HE DIDN'T BUILD THIS

Most people don't realize and fewer seem to care that my ingenious colleague David Schoffman holds the United States patent on the Hackle-T:150. (The EU patent is held by an ertswhile mutual friend who shall remain nameless pending the outcome of some numbingly complex litigation - [but let's face it, how much fly fishing do they do in Luxembourg?])

Hackle-T:150 working drawing, David Schoffman, 2004

According to the fly fishing periodical of record, Buzz Tembault's Reel View, the Hackle-T:150 is used as a primary hook by 48% of regular and semi-regular casters. Impressive numbers but what is even more impressive is that this tiny little invention provides a handsome nest egg for David and his family. 

Now I'm not counting his money but between his thriving stature within the cozy, unregulated art market and his yearly residuals from the Brown Trout set, David needn't worry about the high cost of cadmiums.

And yet, my generous friend still devotes a significant portion of his time to what the Americans call, "giving back." (Interestingly, in France we do not have an equivalent expression, the closest I've come up with is "étant une ventouse"). 

I am speaking of course of David Schoffman the teacher.

Schoffman conducting a drawing workshop, Los Angeles, 2012

On any given day, one might find David lecturing an avid auditorium of graduate students on the fine points of late Renaissance Venetian printmaking or conducting a marathon life drawing workshop for a grubby mass of heavily pierced teenagers or demonstrating the delicate finesse of watercolor painting to an eager claque of retired senior citizens.

 One might reasonably ask 'why does he do it'?. Can one man be so benevolent and selfless?  Is this measureless bounty of munificence legitimately heartfelt?

There are several theories floating around the art world addressing this enigma. One suggests that Schoffman's charity is an endless act of expiation, a perpetual atonement for some mysterious malfeasance of his misspent youth. Another posits the theory that David's Molochian appetite for adoration and attention is scarcely satisfied by his accomplishments and therefore his ego demands constant and renewable nourishment. Still others insist that the chump change he earns from his teaching gigs is squirreled away, supporting a series of serragli of coast to coast mistresses.

Having known the guy for nearly 40 years, I believe it is simply a matter of attention deficit. Schoffman is constitutionally incapable of spending long, lonely hours in his studio. Now that his career is firmly established and the demand for his work seems endless he is able to consign most of the hard labor of putting paint on canvas to a small battalion of underpaid assistants. Since he himself does not fish - as far as I know, David is ambivalent to lakes, rivers and anything else that falls loosely under the catagory of Nature - he has to do something with his time.

The Body is his Book #99: One-Hundred Paintings. David Schoffman (and his workshop) 2012