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. 

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.