Back home in New York from our vacation in Michigan at the end of July, Chris sat down to make a plan for August. A sense of calm fell over me just watching this familiar ritual.

He set out a small notebook, his watercolors, brushes and a white pen. As I have mentioned before, Chris plans his work goals a month in advance on a pie chart, choosing from among a dozen or so projects he has written on a red pig. Projects include books for which he already has a contract, and ideas he plans to flesh out.

I asked the obvious question: “Why a pig?”

The use of a pig, Chris explained, goes hand-in-hand with a decision he made long ago to approach record keeping, planning and documentation as works of art [I chronicle this practice in issue 35 of Uppercase Magazine p. 24]. And, I might add, he loves animals. A biology major in college, he once sat through an entire orchestra rehearsal with a small garter snake in his pocket that he later put in the refrigerator to test a hypothesis about hibernation. (No snakes were harmed in the making of this experiment.)

But I had a question about the time all this beautiful documentation takes. "Do you ever feel you take planning and record keeping too far?" I said. Does documentation of life and work threaten to take over the time for art? Does it seem like a waste of time?

After a short pause he said, “Yes." Adding, with a smile, “But your interest in it has made it seem less futile.”

In a small notebook he finished painting yellow, blue, gray and red horizontal strokes across the page. This is the template he will follow during the weeks of August

On the yellow line at the top of the page he wrote leigekur, (a German word he uses to mean lounging with a book and a cat on your lap at five a.m.). On the blue stripe he wrote asana (yoga). On the red, work. The long paintbrush and pencil you see in the photo are simply different ways to illustrate work time (painting or writing to be determined on a daily basis) and the breaks for coffee and lunch are self-explanatory.

Assorted afternoon "life chores" (i.e. computer repair, Kitchen faucet, send package to Georgia, buy ticket to Wien) are written inside a light blue fish

“A fish?” I said.

“A fish is long," he said simply. "It fits the space.”

Above the pig Chris jotted a quote in green paint attributed to Iranian novelist Ottessa Moshfegh, who has the same words written on a post-it on her desk: Work hard the rest is a mystery. It is a viewpoint that captures Chris' approach to life and work exactly.