Year Two

Half the west wall was cork and we would pin our drawings to that so that there a wall of drawings and photographs. Lots of people were always around from down in the shop and friends stopping by. Sometimes they got into the drawing as well. We had a regular gallery there. Ford liked to do landscape stuff. I did abstract line-drawing of unconsciousness stuff, to see what I could learn from the symbolism of schematics of the psyche.

I could never draw but only enough to get by, not like the show-offs at the art classes some of them. The shading is what threw me. My drawing teacher at the Art Institute made me draw. He was like a physiologist as well and went around to each student, a naked model on the concourse, and talked home-life, personal problems, and related it all somehow to drawing.

One story he told me - he always wore a watch when he was a student. Everybody he knew didn't wear a watch. They said, "I don't a wear a watch. I don't need to know the time of day. I am without time. I am beyond." He said they always came to him; and asked him what time it was. I myself didn't spend the time, to be good at drawing, or had not much talent at it. Hard to tell even now; talent - if ya got it or you don't. I don't.

So am guessing I started making lamps, now recalling the one that never got fired and the one up for charity. Didn't make that many maybe a half dozen. I was throwing cylinders and plates and piecing them together. Think it was SusieQ my partner in the shop who introduced me to colored stains, where I could apply colors to these constructions. Glazes were a shot in the dark.

(18 of 46) Next Page