Carving the Life of a Writer

Woodcut depiction of a writer’s life. (Artwork by author.)

I’m a Woodcut Artist. A few years back, I was commissioned to create a t-shirt design for a North Hollywood Literary Festival. The email from the festival sponsors requested something that “depicts the journey of the creative writer in these modern times when so few people read.”

My initial brainstorming elicited depressing ideas like a writer committing Harakiri with a fountain pen, the Greek character Sisyphus rolling a massive tome up a hill and a man drowning from the weight of a typewriter tied to his leg. I rejected these early concepts as too dismal and clichéd. Plus, who uses a typewriter or fountain pen these days?

I found inspiration in downtown Los Angeles while visiting a friend for lunch at Grand Central Market. We took a walk beside the Los Angeles River near Dodger Stadium and I noticed a homeless man beside the train tracks writing in a journal. He wore a tattered suit and his shoes were scuffed and torn. He had an umbrella with him although it was a 90-degree day. He evoked the spirit of Jack Kerouac’s road-weary wanderings across the tarmacs and train tracks of 1950's America.

I recalled a passage Kerouac wrote in an early short story while experimenting with the literary style that would ultimately birth his classic novel On The Road.