Since Kit White and I met when I was a freshman in college, I’ve just realized that means we’ve been friends for two-thirds of our lives. He is pretty much the same person he was then: philosophically serious but funny and fun, learned, lucid, wise, and a painter of gorgeous, emotionally riveting abstract pictures. Of course, his work has now sold in lots of fancy galleries and and been acquired by museums, and he’s probably wiser than he was at 21. And he’s also taught painting to undergraduates and graduate students for the last couple of decades.

So this seems like the perfect moment for him to distill 30-odd years of artistic practice and pedagogy into 101 Things to Learn in Art School, this inspiring yet straightforward, sophisticated yet succinct guide. (It’s also an exceptionally handsome little object.) There cannot be a better, smarter manual for anyone crazy enough to want to become a visual artist, or for the encouraging and/or bewildered loved ones of such a person.