Hamilton Sketchbook and Everyday Matters

Hamilton Sketchbook by David Collier
and
Everyday Matters: A New York Diary by Danny Gregory

This was a particularly good combination of books to read. I finished Collier's book on Friday, the day Gregory's book arrived in the mail. This was interesting because I ordered Everyday Matters last January, but it was backordered. I kept clicking the box saying I wanted it whenever Amazon asked me, but beyond that I had kind of forgotten about it.

More interesting things about that (at least to me): the book was recommended to me just before Christmas (because I had ordered Gregory's The Creative License a while before). My brother Jim and I had been tossing that phrase -- "it matters" -- back and forth for a while (see http://churchill-dicks.blogspot.com/2006_12_01_archive.html and http://churchill-dicks.blogspot.com/2006_08_01_archive.html). I hadn't planned to get him anything for Christmas -- didn't want him to feel obligated to get me something. But this book seemed like the perfect thing. And then he sent me the "It Matters" baseball for Christmas.

Anyway, I hadn't read the book, and I figured I should if I had gifted it to Jim. So I ordered it. The problem was that a new, slick-looking paperback was in the works, and so I think the hardcover is in the process of going out of print. I'm glad I got the hardcover. It looks homemade, with a cloth binding and watercolored sketches all over the front. It has thick pages. It feels good in your hands -- the right weight and size. I think part of the reason I'd never really gotten into The Creative License was its large size and slickness.

Similarities between Hamilton Sketchbook and Everyday Matters: both written by fathers who live with their wives, and have one young son and one large dog each. Both consist of series of drawings about specific places. Major differences: when Danny Gregory started his journal, his wife had just had a terrible accident and had become paralyzed from the waist down. Also, Gregory made his living in advertising, making lots and lots of money. Meanwhile, David Collier cobbled together manual labor jobs while trying to make a living from his art. Gregory didn't think of himself as an artist -- drawing was just something he did for fun. Collier was a professional cartoonist, but wasn't making much money at it. Collier and his wife and son had just moved to a "city" from a very rural area, while Gregory had lived in New York since childhood.

I loved Everyday Matters -- I enjoyed it much more than Hamilton Sketchbook, even though I recognize the value of both. I'd never "read" a sketchbook before (although I have one of Andrew Wyeth's, which I'll get into soon). It was such a relief to read this quote from Gregory: "I don't draw every day. Sometimes months will go by, and I haven't been able to stop and put it down on paper. I'm just too busy and distracted. When I pick up my pen again, my first drawings are horrible. Cramped, tentative, blind. But after a few days of steady practice, I am right back where I left off and I progress from there. Each time I go back to really seeing, I see more." I have the same experience -- sometimes it seems like the whole world is open to me, like I can see every shadow, every blade of grass waving and shining individually. And other times I see nothing. I get out my journal and write, "I don't know what to write. Everything looks dull and grey."

The books are about completely different places: Hamilton, Ontario and New York City. But both are about learning a city, even though Danny Gregory had spent most of his life in New York. Both are about being fathers, watching their sons grow up. I like the mood of Hamilton, but I just don't like the drawings as much. And the book had an odd focus, like notes had been added much later to explain the drawings before the book's publication. Everyday Matters was focused outward, attempting to explain Gregory's experience with drawing. Which is also odd, because Gregory really didn't think of himself as an artist at first. Maybe he revised later? I don't know.

Anyway, I think Everyday Matters is beautiful. I loved reading it. Hamilton Sketchbook was harder to wade through, but still interesting. I would recommend reading them together to compare and contrast. But read Hamilton Sketchbook first.