Once you’ve gathered a heap of observations, you can, if you want, start clicking them together like Legos, the way an art critic would. You can make guesses at what the artist meant to say, or tell a story about how an individual painting fits into the world of paintings. There’s a lot you can do with a heap of observations, but personally, I think a viewer’s highest calling is to do nothing at all. Just challenge yourself to look closer and closer and see how big your heap can grow.

The zooming-in trick works with people too, except it’s impolite to stand so close.

Let me give you an example, Lillian Supanich. Before we had a chance to talk, my read on her was pretty straightforward. She’s an artist in her late twenties. She makes paintings and goofy plastic figurines. She’s interested in, as she writes, “reviving painterly traditions of illusion and representation within a personal grammar of queer potentialities . . . and her own trans-femme subjectivity.”

Which is all important and worth knowing, but isn’t exactly satisfying. The words don’t add up to a person, just the idea of one. It’s the equivalent of glancing at a ten-foot-tall Cy Twombly canvas as you pass on your way to the museum cafeteria. You’ve “seen” the painting in the sense that some photons bounced off it and into your retina, but that’s all. The fact that you’d seen it would be the most interesting thing you’d have to say about it. Some people look at art with no other goal, and I feel sorry for them.

My close-up view of Lillian is something I could have only gotten from our conversation at her studio. Most of the details I picked up don’t have any obvious connection to her work. Some of them are biographical, like how we share MIAD as an alma mater and Riverwest as a den of mid-twenties art-making. We both have experience with big, spooky buildings converted into artist studios. We both know the minor guilt of not visiting it often enough because it’s nicer to work from home.

Weirdly, the less these details have to do with Lillian’s art, the better I understand. She prefers not to have her picture taken. She’s embarrassed of how messy the inside of her car is. She’ll give you a ride home if you ask. Despite the disorganization, she’s a planner, a methodical thinker. She knows how to take herself seriously, but is more naturally a goof. She’s a smart person, but doesn’t use it as an excuse for introversion. She actually opens up pretty easily. She can keep a conversation going.

The details do tend to fall into place, though they never quite fade into the background. Even when you zoom out to the big picture, they’re there forever, informing and complicating our understanding. We can grow our heap as big as we want, but there will always be more to shovel on top. And the person themselves will always be taller still.

I wrote most of the above before the election, and returning to my draft this week, I was worried it wouldn’t feel relevant. But to be honest with you, it’s about the only thing that matters to me these days. We all have our own Heap of Observed Details, and there’s lots of ways we can pick specifics off the top, arrange them, build arguments and worldviews. But I never feel closer to what’s real than when I just look at the pieces themselves.

BECAUSE LOOK:

I’m sitting at the Stonecreek Coffee on Downer. At the next table is a mother and father about the same age as me, their kid in a bulky stroller between them. They haven’t bothered to take off their puffy coats or poof ball hats and eat quickly. The forks here are a little too flimsy for the tough waffles they serve, but the food is good. Another man walks by with his daughter in his arm. She’s still not speaking, but old enough to recognize the difference between her and the one in the stroller. I must have been the same.

Two seats to my right is the guy I mentioned in last week’s newsletter, the RFK voter. We end up sitting next to each other about once a week, but never spoke face-to-face. My impression of him isn’t more complicated than Eccentric Ex-Hippie. He’s wearing a poncho. He’s journaling.

Out of nowhere, just now, he starts loudly packing up his things. There’s something in the journal he doesn’t like. For a second he seems in a rush to leave, but now he’s calmed back down and is staring fixedly at the paper.

“Okay, so--” he says, minutes later. He gets up.

Then he’s gone. Then the family’s gone too. New people come to fill the old tables.

Friday

Saturday

Sunday

Thursday