Walk-ins welcome

10 things worth sharing this week

A new sign for my studio!

Hey y’all,

Here are 10 things I thought were worth sharing this week:

1. I love it when people visit me in the studio. For years, I’ve been dreaming of getting a “walk-ins welcome” sign like you see in barber shops to hang in my window. (See #44 on this list.) After watching Dean Peterson learn sign painting via his @deanpainterson Instagram account, I thought, “Why not just hire Dean to make me one?” Boy, did he deliver! Next time you’re in Los Angeles, you can see his work in person at his non-alcoholic bottle shop and market Burden of Proof. (Just now realizing what a great Show Your Work! story this is — cool things happen when you learn in public.)

   
   

2. “However complex and solid it seems, civilisation is actually quite fragile. It can be destroyed.” We finally finished all 13 episodes of Kenneth Clark’s 1969 BBC miniseries Civilisation. (I’d never seen it, though I’m very familiar with the book.) Not sure if this is the best time or the worst time to contemplate Clark’s “personal view,” but it worked on us like a tranquilizer dart at the end of the day.
   
   

3. I somehow didn’t quite put it together that John Berger’s 1972 BBC series Ways of Seeing was a reaction to Clark’s series. The book they made out of it is one of my all-time favorites. (Someone made it into a website?) Here’s a map I drew of the book in 2008:

   

   
   

4. “Do you want to read? Or do you just want to have read[?]” If you really want to read more, Alan Jacobs has some advice for you. (His influence is all over my Read Like an Artist zine.)
   
   

5. Here’s a reading tip from me: Bring a book to bed with you and leave your phone charging in another room. (Neil Pasricha recommended this cheap USB rechargeable reading light, and it’s pretty nifty.)
   
   

6. Tolstoy summer: I let a month pass after finishing War and Peace, but then I decided I needed “God’s older brother” back in my life, so I’m back in the 19th century now reading Anna Karenina. (The Rosamund Bartlett translation is great.) I love Tolstoy because I’m a third into his book about a lady having an affair and so far the best chapter is about a dude experiencing a state of “flow” while mowing a field with his country peasants.
   
   

7. “I’m someone who actually really likes the suburbs in a non-ironic way…. I thought, ‘I think there's just as many interesting people in my neighborhood in suburban Texas.’” Mike Judge on how Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing inspired King of the Hill. (I liked the reboot a lot. When I watched the show as a kid, I thought it was overblown satire. After I moved to Texas, I learned it was a documentary of remarkable realism.)
   
   

8. Ear candy: If you love James Brown and Fela Kuti, you’ll love this Analog Africa compilation, African Scream Contest: Raw & Psychedelic Afro Sounds from Benin & Togo 70s. If you need something to chill you out after that, try Brian Eno’s Thursday Afternoon, or Japanese ambient legend Hiroshi Yoshimura’s Wet Land, which isn’t available through any official channels, but can be found on YouTube and Internet Archive.
   
   

9. Music documentary: Sunday Best, a film about Ed Sullivan’s history of booking Black artists on his immensely popular Sunday night show. (Here’s a great writeup by Robert Christgau.)
   
   

10. An editing principle that serves me well: “When in doubt, cut it out.”
    
    

Thanks for reading! On Tuesday, I’ll be sharing a terrific new typewriter interview with an artist many of you love. If you become a paid subscriber, you’ll be first to see it:

xoxo,

Austin

P.S. Thanks to Gina Sekelsky for mailing me these photos of Steal Like an Artist in a vending machine in Taipei’s Songshan District:

And Wesley Verhoeve for this photo of a Steal Like an Artist translation spotted at book.ua in Kyiv, Ukraine: