Sketching Zanesville

Vivian Wagner

Panthalassa Pamphlet
July 2017

Tea & Tattered Pages

I
’ve never liked Zanesville, Ohio. I’ve never felt comfortable in this sprawling, southeastern Ohio
city at the confluence of the Muskingum and Licking rivers, with its rush of cars and bewildering
plethora of fast food restaurants and overwhelming smell of exhaust. I’ve lived for twenty years
in the nearby village of New Concord, going to Zanesville only to buy groceries and other
necessities before quickly hurrying away.
Recently, though, I discovered urban sketching. I’ve been going to sketch crawls in Columbus,
taking classes on Craftsy, and practicing around my village. And I started wondering if, perhaps, it was
time try my hand at Zanesville. Many of the urban sketches I’d been admiring were done in beautiful
cities around the world – Madrid, Cuba, Barcelona, Venice, Seattle. Zanesville seemed the opposite of
such places, but maybe that was an argument for sketching it. Maybe it needed some attention.
Sketching a place and its people requires me to slow down, look closely, and feel compassion.
Perhaps by sketching this city that had always eluded me, I’d come to understand it.
And so, one afternoon, I took to the streets with a sketchbook and portable watercolor kit, with the
aim of observing this place I’d long ago quit seeing.
 My first destination was the top of Putnam Hill, where I knew I could get a birds-eye view of the
city, with its iconic Y-Bridge crossing both rivers at once. This, I figured, is one of the most lovely and
forgiving views in Zanesville, offering a broad, sweeping view of the rivers and also the downtown. It
seemed like a good place to start – the one place in this city where you get a sense of the landscape and
the city working together.
When you sketch a place, you need to think quickly. You need to let your pen follow the contours of
whatever you’re seeing, and trust that it will approximate reality. It doesn’t have to be an exact
representation of the world, but it has to be faithful, somehow, to the spirit of that world.
Up on Putnam Hill, looking over the Y-Bridge and the city’s downtown, I saw something of the
spirit of Zanesville – or, at least, old Zanesville, with its ironwork and red brick buildings, its sense of
space and symmetry and purpose.
 After visiting Putnam Hill, I drove around the old downtown. Though much of it’s boarded-up and
abandoned, artists and craftspeople are starting to move in, opening galleries and studios and reviving a
place that had until recently been spiraling down.
I take yoga and art classes at Megyen’s Yoga Room, which is housed in one of these artists’ havens
– the Masonic Temple. It’s one of the bright spots of the city.
I do love going there, and sketching it reminded me of that, made me look closely at the windows
and doors and alleys of a place that nurtures me.
 And, I remembered, I also like the old train yard, where freight trains still come and go, hauling oil
and goods in and out of downtown.
 As much as I appreciate Zanesville’s downtown, however, and the artistic spirit that’s being revived
in it, much of the city’s activity happens in the north part of town. In the early 1960s, Interstate 70 came
through and cut this city in half. After the interstate’s construction, Zanesville’s main artery became a
north-south road that’s a hell of fast food and big box stores and general ugliness: Maple Avenue.
After visiting downtown, I ventured up Maple and stopped to get my car washed, thinking that it
would give me a place to sit for a few minutes and watch the manic traffic go by. There aren’t many
places in the north part of Zanesville to walk, sit, or observe. This was one of the few outside spots I
could find.
While I waited for my car to be washed, I sat on a cement bench, watching cars go by, remembering
what I hate about Zanesville. It’s this street. I hate Maple Avenue. And I hate how the interstate cut
through this city and created this horror.
As sketched, though, I found myself unconsciously making it a bit prettier than it was. I didn’t get all
the cars, for one thing. And for another, the buildings as I rendered them looked older and more quaint.
It’s strange what happens to your vision when you study a thing you dislike.
Maple Avenue didn’t look so bad in my sketch.
One of the tenants of the Urban Sketchers’ Manifesto, as laid out by Gabriel Campanario in The Art
of Urban Sketching: Drawing on Location Around the World, is that “we are truthful to the scenes we
witness” (21).
I tried, but in this sketch I found myself representing the place as I wanted it to be, instead of as it
was.
Maybe that’s not all bad. Maybe it was just my attempt to reconceive of Maple Avenue, to rethink
what it might still be.
Or maybe I just need to work on my sketching skills.
 A kid at the carwash wearing a MAGA cap cleaned a large diesel truck ahead of my car. The sun
was shining bright on that late spring day.
Zanesville’s in the heart of Trump territory. Sixty-five percent of voters in this county voted for
Trump in the 2016 election.
I don’t have anything to say to them.
The kid at the car wash seemed nice, though. I smiled at him while I sketched. Sometimes we need
to try to get past political differences to exist in a place. Sketching helped me, at least momentarily, see
that.
 Finally, I stopped at one of the few spots of refuge on the north side of Zanesville: Starbuck’s. Here,
people read, write, gaze out the window, talk, think. Here they create a space for themselves that isn’t
entirely defined by the roar of Maple Avenue.
Maybe, I started thinking as I watched and sketched, a place is more than its major artery. Maybe it’s
more than its fast food restaurants and chain stores.
Maybe it’s the people.
Maybe it’s this man, reading a newspaper.
 And maybe it’s this woman being interviewed for a position as a pharmaceutical rep. She seemed
nervous, and I could tell she really wanted the job.
Maybe this is what happens, when you sketch. You see the people around you. You listen to them.
You find some hope.
Perhaps it’s the people who matter, in the end.
Perhaps it’s the people who, finally, shape a place.
Sketching’s helping me see that.
In his introduction to The Art of Urban Sketching, Campanario says that “sketching is our way of
discovering our communities. We are tourists in our own cities, replicating in our own personal styles
awe-inspiring landmarks or just the mundane moments of our commute. We are historians who
document the changing urban landscape” (012). And urban sketcher Jerry Waese, whose sketches of
Toronto are included in the book, says that “urban sketching is about making this place where I live
home” (62).
This, then, is what I’m trying to do, sketch-by-sketch, with Zanesville. I’m trying to understand this
place, trying to document it, trying to feel at home in a place where I continue to feel alien.
I know I still have a long way to go, but I have plenty of paper, ink, graphite, and paint to help me
get there.
 Work Cited

Campanario, Gabriel. The Art of Urban Sketching: Drawing on Location Around the World.
Quarry Books, 2012.