THE BEGINNING:
Minneapolis, Minnesota.
I went to Grant Elementary School, and we lived in the projects: government
supported housing. Then we moved to 1114 James Ave. N., our first house.
My sister Carol was born here. She is five years younger than me.
I had my first creativity center in the basement where I made model airplanes
and did experiments with homemade gunpowder. These weren't the kind of
plastic models where parts are glued together. They were the kind of models
where parts had do be laborious cut out of a printed sheet of balsa wood,
glued together and then covered with tissure paper glued to the frame and then
painted. My father Sam, was in immigrant from Russia and had two brothers,
my uncles. I don't remember hardly anything he ever said to me and he hardly
said anything. My mother Esther was a very kind and loving person, and only
graduated from high school. She tried to bring her family's Jewish tradition into
our home, but failed. The only reading material I remember in our house was
Reader's Digest, Cosmopolitan, the encyclopedia letter A and the only piece of
good writing was The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair. Eventually I read this book,
and it had a huge impact of my feelings although I had no idea what it really
stood for. I do now.
My grandfather and grandmother were very religious and orthodox. His
occupation was shoemaker, and they lived upstairs from his shoe repair shop.
I used to spend many enjoyable hours playing with leather scraps, gluing,
cutting and nailing them into fantastic shapes. I can remember the smells of
the glues and polishes, the little fuzzy cotton balls fastened to the twisted wire
handles used to color the shoes, the rough textures of the leather, the weight
and odd shapes of the hammers, the sharp points of the nails, the greasy
texture of the waxed thread, and the sounds of the polishing wheels and the
odd clunkety-clunk of the stitching machine. Those were wonderful hours of
absorption and concentration.
I had my first crush in grade school. Her name was Susan Hoffman.
I used to follow her home on my bike, but was too shy to talk to her. She lived
in a quanset hut. It looked like a huge cylinder cut in half. I gave her a gift
once, but her parents wouldn't let her keep it. No one taught me anything about
relationships or relating to a girl.
I remember making a submarine replica in grade school. My father destroyed it
when he once got angry. My finger was torn open when I tried to get it away
from him. Still have the scar.
I remember making a large paper and balsa wood airplane with an engine, and
taking it to a nearby park. I tried to fly it alone, and crashed it on the first try. I
felt really bad about it. Wonder why I didn’t ask a friend to help me launch it. I
can guess that I assumed my old friends were not interested, then, as now.
In sixth grade, I painted a large Mexican cityscape of Taxco that was framed
and hung in the classroom, and drew the X-mas pictures on the board. I
enjoyed seeing my artwork on the wall of the classroom. No one seemed to
care or offered me any encouragement.
Started making art on my own one summer while on vacation. In the freezing
cold, snowy Minnesota winter, I bagan to trace comic book covers by holding
the comic and paper against the ice-cold windows. There was an artist who
used to make celebrity faces using cut paper pasted so the features would
pop-up. I tired to do the same thing and remember hanging them in the front
room where I had my first art center: the top of a folding card table.
Painted copies of travel landscape postcards using Prang watercolors.
Had my first one-man show in 6th grade. I called it “Toothpaste Paintings”
because I used toothpaste for white paint and they smelled like mint. No one
told me to do these things, I just followed my own natural interest. There are
many things one can learn without a teacher, but don't depend on teachers to
tell you that.
Paper route at 14. I remember the cold dark mornings and the quiet solitude
of the neighborhood. I learned how to bounce the rolled up papers off the
hallway walls to get them to fall near the subscriber’s apartment door. There
was a bakery nearby and early in the dark morning my friend Cedric Beckfield
and I used to meet there as the first loads of donuts were coming hot out of
the oven. They were delicious.
One summer, my mom tried to arrange for me to go away to a summer camp
that was operated by a Jewish community center.
Since our family had so little money, she pleaded with them to allow me to go
at a special reduced rate or perhaps for no charge at all. I remember how
disappointed and angry she was with the Jewish center for refusing to admit
me to the summer program.
Somehow, she found a Lutheran church that invited me to attend their summer
camp free of charge, so there I was, packed off to a Lutheran bible camp. I
wonder how the administators of that Jewish summer camp would have felt
seeing me given into the hand of the Christians. A little shame, a little regret?
I remember really enjoying my summers there. Yes, I attended more than one
year; maybe I attended three for four summers. I can still see myself running
in the fields and being on the bus heading for the lake for swimming with all the
other kids. They had a bible verse contest, and guess who won first prize for
remembering the most verses from the New Testament? Yes, it was me, and
the prize was a great Swiss Army Knife. I can still sing some of the songs like:
“red and yellow black and white, they are precious in his sight, / Jesus love the
little children of the world.” And, The Old Rugged Cross, and …..Praise god
from whom all blessing flow, …all the creatures here below…. This
experience perhaps allowed me the feedom to see the good-heartedness of
those in another culture, another religion. Many members of religious groups
make it their practise to stay separate from others to avoid contamination and
preserve eithnic purity, social intercourse and of course, regular ordinary
intercourse. Jews, Christians and Muslims all share this trait, and I remember
Reverend Moon's followers created huge discord and suffering amoung
parents as he encouraged his often young members to completely break with
their families.
I went to another summer camp for a couple of years, but I can’t remember
the name of it. I still have some memories from that experience, like sneaking
into the girls tent and smearing their faces with paint while they slept, we drank
copious quantities of 'bug juice,' (cool aid), and walking single file through the
wood singing warrior songs. I had a crush on one girl there and heard later
that she had died. Another girl I liked in grade school named Lurlean Knight
also died, of leukemia.
Went to Lincoln Jr. High. My most important class was Boy Bachelors, a
cooking class for guys. Learned to love cooking and baking, and made
cinnamon rolls at home, and once, a thirteen egg angel food cake with a
whipped fluffy 7-minute icing as well as other dishes. I have forotten every
other thing I might have learned there, same as most other students who find
most of their education, irrelevant and useless.
Worked in an electronic parts store. Nearbye was a cleaning store that left
piles of this stinky gooey stuff out back that we used to put in little piles in the
street and set on fire. In our neighborhood lived a kid named Harvey, Butch
Orenstein. He was a little older, and we build a shack, a rough wooden house
in his back yard as a clubhouse. We had bonfires and used to roast potatoes
until they were black and charcoally, then cut them open steaming hot and
white, and goop them with butter and salt and have tribal feasts. In the fall,
there were masses of autumn leaves to throw, pile up and get buried in, and in
the winter, there were snowball fights, building snowmen and making igloos. At
some age, we learned to make snowballs, stand around the corner of a house
and throw the snowballs up over the corner of the house trying to aim them to
bounce off the roofs of cars driving slowly by through the snow. Some times a
driver would get so infuriated, having his car bombarded, he would charge out
of his car and try to catch us. They never did, and the flight in full panic would
be exciting.
My friend, Cedric Beckfield's father was a mechanic and I watched him take
apart car engines. His brother built a racing car and let us try to drive it up and
down the alleys. It was just a frame with an engine on it.
Bought my first car at age 14, a 1935 Ford Coupe. It was painted powder
blue and I was delighted to have it. Paid for it with paper route and Bar Mitzvah
money.
Late at night I used to sneak out of the house, and on my car radio could tune
in to Del Rio Texas and hear Gatemouth of the South blast out the real blues. I
really loved that music, and late at night, I would sit alone in that little blue car
and listen. I remember he wold offer for sale "a genuine, simulated diamond
ring.' Had no idea why that music existed or why it was only played at night in
Texas. Now I do, and I never knew anyone else that ever heard it or liked it.
I had no Afro-American friends. How captured and enclosed we are in our little
groups of the like-minded. Most people still are.
Perhaps I read somewhere that the longest time that a person could hold their
breath was four or five minutes so I started to practice holding my breath. I
watched the big clock in the classroom, and started to have my first spiritual
experiences. Little did I know there was a thousands of years old tradition of
spiritual transformation involved with holding and being aware of the movement
and flow of breath. I would feel hot energy and lightness. Time would
disappear, and I felt joyful. I was on the path of self-realization and release of
ego-self consciousness while most every one else was sitting in class passing
notes and fighting that oppressive boredom.
Went to North High School. There was Jean Hanson and Eunice Rankin. Their
parents didn't like Jews. What did that mean? Just being faithful to their
religious teachings I suppose. I had no idea then. I wrote my first love poem to
Jean and passed it to her in study hall. I remember how my faced burned with
embarrassment.
Met Jeannie Becker, a nursing student at a near bye hospital. She was
boarding with a minister, and one cold winter night when we were snuggled
together, the minister turned on the light and came downstair. He was furious!
His own house a den of iniquity. The irony of it all.
She was raped and made pregnant by old boyfriend and married him. And
then there was Charlotte. She was a favorite of some guys I knew, and
eventually became pregnant. I saw her years later when she called me, and I
went to visit her when her husband was at work. We just talked. Before that,
when we were involved, I went to visit her when she was babysitting, and
remember her warmth and the dark bedroom.
Lived in our second house on Washburn Ave. in North Minneapolis.
Played football, wrestled, discus, lettered, but never really liked sports. Still
don't. Some of the team members were Christian Jew-haters, and excluded us
from their social group. The coach was also noted to make anti-sememtic
remarks.
Sometimes I tell my students that I don’t like sports and they seem shocked. I
tell them there are other things to be interested in and show them prints of a
few of my artworks. They are incredibly amazed and impressed at my
pictures. You'd have to hear the oooo's and wow's and the wide open eyes to
really understand their response. They are often skeptical that is was I who
created them.
In my second art and creativity center in the basement, I taught myself
photography, how to make home-made radios, and years later when in
college, filled the basement with my paintings. I remember after seeing the
scary movie Psycho, I used to run up the dark stairs in a panic and slam the
door shut then listen for footsteps. Weird huh? There was a shower down
there. There was not one teacher I had, that knew the personal me, who ever
asked what I did outside of class or showed any interest in my creativity and
imagination at work. I had no help, no encouragement, no support from anyone.
My emotional and romantic life was also self-directed.
I begin a five year relationship with Lois Mirviss. She was fifteen and I was
about twenty. We used to call her Bitsy. We separated when she dropped
out of the University of Minn., and went to New York. My mother said she
wasn’t smart enough for me, but looking back on it, I would have married her if
our parents had encouraged it. I loved her. But our parents never were
interested in meeting one another. Looking back on it, that seems really
strange. Wonder why that occured. Lois’ mother made some paintings, and I
started to paint with watercolors in response to her example. Lois also did
some artwork then; before we entered the University of Minnesota. Her
parents were very kind to me, especially Mrs. Mirviss. I felt very welcome in
their home and it become part of my home. Lois was beautiful then, and she
and her mom loved Japanese culture. They taught me how to use chop sticks
and took me to a lovely Japanese gift store full of wonderful things like fat
round art brushes, rice paper and sumi ink which I eventually bought and tried
to use. No one ever mentioned that there were classes and teachers in this
artform.
Graduated high school. Top 10%. of a class of 500, and 96% on the college
entrance test.
Worked summers on construction jobs as a laborer. My father also worked
through the labor union. He was also a barber and would cut my hair while I sat
in a barber chair he had in the basement. It took forever. Perhaps that was
the way he expressed his love to me. I didn’t appreciate it then.
I used to go down to the union hall in the mornings of summer vacation and sit
with the other mostly Black and Hispanic poor people waiting for construction
jobs. I liked the outside physical work, but must have passed by many
opportunities that I had no awareness of, but rich kids and their parents must
have known about courses and classes at foreign universities and vacations in
Europe, China and Japan. That's partly how they keep the advantages
afforded by their wealth. The other is knowing how to manipulate the pollitical
and tax system. Most poor people haven't a clue about how their poverty is
maintained through the years and generations by political manipulation.
I won a scholarship to the University funded by the construction and labor union.
Started University of Minn. Institute of Tech. Engineering. Suffered! Although I
was an A level high school student, my high school education failed to prepare
me for the world of college competition. That's also when social promotion was
taken for granted. This means a student was pushed along to the next grade
even though he/she had learned very little. Since the schools get paid by the
number of students who attend each day, as long as there was a body in a
seat many administrator probably just didn't care.
Changed to Architecture and then to Art. when I was about 22 years old,
one high school friend, Richard Ostrin went into the navy and
left a guitar with me for safekeeping. It lay in the back of my closet until I
unwrapped it one day and tried to figure out how it worked. And did.
Discovered Leadbelly, Sonnie Terry and Brownie McGee. Struck to the heart
by Robert Johnson‘s music. Still am.
Met Peter, Paul and Mary. Hung out with them when in town.
Peter liked Lois. I felt closest to Paul who later became a born-again Christian.
Hitch-hiked to Philadelphia to visit the yearly folk music festival they had. Slept
in cars in used car lots when it rained.
Bob Dylan was just beginning his career and played at the folk festival and
blew them all away.
I had learned enough guitar to play at local coffee houses like “The Place” and
the 10 O'clock Scholar. Dave Snaker” Ray and John Koerner played Leadbelly
songs, and Tony Glover played the harmonica. Bob Dylan hung out at Red
Nelson’s place for parties and I remember he had just played at Carnegie Hall,
and nobody believed him. Some people didn’t think well of him. When his first
album came out on Columbia, some people resented his accomplishment. I
had no idea how a musician got a record made. It all seemed unreal. I only
had a student mind and didn’t live yet in the real world.
I remember laboring many hours to make a model house for my architecture
class and the Professor crushed it in front of the class as a demonstration.
Of what I wonder? Cruelty? I felt very put-down and hurt. Professors
seemed to expect a lot and taught very little.