha P. Johnson

After four years of building a body of work, I’ve reached a turning point.
When I retired, I promised myself to return to the questions that began with my thesis — shadow, symbol, communication, reality, presence, and absence.

This painting marks that return. Its forms begin with light — and it is light’s rays that define an object’s appearance, translated by the eye that observes it.
Is this an image of circular tubes, or a visual echo of Marsha P. Johnson?
It moves between light and darkness, order and release — the space where renewal begins.

Sometimes celebration simply means knowing that the light is still here —
that something imagined has finally come into being.

Hope you explore this new gallery:
Mixed Media Drawings — 2025 →

Who is your favorite historical figure? At the Moment … John Cage

Cage says that somethings are always created out of nothing, the intangible, living void. They’re not a form of self-expression; instead they are a inner response. One starts with a structure that is empty and all possibilities are on the table. Wu-wei or effortless action, says that nothing should be forced.
                                      ~ https://www.kimmanleyort.com/

Something....That was Used a Nothing.... None is Something again.
Something…That was Used as Nothing… And Nothing becomes Something again.