On the south wall of my condo living room is a ceiling-to-floor display of diverse photographs, primarily from local artists. Most of them have been with me for a number of years, and most of them are black and white. It’s my “Wall of Fame.”
Today I removed one of my favorite photographs, a splendid black and white work by William Klein, purchased in 1999. It’s a romp and reminds me of the rounded women in Fellini’s films. In this famous image, the rounded women pose in Paris, gathered together in steamy silence in a Turkish bath. The ladies are fashionable fatties with definite attitudes. The sale of it will defray my Master Card bill, which has been steadily escalating for months. The Klein is going to a great buyer.
It will be missed, but it was in good company. Artists Kevin Miyazaki (three of his!), Julie Lindemann and John Shimon (a boy posing with a big rooster, one from their aluminum Christmas tree series, and one of me taken for an exhibition at Walker’s Point Center for the Arts, when it was located at the corner of 5th and National in the ’80s). My hair is shorn Sinead O’Connor style for the shot. I am skinny and attitudinal. Nearby is Jim Herrington’s take on me. Yes, I resemble a nasty bitch, an escapee from film noir. The image ran in a 2004 Milwaukee Magazine article (“Where Legends Dwell”), a funky feature about the Shorecrest Hotel where I was living, and the balance of the images in the article were taken my Kevin Miyazaki. And here’s me photographed by Frank Ford, for last year’s exhibition at the defunct Cedar Gallery in the Third Ward. In the lower right hand corner of the wall is his image of my granddaughter at age 16. She recently graduated from law school and is seeking work in New Zealand.
Before the photos were installed by Grava Gallery, I donated a great Tom Bamberger landscape I bought when Michael Lord was still in town, along with several Frank Ford images (I miss the one of a spookily creepy John Waters) to the Racine Art Museum. A marvelous WaswoXWaswo photo of a dwarf serving tea to a proper lady is in a friend’s home. Two of the wall’s residents were purchased in the ’80s from the long defunct Silver Paper Gallery, and one of the two ran on the cover of Art Muscle Magazine when I was both publisher and editor. There’s a tale to tell here. I never discovered who the photographer was, but apparently he/she ran a studio specializing in photographs of dancers. One of the leotard-clad dancers in the circa late ’50s photograph saw the aforementioned Art Muscle cover and called me to say the image was of her and her girlfriend. The other image is of a dancer dressed in feathers and animal skins….straight out of the ’40s when women were women and men were ah, men looking at women.
When I quit smoking I purchased a color print from local photographer Brian Jacobsen. It’s a big ice-cream bar with a cigarette stubbed out dead-center. The hole where the Klein hung has been taken over by an altered Polaroid I shot in 1980. Back then I lived on five acres in Kettle Moraine and was just beginning my long journey on the art road.
My sister arrives from Kansas City in two weeks and I’ve compiled a pile of family photographs (including some Kodachrome slides) for her use. She’s shaping a CD before we forget who we are. In the pile is an image of my Moriarty grandparents. They’re standing in the sun somewhere in Redfield, South Dakota.
