Sunday, July 7, 2013

Café Odessa


by Drew Martin
I awoke from a bizarre dream more than an hour ago, somewhere around 3 am. I was in a long American sedan, which an old lady was driving, and there were others in the car. We were going to a restaurant to discuss a project. I pointed out that the part of whichever city we were in was trying to resemble a quaint Czech town. The old, silver-haired lady navigated the old, silver Cadillac through the narrow streets. When we arrived at the venue, she drove the car through the front door of the restaurant, and pulled up alongside the table. After we got out, she folded the car like a card table and stored it outside on the street. There were some people waiting for us, who were already seated. She introduced them as other Americans. One man seemed familiar, but I thought he was Australian. He corrected me and refreshed my memory, telling me I recently did a drawing for an article he published in a political journal. I looked down at the table and saw the drawing, and others I had also done for the journal. I sat down and picked up the menu. The place was called Café Odessa. The menu was red and had a stylized symmetrical line drawing of a baby carriage. I thought it was clever and looked for the artist's name. I found the familiar signature of Jiří Slíva, one of my favorite illustrators who has a great collection of coffee-themed drawings titled Café Fetish. I thought it was strange that he would draw something so iconic. I could not sleep after waking up from the dream so I got up and drew this picture imagining how it might fit into his book.