Mondays With Artists

As you know, I work for a major publication. This comes with many risks, such as: people assuming you know about art, geriatrics seeking your support for their cockamamie schemes (hello, plasticize board, anyone?!), crazy artists thinking you have some sort of control over their failing careers and marriages.

Oftentimes, this madness comes in the form of telephone calls, and in the last few months I’ve become like Naomi Watts in The Ring: when my phone rings at the office, I freeze in terror and refuse to answer it. When coworkers ask if I’m “gonna get that,” I tell them I know who’s calling and I can take it later—even when I don’t.

Recently, I’ve been contacted via postcard by an unidentified artist. The first postcard arrived at the end of BHM, and was this (click on image to enlarge):

Can you read that? It says "I draw sock monkeys"

What does this mean?! What is a sock monkey? Is it made with socks? Am I looking at a picture of a puppet, a painting, or some sort of mixed media piece?

Not only is the image frightening and unappealing, the one-word sentence (is it even a sentence if there’s no punctuation mark?) is almost menacing, with its tiny handwriting and lack of a signature.

I kept this postcard because it was hilarious—obvi—and felt no guilt, seeing as the artist left no way of being contacted and did not connect his/her/hir’s name to it. I thought nothing of it, but occasionally laughed at the idea of a sock monkey during moments of procrastination.

Then, three weeks later, another one arrived.



This time the sock monkey was dark brown—is this a racial thing? What was this artist trying to say? I flipped it over, hoping for a clue.

Again, with the sentence fragment! I began to get frightened. With no return address, and only a San Francisco postmark, I had to wonder: was this a San Francisco Treat…or Trick?????

I kept this one, too, hoping to piece together clues like Columbo when the time was right. Then, a week later (today), this arrived:


Oh. MY. GOD. There’s more. There’s an “and.” But what, gentle reader, is a “sock monkey fertility cult figure”? Why does this person keep sending me this information without any name or address attached???? This is clearly a cry for attention and/or help, yet they do not actually want to be located.

My fear is mounting.

You can’t see it here, but if you look very closely at this last postcard, there is writing around one of the images. I can’t make out all of it, but it begins with, “I prayed for you last night but you did not come true…”

Is this me? Is someone in love with me in San Francisco? Is my fertility at risk? Is this person saying that I’m no more than a damned dirty ape?

These artists are really starting to freak me out.