Barbie-heimer

I must admit that I don’t have an overwhelming desire to see the “blockbuster”movie Barbie. Sure, I had a Barbie doll. But I didn’t relate to her. She was tall, and impossibly thin with a long blonde ponytail. I took a blunt pair of scissors to her ponytail at one point. Her head came off so easily. As did her arms. Pieces easily went on walkabout.

I couldn’t afford to buy Barbie clothes, she came dressed in a zebra striped bathing suit, and nothing else, other than tiny white high heels. So I made clothing for her but eventually I became bored with her and abandoned her for Tonka Toy (Breyer) horses.

I don’t remember who gave me the doll, I think it was a Christmas gift from our next-door neighbor, ca. 1959 or 60. I was short and dark, and had no boobs to speak of, they were a long way off on the grown-up horizon, so I didn’t relate to her all that much. Besides, I hated the color pink. I think she met her demise via a 4th of July firecracker. Her graffitied carapace became housing for a tiny bomb.

I will probably go and see Oppenheimer, because some of my family history is tied up with Los Alamos—my mother’s cousin, who was brilliant in mathematics, was whisked away right out of high school to work on the bomb. 

We only found this out much later after Marie had died of cancer. In 1990, I made a pilgrimage to the Delgado Bridge in Santa Fe where the Rosenberg spies were captured, and also a visit to the Pajarito Plateau, where we visited the petroglyphs of T’sanque/T’sankawi, and Los Alamos where a spare shells of Fat Man and Little Boy still doze in the museum. 

The place names still haunt me. Los Alamos, Alamogordo, Stallion Gate, Trinity, Oak Ridge, Fermi Institute. I am a child born of the Age of Light. Meanwhile, on the rock outcrops, near Los Alamos, the petroglyph of Kokopelli, playing the water sprinkler, abides.

My cousin’s name was Mary—or Marie—Walsh, as we called her. She was the daughter of Wild Bill, the gambler, and grew up on Home Ranch, in the Reese River Valley. I think she was also my grandmother’s goddaughter. 

My grandmother sometimes received postcards from her, addressed from New Mexico, but no PO Box, or return address. I remember there was a letter with words cut out of it, clearly censored. Like little blank eyes. My grandmother hid them in the top drawer of the bureau beneath her handmade Irish lace, and all her sewing scraps.

In the mid-1970s, I worked for “Crappa,” retired politician Roger Kent, whose father was Senator William Kent (who gave Muir Woods to the Department of the Interior) and Roger’s brother “Buffalo” that is Sherman Kent, was head of the CIA, and they both admitted the Manhattan Project was the best kept secret. 

Even the Kents didn’t know about the Manhattan Project until it was declassified. For a government that didn’t keep secrets well, it was the best kept secret of all. And Sherman—if anyone should have known, it was him, after all, he was a CIA. But Sherman was also in the dark.They were surprised to learn that my cousin, who was gifted with numbers, had worked on the bomb at los Alamos.

Sadly, the math gene blithely skipped over me, is, despite having an Olympic gold medal winner try to teach me, but I do remember the bomb drills where we hid our heads under our desks at Lagunitas School. We covered the back of our necks with one arm, and our eyes with the other, and waited for the drill to be over. The day they were detonating atomic bombs over Jackass flats in Nevada, the entire school went outside to the playground to witness the light. 

We were in West Marin, a long way from Jackass Flats. The sky did go white. And it did sound like you could hear a muffled bomb go off in the distance. 

Later, when I tried to look this information up, I was told the detonation was underground. That what we witnessed was impossible. Maybe so, but we did hear and see something that day when the sky was robbed of color. And we were 500 miles away on the northern coast of California. It made the presence of the atomic bomb far too real for me. I was haunted by nightmares for years to come.

As it turns out, the last above ground nuclear test was July 17, 1962, so yes, we could have witnessed an above ground blast. And every year on Labor Day weekend, I can’t help but think of all the artistic hordes intent on radical self expression, gather at Black Rock Playa to ignite a Burning Man— to burn away the corporate sins of the world. (I attended the first burning man at Baker Beach in San Francisco, 1986.) 

Each year, my old college friend, David Best, erects a phantasmagoric wooden temple—just downwind from that radioactive Armageddon of Jackass Flats. prayer flags in the wind. I can’t help but think of all those radical isotopes on the wing. And how we are all glowing from within during this Age of Light.

see my atomic poem list below

Mill Valley's Unknown Museum and the Gluers Junk Art Movement

Embedded in my hitchhiking blog post, was a small story on the Unknown Museum, time for its own post, something i've been resisting for years—then I found the old photos. This is still very much in progress... Also, I found some slides I took and I scanned them. I'll need to add them in. But you can visit the gallery I made on my Facebook page Nico Morris was able to ID most of the work.

In 1969, on the long coattails of the Summer of Love, at the age of 22, eccentric LA artist Mickey McGowan moved to Sausalito with nothing more than the proverbial shirt on his back. Penniless, he shared a studio with a friend, Rat Soup, at the Sausalito Art Center for $80 a month. 

"A lot of us had our first shows there, myself with my drawings. Rat Soup with his sculpture." To make ends meet, he slept in his car, or sometimes in the studio, and worked at the Trident kitchen for chickenfeed. "Every night Miles would stroll in and Janis, or Crosby, the mainstays of the place." (Marin Nostalgia). My mom, who was working at the Trident, between theater performances, said even Perry Como used to drop in. And of course, the Limelighters All, were in situ.

McGowan, taught himself to make shoes, called himself the Apple Cobbler, and set up a funky little shop in downtown Mill Valley in 1973, and soon was court shoemaker to the rockstars (Grateful Dead, the Doobie Brothers, The Tubes, Journey), artists, and fashionistas. His wild hand-stitched leather boots and quirky one-of-a-kind brocade boots festooned with doll heads and toy tanks were in high demand. 

Mickey also made non-functional art shoes. (Combat Boot Stepping Out Shoes in World Culture, on exhibit at SFO International Terminal until Nov. 12, 2017.) Mickey was a Marin City flea market regular, often seen collecting kitsch for his art shoes and assemblage art. The small accumulations of ephemera and knick-knacks decorating the shop corners soon became a monstrous collection threatening to engulf the shop.

Around 1974, McGowan, in need of larger digs, moved into an old radiator shop at 35 Corte Madera Ave., at the corner of Lovell, across from City Hall, in Mill Valley to house what later was dubbed "the world's largest private collection of pop cultural artifacts" (Paul Liberatore). He also took over Ted’s Richfield gas station next door. Mickey shared his low-rent garage-atilier ($200 a month) with a motley collective of psychedelic-era glue artists, and the Unknown Museum was born.

Mickey had teamed up with other like-minded junk artists, later dubbed “gluers” or glue-artists, Larkspur artist Dickens "44" Bascom, Larry Fuente, and David Best at the Sausalito Art Center. 

CHIA SEEDS

CHIA SEEDS 

Each morning Neil glugs down 

a dietary concoction of chia seeds—
slimy things I find hard to swallow.
A cup of tea keeps me regular.
And chia pets keep me green.
A college classmate, artist David Best
once chia-seeded an old 50s Cadillac.
He mounted a water buffalo to the hood
and lined its sides with broken mirrors.
At night the deer came down to graze
upon the curved beauty of its fenders.
And to gaze upon their starry reflections.

6/9/2013

Hitching in Marin during late 60s, early 70s

When I was a teenager, I bought my guitar stings from Van Morrison's mother at Caledonia Records in Fairfax.

It was worth the bother to get there as she'd make us a cuppa tea with shortbread. I was round-eyed—she sounded like my grannie but was from the north of Ireland. I looked for horns. We shared a name in common: Violet—but her fingernails and mouth were little scarlet wounds circling her cigarette.

Mr. Morrison, in his tweeds, was sitting on a stool, puffing away on his pipe, smiling at us from afar. Meanwhile one of Van's songs—maybe it was Gloria—was blaring on KFRC's Top Ten. I was learning Pastures of Plenty, and Cottenpicking—they chastizing me for not having a guitar case for such a valuable guitar.

One time she was shop-sitting for a friend at Amazing Grace Music, an old gas station cum music store on a tiny wedge of land between the Miracle Mile (Red Hill Ave.) and San Anselmo Avenue in San Anselmo. It was much farther out of the way for me so I rarely went there, but I had a Martin and I needed some Martin strings.

Mrs. Morrison made Van give me a ride home. Van the Man in the van was not pleased. He was seriously bent out of shape by the request so I was terrified to speak to him. And it was a long ride home held in utter silence. I lived far from town—way out in Forest Knolls, and he lived even farther out in Inverness.

Violet Morrison was a chanteuse in Northern Ireland

There was no bus service out to The Valley so it was either thumb, or shank's mare. Van the Man drove a van. I had no real idea who he was at the time... I was so fecking shy I couldn't talk to him even if I wanted to.

It seems that every rock musician from the 60s moved out to West Marin—sort of a fallout from the Haight. West Marin was invaded by the likes of the Sons of Champlin, Big Brother & the Holding Company, Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane—to name a few. 

They saw us kids hitching home every day—to us, it was merely an alternate bus service. We didn't think twice that these guys were famous. The road out to The Valley was long and winding, and in those days, people generally stopped for hitchikers.

---

Jesse Colin Young, who also lived in Inverness, was much easier to talk to than Van. He had cute little kids who took swimming lessons with ze French Mrs. Zettl who lived half way up Arroyo Road—so I got a ride almost all the way home from Jesse.

Carlos Santana was silent like Van—absolute mauna. He had a nice Mercedes with fawn leather seats though... One morning, I was still half-asleep, hitching into Drake High School (emphasis at that point was on getting high), Carlos pulled over to offer me a lift.

It was pretty early so Carlos might not have been awake either. He was pulling pretty hard on both his coffee mug and a joint. He looked half-dressed—like he just rolled out of bed. I remember being a little shocked that he wore those baggy string pants. Them string pants were riding dangerously low on Carlito's hips as I recall....

Carlos moved into my friend Lindy Young's place on Tamal Road (right up from Linda Gregg's place—where Jerry Garcia later died) and he had horses too—that was our common ground. I don't remember much else—other than I got to school on time.

Got a ride from decopage artists Larry Fuentes and Dickens Bascom too. Dickens' art car had an entire Remington typewriter that still worked glued to the trunk of his Fort Falcon. The sides and fins were lined with worn out sneaker bottoms—like fish scales. Poetic justice.

My College of Marin classmate David Best copied Dickens Bascom and Larry Fuentes' art-cars and came up with some amazing art-cars of his own—and made a career of it. I loved the flocked chia seed Cadillac punctuated with mirror shards and a water buffalo head hood ornament that he used to park at Micky McGowan's Unknown Museum in Mill Valley.

The Unknown Museum, (founded ca. 1974—but I think it was earlier than that) which closed its doors in 1989, was something to behold with all its repurposed Americana detritus as iconography—the ultimate recycler's wetdream.

David told me that at night the deer came down to graze on the car. Mickey the cobbler had a Fiat stuffed with Disney toys and Barbie dolls.The Fiat didn't run, but David's Caddy did—I sat in it with David and talked until the cows came home, but never got a real ride in it. So I guess it doesn't count. Somewhere I have the slides... fodder for another blog.

On teaching Poetry to Kids

This has been one horrendous countdown week, finishing up my poetry residency. Funding wasn't what it should have been this year and we only had 5 sessions total (including layout and art) to get a decent poem ready for our annual poetry book. That's 4 writing dates. Normally I have 6-7 sessions per grade.

In addition, the 5th grade had low writing skills. Low skills across the board, I'd say. Take ESL RSP, or At Risk populations, and a whopping 60% fit the profile. By comparison, the 3rd graders (their profile is just under 50%) are writing the socks off them.

It took me a full day to read some 70 students' work, comment on it, in some cases, wrestle a poem from their prose, and type up the best examples for the poetry book. (Their own published work becomes the model for more writing.) Normally, I type 8-12 model poems up each time, but if a class has weak writing skills, then the final day becomes a crunch day to squeeze everybody in—even if it's only a line or two—as I need to have a poem typed for each student in order to do a final editing session with them.

This year I have several new students from Cloverdale and places north. So I get to see first hand how much my returning students have retained over the years, as these incoming kids are entirely new to poetry. I asked them to do a prewrite and to tell me what they thought poetry was, what they thought about it, and if they liked it.

Generally speaking, boys will say they don't like poetry, and one 4th grader wrote he thought it was a waste of time. Let the Games begin. By Day 4 I had him fully invested in the power of the written word, he came up to me yesterday and saying poetry was neat and he really liked it. Pretty much ditto for the rest of the new students.

It's a long road to metaphor, let alone simile, and figurative language doesn't come easy to the students who've never been given the opportunity to do creative writing. Sure, there are great attempts at storywriting, something they've been rewarded for in the past, but it falls short of poetry by its excess of filler language.

Sure, students have learned about adverbs and adjectives, but not about strong verbs and nouns. Or junk food words that take up space but tell us nothing. So they litter their ideas with flabby prose and sometimes by the time we scrub away all the flotsam and detritus of language, there's a skeleton so scrawny, it won't sustain the bones of a poem.

How to teach fresh imagery remains central to my workshops. Some of these kids are so literal (as in factual reportage) they don't even get clichés or puns, let alone, figurative language. God forbid that I should ask them to use comparisons: simile and metaphor. They've never had to use their imaginations, and it's like a rusty tool left out in the rain.

We are a nation of passive consumers, whether it's via TV, Wii, video games or films. I should be thankful that my students are reading books. At least they're reading. But writing is a whole other ball game.

I tell my students to reread what they've written and to cross out all words they don't need. Put their poems on a diet. Toss out 10-20 words. Now look for weak verbs and nouns. Build strong images, use comparisons. We freewrite, we write the day's poetry lesson, and next class we edit the typed poems.

At residency's end, each student has a typed poem, edited and workshopped, ready for the book. It's a lot of extra work on my part to read poems, comment on them, type up 7-10 of the strongest poems each week, but by residency's end, I've got most of the poems ready for the poetry book.

Most students love poetry, one 3rd grader said she wished every day was Poetry Day. And of that 5th grade, I definitely was in a battle zone with one extremely recalcitrant and onerous student. Though he can write well when he chooses to, and I've eked good work from him last year (he was new), he's decided that everything in school is for shyte—especially poetry. So it's become a battle of wills. When he's out of line, I write his name up on the board, ask the teacher to deal with his behavior, and move on. Don't let it spoil my flow.

One rotten apple. The problem is in role model. I need to keep all the other boys engaged, and I did, but it was tougher than it should be. Sometimes the chemistry of the class is such, that you tend to overlook the good stuff. The girls who write their hearts out. The boys, invested in language, who write of dragons and dungeons and the dark side. Not my favorite but at least they're writing sci-fi.

I wish I could get the boys to make fabulous sports poems. Things from their lives. We talk skateboards and baseball and golf; they love to shout the terms, but bottom line, they can't seem to render it into poetry—even on opening day of baseball. They need to ride the coattails of fiction to allow them to enter into the poetic realm.

And that's my job as a writer, to offer them my coattails so that they can apprentice with me, and write fabulously every time. And ride the coattails of their own experience into poetry, not just parrot back something they read somewhere in a book or saw on TV.

All this to say, I'm now days behind on my own poem a day as it was so challenging to get the kids to write, there was no time left for me in class to write, and when I got home, and finished with their poems, I was too tired to write. I did write and drive one morning, but that's risky and Monday was far too stormy to risk multitasking at 70 MPH barreling up Highway 101 in the rain. Besides, I'm not fond of transcribing random driving notes, a fine idea in theory, but poems rarely come that way...

I've also two papers due for tonight's class, and haven't even begun my taxes, and it's nearly Good Friday. April is indeed a cruel month. But hey, at least I've written a blog of sorts.

The new principal and I met to sign the CPITS contract, and discovered we had friends in common. Alas, another obituary is in order: Darrell DeVore, the music man (AKA The Flute Man or Mr. Sound Magic), but it will have to wait.

Darrell and I worked as artists in residence at a school in Petaluma one fine spring. We spent a lot of time by the side of the road talking of all things verging. I remember potluck parties in the country, with impromptu music jams, listening to Richard Waters on his Waterfone and Darrell on his myriad flutes or hand drums.

Whaever happened to his son, Trane DeVore? (Bobbie Louise Hawkins' grandson). Trane (as in Coltrane) used to read at my poetry series, and I ran into him at UC Berkeley in the late 1990s or the early 200-ots. Heard rumor that he was getting a Ph.D or something... hope it didn't ruin his poetry. Ph.Ds will do that. Just like grad school, only ten times worse. I should know, that MA & MFA cost me poetically, and I'm no longer as prolific as I once was. All that intellectualizing is not necessarily a good thing for poetry's authentic voice.

Trane, who looked like a tall young WB Yeats, or my late cousin Ricky Reilly, used to work with my cousin Sinead who was a barrista at the Petaluma Coffee Company, way back when. I think they went to Casa Grande together. I knew Trane separately from his father. Different worlds colliding.

I'm just putting this stuff into the universe to see what happens... when you writing something down, it tends to develop a life of its own and attracts connections.

The Irish had an idea that grammar was related to glamour (an Irish word), and that writing itself was a kind of magic. As in Poetry with Merlin, as one 3rd grader wrote on her folder.

POETIC ASIDES: Yesterday's email brought a query from someone who stumbled across my blog, he was interested in my early Sausalito days, specifically Tiki Junction. He was asking about Barney West, the tiki carver. I barely remembered watching him carve the tikis at Gate 5 when I was a kid, I had no idea he was a cultural icon for tiki carvers. Now I'm racking my brain, trying to remember more, as there is a dearth of information on him or Tiki Junction.

What I do remember, is that people used to steal the tikis, so Barney shackled them all up like a chain gang. it was pretty funny. But did I have the hind/foresight to take photos of them when I was in my early 20s? I was not yet a writer... A little vault excavation is in order.

I must've known something about Barney as I do remember making a tiki pilgrimage to Trader Vic's in the City and to Tam High in the mid- 1970s. (The maitre d let us wander in and look at the tikis one afternoon, without making us order or pay for drinks.)

During my College of Marin daze, we also went on a Benny Bufano pilgrimage as well. And there's the Unknown Museum. I did take lots of photos of Dickens Bascom, Larry Fuente and David Best's crazy work. Some of it in Mill Valley, the Sausalito Art Center, etc., I just need to find and scan them. There was a Lady Godiva sequence, a woman posing on a bejewelled and beaded life size fiberglass horse on the San Geronimo Golf Course. More fodder there to uncover.

Times like these, I wish my friend Micaela had been around, or my brother was a little older so we could reminisce. But with nearly five years age different between us, growing up, we were universes apart. He was into his go-carts and mini motorcycles whereas I was into art with a capital "A."

Meanwhile those two Adult Ed pedagogy papers await my undivided, if narcoleptic, attention, and memory will just have to take its place in the cobwebbed corners of time a little while longer.

Gallery Tours: Sonoma County 1994

GALLERY TOUR ’94 Maureen Hurley

It goes without saying bucolic Sonoma County is good for artists, but do galleries support good art and local artists? Who buys art, what sells? With a list of 40+ galleries (excluding cafes, bars and banks), I needlessly braced myself for what often gives art a bad name. Galleries ranged from the exclusive to the down-home; most were sophistocated, with prices to match any budget and taste—from traditional wildlife to abstract expressionism. Wine country landscapes and plein air pieces were solidly represented—but I didn’t expect to find such a wide range of artistic visions.

Some excellent new places have opened including The Photography Gallery, and the Coop; some doors have closed—the Anasazi, Bronson Tufts, and the J. Noblett galleries. Nature abhors a vacuum: three new galleries opened in the town of Sonoma.

In two short blocks from 5th to 4th Street in Santa Rosa, are three fine galleries comparable to those in San Francisco, Amsterdam, or London. Two galleries in one, The Fine Frame & Art has pastels and oils on display in the back room where the frame shop is located. Owners Maureen Baumgartner and Kevin Berry, also a fine painter, made this gallery a pleasant space. A weathered brick wall sets off art nicely.

In general, I was delighted to see the work of the numerous artists whose work I’ve reviewed over the years. A most auspicious beginning: Polaroid transfer photography by Kathleen Carr, an assemblage piece by Raymond Barnhart.

The second business, West Coast Editions, has an inventory of limited edition contemporary fine art prints. Owner David Perez, a former printmaker, has a superb collection from around the world. Goya fitfully snoozes in a drawer above eclectic California artists, Diebenkorn, and Curtis. In 1989, I brought some of Jim Curtis’s etchings to sister city, Cherkassy, Ukraine, which were snatched up by the official and underground artists alike.

Perez focuses on contemporary artists of California, and the Bay Area. Prices are affordable; $50 for lovely little pieces by Michael David Richie. There are some real art bargains under $500. Perez explains most sales are in this price range, and many customers are local. Other gallery owners voiced the same opinion.

Limited edition prints are the art of choice for prospective buyers. (Purchase prints with a print run of 300 or less.) For those who balk at multiple copies, monotypes or monoprints offer original art in print format.

The current show is abstract monoprints from the Smith Anderson Editions of Palo Alto, celebrating 25 years of printmaking. Featured with internationally renowned printmakers, are two local artists, my art professor from Sonoma State University, Inez Storer of Inverness, and College of Marin classmate, David Best. David is best known for his outrageously encrusted cars, replete with stuffed rhino and water buffalo head hood ornaments; it was a pleasure to see his skill displayed in the print medium. Figure studies of La Lune, and another untitled piece evoked images of Doré’s engravings. Storer’s monotype, Elizabeth of Hungary, with a nesting bird on her head, was whimsical. The show runs to the end of the month.

Open since November, The Photography Gallery, a few doors down from Fine Frame & Art, offers fine black and white, and archival quality color prints of local photographers. Bob Hasenick’s poppy was featured on the cover of the 1994 Audobon desk calendar. Owner Jack Haley has some stunning large format work on display. Haley was out on a shoot in Nevada, but a photographer friend said Haley has an innovative marketing approach, renting wall space to artists, thus taking a much smaller commission than the standard 40%, and one can purchase prints framed or unframed.

To make ends meet, most galleries are also frame shops, Soundscapes on Mendocino Avenue sells audio equipment and home entertainment systems. Mark Silver, in audio retail 26 years, was ready for something new. In L.A. he decorated his stereo stores with art, now he’s switched focus. Partner Sarjan Ebaen manages the art end of business. In 11 months, he’s exhibited 25 artists. In addition to featured artist of the month, watercolorist Ray Jacobson’s work is on permanent display. Gerald Huth’s 72 construction/ paintings, On the Human Condition, figures rendered in many mediums, are punctuated by text from T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland . Ebaen says 75% of the work priced under $1000 is what moves. Though large ticket items do sell, those priced from $250 to $500 are equally important. Future trends include art furniture, and artist-designed entertainment centers.

I took a quick peek at Louisa Fraser’s work located on the balcony of Whistlestop Antiques, wandered over to a storefront window of the Karl Walburg gallery where $85 would buy me “anything in the window.” The Karl Walburg gallery and frame shop in the former “Sweet Potato” store on Railroad Square is enormous, the largest in the north bay. Though the gallery is only a year old, Karl, son of sculptor Gerald Walberg, and partner Christine George have produced 12 shows and three fundraisers, exhibiting the work of hundreds of artists. “We sell art by keeping prices low, but art is not about price tags,” said George. Prices range from $5 to $60,000. On exhibit is Mexican painter, Conrado Dominguez, with local artists Dwight Eberly and Nancy Tieken. Eberly needed no introduction: I recognized his Salt Point pieces. Land Images, California Landscapes by Five North Bay Artists will be on display July.

On 4th street, the reputable Lawrence Gallery with an international clientele, is the oldest and most established of the Santa Rosa contemporary art galleries. Three glowing Wendy Weldon abstracts immediately caught my attention as did watercolors by Portuguese artist, Chacorro. Not overtly fond of appraisable investment art, I squeezed past canvases, wishing the posh room was a bit wider, to find refuge in Israeli artist Itzchak Tarkay’s lovely watercolors. Lawrence Gallery exclusively represents the work of Chicana artist Sonya Fe who recently moved from Sonoma County. Fe’s canvases, with a price tag of $30,000, may be out of the average buyer’s range, but prints begin at $150. John Lennon’s limited edition serigraphs (silkscreen) are also on sale.

I asked arts consultant Darth Elledge who was buying art. Though most of his customers are from the East Coast, Elledge doesn’t neglect local customers, “Developing a clientele may take months. If they buy a painting, they deserve individualized treatment. I will go to their house to install a painting, and rearrange the furniture if necessary.” I would feel comfortable purchasing art from the knowledgeable Elledge, and most gallery representatives I met.

In order to stay in business, galleries must diversify with both commercial investment art, and art for serious collectors. Arts consultant for the Petaluma Ah! Some Art, Eolah Bates said, “When I first came here we exclusively sold ‘limited editions.’ We have many first-time buyers. The clientele is more sophisticated, preferring original art to lithographs.” Ah! Some has traditional oil paintings by local artists Henry White and Ralph Bayer. Upcoming artist include Betty Burns and Terry Behrens.

Purist at heart, I have a knee-jerk response to “limited editions” of 10,000 or more. “Those Bev Doolittles are in demand by the corporate investor,” Bates reminded me. “We still sell limited edition posters.” A commodity, stock certificate in poster format. “Collectors have to start somewhere, and Greenwich artists hold their value,” said Bates.

Michael Richie has an artist in residency and show of pastels and etchings at the Press House Gallery at the historic Buena Vista Winery in Sonoma. Sonoma County pastel artists Marsha Connell (who had a previous show at BV), Mary Silverwood, and Richie typically push the inside of the envelope out; a new word for “pastel” is needed. Richie’s vibrant pastels of Latin America are anything but pastel. The Press House Gallery, a balcony over the gift shop/tasting room, is an interesting display space where one can sip a civilized glass of Zinfandel. Richie will be working on location from June 10 to July 17.

Mary Silverwood’s pastels and limited edition prints are available through Diane Shulkin of My Daughter the Framer in Santa Rosa. Framed pastels range from $1600 to $2200. Mary will have a dozen new pieces for Matanzas Creek Winery’s annual Wine Barrel Gala June 25, where her work has been continuously exhibited since 1989.

A glorious day, I headed for the coast. Though it’s June, many west county galleries are closed mid-week. Norman Gaddini’s hand-tinted scratchboard pieces at the tiny Occidental Art Gallery resembled lithographs. The hard to find Jessica Framer/Coop gallery is worth tracking down—Occidental needs a decent fine arts gallery.

Two galleries opened on April first in Freestone; what’s this, an Arts destination? The King-Heller Gallery at the Paint Store (formerly Anasazi gallery) featured one of the Sonoma 4 plein air painters, Bill Wheeler. Currently on display are rare figure drawings by the late William Morehouse, also of the Sonoma 4. The three-room gallery defies plumb lines, but has great knotty pine floors; to prove it really was a paint store—a bucket of “Rural Outdoor Paint” is on the potbelly stove. Lively and energetic, Morehouse’s coffee-wash nudes from ’87 to ’91 have cryptic numbers and letters, a code known only to Bill. . . A deer trotted up to the back door as if to pay homage to Morehouse. Stuart Buehler’s paintings and assemblages will be on display July 2.

On a caffeine contact high from Bill’s drawings, I pulled into the Freestone House Gallery at the Wishing Well. New owner Jim Longacre has transformed the space—bare wood walls adorned with meticulous watercolors by Freestone artist Pamela Glasscock, and work by 6 other artists. So tranquil. Said Longacre, “It was natural for the nursery to bring in art. Sacramento tourists, fed-up with what passes for art at coastal galleries, exclaim, ‘Now, this is a breath of fresh air!’” The 1st Annual Botanical Art Exhibit opens June 18, and runs through mid-September. On the road, life began to imitate art: hedgerows of roses, irises, Indian paintbrush framed by my truck window.

The Bodega Landmark Gallery—half a shed crammed to the gills with eclectic paintings stacked five deep next to a smashing exhibit by Philip Buller? Oh well, the salt tang enticed me down the road.

With the exception of Guerneville printmaker Gail Packer’s intaglio prints, most art in the three storied Branscomb Gallery is banal—renderings of the usual suspects: otters, whales, and bunnies. Packer’s prints of rural Sonoma County are the only thing happening. Hildy Henry’s hand-painted folk art frames do real justice to Gail’s pieces. Other notable exceptions are El Meyers’ watercolors upstairs, and tapestries from southern India. There’s an excellent display of intaglio printing with three of Gail’s copper plates; she rarely prints more than 200 copies of any piece. Framed—from $500 to $750.

You can see more of Gail’s work, along with Lorraine Cooke’s pastels at the Curtis Chase Gallery in Guerneville. Once I dragged a print of Coleman Valley Road, that Gail donated to sister-city, Cherkassy—through airports and customs, onto trains, trolleys and busses across Russia to deliver it to the Cherkassy Arts Guild.

The Ren Brown Collection is a tranquil space with small Japanese gardens and running water; an environment that’s seamless, a haven in any storm. Lovely wooden tables adorned with exquisite raku bowls; I wanted sink into the tatami mats and have someone serve me green tea ice cream. Elegant etchings from Ritsuwo Kanno’s first American exhibition are absolutely breathtaking. The show run through July 11. I could’ve lingered for hours, but the coastline was a movable feast, and I had miles to go, and deadlines to keep.

Duncan's Mills has five galleries! Quercia gallery (once home of the Christopher Queen gallery) has an excellent collection of contemporary art hung from floor to ceiling. My only complaint: it’s hard to read the faded, hand-written tags. What a selection: Frank Gannon’s California Impressionism, Bev Rowe’s vibrant pieces, Ray Jacobson’s seascapes, Jennifer Hoover’s paintings (I originally saw at the Framework gallery of Forestville). It was hard to tear myself away but Christopher Queen gallery across the courtyard beckoned. The 18-year-old gallery has a flower exhibit of contemporary watercolors and oils by Morten Solberg, serigraphs by Henri Plisson and others. As co-founder Nancy Ferreria gave me a tour, my eyes feasted everywhere, wonderful paintings, excellent Middle Eastern rugs, and objet d’art. In the next room, wildlife including Solberg’s polar bear with abstract background—a style that made the Forestville artist famous. Upstairs is her father Swede Wallen’s superb collection of early California art. William Keith, Deakin Edwin, Thomas Hill—reasonably priced. In July, artists of the Bohemian Club including Keith and Hill will be shown.

Quicksilver Mine Co. hangs 7 lively shows a year, the gallery is attached to the store, shows spill out into the storefront windows and throughout the store. Art bins extend the current repertoire, offer bargains on non-featured artists. Micah Schwaberow’s woodblock, Russian River Moon, a steal at $75. John Curry’s assemblage was pricy at $24,000. Curator of the current Man to Man exhibit, Rob Higgins said, “I was tired of the usual T & A and wanted to see something else.” Carl Hedberg’s resin sculpture “View from a Urinal” to Jesse Helms, is decidedly upfront. Higgins explained, “The male figure is not well represented in art.” Has he hit upon a future trend? The California Museum of Art has an upcoming show on male images. Traditionally, publication and presentation of art (and poetry) disproportionately features male artists. Sonoma County is one of those rare places that exhibits the work of many women artists, I hope to see male images by women artists too. Man to Man runs to July 17, followed by Karina Nishi Marcus’s exhibit entitled, Confluences: Abstractions of Water and Space.

guessing May 1994?

Letter to David Best

An issue of Creative Discourse arrived in the mail reeking of oil paints. I marveled at technology—an arts magazine smelling like an artist’s studio!

I've always had an intimate association with paint. When I was very young, I ate some of my mother's white oil paints. Making my first metaphor, I assumed, because it was white, and looked like ice cream—though it was in a small glass tube and not in the freezer—ergo: it must be ice cream. Pavlov rang a bell.

Van Gogh had a certain fondness for cadmium yellow, and his habit of indulging in eating paint was partially responsible for his madness.

My mother who was also mad, didn't have to eat paint, but that’s another story. Her studio was, appropriately, at the Project Artaud in San Francisco. Artaud was another madman. However, when an arts magazine carries the odor of an artist's studio, the mind has a way of unwrapping itself from linear time.

Since I no longer have a studio, having forsaken brush for pen, this made me nostalgic for our old painting studios at the College of Marin, and the basement of Darwin Hall Science building at Sonoma State University. Fledgling artists worked in scientist's basements.

Einstein, who prized creativity over knowledge, would have loved this admixture of art and science. But the ventilation in Darwin Hall was non-existent, and one way or another, we were all stoned out of our minds. Eveything is relative. Einstein, couldn't add simple equations, nor remembered to wear socks. What Einstein and I have in common is an inability to add.

After I collected my degrees in painting, I became disillusioned with the gallery-pimping art world, and took up the horizontal process of writing around.

I remember a childhood visit to my mother in the City, I wandered next door to the San Francisco Art Institute and watched a man painting in the courtyard under the Spanish tiled arches.

Not a brilliant conversationalist at the age of eight, in a child's drooling of absorbed preoccupation, I finally slurped, “I paint too.” When he asked what I used, I said, “Oil on newsprint.” His surprise turned to disbelief when I elaborated that I didn't like canvas. I liked watching the linseed oil make ghostly halos on the unpainted surface.

He resumed his painting without saying another word, his lips making a thin line of concentration and denial. The courtyard was filled with the pungent smell of turpentine, and the soft scratching of a brush across canvas orchestrated its own kind of silence. I remember how cerulean the unadulterated sky was, and a crow with blue-black feathers sat watching us with an indifferent gaze.

A Xeroxed drawing of a deer with oil paint fell out of the magazine: Number 214. Signed, Best. David Best. A name crawled out of my reptilian memory.

It was 1970, David was making odd altars of clay and baubles in the ceramics lab. Overnight, glue-sniffing artists crawled out from under Salvation Army and St. Vincent de Paul refuse bins and Dipsea dumpsters—glass and junk, old bureaus, chairs, spheres and cars were transformed into glittering altars.

Someone lined the toilet bowl at the Sausalito Art Center with pennies. We polluted our lungs with verdigree fumes.

One afternoon, a life-size bejeweled horse showed up on the San Geronimo Valley Golf course with a real Lady Godiva on its back. Her red velvet cloak, a gaping wound on the putting green. Golfers and commuters either ignored the apparition, or nearly drove off the roads in disbelief; some making hasty mental notes to stock up on more of that good dope.

Artist Dickens Bascom's beaded Ford Falcon with its fins covered with scales made from the soles of tennis shoes, actually worked. It had to, the sight of it was like the siren call of a red flag in front of the bull for the local cops who were always pulling him over for vehicle safety inspections.

After a while, they’d hit the lights just to keep in practice, or to see the latest additions. Once, in front of the Fairfax Hardware store, I tried to use the typewriter glued to the back of his Ford Falcon but that was before I became a writer. There were no words. Just blank paper for the accolade.

David also decopaged an entire vintage ’50s Cadillac. The hood ornament was the stuffed head and horns of a water buffalo with red eyes.

I like to think of that Cadillac as an homage to water and 20th century of abandoned technology. A Las Pulgas water temple on wheels. The sides of that gas-hog were of faceted glass and on the mink-lined back seat, plastic ketchup bottles, stuffed toys, and toasters were chauffeured about in style.

This was during the great Marin County water drought, which rode hot on the heels of the gas shortage. I remember old Mr. Buck smoking stogies on trail rides up at the Meadow Club. When his wife died, she left a few Standard Oil stocks in a trust fund for artists—who’d have forseen the gas shortage would make Mrs. Buck so posthumously wealthy?

We became experts at siphoning gas, and rustled county water with a double-ended hose that connected the county pipes to ours; at night we ran water uphill to fill our tanks. An artist, inspired by David's eclectic stable of cars, covered an entire Oldsmobile with chia plants, but he couldn't drive the delicate, undulating carpet very fast. At night, the deer came down to graze on it.

An old gas station with the flying red horse in Mill Valley became the temple of The Unknown Museum. The jeweled mannequin with antlers greeted the visitor. A wall of old T.V.'s, overgrown with nasturtiums and electrical cords dangling like roots.

A weathered Fiat filled with rubber Disney toys. A mandala made of bullets, pencils and toy cars. Bureau altars with fur-lined drawers as elegies for Vietnam and Reganomics. A decomposed teddy bear was caught napping in the baby carriage by a leafy green spear of dandelion blooming from his navel.

What survived of the Unknown Museum are merely frozen images on film. The trashman cometh and he taketh away. Recycled technology. One man's garbage. Out of the rubbish heap, a phoenix circles the place of birth. Glittering birds.

Every seven years our cells regenerate. My cells have resurrected themselves five-times-seven. Memory is locked within the skin.

There was a meat company that wanted to boost sales. Expecting a Pavlovian response from customers and increased sales, they ran bacon-scented ads of ham, but all the neighborhood dogs ran off with the newspapers.

Some things are hard to forget. A taste for paint. A drawing of a deer against green pigment. A cloudless blue sky reflected in a mirrored Cadillac with chrome mag rims.

© Maureen Hurley 2007 Reprinted from Creative Discourse, Petaluma, Ca 1989

Journal Entry, CPITS, Mendocino Oil Spill

2/9/1988 noon on Tuesday.

This place I have come to after sporadic attempts to write in the altered state with the 20th-century pressing upon me, expecting to learn tools to make managing time easier, I discover I have slowly begun to learn to spend less time on the struggle. Though I do not write daily or even weekly, I am not as concerned though I vowed to write more often.

Cecelia's workshop inspired me to find the original pleasures of writing.

Yesterday I spent rewriting my notes from the Mendocino offshore oil hearing. Tom shortened my piece by at least by 1/3. Much connective tissue was lost. I don’t have an original draft. Tom Roth does not have the vision and foresight that Nick Valentine has. Still, I think I will be pleased with the end result. He promises a double truck spread replete with photos. That's a big deal in the newspaper bizniz.

So, though I'm not writing, poetry every day, I am involved with language, whether it's teaching kids, or grant writing, or being a paparazzi.

Celia said: Consider all writing your work.

Though I have a grant due come on Thursday, a CAC artist in residency grant at Mark West school, and I've just barely begun to crack it, I'm not worried. The coast took first precedence.

I'm fighting back in the only way I know how, with media. Maybe I will do some more journalism. Though it makes me even busier than I already am.

Today I managed to pull 14 pages of writing from my journals. Some are poems already, others have decent material. I'm surprised by how much good material I do have. I tend to think of that my unconscious writing is not real writing. Because the Muses haven't properly tortured me enough until I have no choice but to write.

If I do more of this, will I have lots more poetry? People are all asking for work. From the birth of a poem to final product, it's such a slow process. I've had an extraordinarily publishing record as of late, not the rejections of course, I didn't send that many poems out but then I don't write much either.

I continue to send poems to small journals. My desire is to publish a single poem several times if it's good, it should be out there. I'm not of the single poem, single journal school. Poetry journals have such small print runs. Usually less than a thousand copies.

Cecelia Woloch wants more work for Blue Window. Green Fuse took some work and Creative Discourse took work as well. They took Tocaloma Road, and another piece—I think. On April 23rd, they want me to do a reading with David Best. I'm very pleased and excited to read with my old College of Marin friend.

I wonder how much my two valentine sold for at the Sonoma State art auction? I heard that  a lot of people attended. I was too sick to go myself and besides we were at a CPITS meeting at Point Bonita. John felt so sad that I had misted as my own art show, was as if it was my fault. It was the CPITS logo's fault. A brouhaha over a logo.

Anyway, time is pressing in on me and I feel I shall have to return to my grant if I want a job next year. Pure and simple.