Bill Hendricks (81/82) giving Richie a peck on the cheek…
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.
This was home.
“I am the maker of rules, dealing with fools.”
— Eye in the Sky, Alan Parsons Project
Curious how the story begins with the last stroke of the pen or brush. As I look at the image — the strokes, shadows, and hues — something of the ’80s returns: the Saint, that holy spot. Dancing there with people I loved — accepting and greeting the universe. Death, hope, sorrow, play, joy, and the celebration of life — and a song: Eye in the Sky.
The line says “dealing with fools”…Nah. What circulates in my head is “protector of fools. I can read your mind.”
Bill Hendricks (Shadowmason)
Song reference: Eye in the Sky — The Alan Parsons Project
Related post:
Surrealism, Automatic Drawing and the Spirit
— a reflection on creativity, memory, and the unseen.
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
A few days ago, I watched the video linked above, “3IATLAS Just Revealed Unbelievable Photos That Shocked NASA and Harvard | Michio Kaku.” On my walk today, this image came to mind, and I felt there was a connection.
A bit dystopian — one AI-generated and mine not — but they both share a feeling.
One states it; one you have to interpret.
The strongest statement in the video was this: “They said we failed the evaluation. The evaluation period is now done. We were filed away.”
Dark, I know. But I think — not doomed.
Bill Hendricks
https://artchangeslives.com/tag/ephemeral-traces/