Marco Polo by Esther Pearl Watson

We send a lot of info your way—about the art we're sharing with you that day, about the artist who made it and why we love it. And we know you're busy, so we know you might not always read absolutely everything we put in your inbox*. You might skim, check out the links. Really, it's ok—we're happy you're looking at art a few times a week. But, sometimes, you're missing really good stuff, like when Jen first introduced you to Esther Pearl Watson's work.

Much of what she wrote then aptly applies to Esther's second edition, Marco Polo. So, here you are, again (slightly amended):

I don't know what it's like anywhere in Texas right now, but thinking about today's edition by just-outside-of-Fort-Worth native Esther Pearl Watson has me imagining a day so hot that the air ripples, with enough of a breeze to stir up the sand so it gets stuck on the damp hair of your neck and maybe even in your teeth. Esther paints pictures of stories that I want to hear. A few handwritten sentences give away just enough of the plot—suddenly it's not a story; it's a movie and we're building the set, soundtrack and a script. There are spaceships. [And also: swimming pools.]

In The Denny's Parking Lot [and Marco Polo], there are child stars who hopefully grow up to be just like Drew Barrymore, populating the sound stage wardrobed in impeccably curated late '70s fashions. I am pretty sure that Esther's dad, builder of the aforementioned spaceships, is played by Jeff Bridges. Heroes and spaceships aside, Esther's at Denny's with her dad, and maybe a sibling who she fought with in the back seat of the station wagon along the way... [Or playing Marco Polo in the backyard pool with friends, flapping around on plastic rafts, chlorine catching in their throats and on skin.]

This is where we get to the part where it's possibly easier for this to be a story instead of a memory, with perfectly puffed cotton balls serving as clouds and toothpicks that have bright green Easter grass glued to them standing in for trees. Back then, Denny's was cool and all, but it was hot in the car, and even though Esther was only five or so, it seemed like maybe her mom had a good point about the flying saucers. As a grown-up, Esther can tell the story in a deceptively simple way, referencing the outsider art that she discovered in high school (the same art that made her understand the artistry in her dad's quixotic endeavors) and the comics that make the most painful, awkward episodes of childhood and adolescence fodder for humor—even if some of it is a bit black. She tells these stories over and over, the simplicity and the whimsy expressing something real and universal, about what it is to be a child, and how you remember it, and how what happened then shapes what you become. How she tells it is in no small part due to her dad, so aside from everything else about how growing up with a dad who wanted to build spaceships meant and means, she's got that to thank him for.

— Sara

*And to all of you who do always read, and sometimes even reply: We know you're out there, too. Thank you. We love you.