With “Birth of a Salesman,” visual artist Sam Robertson and sound designer Dan Dukich capture the pain and absurdity of introducing a labor of love to an indifferent world.

By Jenna Ross

The Minnesota Star Tribune

May 6, 2024 at 11:00AM

Artist Sam Robertson in front of a bus-bench advertisement about his illustrated Old Testament, a seven-year artistic project that is now the subject of a narrative podcast. (Provided/Sam Robertson)

It’s true that Sam Robertson spent seven years illustrating the Old Testament. That he published his surreal illustrated version of the Bible in 2021. That he then peddled that good book door to door.

All true. Strange, sure, but true.

Then Robertson made a podcast, “Birth of a Salesman,” that takes that set of facts into an even stranger place. Several places, actually, as it follows a Robertson-like character, clad in a brown suit, onto neighbors’ doorsteps, along for an adult sleepover and into the crosshairs of his nemesis, a competing door-to-door salesman.

Over five episodes released in April, the podcast blurs reality and fiction, capturing “the absurdities and struggles of trying to bring one’s artwork into a seemingly indifferent world,” said Robertson, 35, of Minneapolis.

To be an artist is to be a salesman, the podcast argues, in this case one who turns to outdated means — a front porch pitch, a post office box, a bus bench advertisement. (That ad exists, across from a Baker’s Wife in south Minneapolis.)

Robertson created “Birth of a Salesman” with his friend and former bandmate Dan Dukich, a musician, sound designer and audio engineer. With its old-timey sound effects and broad characters, it sways between silly and satirical, odd and earnest. “Sam’s out here, in the harsh world, vulnerable and exposed,” Dukich’s voice-over says in the first episode, “naked except for the fancy brown suit from the ‘70s or ‘80s, which adorns his entire body.

“And in this infantile state, any interactions with strangers, even the ones that aren’t noteworthy at all, seem to act as rudders, steering him in unforeseen directions on the sloppy seas.”

Two friends -- sound designer Dan Dukich and visual artist Sam Robertson -- created "Birth of a Salesman," a podcast that plays off the tensions of being an artist. (Jenna Ross)

In an interview, Robertson shared his character’s befuddlement about the business of being an artist, with its pressures to post on Instagram and TikTok.

“I feel like railroad man,” Robertson said, quoting from an Eels song: “The times that I live in/ Are not made for a railroad man.”

Sitting beside him, Dukich nodded.

“While in the podcast it’s blown up to an absurd level, I think it’s true to Sam in a lot of ways,” Dukich said. “You are really trying to seek a deep connection with people, and it’s hard to do that over a 20-second TikTok video.”

Being an artist means “living in the mystery of making, and then you have to leave that to go to a place of being super strategic, explaining the mystery,” he said.

It took Robertson seven years to illustrate the Old Testament. The finished book, a handsome tome, contains 257 paintings — modern scenes with odd details and a pop art feel. There are Tupperware parties, toilet plungers and plastic ball pits. Moses is a construction worker, the cherub is an old man and God wears shorts and works at a standing desk.

Artist Sam Robertson's depiction of a verse in Psalms which begins, "They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters..." Robertson is not a religious guy, but the good book turned out to be inspiring fodder. (The Minnesota Star Tribune)

Robertson knew, making it, that it wouldn’t sell itself. Religious folks would find it to be too subversive, he said in 2019, and agnostic people, like him, might expect rigid, sacred images.

“All potential groups are ostracized from the get-go,” he said then.

Selling it door to door was always part of the project. The podcast features field recordings Robertson made while pitching it to strangers. Most were disinterested. Some were rude. At one point, trying to find a point of connection, Robertson asks someone, “It’s an art book. Do you like art?”

“I don’t,” the man replies, laughing.

“You don’t like art?” Robertson says, incredulous.

But Robertson also encounters friendlier people, via scripted exchanges voiced by 15 actors. In this fictional world, one of the rules is: People are excited to help Sam.

Scripting, recording and editing the podcast took Robertson and Dukich more than two years, making this a decade-long project for Robertson, who works as a carpenter.

In a way, he’s doubling down on a project and an identity as “the guy who illustrated the Bible,” he said. It’s kind of like how a joke, told too hard for too long, isn’t funny, he continued. “And then there’s this magic moment where it becomes funny again.”

This project is more genuine than a joke, he said. But the commitment is “just on some level really absurd.”