A Short History of Artists in My Family by Craig Blais

(i)

We’ve only had one really. My mom’s cousin Ronnie
who I almost never saw growing up. I was told
he went away to college in Boston and came back
bloated with a sick liver from the drinking.

A cautionary tale about artistic ambitions,
college, cities, and addiction. In the early-90s
we learned he was in the same room as his sister
when she OD’ed on heroin. The lack of any

further details made it worse than if we had known
every juicy bit. He was in and out of shelters
after that. My brother would spot him downtown
while pouring concrete. “Guess who I saw hobbling

up the street on one crutch today?” he’d ask,
setting up the punchline with a smirk. “The artist!”

(ii)

I never had a clue about what kind of art
he made other than the two landscape paintings
he gave my grandparents during a brief stint when he’d
“gotten his shit together.” My grandfather built frames

for them in the cellar, meticulously smoothing
the edges of the wood with fine-grade sandpaper,
applying three coats of a dark walnut stain,
then going over that with a polyurethane

that stunk up the stairwell for a week. He hung them
side-by-side above a couch with its own woodland
scene I used to get lost in. Stepping back to make
sure they were level, he gave me the closest thing

I ever got to an art education: “That’s not
really how leaves look,” he said, “but it’s still nice.”

(iii)

Ronnie was dead for a year before anyone in
our clan knew. “Couldn’t someone have reached out?
It’s not like we are a small group,” his niece asked.
The obit sent around mistakenly said he

was born in Canada on August 20, 1049.
There was mention of a PCA and caregiver,
and no one else. “He was very private,” his brother
added as an explanation. “They probably

just didn’t know who to contact.” Someone posted
a link to a video set to music. The cellphone
hovered over a bedroom wall covered with ink
drawings on postcards set meticulously apart—

they had the tortured intricacy of prison art,
abstract as the idea of hunger to one who starves.

Craig Blais is the author of About Crows (University of Wisconsin Press). His poems have appeared in Denver Quarterly, Hotel Amerika, The Southern Review, and elsewhere. Craig lives in Massachusetts, where he is associate professor of English at Anna Maria College. www.craigblais.com