Someone surprised me

I live in a pretty busy part of Chicago. There’s some dumpsters alongside our building. A consequence of this is that many people seem to think: “if it’s close to the garbage, it’s just like the real thing.” In other words, we seem to collect a bunch of things AROUND the dumpsters, but not actually contained inside where our trusty garbage service can easily move the waste to their trucks.

The result is gross.

There’s constantly broken bottles as I step outside our front door. Extra points because there’s a bunch of dogs and children in the building. Who doesn’t love to play with broken glass?

My wife and I find ourselves cleaning it up. Very. Frequently.

One tremendous day awhile ago someone decided to “throw” out a large glass dining room table. It of course sat outside the dumpster and shattered. Glass everywhere. That took some time to cleanup.

So this last Saturday… I heard shattering glass.

I head to the window expecting this is going to result in me needing to get the broom and dustpan and start cleaning. I see someone dropped a picture frame. Glass everywhere.

I grab said broom and pan and head outside, hoping to help the picture frame owner clean up, but completely expecting him to have fled with plenty of glass for someone else to deal with.

But I had a fantastic surprise. The guy was fastidiously cleaning up all the shards on his own. I beamed as I got to help someone clean up instead of doing the job by myself.

It didn’t take long, as he had the situation pretty much under control. But we chatted briefly about the broken picture frame.

It turns out he’s a new artist in Chicago and lugs around his supplies and this picture frame as he tries to find a studio to work in. It’s a hassel, but he’s trying to make it work.

As I finished doing some sweeping and wished him luck as he got ready to continue on his journey, he gave me the artwork that was originally behind the pane of shattered glass to thank me for helping him out.

I was very appreciative of the whole situation.

I obviously don’t know this guy at all, but I can tell he’s got some awesome character. I thought I’d check to see if there’s at least some small thing I could do or connection I could make.

Please, if you are in Chicago and have any access at all to help a young artist out, even if it’s connections or advice on how to work, improve or thrive in the world this guy is living in I’m sure he’d love a chance to meet you. As he walked away, he mentioned he was Worldsof Color on Facebook.