Virtual Memories Show 436:
Dmitry Samarov
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“Basically I didn’t have to make anything up. I’ve never understood why anybody has to make anything up. The world is so weird, and the stories you get by shutting up and listening are all you’ll ever need.”
With his new book OLD STYLE, artist & author Dmitry Samarov moves from memoir into a (mostly) fictional mode, chronicling the lives and deaths of a pair of Chicago bars. We get into the liberations & responsibilities of fiction, the challenges of writing about bars while avoiding nostalgia, and how he put in the time to understand the bar patrons and their archetypes. We also talk about making art through the pandemic, turning his old art & writing into collage books, the need to change his palette, and what it was like for him to teach drawing for the first time (at 50!) and the curriculum he’d design if he had the opportunity. Plus, we get into his is recent NYC trip to see the Alice Neel retrospective, the next book he’s hoping to write, and his semi sorta envy at my taking up drawing at 50. Give it a listen! And go read OLD STYLE!
(& check out my other conversations with Dmitry: 2014, 2015, 2018, 2020, and our COVID Check-In)
“I haven’t had a truly stuck or blocked period in many years. My way of working is to throw a lot of stuff against the wall. I don’t know what percentage of it will stick, but I make a lot of work, and it takes years to figure out what was actually good.”
TUNEIN PLAYER TK
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About our Guest
Dmitry Samarov paints and writes in Chicago. He is the author and illustrator of six books. He sends out a newsletter every Monday. An absurd amount of his work is collected at his website, which is seventeen years old now.
Credits: This episode’s music is Fella by Hal Mayforth, used with permission from the artist. The conversation was recorded remotely via Zencastr. I used a Heil PR-40 Dynamic Studio Recording Microphone
