Left Turn

One impactful left turn in my life began with a small newspaper classified, an illustration of a hand holding a pencil. Only the words “The Drawing Workshop” above a phone number. Why I called, I cannot fathom to this day why I called. George Sotos was the art teacher who appeared before the student was ready.

George had been teaching adult night classes at his studio for over twenty years. Turns out he ran the same ad in the Chicago Reader every week. Although I combed through the newspaper job listings daily, I never noticed his classified until the Spring of 1987. At the time The Drawing Workshop had caught my eye, I had no specific interest in drawing or art in general. I was looking for a light-hearted distraction from my serious soul searching to find my purpose in life. The class was cheap and close to my apartment just north of The Loop.

When he answered my call, George’s voice was gravelly yet pleasant. I explained I was a true beginner: zero training or experience with drawing. He asked me to stop by any afternoon before the class began to gauge my skill level. The thought of “positioning” was intimidating, but I reminded myself this foray was just for fun. Plus George held classes on two floors in the historic Tree Studios building. I could not wait to see the beautiful courtyard referenced on Chicago’s landmark bus tours.

George opened the tall frosted-glass door to his studio with a gracious smile. Standing well over six feet, likely in his early 50’s, he wore baggy blue jeans and a ragged red flannel shirt over his pot belly. George’s graying curly hair was wrestled into a messy ponytail. Round wire rim glasses magnified his olive green eyes and uneven ears.

George skipped the small talk, pointed to a stool, and asked me to sit down. Late afternoon sun was pouring through the 12-foot windows that ran along the entire west wall of his second-floor studio. The glare made me squint. As George handed me a large drawing pad, I thought I saw several figures silhouetted behind him. I blinked hard to help my eyes adjust. Three human skeletons came into focus, each hanging from their own narrow metal stand. Four large wooden tables in the room were covered with more bones, hundreds of bones. Somehow none of it felt scary or morbid.

Before I could make sense of what I was seeing, George pulled over a nearby easel. Next he walked across the room and picked up a simple white plaster form of a female torso — no arms, no legs, no head — just a smooth, fleshy body. It recognized as the classic prop from movies about artists. George carefully positioned the torso on a white pedestal at eye level in front of me. Then he flipped on a bright spotlight that created harsh black shadows beneath the plaster breasts and inside the plaster belly button.

“See what you can do with that,” was all George said. No instructions.

I picked up a stubby piece of charcoal from a little tray. It only took a couple of minutes and a few drawn lines for George to say, “That’s enough. I can see how you see. Very interesting.”

George’s deep voice lifted an octave as he described his perception of my unusual aptitude to see three-dimensionally. Next came the explanation of why so many skeletons and bones lived in his studio.

“Most painters focus on the flesh and don’t see the underlying structure of the human body,” he explained. “I have found a way to train the mind and hand to work together to see three-dimensionally. My students paint from the inside out. The results are amazing.”

Then he said, “I have my students sculpt the bones of the skeleton in clay. Are you interested in doing that?”

Before I could answer, George launched into a passionate, philosophical art lecture. As he talked he pushed around the hanging skeletons which had wheels under a plywood base. I realized there were eight full figures, not three, as he lined them up along the windows. Then George reached across the largest wooden table pushed against a wall. It was covered with hundreds of individual bones in all shapes and sizes. He hunted carefully through the chaos, then grabbed a particular bone.

“We only work with real bones, never plastic replicas,” he assured me. “It’s not easy to get skeletons from medical schools any more. They are getting pricey. But, there is nothing like the real thing.”

With a hint of drama, George pushed aside a pile of bones on smaller table in the middle of the room. He set his chosen bone in the middle of the cleared space. Once separated from the cacophony of other bones, I could see it was an extremely complicated, delicate, fragile butterfly shape.

“That is the sphenoid, the most complex bone in the human body,” said George. He touched the bridge of his nose with his fingers. “It sits here, then goes behind the eyes and connects to virtually every bone in the skull.”

George pulled over another stool. He hauled out a heavy plastic bag from underneath the table, snapped off the rubber band, and pulled out a chunk of red clay. He tossed it back and forth between his palms twice. The blob obediently transformed into a large softball. He tossed it to me.

“Try it,” was all he said.

I did. And I got hooked. Really hooked on the clay and the bones. I didn’t care about drawing or painting the figure. I never tried. Instead I stuck with sculpting each of the 206 human skeleton bones in clay, over and over, for nearly two years. I loved looking at the bones, holding them, tracing their unpredictable shapes with my eyes and hands, replicating their crazy contours. Their subtle asymmetry fascinated me.

I also assembled a full skeleton of clay bones on a metal armature. Somehow it looked eerily like me. In fact many of George’s students unconsciously created self-portrait skeletons. Somehow we brought our own invisible insides to the outside. Creepy and cool to see clay doppelgängers take shape one bone at a time.

I remember having particular difficulty sculpting the ribcage of my skeleton. Coincidentally, later in life I suffered a muscle injury in my back that routinely pops one of my ribs out of place and limits the movement of my diaphragm. I now live with random episodes of being unable to get a full or deep breath, sometimes for days or weeks at a time. Maybe our clay self-portraits were as prescient as they were reflective.