Yesterday I was at the Central Library assisting my friend Scott Nedrelow on some new projects, when I noticed a plaque on one of the private rooms on the 3rd floor: The Rake Study Room.
Much like The Soap Factory, I can’t say enough good things about The Rake and the formative role it played in my making a living as an artist and writer here early on. The Rake was a free glossy magazine, full of short profiles of local oddities, and beautifully written long-form pieces, published between 2002 and 2008. Sometime in 2006, I met the editor, Julia Caniglia, at The Soap Factory, and she invited me to come up the their offices in the Warehouse District and pitch her some ideas. (This is without, I am pretty sure, actually having seen any of my work.) I was scared shitless; the only thing I’d ever had published anywhere were a few album reviews in a small zine back in Louisville. So I wandered into their offices one afternoon with an incredibly primitive, beat-up portfolio full of disorganized drawings and zines, and somehow they let me write and illustrate a guide to the top make-out spots in the Twin Cities (not online, as far as I know — I will have to scan it and post it here sometime). It was an enormously fun, amusing little project, and the first thing like it I’d ever done. In fact, it was really the first time anyone in a position to do so had taken me seriously as a writer or artist. More amazing yet, they paid me to do this. All of this doesn’t seem like much now, maybe, but at the time, going around town and seeing a really well-written, beautiful magazine with my work sitting side-by-side with the work of other, better writers and artists was incredibly exciting.
Just a little after that, The Soap Factory entrusted me with assembling their 20th anniversary retrospective show (again, with what in retrospect looks like an awfully thin resume), and Herbach, Brady, Sam and Steph with The Electric Arc Radio Show began inviting me to collaborate on their scripts and perform with them. My life as I now recognize it really all begins around that time. Most — probably all — opportunities I’ve had since have somehow directly or indirectly come out of The Soap, Electric Arc or The Rake.
I’m not sure what the story on The Rake study room is — who endowed it, where it came from, how long it’s been there. But it’s comforting knowing it is there, and it’s got a really nice view of the atrium. It’s a good place to sit and watch people go by and think about the mysterious processes through which luck, hard work, opportunity and simply being in the right place at the right time all intersect with one another.
