Back in the early 90’s, when I was only a few years out of school I had a full time design job on Lafayette street. Once a week I would pack my scratch board, scratching nibs, brush and india ink. This was the day The Village Voice closed, and I would sometimes receive a call from Bob, Florian Bachleda or Jennifer Gillman asking me if I would like to do an illustration for that evening. When 5pm came I would walk around the corner to the Bowery and head up to the art department. They had a great Michael Bartalos mural on the wall.
There would usually be another illustrator there too, the one I remember most is Paul Corio. One of the designers would give us our stories we would then do sketches and bring them in to Bob. He would pick one and then we had two maybe three hours to do the illustration. We would bring our finished illustrations up to the paste-up floor where they had the mechanicals for the whole paper laid out on tables. It was great fun and I’d like to thank Bob for one on my favorite memories of illustration before the internet.
