Tony Fitzpatrick Interview · Apr 7, 07:24 AM

Interview with Tony Fitzpatrick at the Pierogi gallery in Williamsburg on Saturday afternoon, January 8, 2005.

Tony is an actor, a published poet, an artist, and the unofficial “statesman” for the city of Chicago. He celebrates Chi-town in all his work, offering a passionate expression of his beloved city to those who don’t know it like he does. Although his love is for one city, the stories he tells may hit home to people from any city. Tony is the son of a burial vault salesman, a husband, the father of two, a storyteller and a historian. His most recent show in New York displayed collages that he makes from old matchbooks, ticket stubs, little pictures of women with those wonderful 1950’s looking bodies, paint and words. He begins his collages with a drawing or painting in the center and then pieces together a story of his life with strategically placed remembrances from bars, restaurants, train stations, ball parks—places where people gather. A man of the people talks about his art and the city that inspired it…mostly the city that inspired it.

Young Philosopher: How did you go from not selling any of your work to this?

Tony Fitzpatrick: You know, it’s a really long process. I never got into art making with the idea that I was ever going to sell anything. That wasn’t what I was thinking about. I knew that I just had to do this. I had to make these things. I’ve been fortunate that this work has found an audience and a body of collectors who are willing to support it. I’m very very lucky. So, I don’t really know how it happened other than I stayed busy and I showed a lot. People started noticing me.

YP: Your work is Chicago-centric. I see all kinds of aspects of the city that you celebrate but what don’t you like about Chicago?

TF: That it’s still the most segregated big city in America. It’s still very much a city of tribes. The South and West Sides of the city are the black neighborhoods and the North Side has more of the wealthy white neighborhoods. And I don’t like the Chicago Public School system; it’s very poor. For a city as big as it is it should spend more on education, but like every big city the education system suffers.

YP: What are the drawbacks of a segregated city?

TF: You lose some of the economy of idealism. What New York has is a very generous melting pot where everybody participates. You walk down the street in Manhattan and there are people from all over the world and all over the city and there is an idea interchange that’s valuable. It’s part of the hard currency of a big city. Those ideas turn into wonderful things and organizations, and art and theatre and discourse.

YP: I remember you saying at the end of the play RACE (stage adaptation by David Schwimmer and Joy Gregory of Studs Terkel’s book), “I’m a Chicagoan. We’re not a race, we’re a species.”

TF: It’s true.

YP: I like the all encompassing feel of it. We don’t have to point out differences all the time. Instead, we can unite through common needs and interests.

TF: Exactly. I think of myself as part of a bigger human community. I hope that translates in my work.

YP: Where is the heart of the city?

TF: We carry it within us. I think for some people it’s the South Side. For some its Wrigleyville. For some it’s Wicker Park or Bucktown. It’s something we inately carry with us as we carry our stories and our personal history in the city. Any place can be the heart of the city.

YP: Can someone become a Chicagoan or is it only a right by birth?

TF: Yeah, you bet they can. Of course they can. The one thing that’s great about Chicago is that it’s a welcoming place. Lots of people from Poland move to Chicago.

YP: Tons.

TF: People from the far East move to Chicago. It’s a city of immigrants built by immigrants. Some of the great things in America started in Chicago: trade unions, the labor movement fermented in Chicago with the steel workers and the meat packers, and the rail road workers. Chicago has always been welcoming of the new comer.

YP: In your lifetime how has the life of the immigrant and the blue collar worker changed?

TF: It used to be like all big cities. Immigrants came and they migrated to the underclass. They were poorer people who came without a dime to their name and then worked their way up to the middle class. Now you’re seeing lots of people come over from the Middle East, and India, and Pakistan who are already educated and they migrate to the middle class.
It’s a different kind of immigrant experience. Computers and the internet changed everything, particularly immigration. We have a class of immigrants now who are very well educated and very ready to work hard in middle class jobs and acquire wealth perhaps more easily than fifty years ago.
The immigrant experience, while still tough, because there are still cultural hurdles, is a different experience.

YP: Does it bother you when people interpret your city?

TF: I’m one of the guys whose doing it so I welcome the variance of perspective. Chicago is obviously a different place for me than for someone who is Chinese and lived at 22nd and Wentworth. They’d have a different view of the city. I welcome their view and I will learn from it. Someone’ s experience of a city is as different as our fingerprints and we can learn from all of it.
One of the things I’ve always loved about Studs Terkel’s books is how many different ways people look at the American dream or working in Chicago.

YP: Do you care when people from the suburbs claim Chicago as home?

TF: I used to think, “you’re not from Chicago.” But people usually choose the biggest city they’re near to anchor their cultural identity. I know people from Scarsdale who say they’re New Yorkers. I know people from New Rochelle who say they’re New Yorkers. I know people from Jersey who say they’re New Yorkers. It’s kind of the same thing.

YP: I have a friend who says he’s from Los Angeles. He wasn’t born there but that’s the place where he lives and works.

TF: L.A. like New York is comprised of people who came from somewhere else to be there. It’s hard to walk around New York and find a native New Yorker because everyone is from somewhere else.

YP: Unless you walk around the Bronx.

TF: Yeah, Manhattan is a culture of people who have come from somewhere else to become part of it. That’s the great brass ring of the city of New York. People come to New York to become who they are going to be.
I come to New York to have my shows because New York is where the art world is. But it never gets in the way of me being a native of Chicago.

YP: Chicago is a badge you carry with you. You’re proud of the place.

TF: Yeah, I think of myself as a statesman of Chicago.

YP: We have a good statesman.

TF: I love the city. It’s my home.

YP: Is it the city itself, is it family, is it security, is it the ties you have?

TF: It’s all of those things. It’s a big stew of all of those things. The Second city. Chicago always feels like the slightly less attractive little sister of New York.
I made the shows and the idea of these books (Tony’s new book is called The Wonder: Portraits of a Remembered City, Volume 1, available from La Luz de Jesus Press/Last Gasp) is to make a case for a magical Chicago, one as much of the imagination as of actual experience.

YP: Do you feel that you need to legitimize the status of the city of Chicago?

TF: No, it’s a great city. It’s a place I would like to give people another perspective of. As much as it’s a city of “big shoulders” it’s also a city of Celtic poetry, Arab music, and Flamenco dancers and Parisian restaurants. It’s all of those things too, we just have to keep our eyes open to them.

YP: Do you ever make your art, your collages, with other people in mind?

TF: No, they are pretty much like my diary. I make art from my own experience. It’s pretty much my story out there on the walls.

YP: For all of us to see.

— Albin

Comment

1. Why couldn’t this be in Interview? Their format and content are no different. Not to keep harping on it.

   — robert trent · Apr 7, 05:10 PM · #

2. The tie that binds.

   — Jerry Nge · Apr 7, 10:19 PM · #

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