“I believe we have two lives…the one we learn with, and the one we live with after that.”    Glenn Close to Robert Redford in The Natural

 The posters are all done and the desired goals have all been met. The process of creating your Hometown Series has allowed you to come to terms with the tumultuous decade that was the 1980s. It has also enabled you to bid farewell to both a childhood you never completely left, and to the mother who left you way too soon. She was only 60 years old when the heart attack claimed her on that grotesque November night eight years ago, but thanks to the miracle of art, and your own willingness to take a chance, the mention of her name now brings a smile instead of tears. And the magic of having known this complex and funny woman far out-shadows the sadness of having lost her.

The poster project has also given you one last chance to go Old School before the world of graphic design surrendered unconditionally and forever to the computer revolution. The markers, the layout paper, the press type, the drafting pens, the exact-o knives, the rubber cement, the T-squares, the triangles and the French Curves will all soon drift into obsolescence. But those were always the tools of your trade. Using them was the way you prepared your art for reproduction, and you loved it—in all its gloriously tactile messiness. Computers will be amazing, and they will eventually prove themselves indispensable to designers, illustrators, typographers, and everyone else in the industry. But the kind of graphic art you’ve always loved, was the kind that had to be done painstakingly by hand, just like the Hometown Series.

The future now stretches out before you like an uncharted frontier, but the prospect is exciting because it offers you the opportunity to begin again. Behind you now is the life you spent learning how to live. Ahead will be the living itself. There will be new adventures and you will take new risks. There will be setbacks, of course, but also moments when you surprise yourself with a poise and wisdom you never knew you had. You will continue to dabble in art and will experiment with new styles, media and techniques. You will seek answers to Big Questions, and you will journey impossibly far to find them. You will finally come to know what it is like to love and to be loved in return, and you will see your children grow into strong responsible adults and watch them as they journey out into the world to create their own unique stories. And you will inevitably lose Dad too, but he will be a very old man when it happens and it will be gentle. And everything that needs to be said will be said, including “good-bye.”

Finally, you will remember.

You will remember all the sights and sounds, all the magic and mayhem, all the laughter and all the tears. But, although you will soon be leaving your beloved Milwaukee, Milwaukee will never be leaving you. To you it will always be a place of wonder and enchantment. And it will always be your hometown.

    The Milwaukee Hometown Poster Series      1989-1996    John T. McCarthy, Jr.