It's drawn by Wesley Willis

Not many artists can lay claim to more than a thousand songs and 53 albums in a decade; but Wesley Willis was never an artist who invited easy comparison. The Chicago native built a following with his keyboard-centric songs, which he constructed by hitting the demo key and shouting with passion and vulgarity about his favorite bands, people, modes of transportation, and mythological creatures. But long before he picked up his beloved Technics KN1200 and was diagnosed with schizophrenia, Willis made drawings—and he continued to do so until his death in 2003. His artwork stands in stark contrast to his music: It's crisp, calm, and surprisingly detailed—but like his music, it tends to depict his favorite local spots.

Nearly five years after Willis' death, there's been a renewed interest in his art: Chris Bagley and Kim Shively have released Wesley Willis's Joyrides, a documentary about his drawings; the Mohamed Khalil Museum of Egypt will display some of his cityscapes in April; and Dominican University is currently hosting an exhibition of 25 drawings entitled Drawn By Wesley Willis. Decider spoke to Dominican University's gallery head Jessica Cochran, exhibit curator Jakub Niedorezo, and Willis' friend Paul Young about some of the displayed drawings.

Untitled, 1984

A.V. Club: Was this finished?
Jakub Niedorezo: Yeah. It was part of his studies of trucks. There's no scene, really—just trucks. It goes together with probably what he would remember seeing, what he might have seen in a book. If you look at other pieces, it looks like this was his process. He would concentrate on one part, then move along the entire drawing.
AVC: It's very detailed. There's even serial numbers on the trucks.
JN: Yeah, the numbers would correspond with the real trucks here and there. He would have amazing memory for those things.

Downtown Chicago, 1984

AVC: Usually his drawings have a huge sense of perspective, but this feels claustrophobic.
Paul Young: Wesley would be up at the Hancock or Sears Tower to draw.
JN: He had a drafting class in high school. Paul let him use the studio at IIT often. That's why a lot of them are in the blue pen. They look almost like blueprints.
Jessica Cochran: I thought it was kind of sad when I first saw it because I felt like the city was impenetrable to him. It's all these huge buildings. It's so different from his other ones. One thing he would do is he had his own building that he would fit into the skylines that he created. It's in that one on the right side. It's just a building that has white lines running up the side—like road lines. It was his way of immersing himself into the city.
JN: The building shows up in a lot of them, and kinda changes locations a lot of times, too. But I can see the crazy detail in that little spot; it shows the grandness of the buildings. He's able to see this tiny, tiny detail. It makes the buildings seem so much larger.
AVC: Did his building have a name?
PY: If it did, I've never seen it. A lot of these other imaginary buildings he's done, he would name them. He'd make up the names of the corporations and stuff like that. [Laughs.] He has a drawing, Building For The Chicago Year 1994, drawn in 1983. It's got the PCL Tower Building and Skyscraper City.

The Shore Line, 1987

AVC: Why did he favor this crosshatching style?
JN: I think it comes with the materials that he used. I can assume he wanted to fill in a space with color. Once he had all the details of his city and was just adding colors, I don't think he was as interested in getting a perfect solid shape or color. Those crosshatches hint at the color.
AVC: This is of the Drake Hotel. Was there significance to the locations he chose?
JN: Those might have been from a postcard: All those signs you see, it all goes to his attention of the details and the scenes. He looks at a scene like this, and it's the same thing. A little sign here, an advertisement there. It all needs to be put in there.
AVC: Was he as aggressive about selling his drawings as he was his CDs?
JN: Yeah, he sold them right on the spot often. Right there where he was drawing, somebody would wait for it to be finished and then he would sell it there. He would walk around with a large stack of them, with large stacks of cardboard.

Dan Ryan Expressway, 51st Street, 1992

JC: I'm not sure if this one's finished or not, but I spoke to somebody else about how the odd perspective really leads you in to the left sign. It's kind of like a process of looking at it. There's so much detail, so much going on in that small, small space. He really wanted the eye to concentrate on that one spot.
PY: I asked him to stop, to see the process.
AVC: What did you learn about his process from stopping him at this point?
PY: No great shakes; it's more a documentary. It's almost like a photograph of a drawing or painting in progress. People did that with Picasso and make books out of him to see the development of things. But you know, I think a lot of Wesley's work—and it comes out in different ways, but he loved to make people smile. It was all for that. Art for him was nothing that had to be looking good. It was meant to be beautiful. Not shocking. Not crazy or the next century's art. It had to be different. It was just what he did. I think his idea of creating the two vanishing points and to be able to see in both directions is a wonderful thing. I've seen it make people smile here. He loved people to just smile and laugh. There was a drawing he did of Grant Park, looking at the buildings along Michigan. He did a drawing of the Essex Inn, and he left off the first two letters of "Essex," so it's "Sex Inn." [Laughs.]