Pushcart 2026 L: Wendy Brenner, “Don’t Bleed on the Artwork: Notes From the Afterlife” (non-fiction) from Oxford American #124

We are not a museum, just a tiny, scruffy, neighborhood frame shop in Evanston, Illinois, a Chicago suburb known for Northwestern University and the Mitchell Museum of the American Indian, for its commitment to social justice and the arts. As in most places, that commitment often fails when it meets reality, but still, Evanston is fierce and beautiful where you least expect it. At my job, for instance. The art is unrelenting. Landscapes and dreamscapes, towers, harbors, mountains, forests, icebergs, beloved anonymous houses, beloved anonymous pets, psychedelic visions and graffiti, diplomas, hockey jerseys, vintage bicycle parts, photographs of every possible object or being …. You might think an article about working in a frame shop would be uninteresting at best, boring at worst. You would be wrong. Of course, this isn’t just an article about working in a frame shop; it’s an article about art, about aging, about the strange and unexpected directions life takes us, about healing…