Art, like life, isn’t always pretty. Nor should it be. Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote about the rustic, downtrodden everyday man, struggling with all of life’s messy bits, and from this suffering sprang great art. My first job as a teenager was as a busboy and dishwasher at a restaurant. Among my duties was scraping dirt off the kitchen floor with a spatula, and cleaning enormous stock pots whose bottoms had caked-on sauce. Some years later after completing art school, I worked as a graphic designer for a weekly newspaper, on the cusp of computer technology. The editorial and ads were laid out with Mac computers but still output the old fashioned way, to paper galleys with a Linotronic imagesetter. These galleys were later cut and pasted onto camera-ready master boards called “flats.” While my experiences were not quite as harrowing as Dostoyevsky’s (he was imprisoned for his radical beliefs), they did “butch me up,” providing a bedrock of balance and an appreciation for my craft.
As I reflect back on these difficult steps of my career ladder, I can honestly say I was glad to have experienced them. Not only do I have an insider’s empathy for those who toil in the food service industry, but today l am very handy with an X-Acto knife!
