Holiday Column: Artist Robert Beck Multi-Tasks in Carmelo’s Shoe Repair on Amsterdam Between 73 & 74 

As Santa Waves Goodbye
By Robert Beck

There are plenty of places to get your shoes repaired on the Upper West Side. Some are impossibly tiny spaces wedged between stores, barely wide enough to leave without having to back out. Carmelo’s is vast by comparison. Two people could come and go at the same time. Well, not while I was set up there.

Carmelo and I didn’t talk much. When I asked if I could paint there, he just said okay. No questions. He is another one of those small business owners who never stop moving. The shop offers to pick up and deliver, and occasionally Carmelo would step away from the bench in the back room, or from cleaning the display cases and polishing shoes, and he would head out into the cold drizzle while William went back-and-forth between repairs and taking care of the customers. On one of his runs, Carmilo brought back a bottle of water for me, which was gracious.

I should mention here that I hadn’t eaten that morning and was going to rely on the breakfast bar I knew was in my painting bag. Turns out it had been in my bag longer than I thought, so I quick ran a few doors down Amsterdam to find something else. Heaven behold, William Greenberg Desserts. I got a cherry danish (I’m told they are spandauers? Never heard that), and took it back with me. You might think eating a jelly pastry while doing a live oil painting in a cramped Manhattan shoe repair shop is pushing the edges but remember, I’m a pro.

Meanwhile, people came in and petitioned for the lives of their beloved boots and bags. Could they be saved? Or customers sat in one of the chairs (I was blocking the other) and tried-on their recently resurrected hiking shoes. They all seemed glad to be there, a place with a human scale, out of the rain, checking a chore off their list, making something right. I was all smiles, too, with a jelly smear on my cheek. I should paint in a bakery.

Throughout it all, a Spanish-speaking radio station maintained group commentary in the background. The program included lots of chatter and laughter, and I enjoyed the music, but I admit to understanding none of it. It didn’t matter; I had my hands full. The support column and half of the back wall of the store are mirrored, which is tough to describe with a two-dimensional image, and that cream-colored stitcher or cutter or whatever it is was tricky to make come forward into its own space and look like something. Anything.

Painting the Santa on the counter, however, was a piece of cake.

Robert Beck moved into his new studio this week, and he promises to tell all once he has the pillows fluffed.

Read all of Robert Beck’s columns here.