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From the "Art Bulletin Group"--
It began
with the "texture" and no money for paint or paper. For
paint I used
"distemper"--the medieval name for mixing hide glue with powdered
pigment. In the 1950's, you could still get the glue (horse
hoofs glue, I think it really was, a darker, coarser form of the
rabbit skin glue still available in a few traditional art supply stores) at the
house paint store, and the dry pigments also. Earth tones were
the cheapest--50 cents a pound in a paper bag for most--so I used
those. And for paper, there was the my membership in the College
Art Association (maybe I could get a college job someday) and the
resulting Art Bulletin. And for subject, well, there was the frenzy of lust in the old rooms at the top of our Harrison Street
house, and my search for redemption from it embodied in these
works... "In the morning and the noon will I hunger...for I am compounded of early autumn dust."
Maybe Hermes would save me, maybe Fortuna promised success.
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The Survivors of
"The Art Bulletin Group"
1957 |
**
And in the morning and the noon will I hunger while in the
night
I go insatiate”
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See text to right... |
"Dear sir: I address you as one
human
being to another, and request that you
hear my call. My voice is from the realm
of spirit, from a land of sun and moon and
the infinite fountain at the source. It calls to
you because of the jeopardy of this land, its
imminent destruction (caught always between
dissolving now and and birthing eternity). It calls
to you as perhaps the last soul on this side to whom it can speak" And there was in the
background a fountain in fading sepia, and at the bottom my seal, pale
red ink initials embedded in wall-fix texture surrounded by a blue
circle.
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See text to right... |
"I
wait tensely for the autumnal gift.
Out in the early evening here
the fountains fall clear into their
marble basins, and as the golden
singing bird flies restlessly
from branch to branch, I seek the fruit of
life, I search the golden apple of love
which nestles among the leaves in the
valley of Hesperus.
And there was at the center bottom
the fountain--the background is scattered with the blue of its
spray--at the center of the crossroads in the forest of Hesperus. |
About my work, 1957-58
