2025 10 11

Sunflowers. Chicago, Illinois. August. 2025. © Clayton Hauck

Whenever someone dies, immediately everyone jumps on social media and talks about how they are affected by the passing. I’m not sure why, but I’ve always been bothered by this. It’s no secret humans love to make everything about themselves. Someone’s end becomes your new cause for a minute, a day. Maybe this isn’t such a bad thing, after all. I think it triggers my Selfish Radar, which admittedly is fine-tuned, as I’m endlessly bothered by thinking of myself first.

I met Tony Fitzpatrick only briefly, a few months back, at the memorial service for my artist friend Cooper. Tony was nice, well spoken, and thoughtful. My imposter syndrome kicked in later after looking up his work and realizing I both loved it and had seen it around, yet wasn’t able to connect the dots and know who the face was behind the art.

Being an artist is a damn hard line of work. Tony’s work was incredible and he was, by all account from my own social network, one of the city’s finest — yet I hardly knew him. Maybe I am an imposter or maybe it’s just really damn hard to get people to see your genius, even when you have it in spades.

-Clayton