🎨 Anita White turns the sketchbook on herself
Anita White is one of 120 artists showing their work across the neighborhood this weekend, debuting an inward-looking book at the LoLA art crawl she helped launch.
Anita White paints while she talks, in the same way someone else might fidget with jewelry or peel a label off a beer bottle. It’s such an ingrained habit that you hardly notice it, and it seems like she hardly notices it either. If you’ve stopped and chatted with her; if you’ve performed at a show she’s at; if you’re a beautiful vista or colorful plant in her field of vision — you’ve almost certainly been painted. Her neighbors and friends all have stacks of their own portraits, accrued over years of casual conversation, each with its own hastily assembled style, impressionistic but totally recognizable in its likeness.
This weekend is the expansive League of Longfellow Artists annual art crawl. As she has every year since she co-founded the crawl 15 years ago, Anita will set out hundreds of her paintings and drawings in her front yard perched above Minnehaha Avenue near 46th Street. And while almost all of that work depicts the other people and things in her vicinity, this year she has a new product that turns the lens on herself: “The Fumbling Guide to Romance for the Older Person,” a pocket-sized book that traces a budding romance that she’s sketched in real-time since it began.
Background
Anita grew up in Uptown and went to MCAD, then spent much of her post-collegiate 20’s living and painting inside a primitive stone cottage on a small Irish island. After a stint in California she moved back to Minneapolis in the 1980s to continue a career teaching art, spent mostly at Talmud Torah Jewish Day School in St. Paul. She moved to Minnehaha Avenue in 2006.
Anita developed a habit of what she calls “documentary drawing” — capturing people and scenes in real-time, often given to the subject as a gift right afterward. Partly to make sense of reality, partly to stay in the moment, and partly just as something to constantly do.
When Anita’s late husband Josh’s health began failing around 2017, she prolifically captured the sorrow, joy, humor, and banality of caring for an ailing spouse. As he became increasingly hospital-bound, she turned her sights on the personnel and spaces of the healthcare system. The style of the work often counterweighted the situation: More irreverent during times of pain; more symmetrical during times of unpredictability. Josh passed away in 2019, but she kept in touch with many of the healthcare workers, and when the pandemic struck, she mailed in weekly collections of drawings.
On one hand, this has been a professional pursuit, leading to the types of exhibitions and commissions that make up an artist’s career. Hennepin Healthcare hosted a show featuring the paintings of her husband's care, which he was able to attend, and later commissioned her to document 160 day-in-the-life moments in the hospital over the course of 24 hours. The city and MCAD hired her to paint residents of the Whittier neighborhood and document their hopes for the Nicollet Avenue K-Mart site, printed and mounted on the fencing surrounding the property.
But Anita freely admits that the hustle side of the artist's life — marketing, business, project management — is not her forte. She's relied on the help of her many art world buddies over the years to help organize shows, maintain her web presence, and generally keep her on track. Lately, much of that help has come from a special someone, Harry, a wonderfully detail-oriented type who emerged as a suitor at the beginning of the year.
The Fumbling Guide
Anita began meticulously documenting her new relationship from virtually day one. These drawings got their own dedicated sketchbook, apart from the miscellaneous pads where she documents the rest of everyday life. Within a few months she’d filled up the entire pocket-sized book with 66 scenes and moved on to a larger sketchpad. (And now onto a third.)
They capture the excitement and awkwardness and self-doubt of dating for the first time in 45 years, the ever-evolving grief over her husband, and the sense of urgency that comes with beginning new things later in life. And, of course, the humor and absurdity of it all. Writing has always played a significant role in Anita's work, and the book is filled with memorable poetic flourishes like "When I die, I'll remember running to see you! Again and again! I'll remember how you had my back. I'll remember holding you close and kissing you again and again."
With Harry’s help as a cheerleader-slash-project-manager, she decided to publish the sketchbook nearly in its original form. The Seward print shop Smart Set helped put the book together, which feels like a kind of coffee table book despite its pocket-sized dimensions, and she's making the first run available at her LoLA sale. She hopes to print more if people show interest.
She says it’s nerve-wracking to publish something so inward-looking after a lifetime of conveying others. But, as she quotes from a horoscope in the book, "Uncharted territory invites you to dabble in the fine art of looking like you know what you're doing."
Anita’s work will be on sale Saturday and Sunday, along with five other artists, at 4524 Minnehaha Ave.
2024 LoLA Art Crawl
What: An art crawl featuring 120 artists at 60 sites around the neighborhood. All sites are open to everyone at no cost.
When: Saturday and Sunday, Sept 21-22, from 10-4 both days. Rain or shine.
Where: Homes and businesses all over Longfellow — just look for the yellow sign. A full map is available here and at select shops around the neighborhood.
Who: Family, dog, and bike friendly.
Longfellow Whatever is proud to be a pillar sponsor of the 2024 LoLA Art Crawl.
Longfellow Whatever beanies are here!
It may not feel like it, but beanie weather is coming. And these aren’t promotional-grade beanies that let the wind whistle through and turn floppy after a wash. They’re fleece lined, stiff, hold their shape, and fit even particularly large or small heads. Premium, in a word. After using the same brand for a different project, many recipients of those have complained of their spouses stealing them.
Order below or just reply to this e-mail if you'd like one.