Following in Grandma's Footsteps

I had my moment in the sun as an artist's model as well.  (Please see previous post.)  Below is a series of photos John Lesnick did in homage to Duane Michals, entitle "Exit the Photographer."  I believe John took at least one class with Mr. Michals at a workshop in Venice.  John asked my friend Larry and I to pose for him on this project.  He wanted to use Larry's apartment, which Larry had just moved into and which, being on the top floor of the building, had good light.

As far as I know, John only printed this one series.  He presented it to me as a gift about a year later.  (He complained that creating the mat for the sixteen pieces was more work than he usually did for photographs.)  I then gave it to my friend, Jack Bayer, as a birthday gift one year.  Jack passed away about 10 years later of heart-related causes.  Again, the family swept in, but this was one piece they didn't care about, so it landed back in my hands.  After cleaning 10 years of cigarette smoke residue off of the glass and frame, it turned out o.k.  Here are the full series and one of the individual scenes:

 

  

The photos are fully mounted on acid-free cardboard.  Each individual photo is 4" x 6" and the framed work is 33"w x 26"h.  The work is dated 1980, and signed.

Why I like this piece:

Apart from all of the narcissistic reasons, (I mean, who doesn't revel in their faded beauty?) this is a good homage to Duane Michals.  It follows his artistic MO, but it follows John's particular way of translating that method to his own uses.  I suppose one could infer that the photographer leaving the scene of his own creation to join a scene (imaginatively) being created elsewhere is clever.  Perhaps too clever, but John was early on in his career (1980) and so perhaps this represents his working on an issue rather than actually resolving an issue.  

That is one good thing about art.  If it is done with the idea that the questions are more important than the answers, than it is at least done in the spirit of art.  The questions engender more questions, and that is why art often reflects its era more accurately than the carefully recorded history of the same era.  

What this piece reminds me of:

First, it reminds me of how the Lower East Side has changed so completely from those days.  You may remember that I mentioned a friend who was mugged 3 times in as many months.  That friend was Larry, pictured above.  He left New York defeated by the danger.  New York, supposedly, is less dangerous these days, but it could easily revert to the late 70s and early 80s, when you had to know where and when you could be on the streets.

Mostly it reminds me of Jack.  Jack had this over his desk in his studio apartment in Chelsea.  He liked it very much.  Jack was a very ruggedly handsome man.  He had served in the Navy during the late 60s, and ended up in New York with a career as a freelance graphic artist. He made a good, if modest, life for himself in the city.  He also made no excuses for his vices.  In today's world of political correctness, he would have smoked his cigarettes and over-indulged in food and drink because the practice of self-denial in such things would have smacked of hypocrisy to him.

Jack and I carried on a brief affair about a year after Terry's death.  He was one of Terry's trio of caregivers.  We became closer because of our shared grief I suppose, but the affair only lasted a few months.  It is one of the signs of how time had changed such that when he passed away a few years later, in the late 90s, I hadn't spoken to him for over a month.  I had to track down a close friend of his to find out that he had died of congestive heart failure.  He had programmed all his phone numbers into the phone, and no one thought to listen to his message machine.

Arts and Crafts and Grandma

My parents called me up to a spare bedroom.  They were rummaging around, trying to find things, and figured it would be a good time for me to take whatever few items I had left there.  They opened a blanket chest and pulled out a shank of braided, auburn hair (almost honey colored), wrapped in a plastic bag.  "This was your grandmother's hair.  Do you want it?"  It took me a moment, but I said no.  

I knew my grandmother had been a model, which was not your average grandmother's calling.  She also had some pretensions to artistic endeavor and these pretensions expressed themselves in little crafts projects.  I offer two of them below:

This is a print which Grandma took the liberty of very lightly coloring in (so lightly that the camera couldn't pick it up).  She then signed it in a larger signature than the actual artist's, whose signature appears almost directly above hers nearer the neckline of the cowl.  It measures approximately 7.5" w x 9.5"h.

 

This is a vase which Grandma painted by hand.  It measures 5"d x 4"h.  As you can see in the full sized version (just click on it), the paint has worn away on a few of the outer buds, which I think is due to Grandma using paint that was too watered down.

 Why I like these pieces:

These are remembrances more than art, but I included them here because I think that they are exactly how art is in its simpler forms.  All art partakes of craft, but not all craft is art.  In the first example, my grandmother wouldn't endeavor to draw a young girl, but she would "gild the lily" and add color to improve, in her eyes, a worthy effort.  Art always competes with people's expectations of what art is.

The vase is my grandmother's and hers alone.  She perhaps copied the flower theme from some other item or work that she knew, but she knew how to mix the colors on the brush to obtain the desired effect.  I remember this vase placed on a bracket on the wall in her kitchen, holding a philodendron.  

What these pieces remind me of:

Of course, they remind me of my childhood.  My grandparents had a very nice 3 bedroom house with a good piece of land behind it.  Among all her other interests, gardening was my grandmother's passion, and she had fairly elaborate plantings, leading on a garden path down to a terrace which held a fireplace for grilling.  Further on were two trees where a hammock was usually hung in the summer.  Not bad for a suburban setting which today is very developed.

My grandmother was a stickler for good behavior.  There was to be no running or screaming or general roughhousing.  Speak only when spoken to, and always say "please" and "thank you."  This was quite different from my maternal grandparents, where kids were generally expected to be kids, which meant a little noise and/or conflict was par for the course. Each set of grandparents spoiled us in their own way.

 

A friend and an artist

John Lesnick was a close friend of mine.  We met felicitously in front of the loft building in Chelsea where I was visiting an ex-boyfriend at the time and where John lived.  I remember that he had just bought groceries and we greeted each other with the brown paper bag he was clutching acting as an annoying barrier between us.  We were immediately attracted to one another and had a brief affair which turned into a  lasting and deep friendship.  I was privileged to know him for the remainder of his life, through all of its ups and downs. He is in the collection at the Museum of Modern Art,  Visual AIDS, and most of his art is now housed by the Leslie-Lohman Gay Art Foundation.

I bought this piece of art from him not too long after it was produced:

 

It is part of a series of full-figure male portraits that he did in a large format print.  This particular print (not titled) is number 7 of 10, is signed by John, and dated 1984.  These prints were produced at the Lower East Side Print Shop.  This organization became John's second home during the early '80s.  He was very productive at the time, but unfortunately not successful commercially as an artist.  

John discovered that he was HIV+ during this time, but he continued to work and travel and enjoy life as fully as possible.  He became an AIDS activist and was a case study in the advances in AIDS-related medicine during the '90s. I purchased one or two more pieces, and he gave me a couple of other pieces of his work as gifts.  When he passed away, I was able to complete this work:

 

As you can see it is quite large and fills one wall of the foyer to my apartment. (Apologies for the poor photography and the glare in both these photos.)  Each framed quarter measures 35.25"h x 43.5"w, so the full work is 70.5"w x 87" high.  It is number 7 of 12, signed and dated 1984.

Why I like this piece:

This piece puts me into a sort of meditative trance.  The pose of the swimmer's right hand appears to me as if it were a gesture of benevolence, but I can't quite figure out why that is.  I bought the original upper right quadrant because it stands as a piece on its own.  The reason it does that is because it encompasses that enigmatic gesture.

As a whole, the work partakes of photography and, to my mind, theater.  It is a set piece for some unwritten play, and it represents an aspect of one of the characters, perhaps the villain, that is decidedly unexpected.  I can imagine this portrait coming to the fore of the stage in the last act to symbolize the villain's attempt at redemption.  ("Angels in America" anyone?)

What this piece reminds me of:

This piece reminds me of loss and of peace with that loss.  John led a very full life, had many friends, and not too many enemies.  He was respected and loved.  John was the closest experience I could imagine of knowing Lazarus.  He very nearly died prior to the advent of protease inhibitors for the treatment of HIV.  When he came back to life, he lived as fully and as creatively without (too much) complaint that he had nearly been robbed of this second chance.  

The longer I live with this work, the more I appreciate it.  It is a comfort.  There is much more of John's work to show, and each will remind me of some other aspect of life during those times.  

Terry's Art: Another Inheritance

Terry was a very visual person and had aspirations of an art career in New York.  It did not quite work out that way; he was very good at the software design he did for Intel.  He did produce some interesting work.  The four pieces here are, as far as I know, the only print project that he completed, and I believe it may have been done before he arrived in New York.

He also produced a series of photos of himself in drag which tell the story of a lonely woman's day and her ruminations on life.  That may come in a later post, but is rather heavy on the imagery and will take some time to organize. I apologize again for the quality of the photography; it doesn't quite capture the colors of these prints.

Terry created these four prints as a group:

 

 

 

 

The images are very saturated in color.  Each image measures 17"h x 14"w.  Each print is signed, not dated, and they are labeled in the artist's handwriting as Artist's Proof with a number for each copy and the number of proofs for the edition.

Why I like this piece:

These are idealized male torsos, and represent a type of art created by gay males during the post-Stonewall era to express their love of the male body.  The suppression of such images prior to the early 60s created a generation of artists to whom the image of the male body was the highest expression of their artistic skills.  Without a long-winded discourse on how the male of the human species, regardless of sexual orientation, became such a visual creature it is clear that the latter part of the 20th century may be remembered best for its mini-renaissance of male beauty.  From the physique photography of the '50s through the Abercrombie & Fitch catalogues stretching into the early 21st century, there was never quite so much attention paid to the male and all the variations on the ideal of that human form.

On another level, because of the colors in play on these prints, they relate rather well to the Floc'h and Riviere work in this previous post.  They partake of the same simple background, with a single subject in each frame. 

What this piece reminds me of: 

Although this series of prints reminds me of the time I spent with Terry, one aspect that he spoke of nearly came true, but in a weird way.  These prints have traveled with me to several different abodes.  When I settled in my current apartment, I became familiar with a neighbor whose profession was that of a lead glass window designer.  One of Terry's ambitions for these prints was to have them transposed into leaded glass.

I hadn't thought of that for years before meeting this neighbor.  I told her I had something she might consider for a subject, but her face fell when she saw these prints.  I don't think she was quite ready to approach the subject matter objectively.   

A "Family" Inheritance

This piece was one of the few things I inherited from a family member.  It is an abstract work which is a portrait of the person who ultimately passed it into my hands.  His name was Fred, and he was the person who introduced me to New York city, and not just to NYC, but to gay life in NYC.  

This work was done by Fred's boyfriend from the 1960's, Richard Passantino, who changed his name at some point to Richard Santino.  Richard went on to become the lover of Richard Poirier, a noted literary critic.  Mr. Poirier acknowledged Richard Santino as his lover, and as the creator of the collage for the front cover of his book "Robert Frost: The Work of Knowing" which remains a valuable reference on Frost's work. (A scan of the cover is included after the jump at the end of this post.) This book was assigned to us in a class taught by Joseph Brodsky at Columbia when I was a poetry student there.  I did not take the time to read the introduction of the book back then, so I had no clue of the connection until researching this post, but it goes to show what a small world this is.

The work is entitled "Mon Homme," and is a serigraph, signed and dated by the artist.  It measures 11.5" x 15.5" and is in the original frame.  It consists of an arrangement of mainly abstract cubes with the figure of a man seeming to recline on those forms.  There is a patterned background, and the overall colors are blue and yellow.   

Why I like this piece: 

I can verify that, as a person, Fred was composed of these colors.  He had very blue eyes, and his wardrobe almost always included a splash of yellow with the blue he used to set off his eyes. This piece is fairly simple in its composition.  I do not generally favor abstraction, but this clearly comes to us from the 50s and 60s when abstraction was more the norm.  But because of it's simplicity, the piece seems to have no grand aspirations other than an artist trying to capture the personality of, and his own feelings about, the man he loved.

What this piece reminds me of: 

This piece is my "madeleine" of the first few years in New York.  I moved to the city to attend graduate school at Columbia.  When I first moved here in January of 1978 it was merely with the intention to attend school.  The city held no fears for me, or attractions other than I knew that movies always opened here before they were shown in the rest of the country, and there were quite a few that appeared and never were shown to the rest of the country.  But the main thing was that, other than getting an education, I had no expectations of the city.  

One of the lifelines that I had in this endeavor was my father's cousin, Fred.  He taught English as a second language at New York University, and was well-known among ESL teachers for having produced a series of useful text books for the college level. My father put us in contact, and Fred put me up for the first weekend I visited Columbia to complete the registration process.  A week or two later, I moved into a Columbia University dorm for grad students.  

Fred introduced me to the subway system, pointed out some of the architectural wonders, and generally acted as a tour guide for those first few months.  He was a very good guide, having lived in NY for most of his life.  His apartment was in the Washington Square Towers, just south of Washington Square Park.  Early in the summer of that first year, he asked me to take care of his apartment while he was away on vacation in Puerto Rico.  It was a great opportunity to get a break from the dorm.  

I had an off-again, on-again girlfriend in medical school at the time, but our relationship had strained due to the long-distance aspect of the affair, as she was attending school in Philadelphia.  When I stayed in Fred's apartment, I had already decided that I wanted to explore the Village.  Christopher Street seemed a natural place to start.  It was already famous as a gay mecca, but I was more innocent than I knew.  That first evening, I could not believe what I saw and felt as I walked down that street.  Men were looking at me openly, very opposite to the furtive way I had always looked at men.  It took me three passes before I finally got up the courage to walk into a bar at the end of the street.  That night I took a man home for the first time in my life.

When Fred returned from his trip, he noticed the change in me.  As we were walking by Sheridan Sq. one evening not long after his return, he asked if I had anything I wanted to tell him.  I came out to him, and he came out to me.  "Now," he said, "you can meet all of my friends."  And I did, and it was one of the best coming out experiences that could be imagined. 

Fred was one of the best people to know if you were a young man coming out of the closet.  He had been involved with the Mattachine Society in the early 60s.  He regaled me with tales of how secretive gay bars and gay society was when he first came out.  He talked about the codes and signals that gay men used to identify each other in social situations, and how careful it was necessary to be at work.  He told me of his love for NYC; how it provided a gay man a real life.  He talked about his flirtations with students and with how he and his friends had come to know and love one another. 

That was Fred; one of the most generous men I've ever met.  I still use the stainless flatware that he gave me when I had to move out of the dorm.  He nursed and nurtured me through the usual heartbreaks and fears of becoming an out gay man.  

Fred too was taken by HIV.  He became ill on a visit to his beloved Puerto Rico.  During our last phone conversation, he spoke from his hospital bed.  I was in the process of losing two other friends and couldn't bring myself to tell him of these other catastrophes.  So while I kept the conversation light and topical, he pronounced me as being a very boring person.  

As was so often the case, when Fred passed away his "family" swept in to remove all the evidence, as if the family he had created in New York was of no account.  (Yes, I deem the quotes to be correctly applied.)  They did have the good grace to ask me if there was anything in particular I wanted.  His portrait was the first thing that came to mind. 

You can see the cover of "Robert Frost" by Richard Santino after the break.

And speaking of Paris

In 1985 I took my first trip to Europe to visit a friend who had just moved back to Amsterdam after a career at the U.N. in New York.  He graciously agreed to accompany me by train to Paris.  It was a great trip, and I couldn't leave Paris without a serious souvenir.  I came upon a small frame and print shop and purchased a print and a poster.  The poster will show up in a future post.
   

I considered the print a real find at the time, as it references both Tintin and Andy Warhol.  The image was somewhat familiar to me, and I was excited to find an original print of it.  The cans of crab arose in a Tintin adventure entitled "The Crab with the Golden Claws."  I quote from the Wikipedia entry:  "Tintin had discovered a smuggling ring which used tins of crab meat in order to smuggle their opium."  The work is entitled "Quatre Boites de Crabe Extra" and was created by Floc'h et Riviere, who are a team of illustrators famous in France for their collaborative work.  The print is numbered and bears the signature of both artists.  It is dated 1983.

Please forgive the poor quality of the photograph, which has some annoying artifacts from the light in the kitchen.  I took the photo with all sorts of lights on and off, but this was the best I could come up with.

Why I like this piece:

Of course, this is as close to an Andy Warhol as I'm likely to own.  The whole piece references pop art and pop culture.  It is jokey and fun, and likely the most saturated with color of any art work I have.  This is in the kitchen, and works perfectly as kitchen art.  It seemed out of place anywhere else I put it in the apartment.  It is vibrant and alive, and yes, it makes me want to eat something.

What this piece reminds me of:

I cannot forget how I found this piece, just wandering near the Sorbonne.  It was a small shop and I went in as much to rest as to browse.  But mostly it reminds me of Warhol.  

I used to go to a gay bar on Avenue A called the Pyramid Club.  It was on my list of places to cruise on a Saturday night, starting in the East Village and ending up on the West side.  They used to run a show which was billed as the first gay soap opera.  On a little stage, which was difficult to see from the bar anyway, there would be practically incomprehensible goings on for about 15 minutes or so, starting around 10:00 p.m.  Then the music would start and the area became a dance floor.  I guess Andy and his entourage were there to see the show, but I didn't notice him until I decided to join in the dancing.  There he was with a few other friends surrounding him, sort of bouncing around the way we used to dance back in the late 70s and early 80s.  

I did see him one or two other times; once at Irving Place, another club and once just on the street in the West Village.  New York allows celebrities to live their lives without too much fear of interruption. 

I also remember showing this and the poster to my friend back at the hotel room.  He had become ill and wasn't able to squire me around Paris as he hoped, but I was getting along fairly well on my own.  When I spread them out for him to see I remember his reaction as less than enthusiastic. Chacun à son goût!

The Gift

Last night I went to Posh for an after-job-interview drink.  I was seated with two 20 somethings on my right and two Broadway veterans on my left.  The atmosphere was convivial and the evening wore on very nicely.  The conversation turned mainly around our various attempts to get jobs as most of us were unemployed, and generally sharing our stories in and out of New York.  It was a great way to unwind after a job interview, and a better result than I've had a in gay bar in quite awhile.

One of the Broadway veterans allowed as his main job on Broadway had been as a costumer and property manager.  He offered to draw our fantasies of Broadway costumes.  The 20 somethings chose "Cats," and I chose Blanche from "Streetcar."  For a sketch done in a dark bar after a couple of drinks, the result is amazing. He drew them right in front of us, very quickly and with only a few quick grabs of the candle to check his work before he finished.

I am very grateful for this gift.  It was a pleasure to meet these people, and this sketch is a great reminder of the evening.  Art is everywhere, and sometimes comes to you unsolicited and with unimagined generosity.

My Second Acquisition is also from a group show.

This piece, "Les Bon Moments a Rue Condorcet" by Yvonne Gayle-Butler, was purchased at a group show sponsored by the Young Communist League, I believe. My friend Robin Crutchfield had a few pieces in the show so I went to check it out.  While I enjoyed his work, this particular piece caught my eye.  The art on display was not for sale; it was just a way for people to get their work shown.  But I tracked down the artist and negotiated a price with her.  I have not been able to locate Yvonne Gayle-Butler in a quick internet search.

This piece consists of three sheets torn out of a sketchbook and assembled behind a paper mat which has some stray puffs of paint and the title of the piece written on it.  The three panels are also entitled on the mat.  In order of the three watercolors, left to right:  1. A robe hung on a doorway, backed by elaborate figurative wallpaper with the title  "Regard, regard, le voisin (?) regard encore."; 2. Slippers on an ornate rug, with the artist's knee and drawing hand with the title "A quatre heures avant crepuscule dans le salon avec l'air de paix."; and 3. Clothes drying (?) on a radiator with a box of toys (?) nearby with the title "La fenetre en le bord le voisir (?) regard par son gout".  

My translations are partial because the word "voisir" does not exist in any French language reference I have checked and the last word in the 3rd entry is illegible.  In order:  "Look, look, the ________ look again."  "A quarter hour before dusk in the peaceful living room." "By the window, the _________ looks at her _____."

While the draftsmanship is not great, there is a fair amount of attention to detail, particularly in rendering the wallpaper and the carpet.  The colors are muted except for the centerpiece, which is rendered more richly.  Besides the artist's signature on the mat, each page is also signed.

Why I like this piece:

The informality of the work, along with the slapdash way of composing the images into a triumvirate of domestic . . . something.  Maybe not bliss, but a sensibility almost as appealing and perhaps more engaged.  The robe hanging on the wall looks to me not as if rest is waiting to be had, but rather that rest has been put aside for the moment.  The second image of the artist actually at work is the centerpiece of the work and the centerpiece of the thought about being at home and working.  

In other words, three domestic and very serene still lifes.  The mundane becomes the subject of the artist's work. The third part is the clincher, as the haphazard arrangement of clothes and things waiting to be put away means there is other work to be done as well.  So the home is all things at once, where work is done and waiting to be done, but where "rest" at least resides, even if it's moment is temporarily gone.

What this piece reminds me of: 

I am reminded immediately of how impulsive I was then.  To track down the artist and arrange to buy a piece of art directly was not something I had ever done.  I don't know if the piece or my general compulsiveness about art drove me to it.  But I have never felt untouched when I look at the piece, so it must have been something more.  The site of the workhall on 23rd Street where the Young Communist League held the show has become a Gap store, if memory serves correctly (the northeast corner of 23rd and 8th Avenue).  

In the 80's artwork and the art world was more accessible, as I've mentioned previously. 

There were plenty of artists and many who worked in obscurity unless you made it to the type of unhyped and under-attended shows like this one.  I think I was one of about 3 people in the room on a Saturday afternoon.

And it reminds me of Robin, who remains a friend (or at least acquaintance) to this day.  We met at the gay clubs in the meat market district.  His bio is on the link, but I did not know he was an artist in his own right until we got to know one another better.  This show, which he was a part of, was not until 6 years or so later. 

My First Acquisition

The first piece of art I ever purchased was in a group exhibition at a gallery in Soho whose name I have long since forgotten.  It was opening night and I attended with a close friend of mine.  The object in question is a mixed media piece entitled (I believe) Daphne's Hand.  The artist is Diane Karol who, I understand from a brief internet search, now teaches painting and mixed media at Queens College in New York.

I remember the evening fairly clearly for someone who perhaps had one too many glasses of the cheap wine.  My friend and I had already done a tour of the pieces on display, but this one caught my eye. On our second go round my friend was very quick to note my attraction to it and she dared me to buy it.  I'm not sure of her exact words, but something along the lines of "You know you like it.  Why not just take it home?"  And so I did.  (Although I had to go back and pick it up after the exhibit ended.)

It did make it through the first twelve years or so on the wall in my studio apartment.  When I moved in with a partner it was stored for quite a few years, and I have to say I didn't miss it much.  However, in my current apartment I discovered it in a box that had been moved and then stored again. I took it out, and kept it standing at odd locations around the apartment.  I didn't really pay that much attention to it, and it went missing without my noticing.

Recently, cleaning behind a nightstand in the bedroom, I discovered it again. It had probably been laying there for a good six months or so. Though dusty, it was not much worse for the wear, and now it is the first listing in this blog.  Here are the pictures:

 

It is composed of a cloth work glove which has laurel (?) leaves sewn into the material to form fingernails.  The nails are painted red and green.  The wrist is filled with material and that is where the signature appears.  There is quite a bit of dust which has worked its way into the glove material, but the nails are still glossy.

Why I like this piece:

The piece references mythology directly:  Apollo falls in love with Daphne, but she rejects him and in order to put off his advances asks the gods to change her to something he cannot love.  The gods grant her wish and she is transformed into a laurel tree.  Apollo adopts a wreath of laurel as his crown.

When I saw the piece in the gallery it stood out because it was an object as opposed to a painting or drawing.  Thought and effort had gone into it, and yet it seemed effortless in concept: simple and appealing.

Although it appears graceless and drab now, the concept still carries through for me and I have no intention of parting with it.  If Diane Karol ever reads this post, then she may have it if she plans to do a career retrospective at some point.

What it reminds me of now:

The whole episode in the gallery, the opening, etc., was part of life in those days.  Galleries still have openings, but I don't attend them.  And Soho is no longer the center of the art world.  Williamsburg is arguably the center for new artists, and Chelsea has all of the established galleries with their A-list artists.  Soho is more or less a shopping mall for the rich.  More modest stores like Broadway Panhandler have decamped.  To my mind Soho was a more accessible art market in many ways.  Chelsea today is not much different in terms of accessibility, but there's no direct subway line to the heart of the district.

I would spend hours wandering Soho and checking for new shows by favorite photographers and/or visiting galleries that had consistently interesting artists.  Leo Castelli comes to mind, and the other galleries in that building.  I discovered Larry Clark there, and the Photography Book store always had great deals on books, since I couldn't afford the prints themselves in most cases.