A Tootsie Roll

A Tootsie Roll. The outside crust of a cinnamon Pop Tart. A lipstick kiss on white paper. Cherry blossom trees. A Boston Red Sox crewneck. A gold amethyst ring. An oversized jersey on a girl in a bathroom. A pumpkin spice candle. A funnel cake with lots of powdered sugar. Banana bread french toast. A sandbox. Tabasco sauce. A green knitted blanket. A den buried deep in the woods of Oregon. Light grey capri leggings. A fabric baby. Tang. A heart with rainbow shards. An amber perfume bottle. A Nature Valley granola bar in navy bedsheets. A raincoat in the passenger seat of a car. A Rubix Cube. Sailboats in Seattle. Dragonflies. An SUV parked at a hiking trail spot. A driveway with a black Volkswagen. Chicago's skyline at night. 

My story has — and I hope in every lifetime will — start with a Tootsie Roll. It is strange, I know, that something so small can transport us through time. You see a Tootsie Roll and see an edible snack; I see a Tootsie Roll and am suffocated by a bittersweet nostalgia. It could be a particular shade of green that reminds you of your childhood home or a certain bar of soap you can taste on your tongue. Objects become memory. Memory becomes feeling. Feeling becomes meaning. Everyone has a Tootsie Roll List: an inventory of things that are painfully ordinary to most, yet deeply representative of who they are, for better or for worse.

As an artist, I have dedicated much of my work to exploring discomfort: scary facial expressions, clowns, sex, body parts, bold colors, blood, heartbreak, grief. You name it, I love it. I once considered boredom to be the antithesis of discomfort, believing that the ordinary, the mundane, and the easily overlooked could hardly provoke any feeling at all. However, the Tootsie Roll List dismantles this notion with ease. Some of the most inanimate objects possess an extraordinary capacity to hold emotion. They carry weight, preserve memories, and tell stories without ever uttering a word. Something I pass by without a second thought could hold an entire chapter of your story; they are anything but boring.

So, I began to wonder: Does the significance of these stories diminish the moment I attempt to confine them to a four-by-four canvas? If I paint these objects and they fall into your hands, whose story is it, really?

I have never dared to recreate anything on my Tootsie Roll List tangibly. Not on a canvas or a piece of paper, not with a pencil or a palette of fresh paint. Some of the objects on this list are so deeply intertwined with feelings that I only wish you could experience them alongside me. As an artist, I am anxious, even fearful, of creating something that fails to adequately convey what I intend. 

Take a painting of, you guessed it, a Tootsie Roll. To me, a Tootsie Roll is both a love letter and a goodbye speech. It is a bittersweet story told through two sets of blue eyes, giggles, and a familiar warmth. A warmth that now runs cold. I would look at that painting and fall in love all over again with a much simpler time, wishing I held on just a little longer.

Then, you hang this Tootsie Roll painting on your wall. Perhaps it adds to the ambiance of a room. Someone might walk past and say, “Oh, that’s cute,” or, “Okay, that’s weird.” Eventually, it may become just another dust collector, occupying meaningless space in your home. What I consider an unalterable memory becomes something entirely open to your perception and interpretation. You are free to give it a meaning I never imagined or perceive it in a light I didn’t want. While the artwork may shift with every pair of eyes that encounters it, the memory it stems from remains one I wouldn't change in any lifetime.

There is a profound grief in watching that surrender as an artist. I don’t particularly want to paint something that will leave a significant piece of my heart at the mercy of a stranger’s imagination.

However, some of these objects are not connected to a memory I am protective over.  I will forever wish I could look at the Chicago skyline at night and see only what it pretends to be: a constellation of lights and steel. I wish I could touch a pair of grey capri leggings without trembling or swallow a cinnamon Pop-Tart without tasting tears. But I can’t. These ordinary things have been hijacked by grief.

Consider a painting of a granola bar. You will see a collection of oats and honey because, after all, that is what I painted. You won't know where I was when it became important to me. You won't know who I was with, what was said, or what transpired afterward. You won't know that I spent an entire afternoon crying over something you could purchase at a gas station for two dollars. I would desperately hope you hang this on your wall and that it brings you even an ounce of joy. I hope it feels light, funny, or sparks a conversation. Or perhaps it gets entirely ignored. I wouldn't mind that, either. I would feel fulfilled knowing the painting had transformed into something entirely your own. Once you purchase the canvas, the story becomes yours to rewrite.

There is immense beauty in knowing this happens, as an artist. Something I hold with such resentment becomes rewritten in a new light. In these instances, I feel a quiet relief knowing I can paint something so utterly plain that it is destined to be ignored.

The thing about the objects on the Tootsie Roll List is that they exist so perfectly on their own. They seep so deeply into my pores and stain the fabric of time that they aren't looking for a home; they already have one. These items reside somewhere between memory and meaning, untouched by the limitations of language or the expectations of an audience. My fear in bringing them to life physically is not the rumination itself - I have grown rather accustomed to living among things that no longer exist. It is the possibility that, in giving them a physical form, I might somehow diminish the sacred place they hold in my story.

I hope someday to find the courage to paint this list, along with every other ordinary thing that has made a permanent home in my memory. I would love to let these objects become something beyond what they have always been to me, and to allow new interpretations of old memories without fearing that one might erase the other. That way, the art can belong to both of us, even if the memories never will. But for now, I can't. These things are still mine and I am not quite ready to surrender them to a spot on someone else's wall, to a passing glance, or to a meaning I may never understand.

After all, a Tootsie Roll was never supposed to mean anything to you. It was supposed to mean everything to me.