[chapter 2] [chapter 3]

CHAPTER ONE

My Name is Art, I Live Here.

In 1981, Art School was no picnic. I lived in the building itself, in a closet at the end of hallway on the second floor. I had my clothes on hangers or folded on shelves, and food on the other shelf. With no money, no family support, and only the most meager financial aid, dorm life was out of the question. I was able to have continual access to the building by copying the Dean's keys, which wasn't as hard as one might imagine. All I did was wait for the office personnel to leave, and then remove the ceiling panels next to the Dean's office. The door was set to an alarm, but the ceiling wasn't. I carefully clambered up the wall into the ceiling and back down into the Dean's office. Tiptoeing in the dark I found the light switch and began rummaging about the office. Actually I was Very Careful. I looked into the drawers and noticed how everything was placed, memorized it, (visually memory is something I am blessed with, and came in very handy in Art School.) searched it, and then put it all back exactly as I had found it. Eventually I found his set of master keys, pocketed them, turned off the lights and climbed back up into the ceiling. Once I was on the other side I scampered over to a hardware store where a friend worked. He copied the keys for me, and I returned the originals to the exact spot in the Dean's desk where I found them. I then put everything back as it was and-bingo- no one knew.

The most important part is that I had a Place to Live.

The toughest part about living at school and not really working very much was feeding myself. Bathing was no problem- the school gym had many showers. But finding food could be a challenge. If I had a few extra dollars, I would go to the student cafeteria using a friends dining pass, and for $3.00 get an all-I-could-eat-dinner. But I usually didn't have any money. Luckily, The University, of which my art school was one of several campuses, gladly relieved me of the burden of cash by taking it all in their tuition, which was only slightly less than extortionate. This was especially galling, as it was a state school".

This was offset, ever so slightly, by the presence of art galleries. Each campus had at least two art galleries, which changed their exhibits once a month, and each exhibit had its opening reception. The art school had two galleries also, so at least a dozen times a month foraging at art openings was my main point of sustenance, as I got to pig out on brie and crackers and cheap white wine. I remember dozens and dozens of openings where I would chow down on Brie and ""Red Table Wine". The wine would usually be in a gallon container with a screw top, always a testament to the finer vintages. I would sometimes cut several chunks of hard cheddar, wrap them in a napkin and take them "Home" to my closet for meals the next day.

Breakfast was a bit easier to come by. Across the street from the school was the Ritz Diner, which had a dollar breakfast special- 2 eggs, hash browns, toast, and a cup of coffee. The "Lounge" in the art school had a coffee machine. Sometimes, I would buy some cheap cakes or instant oatmeal or, when I was really REALLY poor I would just shoplift the stuff.

I would often think of Brecht at such moments and whistle "What keeps mankind alive?" especially the part that went:

"You gentlemen who think you have a mission to purge of the seven deadly sins, should first sort out the basic food position, then start your preaching that where we begin. You lot who preach restraint and watch your waist as well, should learn for once the way the world is run. Whatever you twist how many lies you tell- food is the first thing morals follow on. So first make sure that those who are now starving get proper helpings when we all start carving!"

Next to the coffee machine was a sink and a small stove, so I could prepare some basic meals, usually rice and vegetables or canned soup, or the dreaded (I get chills just mentioning the stuff) Ramen Noodles. Lunch usually consisted of whatever I could scrounge out of the closet. I remember acquiring a taste for Campbell's Split Pea Soup- I would eat it raw on Saltines- paté from Mars.

I was not alone in my poverty.

Many of the graduate students lived in their studios. We called the school "The Hotel". Julio slept in a converted refrigerator box in his studio. Once, when he was out of town I crashed in there. It was really quite comfy. A small but firm mattress, the interior covered with cheap terry cloth for sound proofing. Then ends were covered with bits of old drapes. With the drapes down it was so dark you could develop film in there, and it was remarkably cozy. Julio knew how to live.

Dwayne lived in a tent in his studio. It was a small green pup tent that he staked out in a corner of the studio. His girlfriend, Sandra, also lived at the Hotel. She slept on a fold out couch in her studio, three doors down from Dwayne. Dwayne was a pretty wacky guy. Dwayne was his last name. He felt his first name, John, was too boring and awful a pun for continuous circulation, so we all called him Dwayne. He had a habit of shaving off his hair and then painting his scalp different colours, which he would change on a weekly basis. I like Dwayne- we were good friends for many years.

Another resident was my friend Jerry. Jerry and I worked together part time painting houses. He once lived in this completely bizarre apartment on Main Street. It was huge. One long room, with a toilet and shower down the hall. One day his landlord had an alcoholic conniption fit and smashed the windshield in Jerry's truck, but only after serenading the neighborhood with really bad poetry. Jerry and I took revenge on the bastard. Jerry had his last months rent already paid, so he moved out, and into the Hotel. Then we took a SawsAll electric saw to the walls of the place, (for some odd reason, the administration trusted me with the keys to the tool room....) cutting huge holes and obscene patterns out of the cheap paneling. Then we poured Clorox all over the floors, cracked a dozen eggs behind the heating register and then power stapled some cheap beef steaks to what was left of the paneling. As we left, we glued the door shut with copious amounts of epoxy resin. Within a week you could smell the place from 2 blocks away.

Jerry and I always had a lot of fun. For extra cash we would paint apartments. Usually it was pretty easy work- spackle some holes, get out the Antique White, some rollers, and bingo- a day goes by and I have money for the next several weeks!

He had a portable 8 track player, and only 5 tapes. Hawkwind's "Hall of the Mountain Grill", Pink Floyd's "Relics", Stevie Wonder's "Songs in the Key of Life", The Beatles "Magical Mystery Tour" and some Country-Rock crap his brother gave him for Christmas- it might have been the Eagles, or Marshall Tucker.

The worst job we ever did together was this hovel in one of the poorer districts. The previous tenants were color blind and rather savage. The woman who moved in was very pleasant middle-aged and had something resembling common sense, and asked us to paint the place.

The walls were bright orange stucco with flourescent purple trim, except the living room which was done in a bright green and the kitchen which had no discernible colour as it was deeply covered in grease. It took us 4 days and I can't remember how many coats of Antique White it took to cover that mess. Uff da!

But we were happy for the money, and listened to Hawkwind at full blast.

"SICK OF POLITICIANS HARASSMENT AND LAWS ALL WE DO IS GET SCREWED UP BY OTHER PEOPLES FLAWS WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN NOW NOTHING LEFT TO DO WORLD'S A CONCRETE JUNGLE CELLBLOCK 7U

BUT MONEY IS NO JOKE YOU CAN DISAPPEAR IN SMOKE!"

Money was no joke. No one was going to hire a long haired art school punk like me- no one with any brains, anyway. So money was a scarce commodity. Having grown up with none, it's not like I missed it- but the poverty of those years was grinding, and I felt it. I was 6'2" and weighed 152 pounds- my ribs showed it.

But anyway- I digress from my closet. Some famous Artists have slept in that closet, and NOT with me, thank you very much. Sometimes our professors would have a friend in from out of town to give us a lecture, but the poor guest was exhausted from the flight, and needed a place to rest. The Closet was pressed into service on such occasions.

The professors knew of my Home, as did the student body. The only ones who were kept in the dark were the Administration. Everyone but the Administration had something to gain from my living there. Everyone knew where to find me.

Every morning I'd wake up to the sound of the first class assembling itself in the drawing room down the hall. There would be several minutes of grumbling and laughing. Then the teacher would come in and say something like

"The first pose will be 15 minutes,"

And then the class would fall silent to the scratching of chalk on paper.

I would put on clothes, grab my coffee cup and stumble down the hall into the drawing room. Usually I would be wearing a pair of jeans and a bathrobe. My toothbrush and toothpaste would be in my coffee cup, and I would shuffle bleary eyed through the class.

"Good morning Art"

The teacher would say. Usually the model was young and new at the job, and her eyes would grow wide. My rabbit ears with tinfoil intuition would pick up her thoughts:

"Who the FUCK is THAT?!?!? I didn't know people LIVE HERE!!! Coool!"

Depending on how I felt I might glance towards the dias to see the model. Usually they were at least average looking. Sometimes they were very very beautiful. The beautiful ones were the least interesting to draw. The fat ugly ones were the best to draw- lots of curves and folds, splotches from skin conditions, moles casting shadows, nose hair. Something to draw. While a young beautiful co-ed was a pleasure to look at, they all looked the same- beautiful. But ugliness- now there is never any sameness in the ugliness. As much as beauty strives towards a single perfection, ugliness knows no bounds; indeed, variety is what makes ugly so interesting.

That's why some 50 year old alcoholic ex-steel worker is much more interesting to draw in the raw. He might be nasty, he might be a complete moron, he might be ugly, and he's probably really embarrassed and too drunk to notice, but he's got one twisted fucked up body, which is much more interesting to render than last years prom queen. But usually the model was a female student of average looks and sub-average intelligence.

I'd grumble something in response, and wander to the kitchen and stick my head in the sink. Brush my teeth. Gargle. Spit. Go to the men's lavatory. Pee. Dump. Wipe. Look at myself in the mirror, and rearrange my dishelved mop of hair. Examine the bags under my eyes. Find breakfast, or munch on the cheese I swiped from the opening last night... Put a quarter in the coffee machine...

That was fairly typical.

The school building itself was a converted department store. The vast expanse of consumer goods gone to make way for people to learn how to make consumer goods of a different nature. The ceilings were high, the windows large, the floors wooden and smooth, and the walls were white and made of plasterboard. Everything was white. White walls, White paper, White canvases, and mostly White Students.

The students were of several categories. There were the Sunday Painter Hobbyists. They tended to be older, and not very serious or well read. There were the trust fund babies. There were a number of those. Their parents were of the mind "Well Sonny-boy's not the sharpest knife in the drawer, so we'll send him to art School so he can fail quietly." There were also a large number of careerists who were there to learn graphic design. And then there were the lost souls- people who were lost with nowhere to go, but felt some need to inflict their angst on the rest of the world through their own misguided sense of "Self Expression".

There were A LOT of those people. And then there were those, like me, who have known since childhood that they were artists and we were there to get our jobs done.

The late seventies were the formative years of the intellectual cul de sac known as post modernism, and Art Talk was one of the main means of enforcing the trendy hegemony of post modernism.

Art Talk is a form of communication largely found only in Art Schools. It can also be found in Art Journals such as October and Art Forum. It has a vocabulary unique among professional jargons; filled with adjectives, run on sentences that are sometimes filled with multiple objects or no objects whatever, and a style of obfuscation and obscurantism that would make a legislative legal analyst smile with envy.

I hated Art Talk. I did it well. I could talk Art Talk better than almost anyone there. I usually did it because I thought it was utterly contemptible blush, and it was really fun to get these bonehead fellow students of mine all riled up over some dorky bit of solipsism that I lifted from the latest Art Journals. It was amusing to watch them get all angry and twisted, and then go on to make some silly art project based on the fruits of said discussion.

In truth, in my heart, I always felt that "Art Theory" or "Art History" or "Aesthetics" had as much to do with being an artist as Ornithology had to do with flying.

But I couldn't let that on- issues of the spirit weren't permissible, and largely still aren't. They'll have a huge exhibit of Mondrian, but they'll never discuss his spiritual life- the core of his being as a human- they'll never get into the details of Theosophy, but they'll spend years making connections between Cezanne's formal reductionism and Mondrian's Apple Trees, completely overlooking the symbolism of the tree and its place in Mondrian's theosophy. Idiots.

And they'll go on and on and on about the genius of Marcel Duchamp and the absurdity of his work and how he changed the art market to include common objects as sculpture- but it's rare, if not forbidden, to discuss his "Fountain" as a work of Alchemy. And don't dare point out the Alchemical forces and symbols in the "Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even"... No no no- that's not on the radar screen of the art establishment. They'd rather talk Art Talk, because it's a public language that has nothing to do with the truth of a work. It only has to do with the lies people tell themselves, so they might make Art a Religion, something it's not designed to withstand.