Every Saturday, we’ll be posting a new illustration by David Lester. The Mecca Normal guitarist is visually documenting people, places and events from his band’s 32-year run, with text by vocalist Jean Smith.
In late February, I was beyond thrilled when an artist whose paintings were exhibited in the 2014 Whitney Biennial bought a painting from my ongoing series of $100 portraits, and soon thereafter made this bold comment on my Facebook page.
“Jean Smith is a fucking genius. She is one half of the long running avant garde band, Mecca Normal and she is a published novelist and lately she is writing and posting lengthy tender reports on the banality of aging, living, loving, working. She is unsentimental, but her work always leaves me with my own bruised longing exposed.”
—Molly Zuckerman-Hartung, Adjunct Assistant Professor, Art Institute of Chicago; Visiting Critic, Yale University School Of Art
tag: art, labor history, tender reports
“No Mind’s Eye” from the album The Family Swan (Kill Rock Stars, 2002) (download):
