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The original title “Aspecting” also seemed appropriate, at first, that is,
“ASPECTING”, in the sense of looking at facets, parts, sections, or “specks”, or, not
as a whole or complete package. However, it seemed that in order to be aware of
aspects one would need to have a sense of what the whole package was. ..but then,
as I worked, the sense of “the whole package” somehow dissolved.While the people
apprearing in this report may be considered,more or less, as aspects of my
psychopomp (representations o f soul guides) I made few attachments to people but
did to their accomplishments.
The purpose, I think, is to find out who I am and if, as it is written, I am but a grain of
sand, one of many descendants of Abraham lying along the many, many beaches
bordering the vast oceans, how and why is it I dare assert my independence and
suggest that I am not a duplicate of the grain of sand lying next to me? This may
be one reason why I have chosen to call this item….by and large the material is
presented chronologically, but for various reasons including that of some people
reappearing into my life they sometimes appear more than once.
by PAUL HENRICKSON
This image seems to indicate that the grains of sand are indeed different, that is,
they appear to be if one gets close enough. I haven’t the slightest idea what that
animal is with the circular brown spots overlying a florescent green underlayment
with what appear to be serpentine eyes, but each grain of sand seems to be a
universe unto itself…a nano-generated reforming constitutional variable of living
stuff…after all, if man does not give expression to his joy, then “the very rocks
shall do so.”
I must give credit where it is due. The boy is myself and the girl
is my sister. the one, whether or not she realizes it, is largely responsible for a whole
bouquet of attitudes combining spicules and stephanotis…..enframed in a circle of
fern fronds. Wow! what a load of blame shifting!
I believe this is the first human built structure I lived in. #48
Bow Street, Arlington. What an inhumane concept of architecture! But architects like
Paolo Soleri are aware of the highly complicated problem of designing urban-
oriented habitation-work spaces for creatively expressive people.
Two of my most favorite places in Boston, Beacon Hill and The Isabella Stewart
Gardner Museum. Interestingly enough these co uld represent the quite nearly
consistent dychotemies that from time to time have been evident in my life. One of
them that may be helpful in understanding the contents in this site is the type of
interest I have taken in people who have been successful in their fields. While I have
always been curious about what in their natures motivated them to seek the
unusual and what was their private reward, if it was often not the fame but the
involvment itself.
In this regard Mrs. Gardner was not a proper Bostonian for exhibitionistic
behavior was not considered proper by that area’s conventional leadership. This
may explain why some Bostonians voted for JFK while they would not, as I was told,
accept him in their homes.
Henrickson: “Beach Scene”, A few years , not many, maybe
only one, before I left for Norway, I did a beach scene from Sea Girt, New Jersey. This small painting I gave to
Edwin Lamont, the English teacher at the Rhode Island School of Design where I was enrolled. I no longer have
any idea where it might be. The newspaper critic for the Providence Journal at the time suggested a comparison
with the work of Lionel Feininger. Personally, I had some difficulty with this interpretation, but then, felt I had to
allow him the right to see it that way.
Well, I can almost see it myself. But, even then, I tended to reject most
things I heard about myself or my work. I was on a path of discovery. I am still on that path,
actually, and I was not and am not about to be deterred. My perceptions were and are
paramount. I would and will determine the nature of my incarnation, for “unless I be born
again I shall not enter the kingdom of heaven.” Is the kingdom of Heaven the same
as”knowing one’self?”
Well, the two of us, my sister and myself, emerged out of something relatively
obscure, after a fashion, that is. Our parents were Jacob and Gunhild. The accidently
met on board a ship sailing from Norway to New York during the time of a
Scandinavian depression. and coincidently, I suppose, originated from the same
general area south of Oslo called Vestfold…this was about a century ago and 1,300
years before that it was the home of the Vikings who conquered, settled and
influenced the development of what was to become the British island, Normandy,
and the Norman Empire of Sicily, Bur prior to settlements they simply did a great
My father’s father was, like most men in Norway, a farmer, a good one apparently.
he had had two wives. The first one was the mother to my father and he was her
last child as she died when he was three which brought on its own regrettable
influences .
subjected .
Haakon VII, King of Norway visited Boston and all the Norwegians got all
their childrentogether to sing for him at Symphony Hall. So, it migyht be said that I began
my public performances when I was about 10 or 12, probably twelve. Then, I was not long
before I took an interest in the creative accomplishment of others in the hope, I would
suppose, that I might gain insight into what about them might have made it possible for
them to excellence to be manifest, to go beyond what was average or indifferent. I am still
working on that problem, hense this investigative essay. Certainly part of that search
involved both
Kirsten Flagstad http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_xFGwYveSA and
Sonja Henie who were important to my parents, not, necessarily, or primarily because of
their creative accomplishments, but because they were Norwegian. We apparently forgot
that Henie was partly Jewish and we may have had some difficulty in dealing with that
enigma, but it seems the either Hitler didn’t know, or he didn’t care.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sjnfkEOpsE During the second World War Sonja made several
performances in the United States and Canada and her audience was certainly not limited to Norwegians. She, it
turned out, was quite the stern business woman as well and secured for herself movie contracts that made her the
highest paid performer in the business and she was famous for the extravagances of her home parties, her jewels,
herfurs. In 1966 through the help of a member of the Norwegian diplomatic corps in New York I secured an
invitation through also the then Minister of Norwegian Culture, Christiansen, an invitation to visit Sonja Henie
and Nils Onstad at their home near Oslo and to see the now quite famous collection of modern 20th Century
European paintings. It was then, as well, that Nils Onstad showed me the model of the plans for the Henie
/Onstad Foundation. I had had hardly a moment to look at the paintings I had come to see when I was invited out
onto the lawn overlooking the fjord and served a glass of brandy. There were no servants in evidence. I felt a little
deprived for it was the paintings I had truly come to see, but it had not been my intention to ignore the singular
accomplishments of Sonja. Nevertheless Sonja asked me a question that quite thoroughly left me speachless. So
much so that for a moment I just looked at her bewildered and then recalled, that Sonja was really quite famous,
as well, for her having been deprived of an education.Yet, this question was so mindless it beggered the influence
of formal or informal educational opportunities. In order to give myself time to consider the reply I lifted my eyes
to the heavens and my gaze through the mist made an arc from Sonja across to Nils who when his eyes met
mine, gave me a stern warning look that my answer had better be good. I don’t remember exactly what my
answer was, but Nils’ reaction was a series of peals of laughter..so I guess it did the job. What I think I had tried to
do was to respond in like fashion to the non-sense of Sonja’s question, accept it as reasonable and then to reply
nonsensically…as though there had been logic and sense in all of it…somewhat like accepting, but not knowing, a
foreign language as a logical sequence of sounds that must make sense to someone since it engenders a response.
I guess Nils understood that that was what I had done and this accounts for the repeated peal of laughter.
It is, without doubt, a highly subjective conclusion to suggest how early influences may have influenced later decisions. On the other
hand, maybe they do not do so at all, but that the “real” and emergent personality must make these decisions, step by step , as he
meets them and tests them against the personality he is only beginning to think he is, or wants to become. Influences are there,
certainly, but the determining one is the one growing from within…like an inspirited something that must accomodate incarnation,
that is embodiment. However, incarnation has its own demands which we identify, in part, as community compulsion. …
Oh, well, so be it.
In my junior year I went abroad to study in Norway. I had really primarily wanted to go to
France and Italy but I knew my parents would not have approved of that trip, but going to
Norway was entiely something else, and Norway is a lot closer to Italy than is
Massachusetts. In Norway I was greatly impressed by the number and the quality of the
fresco work, much less well known than the Mexican, but, in many respects aesthetically
superior amd very much more informed. Per Krogh was my principle teacher. I do not
think he was partricuarly interested in an American student and during the months that I
was at the Kunstakademiet he said barely six words to me. Whenever he came into the
room, which was rather seldom, all the other students would stand at attention. A stance I
found both ridiculous as well as hypocritical.
Per Krohg:
My aunt Helga was very tolerant of my imagination and allowed me to place this
canvass on the wall at Frydenlund. When the place was eventually sold to another
branch of the family, the sister to Nils Honsvold, the Prime Minister this work, of
course, was destroyed.
But of all influences in my life and life’s focus it is to my home environment and James
Foster Kenney, my High School art teacher that most is due because, I think, he was the most
accepting of diversity and the most protective.
That Junior year abroad had been a very influential one socially, intellectually and aesthetically. I had
already seen the film“The Red Shoes” and so I knew very well who Anton Walbrook was and when a
new friend, Ferdinand Finne , also a student at the Statens KunstAkademiet, who had been his lover asked me
to lunch to meet him I was somewhat eager. It was not so much that he was a celebrity, and a very handsome one,
but that he represented success in a world that was thhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07saf8scSrgen, and to a
great extent is still, a mystery to me.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07saf8scSrg 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slo5FZyPtfw 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEi6YEvuzws 3
Bette Davis: It is only vaguely familiar to me that I remember Bette Davis being on the
Cape the same time that I was. Nevertheless, the memory persists and while I doubt I ever attended a
performance of hers there or any other place it seems as though I had done so for what I distinctly recall is the
feeling of her theatricalistic presence…one that I may have received only through the actual experiences of others.
What I now understand of those experiences of memory is that they exemplify the tranmutation of reality into
meaning…a process which still engulfs me.
True, I had met Osa Johnson when I was 12, or so, but before that had sung in a choir with
other young boys and girls when King Haakon VII of Norway visited Boston and had remembered the layout of
Symphony hall so knew where to go to get back stage, while I had been disappointed that Osa Johnson who had
been a sort of heroine for me came on stage wearing a black sequined evening dress (so un-african!) I was
thouroughly disappointed when, close up, I could see that the flesh on her arms was beginning to drop I knew that
she would be unable to protect me from a charging black-maned lion.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60004FZ2bes
While still high school students Richad Ardolino, who was a celebrity addict, asked me to go with him to see if he
might meet someone I hadn’t even heard of I had little reason to refuse. It was that way we had met
Bonita Granville, the star of ”Hitler’s Children” . I noticed that she thoroughly enjoyed notoriety, but was still nice
when she told me gently that she had given us permission to walk with her, but not on her. Richard who had found
himself in the wrong place, on my left while she was on my right and her companion on the otherside kept pushing
me in his effort to get close to her. The film http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFfELX_j9Yw ..was
a propoganda film, but, neverthless seems to raise questions as to the appropriateness of government interference
in human relations.
Greer Garson, who was personally very gracious, at another time, shaking my hand because I also had red hair.
whose daughter now has a large drawingof mine, measuring about 3’x8’.
Kirsten Flagstad: represents for me the first consciously difficult, or perhaps very easy,
decision regarding the difference between racial fidelity and aesthetic response. My nother was proud of Flagstad
because she was Norwegian. I do not think my father much cared one way or the other. When I heard Flagstad
sing in person it was in Boston right after the war and the subsequent criticism seemed as much political as
musical…or likely more political. That was the dawning of my awareness that differences in approach had to be
made. She too had had to make a similar choice, between the politcs of the time and her familial loyalty. In both
instances politcs lost as I believe it always should when placed in opposition to private personal interests.
Kirsten Flagstad, the Metropolitan Opera soprano who, with Lauritz Melchior rather much saved the Metropolitan from bankruptcy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ch3o0qV6TiA
Liliian Gish http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCmY6VQP6s4 after a performance of
summer stock in Sea Girt, New Jersey she was very kind and gracious to me ay 18 years and
my cousin Anne at 20
Nikita Talin, a dance coach, teacher and director of the Harkness Ballet school, died on Wednesday at his home in McKinney,
Tex. He was 75. The cause was heart failure, said Norma Rogers, a friend.
Mr. Talin was a popular teacher known for his ability to encourage the most hesitant of students. He danced as a teen-ager with
Ruth Page's Chicago Opera Ballet and later with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo before opening a dance studio in Dallas. His
students' recitals were not the usual earnest fare but were filled with glamour because of the ballet stars he imported to dance with
them. He joined the dance department at Southern Methodist University in 1965, serving as a choreographer and a teacher.
Mr. Talin came to New York City and joined the Harkness Ballet in 1978, returning to Dallas nearly a decade later to choreograph
and teach in his own studio. In 1943 during that time when I was, at the suggestion of my high school art teacher James Foster
Kenny, drawing the dancers from back stage as they performed for a live public Nikita invited me to have supper wuth five or six
of the dancers and when I mentioned that to my teacher he had a memorably distinctive response which burst open the parameters
of my social awareness. It is a bit late, but “I’d like to thank Nikita, now, for his kindness to me and on behalf of our imbalanced
society to forgive him his , I imagine, unfullfilled hopes regarding his wealthy Dalas wife to whom, I was told, he fed too many
chocolates . On the other hand, it could be supposed that any woman who manuevers to obtain a famous man as a husband through
the means of enticements of monied support so she might have the pub;ic image of a powerfully attractive cunt, and more worthy a
woman than any other may deserve to be brought down. . and any man who . in this fashion, sells his dick.
My high school art teacher, James Kenny, expressed minor jealousy when I, at 16, had not only met Talin, but had had dinner
with him.
George Verdak I had known Geroge since I was 16 years old, when he had been
dancing with the troup Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. He never failed me as a friend.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeIKDQJIWy8 (Danilova)
Thomas Whittemore whose name is linkied forwever with the project of uncovering the mosiacs of Hagio
Sophia after the Muslim authoprities ahd had them painted over. It speaks well for them that they simply painted them over rather
than to have rmoved them. I met Thomas Whittemore through the efforts of Barbara Sessions who was at that time the Librarian at
The Rhode Island School of Design and, for some reason, took a fansy to this very naïve eighteen year old. I had at this reception
held in Whittemore’s honor at the home of a Providence, Rhode Island industrialist tool maker asked Whittemore if he would allow
me to work with him in this project. He looked at me , cast fertive glances at the other tuxedoed gentlemen around and mysteriously
replied that he could not for the mosquitos were too big. At that time I had had no idea what he was talking about, but my training in
never questioning adults had been too thorough for me to ask him what he meant. Hagia Sophia
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usp6GLrzdws
I did find out later, however, when I returned in 1985. Henrickson: drawing
When I boarded the SS. Stavangefjord Eleanor Roosevelt, talking to a group of African-
American dancers on their way to Norway. I was rounding a bulhead rather quickly and had advanced about 50 feet when I caught
sight of her face which I knew quite well from nespaper pictures seated amongst all those black people and it was THAT which
rather jarred my consciousness. I had not, until then, ever seen one white person in friendly converse with a group of differntly
colored people except, Osa Johnson, but those circumstances were different. My education in international affairs had begun.
She looked up at me, perhaps attracted by my having stopped in mid progress and offered a friendly glance and a smile. Such brief
encounters can be life-changing and this one was but it took more time and more information to get a grasp of what this woman’s
world-view wasd really like…and how, in the process of living she had had to adjust the balances betrween what was private and
what was public. It is this understanding which makes me highly sympathetic with Elizabeth II and why,now, I view the present role
of royalty and nobility with greater accepting respect for their sacrifices than, I suppose, those who take on the traditional ant-royalist
position. I tend to view societie’s actions toward their social leaders as being not at all dissimilar from those of what I suppose the
Aztecs’s might have been. Give them everything, and then, cut them up and throw them into the lake…of course, they must be
laden down with gold and other priveleges of ranks before we thoroughly democratize them and even out the score…and those who
perform these religious rites are usually church and other political leaders.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKUkgXoa4qE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wz21F7FN7ZE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7S--JFKuRa0
Ferdinand Finne who was, at that time, ending an intimate relationship with Anton Walbrook and was also
In May of 1950 many of the students went to Paris for a period as did I and I met a few young people I had known
in the State Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and spent about a week with Henrietta Amundsen, a Norwegian-
American friend from Oslo whose boy friend, Christian Ledebur,whosefather had played the role of Queequeg in
the film “Moby Dick” a most unlikely role for an Austrian Count, had left me his Paris room in a most deteriorated
environment for me to use. The shared john in this once attractive building was unbelievably filthy and convinced
me that my Dad was correct when he described the French as being the most unclean people he had ever known.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeIKDQJIWy8 (Danilova
Anton Wallbrook http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eV4HdupeA3U I found his continental manner
very impressive but his belief that all Americans were naïve about all cultural matters somewhat disapointing.
Mia Slavenska: came to a party I had in my shared attic apartment in Providence. I was
about 18 years and while very fascinated by the ballet, the music, the discipline of the dance, about which I knew
very little despite my few lessons with Natasha Miklashevskia. Mia came to the party with a man I supposed to be
her husband. They were physically present, but, perhaps from fatigue or boredom, their party contributions were
limited.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-C76XdxnHdYtions
Bernard Berenson : I was twice at Itatti, Berenson’s home in Florence, I learned a great deal,
but nothing about art history. In his writing he did clue me in to some of the values to the observer of artistic
production when he used the phrase “life enhancing”. He did not, as I recall, join this concept to the level and type
of receptivity of the observer, but, at least, it seemed a step in the right direction.
Carlo Coccioli had been very influential in
widening my understanding of human relations and the private agonies individuals experience as they adjust to
inner demands and exterior pressures. We remained repectful of each other ubtil he died. However, even more
than I he seemed terrified of the human experience, this, upon reflection, may have been the quality which,
according to his report, attracted Italian right wing politicians and all Mexican Presidents, to his ability, in writing, to
communicate drama. In this way Carlo is like a spider who through deft and talented limbs wraps his victims up in
a skein of sticky involvment so they do not escape.
Danilo Donati was a more comfortable experience and, in actuality, he seemed more civilized than Carlo. When
I met him in 1950 he was managing a store from which he sold ceramic figures of angels, saints, etc., a fascinating
place to enter which, because I was then 6 feet 1” I was forced to hunch in order o avoid knocking my head
against hanging ceramic pieces and since Danilo spoke no English Carlo took charge of the introductions, and since
I knew no Italian it was Carlo who was the princple narrator. It wasn’t until the middle eighties when Shelby
Boggio, at my request, telelphoned Danilo to introduce Danilo to the possibility of his helping me with a project. In
the thirty years that had passed I had not been in contact with Danilo, but even to the surprise of Shelby, Danilo
remembered in great detail our meeting in his ceramic shop in Florence.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhFM_G3fzjg Fellini’s Casanova for which Danilo won an award for costuming.
While in Norway I met several people who were important and celebrated at the time, or became so, among
them being Carl Nesjar who also had studied at The Statens Kunstakademiet and
beame an internationally known sculptor for transforming Picasso drawings into immense free-standing works
and for designing fountains which would work in conjunction with freezing water.
There was also a curious and somewhat tragic incident involving my reactiopn to his creative
effort. I judge my analysis had not pleased him despite my generous suggestion that his remarkably creative
efforts seemed to place him as an agent, or a designer of a stage set for some other actor to take center stage. For
example, it is Picasso, not Nesjar, who is the focus in the concrete works, it is ice which gives form to the sculpture
in winter and water in the summer, in his photographs, it is the inevitable action of deterioration which gives form
to rotting wood and quite nearly a hands-off policy where it seems he might wish the pigment to volantarily place
itself on the paper where his paintings are concerned…in short, personal will seems to be anathema to Nesjar….yet,
he felt free to tell me he did not want me to write about his work. It is THAT action which stands in such
unbelievable contrast to all the others. It would seem that every other natural occurrance is allowed its freedom,
but I am denied it. I remain perplexed, that is all.
Jean Bearn, for nearly 10 years, my wife, a sorry relationship that aught to have been better, but there
were complications, both historical, I think, if the genealogies are correct the Bearns were associated with the ancestors of my
mother’s mother over periods and I have the sense that it was this relationship built up over centuries that functioned to make Jean
and myself interested in each other. There is much more to the story and much of it is still uncertain to me although I suspect the
common.
me in1951, Rhode Island my “gift” to Mother
Alfred Morang was a painter and functioned as an art critic for the Santa Fe
New Mexican in 1951 which was then the only newspaper in town. While I was in Santa Fe he published some encouraging
comments about my work which for an exceedingly inexperienced 21 year-old were appreciated. He rather awed me, not because
of his erudition, which I didn’t detect, nor his paintiongs which I found unfocused and unconvincing but for his life-style which I found
disorganized. It was not that I disliked the man, but only because I didn’t know how to relate to him. Eli levin might have included
Alfred in his book on the Santa Fe Bohemian had he known him for as to those he did mention…none could match Alfred, not even
Don Fabricant although he tried to reach that goal, why, I do not know, for Don wa a better artist.
Pueblo Indian dance
He
Popovida
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3AgD97ZsK4
PUERTO RICO
But the year later I was in Puerto Rico and had my one-man exhibition at the University of Puerto Rico there,
owned a bar called “el Burito”. Before that I was teaching at a strange private art school in Santa Fe, New Mexico
called The Hill and Canyon School of the Arts owned and operated by Stanley and Elisabeth Breneiser,
where I did, in fact, learn a great deal, very little of which I would have sought out. But while there I did some
work of my own. Here are some examples:
It took only five years before I got there, to Puerto Rico, that is, and there, in retrospect I initially did some of
more innovative works. Although at the time I was unaware of how innovative they were cautiously innovative.
It should be noted with some emphasis that Nancy E. Heineman of Garden City, Kansas was effectively and
instrumentally geneous during this period. I had met her in Santa Fe when she had come to The Hill and Canyon
School of the Arts I imagine as an attempt to put her life into some perspective after she had learned that her
husband George had established an amourous liason with another woman and bought her a Lincoln Continental
sedan, so Nancy bought herself one and drove to Santa Fe. At the Christmas break she asked me to drive her to
Mexico which I did and there were never any unseemly demands made upon me whatever, nor, I think, did she
desire any payment or gratitude of that kind. She paid for Jean Bearn’s coming from London, my meeting Jean in
Jamaica andfor several months supported us both with food and lodging in a pleasant two bedroom house
overlooking the valley at Aguas Buenas. She was a patient and loving woman who tried to help two young people,
one terribly confused young man who was struggling to understand himself.
For two or three months before Nancy arrived I ran a bar called El Burito, technically, I suppose I owned it, at least
the management of it I owned and it managed to support me and my help but after Nancy came I gave it up.
I also managed to arrange for an exhibition of my work at the University and sold a small colored etching to a local
medical doctor.
1952 was the year a novel was published in France which Jean Bearntranslated for me which I found somewhat
more than devastating, apparently, for it motivated me to return to Eu rope I n an aattempt to find answers. I
guess I did find them, but they weren’t what I expected and I placed someone else in a difficult position who tried
to get rid of me by having me invited to the home of the Marquis de Cuevas for the weekend. The person who
delivered the invitation was Antoine Taverra who, at that time, was translating Shakespeare into French at
Cambridge. My response was typically a defensive Bostonian one. “I did not come to Paris to meet the Marquis de
Cuevas”, consequently, I was subjected to a scene of personal humiliation by Carlo Coccioli which reduced me to
involuntary and copius but voluminously silent tears on a train from Paris to Romorantin. It was psychic surgury of
a very painful sort. Knowing something, already, of the Marquis interests I was in no mood to play games.
It was also in Puerto Rico where I met Geoffrey Holder, the then to become “Mr. 7-UP Man” for the non-cola, But
then,. aslater as well, he had formed a dance company which interested me for nearly all the pieces they
performed at the University I was able to identify the classical ballet sources,
but, Geoffrey denied knowing any of them. I didn’t argue with him. The next time I saw him was in Ipswich,
Massachusetts at Castle Hill where I and Robert Lucas were walking. Geoffrey who had been reclining over
about 10 of the stone steps on the grand staircase leading to the long view to the sea, saw me and unfolded
himself and strode floatingly toward me , a movement which seemed to have shocked Bob who continued walking
on with his eyes straight ahead. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w45Hpocfw_I Bob Lucas who was about five
feet ten inches became aware of this black man who seemed six feet seven…such an image simply was NOT part of
Margaret Truman. At about this time Bob Lucas, Jean Bearn, myself and the sister
of Eroll Flynn (although how she got with us I haven’t the slightest) were in the Adams Room of the Ritz Carlton,
the room wi th the silver serving trays on the ceiling and Miss. Flynnhad taken off her shoes showing her paint ed
toe nails and hooked them over the endge of the low coffee table…an act that was certainly incongruous with the
company and an attitude out-of-place. Her contributions to the conversation were, as well, not apropos and,
consequently disrupting.
Bob, who took the lead in awkward situations and always did it aithout attracting attention, except for Miss Flynn
who dramatically limped her way along led the way into the other larger room and we found a round table In the
corner, next, as it turned out, to another table where there was a young woman with three rather what we would
say, rather “greesy” male attendants. As Bob had ordered the makings of Napolean brandy cocktails and was
involved in the drama of their concoction and I was seated nearest to the table in question it was I to whom one of
those fellows addressed the question as to what it was that was happening. Took over the responsibility of a reply
and politely, rather heavily polite, and in great detail provided the answer.
The next day Bob told me that he had received a call from Miss. Flynn to say that the lady in question was
Margaret Truman who wondered just who were Miss Flynn’s “snobbish Republican friends”. I am, even after
more than a half century, curious as to know how anyone might have guessed another’s politics by their social
behavior…unless, of course, it was based on the assumption that there is a high correlation between good manners
and political thought. If it had been true then I doubt it could be said to be true today.
In 1953 I got my Masters degree from what is now The University of Massachusetts at Boston. Dr. Robert L
Bertolli was my advisor. He was very supportive and in the summer of 1966 we met again in Venice. Later he
suppiorted me in my thought to work with Viktor Lowenfeld, with whom I had already been correponding at Penn
State University, but not having been able to save money for gasoline to drive from North Dakota to Pennsylvania I
chose Minnesota and it seemed more likely that my wife might better find a job in Minneapolis I accepted the
assistantship offer from the University of Minnesota under Clifton Gaynes and Reid Hastie. The second year I
worked with Paul Torrance which was, without doubt, a somewhat more challenging experience than the Art
Education Department. Now, my work with the Art History Department was something else and it was there I really
thrived. By and large they are more appropriately sophisticated there as well than in either the Art Education or the
Psychology departments.
Reid Hastie mentioned to me that there had never been anyone from that department who got their degree as
quickly as I got mine (1961). I couldn’t imagine why that was so since I have a talent for getting in my own way
with authorities as they invariably find me somewhat obnoxious…even if they like me. After all I had managed to
tell Dorothy Pillsbury Rood and Harry Bullis that they behaved badly and to challenge Dr. Robert Beck, whom
I rather liked, but who seriously tried to wreck my academic efforts through his being the erotic interest of the
Dean…a classic spinster. How it is that some rather intellectual nonentities get to be in positions of influence at
what are supposed to be major universities I really did not know, but my research at the University of Northern
Iowa was soon (1969) to reveal it to me.
Henrickson:”Balshazar” (M.Canine) Henrickson: “The Wind” (Frank Leussen, Valley City, N.D.) At this point I think
it important to give dredit where credit is really due. During my tenure in Valley Cioty, Nort Dakota I conceived the
idea of creating a Fine Arts Festival as much like that I had known in Boston as I could. Juanita Luessen and Kay
Can, the wife of the publisher of the local news paper were the primary motivators and certainly responsible for
the festival’s success for at least 25 years. The idea was mine, but they saw it through. That effort was suvccessful
in a town that even today hads only about 7,000 people. When I tried the same thing some twenty years later in
Santa Fe with a Scandinavian Film Festival I did have evey expectation that it too would be successful. The reason
it wasn’t was, many believe, because of the petty jealousies, I learned later, of what is called “Den Konglia Svenska
Avensyk”..the royal Swedish envy. I had had no idea the Swedes hated the Norwegians so much. Primary among
these evil Swedish women was the wife a Greek fellow who had worked for Air France and told me that what I
wanted could not take place in the time alloted because he, as an important member of the Air France
establishment it had taken a committee, of which he was a member,two weeks to decide what paper napkin to use
at a reception. The other destroyer of a good idea was the wife of a prominent lawyer, James Alley, who allowed
her husband to believe I had come on to her in the absence of her maid. Some men will believe anything they are
told. The third tricky lady who was, however, Danish, was the Director of correspodnence for Senator Pete
Domenici. The American Embassy in oslo had some interesting comments to say about Senator Domenici’s
involvement. The reason it didn’t work was because they were all in it to see how they might personally benefit
and seeing that that was not my focus they decided to destroy it. That, however, was something I became aware of
only after the event…and then not fully.
Henrickson: “Still Life”
The etching, in its rather awesome way, prophesied future developments, or, perhaps they were true at the time I did the etching.
The painting which developed out of preparatory drawings for the etching was prominently exhibited at a Concordia College gallery
in Moorehead, Minnesota. Cyrus Running was the director of the art department there and he also supported my efforts to bring
about an international exchange of art with Norway. That attempt was successful and Valley City promoted its Fine Arts Festival for
at least another 25 years. The painting I gave to my sister and it hung on the wall of their family room until my three-year-old niece
announed that “Uncka Paul did something dirty!”and my sister took it down and faced it to the wall. Later she gave it to the La
Jolla art Gallery which very much wanted it and Ward, my brother-in-law expressed his pleasure at my having been a source of
their having an excellent inc0me tax year. I, of course, didn’t benefit…after all, only the Philistines need finacial help. After awhile
the gallery sold it to some speculator who wanted me to buy it back.The etching is with me in Gozo. By and large Gozo’s general level
of aesthetic development is about that of my brother-in-law, that is, somewhat lower than involved.
Henrickson: a preparatory drawing (done in North Dakota) for “Ugolino”
now on the Gozo Ministry collection. They wanted it so I gave it to them. In terms of my own development, howver, which is more
important than my naive generosity to a rather grasping, exceedingly thankless government, is the fact that having read Dante’s
“Purgatorio”,or whereever the story of Count Ugolino is sited which I found profoundly moving I did what I did to portray it.
Intellectually, of course, I was aware that artists “portra y” their feelings…whatever that rather inane expression means, butthis
was the first time I seemed conscious of the process of finding expression to those feelings and this, of course, gave rise to the
question of the different languages available to man to give expression, or “to make” , and certainly there must be some
corresponding mechanism in the mind of the person receiving the message. Of course, some of these distortions are haptic, others
have a history of their own in the graphic devices , such as the orans, invented by earlier artists.
Henrickson: “Ceylonese Lovers” This was approximately the time when I painted “Ceylonese
Lovers” as a result of an exchange stident from Ceylon named Dayananda Abeywikrame, or something to that effect. It is a
work that interested a lot of people but for, it seems, obscure reasons. It contains aesthetic elements I have continued to explore
from time to time and in Gozo have done so ratherextensively. More so in sculpture (painted sculpture)than in painting.
The fact of painted sculpture has an interesing genesis in my preoccupations as well. It was relatively only a few years ago that it was
confirmed that the Greeks painted their sculpture. A discovery, and a development, that was somewhat of a horror to many as “one
simply does not paint sculpture.” lt was seen as an anti-aesthetic development. What it did point up, however, is that the view of
sculpture of those who had been making aesethetic judgments prior to their knowing the Greeks painted their works had been,
excepting primitive fetishes, a view of form. This view of form was probably a later imposition of upon the past and led, ultimately,
to a new and rather exciting development although based on mistaken premises and was an aesthetic entirely unkown, at least
consciously, to the ancient world. They simply may not have seen “form” as a distinct quality separate from its being the result of
being a direct transcription of the object seen. Being aesthetically conscious of “form” in sculpture (or architecture for that matter)
means that one does more than to tanscribe the form of seen objects into bronze or marble, but manipulates that “form” in order to
give it a function beyond being a record. It was an error for us to assume that Greek works were not painted, but that error was a
fortunate one in that it ultimately enlarged our awareness of the realm of the visual just as Michelanbgelo’s unfinished “slave”
With the exception of Kenny, Lowenfeld and Bertolli and the majority of art historians at The University of Minnesota nearly all
others carried negative vibrations in abundance, most espeically those in psychology and art education. I can only attribute this to
what might be called a lingering suspicion of inappropriate influences and inadequate self-assessments. I always got guidance from
art historians, even those I never met, such as Roberto Longhi and a little from the art educator Edwin Ziegfeld who warned me
about the Swiss based International insititute of Arts and Letters
Reid Hastiewhich had to do with tax deductions for the cost of my art materials and my potential powers over future Ph.D.
candidates , or Robert Beck’s description of me as having “a fair mind and a fair body”.
Harry Bullis: Sometime during the Minneapolis period betwwen 1959 and 1961 I received an invitation
from the International Siociety of Arts and Letters based in Switzerland asking me to accept their invitation to become a “fellow”.
They indicated that my work had merited the invitation. I was perplexed for I couldn’t imagine what work they had in mind.
Consquently, I asked the University Library to researrch the matter for me and I, on my own, conrtacted two of their listed members
who seemed handy. Edwin Ziegfeld who was a prominent art educator at the time who wrote back taking tome to explain how
he had found some of their behaviors suspect and Harry Bullis who was already in Minneapolis and so called him. I got ythrough
with no diffiulty whatever and told him who I was, where I was, and that I needed to know his assessment of the organization. He
evidently hadn’t listened well to my explanation for when he heard the name of ther organization he flew into a rage and abused me
with “Are you a member of that God-damned organization? I gave them $500 and I haven’t heard a word from them since.”.
When I had the chance to say something without interruption I told him, again, that my purpose was to learn his views of the
organization and that his behavior was sufficient to provide me with an understandable reply.
Joseph Poirier was a 15 year-old 9th-grader at Tantasqua Regional High School in Sturbrudge,
Massachusetts when I was that school’s first art teacher. This was 1954-’56, and for me the experience in working in a new school
was exhilarating, although, those who had planned the curricukun and class schedules were not insightful,were not smart, were
rather stupid, but, as authorities, they, of course, were right. In addition to students in grades 9-12, I also had 7th and 8th graders…
and seven or eight hundred of them every week. This is ridiculous planning if one has any respect for the process of educating, the
psychological tolerance of that many personalities on the mind-set of an educator. In any event, Josepg P{oirier stands out as a very
real exception for the two of us, he and I. He was the son of the school janitor in an environment that was strongly biased against
anything not English and being a French- kanuk, is quite the lowest, and, of course, having a father who was nothing but a janitor
confirms the boy’s official I.Q. at 90, and was about the be held back for the third time.
But when Joe came to me as his art teacher, (mentally deficient children are encouraged to take art) and shy and very quiet as he was
trained tobe (every hungry dog knows when not to bark), Joe listened to every word and nuance of speech and responded(silently, of
course), by coming up with a richness of graphic imagry that compelled me to go to the august school psychologist to request that
Joe be tested again. I explained to the psychologist that I was not concerned about the reputation art had as a refuge for dummies
but for the accuracy of I.Q. testing. To his credit the psychologist did as I requested and, to his credit, as well, published his findings
which were that Joe had an I.Q. of 110. This, it may be remembered was at a time when I.Q. scores were advertised as being stable
and if they changed at all the change would be no more thnan 5 I.Q.points. On his next report card Joe’s grade avergae rose from a
D- to a B- which caused me to wonder whether it was due to his possible increase in self-confidence or the teachers having second
thoughts on their criteria for grading, or using the unassailable reputation for the “scientific” approach to evaluating the human
being in terms of grade assignments.
As an educator I must ask myself just what is the role of “ loving understanding” of a personality have to do with that personality’s
accomplishment…as measured by our superior pedgogical methods?
When I offered Ruth Eckert McComb, an internationally famous and grandly respected higher education authority, the opinion that
the most important ingredient in the relationship between the educator and the pupil was “ love”, she rejected the notion in an
uncharacteristically passionate fashion. “NO!!” I, as her student, would not have dared gainsay her.
However, I believe it to be true today. In this instance that if there had not been that instinctual trust and caring between Joseph and
myself, his initial silent calling for me to help him and my ability to undetrstand this level of communication it would never have
happened. Consequently I have many, many times wondered what it was that brought Ruth Eckert and John Hess McComb, a
minister in the Prysbyterian church together as life partners . In any event, those events have deeply influenced my perceptions.
Thank you Joseph Poirier for acting the role of agent for my salvation as a humanist.
Sir Herbert Reid whose approach to analysis and to historical vision helped guide me. We met in
Minneapolis.There was a reassuring detatchment of his ego from his work that I found reassuring.
Antal Dorati came over to me while George Verdak and I were working on some stage sets in
Minnespaolis. He was in the middle of reherasing the Minneapolis Symphony, stopped the reherasal for a moment,
came briskly in my direction still carrying his baton and his arm outstreached. I looked behind me to see if there
was someone he was wanting to meet..but I was the one. I have no idea why. I thought I caught a small smile on
George’s face. After I finsihed my course work for the Ph.D. I accepted a positonm at Radford College as Head of
the Department. Its President Charles Knox Martin was a disaster. He had his wife stand out side the church door
writing down the names of the girls who attened church without gloves and hats.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HRjigDjrKc
Margaret Mead was one of the invited panelists for E. Paul Torrance’s Minneapolis Convention
seminar on Creaticity (1961) which took place in the middle of the time I was working with Torrance. It had been
quite well established that the personality profile of creative individuals included their sharing some of the
characteristics the society at large believed characteristic of the opposite sex. The major sponsor for this Seminar
was The Air Force Academy in Colorado and it was well known that the military establishment deplored gender
confusion so consequently I had a problem in understanding how the Air Force Academy justified its involvment. It
is very unusual that I am ever chosen to ask questions in situations of that type so I was quite astounded when I
was the first, and, as it turned out the last, questioner.The focus of my question was to have the General from the
Academy clarify their involvment in this seminar based on these two well-known dispositions. The general appeared
not to understand my question and Mead, stepped in before the general was finished to say that confusing (from
a non-slamder’s point of view) behavior was also evident in Samoa where the boys would spend the morning
making up their faces and the afternoon walking with each other with their hands on their friend’s buttox thus
causing, Mead said, for her to ask them if there had been any homosexuality in Samoa. The response of these
young men was laughter from which Mead claimed , at that meeting of 300 university people,she concluded that
there was no homosexuality. One might wonder how Mead and Ahmadinajad might compare their notes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOa3ftAKnzo 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9HNzhV0CjI 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFdaW1kZOaA 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDLyQb5Pd3w 4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQnfbAEg_uQ 5
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrdTDbUIeKk 6
Having reviewed the above videos, which I found both entertaining and instructive, I came to the more assurred
conclusion that both Derek Freeman and Mead may have forgotten that the individual has a say in what happens
to him, that his biological components and his environment are both constituent elements which may be mutable….
this must have occurred, somewhat dramatically and illadvisadly (considering the sophistication of his fellows and
the technical experts of plastic surgeons), to Michael Jackson If anything, this clumsy essay is about that sort of
change and reformation. This is an idea that certainly has occurred to geneticists and has been
around for at least 2000 years with much consternation to the nicodemian mindset,
The wind blows where it wills, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not
know whence it comes or whither it goes; so it is with everyone who is
born of the Spirit. It is this understanding of the source of inspiration that
propels much of my work. It is in this sense, also, that I think, Agnes
Martin decried the uselessness of intellectual activity, describing it as a
very pedestrian activity which simply added up one “fact” after another
and consequently comes up with inaccurate conclusions and why Carl Jung
could insist that he no longer believed in God but KNEW God existed. I am
quite comfortable with both these points of view.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-JfYjmo5OA Martin
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJ25Ai__FYU Jung
” . E. Paul Torrance. While I was at The University of Minnesota for two years betweem 1959 and
1961 there was no opportunity for me to create works of art. Ho wever, I did give Torrance a painting in expectation
There has existed a perplexing mystery involving E. Paul Torrance and myself. After I had received the Ph.D.
degree from the University of Minnesota and taken up duties at Radford University, (Virginia) I attended a
professional meeting in neew York and while there met my Master Degree advisor Robert Bertolli who quickly
introduced me to a somewhat beyonf middle-aged woman who was a member of the faculty of one of
Massauchuetts State Colleges. She very enthusiastically congratulated me on the article I had written which had
been published in a volume of papers intended as guides to students regarding attitrudes toward art education. I
had never experienced such praise and was so bewildered I couldn’t raise the courgae to ask her what article, what
text book or what publisher. I also didn’t dare ask Bertolli about it for fear of sounding naïve ior stupid. The only
article I could think of this one might have been was one I had written at Torrance’s request and which, I believe,
ahd been puiblished in a prominent Art Education journal. I am still uncertain as to what article she had in mind. In
any event, I had never been told of it, never received credit from anyone and certainly never received a check. The
very least I might have been able to expect would have been notice from the publisher so that I might have been
able to list that accomplishment in my C.V. But this too was denied me. It reminded me of the viscious treatment I
received from Elliot Eisner, who, unbeknownst to me had received from my then thesis advisor, Reid Hastie, a
draft of my research report. Some years later when I had completed my research at the University of Northern
Iowa and a colleague there had read it I saw a related sresearch report in Psychological Abstracts which appeared
to have been influenced by my studies (which had not officially been published) on the correlation between
Dogmatism and creativity. This time it was a student of Elliot Eisner who had been reporting on it. I was too busy
to check to see whether or not my work had been credited, but subsequently I wondered whether my UNI
colleague had sent word to Eisner for I couldn’t have imagined how else Eisner could have received it. I had seen
Torrance after this event but still was unable to ask him about it and I didn’t want to subject him to hurt by the
question. In any event if there had been mischief afoot, it worked and now, after four deaceds or more no one
seems to know, at least not enough, about that significant research where it is indicated that our educational
systems have adopted a proceedure which insures that only compliant and uncreative liars will be in a position of
influencing the young. …anything to ensure compliance to the majority thought. In contrast the JUST
SUPPOSE TASK which I developed while with Torrance at The Bureau of
Radford, Virginia
Henrickson :works from the Radford period
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_G8Qe7uRUT4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDhIFSHxrqg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axduQ5DJtD0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MznBzJ2eHtQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8l5k-eUvPI As it turned out one of my responsibilities at \radford was to host Rolf Bjorling
when he came to the college to concertize. I found him a very uncertain fellow. Jussi Bjorling, his father, singing the same song as
on the video above. In contrast there is greater nuance of expression and tenderness and not the extreme passionate pushing the
voice which I sense in Rolf and attribute to his misplaced competition with his father. When Rolf came to Virginia and it was my
responsibility to host him and his accompanist my wife and I were short of funds ( which President Martin of Radford College didn’t
mind) for a dinner Rolf after some minutes of conversation announced that it was customary to feed artists . So, Jean, ,my wife,
whipped up something nice in a short notice. She was excellent in that way.
Also, that evening when the conversation seemed a bit heavy in Rolf’s direction and I made an effort tlo draw the accompanist into it
Rolf immediately redirected it in such an abrupt fashion I was quite taken aback. The accompanist noticed my response and
indicated that he was accustomed to Bjorling’srude and egotistical manner and that I should let things lie. I did, but I’ve not
forgotten it.
Also, prior to the concert Rolf asked me if there was a song which I should particularly like him to sing. I mentioned one byGrieg
which he said he didn’t know so I left it up to him to sing what he wished.
Paolo Soleri, architect (and observer). I first met Soleri at Virginia
Polytechnic in Balcksburg where he was giving a lecture demonstration. I was impressed by his ideas before I went. I was still
impressed after I left. In addition to his ideas I was also impressed by his stern lack of charm.This was in 1963, I believe. Then I
didn’t meet him again until 1976 when Father La Voix, who was confessor at the New Mexico State Prison, and I attended a
conference in Jerusalem on art, religion and architecture. On one of the side trips Soleri was in the same bus as I, sitting alone, but
the window in his tank top…brooding. I didn’t allow him to brood. I told him that at the stop over in Athens onthe way back to the
states I was to see Mrs . Effie Mihaelis the widow of the architectural histporian whom I had met in 1966 and who had been the
teacher of my teacher Dimitri Tselosat The University of Minnesota. That much Soleri had an interest in and in his eyes I could
almost see hisforgiveness for being who I am however he saw that that was. Effie was socially charming, as I had expected her to be
and she was very interested in Paolo who was much smaller than she (some people do get turned on by those smaller) she served
finger meat balls which were very good and insisted we should see a play at the amphitheater at the base of the acropolis. She
arranged to meet us there later, around 8 P.M. Paolo and I bought out tickets and were waiting in line to enter when Effie came up
to us and told us to come with her. She brought us to the head of the line where the ticket taker was taking tickets and letting people
in. He took our tickets, tore them up and we followed Effie who turned us over to someone who showed us center seats on the fifth
row. The only other seated people in the audiorium were way in the last few rows. We were both perplexed, but everything became
clear when a couple of well-drssed people came in and speaking in urgent tones to an attendant seemed to indicate that Paolo and I
were sitting in their seats. I lowered by head and said to Paolo “I think we have their seats” He did the same and said “I think so
too.” In addition to that evening being a demonstation in social power the performance of “Lysistrata” which had been, of course, in
Greek, had indicated something to me of such grand aesethetic significance I have never forgotten it. At that time I did not know
Greek, ancient or modern, but the message of that soliloquy was evident the control of the actrss so compelling I felt I understood
everything that woman was saying beyond any spoken language. ..such is the power of aesthetic communication.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfAJpRWM9tg
Chase Decker was one of the faculty members of the Art Department
at R adford College, now a Univer sity. At the time that I arri ved Janice Kent was the Head of the Department. I replaced
her,Kenneth Burge arrived later as I recall and Clarence Bunch was already there. Clarence was a no t unintelligent fellow, buit
he really didn’t seem to grasp the serious natu re of art and seemed to think o f it largely as an entertaining curiosity, but, as usual, I
did not interfer with people’s professional philosophies …so long as they were not my students. Chase had a specifically strong
sense of family, his family, which he announced was FFV, that is First Famly of Virgina. As someone having been born in Boston,
although of Scandinavian parents that southern distinction hadn’t impressed me one bit and I rather enjoyed the implied superiority
but did not take it seriosuly. One time when a medical doctor in Blacksburg was entertaining a Polish Count and invited Chase and
myself and announced that it was black tie we conceived the idea of costuming ourselves as one might for a presentation of “The
Merry Widow” and obtaining some wide florist ribbon and our medals from the boy scouts we adorned ourselves…and damn it all!
no one took any notice ..perhaps they were so awed they didn’t know what to say. Chase drank a great deal.
Henrickson: “Emerald” Henrickson: etching
Henrickson: “ landscape”
Gift to (?) Williams, a neighbor
Henrickson: “sorrow”
Henrickson: One is always influenced by the environment.
Henrickson: etching.nude
The transition from the erstwhile aristocratic Virgina to the south pacific islands was relatively abrupt, personally
and emotionally costly but as it seemed at the time, absolutely essential that I make a break, with my wife, with
the hypocracy of established academia. The president of Radford was, apparently uncaring about his betrayal of
long-established traditions of administrations not interfering with the teaching process and my wife, foolishly
accepting the assessments of the uninformed as well as betraying our relationship announced that were I to
accept the job in Guam she would leave me. I looked at her across the dinner table and felt the warm glow of relief
sweep over me and thanked her for helping me make up my mind and in two days put her on the bus to New
Henrickson: “Rape of Europa” Ken Burge who was an instructor at Radford College with me and I discussed some aspects of
painting and used Titian as an example. A worthy example, certainly. Burge’s thesis was that the aim in placing pigment on canvas
to present an image (of sorts) without disturbing the surface of the canvas. We agreed to objectify our points of view. I tried, but
something devilish intruded and this is the result. It is destroyed now, I believe. This second work was in thre permanent
collection of the Fine Arts Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Pe
Perhaps, indeed, it is coincidental, but I truly did believe I noticed a striking similarity between the faces of the 18th C portrait by
Ingres to the right of the Countess Pauine de Bearn and the woman to the right in the left photo who was my wife at the time,
Jean Bearn. If there is a genealogical relationship then it would have been a repeat of relationships over time between the Bearn
family and my ancestors on my morther’s mother’s side. At the end of the table is my fauther, the ones on the left are Janice Kent
and her friend, both of whom were teaching at Radford College, now Radford University.
MICRONESIA AND THE MARIANAS
My little beach outside my Merizo, Guam, Home my house from the beach
Nan Modal, PonPei, Micronesia
Carlos Taitano: at that time President of the Guam Senate was the source of
some embarassment for me as he had made some unwarranted assumptions , visiting me unannounced at my
home in Harmon Village, a group of condemned navy dwellinsgs, bringing me for a swim and a shower at the
military base where he, apparently, had been granted privileges. When once I found myself in the presence of his
wife and other Guamanian women I knew she had become aware of his attentions to me. By then, as well, I was
aware that both Tony Yamahita , President, and Al Hendricks, then Academic Vice-President were aware,
even prior to my having been, that Taitano was in pursuit. Apparently, Taitaino misreading the names and
misdudging the ages , called Hendrick’s home and asked for me. Then, a state-side student was sent by Taitano to
clarify the offer at which point I had to be quite open and to state that such was not my style. After all, why should I
, after having rejected similar opportunities in academic institutions from Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois and Florida
should I acceed to it with government in a place like Guam? Had I not, in the eyes of the world, descended far
enough ? Occassionally irony aurfaces and I am perplexed as to why I should suffer for what I have not done where
others, are praised, glorified and rewarded for what they have done,( but is called by something else)in the act of
momentarily pleasing their fellow man.
Billy Bright
(student)
Patty Jo Hoff, a fellow faculty member at The University of Guam. She told me, after I
had asked, that she thought I was not a good administrator. After I thought about that for awhile ( maybe three
years, it takes me a long time to make up my mind) I decided that that was because she took the meaning too
literarlly. What I expected was that all the people I had hired were sufficiently professional to know what to do, or, if
they didn’t know, to learn it on their own. Even with children I allow them to check things out and to make up their
own minds…within flexible limits. But, perhaps, adults, who have grown up in restructive systems have forgotten
how to think, or, like Marvin Montvel-Cohen, learned to think criminally and destructively. After she retired Patty-
Jo went into search for nearly microscopic sea creatures of incredible formations like these :
Gaius Nedlic Jean-Claude Gay PJ Jacob, Gaius, Sinkitchy Joseph
Sablan
Guam’s edges
Lion fish Latte stones reef fish
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81NROmUb7o0
During the two-year break I took the opportunity to go round the world and spent about two weeks in Ceylon (now,
Sri Lanka)
Cloud Goddesses: In 1966,
during the bi-annual break I was in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) at Sigiyra and photographed the very impressive wall
illustrations.
One of the greatest threats to civilized human progress is the ego-driven ambition of the political type which,
clever at recognizing human frailty as a resource for self-advancement and blind to the rights of others, will detroy,
willy-nilly, anything they perceive as a threat. In th case of Madelein Bordallo, according to the then Governor of
Guam Manuel Leon-Guerrero she was insanely jealous of my international cultural contacts which put me too
much in the lime light for her ambitious comfort and so commenced a drive to discover my sins. Her route was the
then Attorney general, who, according to reports coming to me, had interviewed 150 students to find out whether I
had molested them sexually. To my dismay no-one took the opportunity to emphasize their virtue by stating I had
done so. What a dismal erotic score. On the other-side of this coin of political effectiveness, Madeleine who gets
voted into office to rep[resent the people of Guam really represemts the military estblishment and they talk to the
people through her. Democracy so practiced is, indeed, a travesty. Her entire career, right from the start, has been
informed and empowered by the most demonstrably evil influences such as eminated from Ferdinand Marcus,
Meyling de las Crus and others named below but how she, herself, has been able to escape consequences and
staining has escaped me.
Madeleine Bordallo is, for me, at least, a partial enigma although my sister at one
time expressed admiration for this young Jewish girl from Minnesota getting herself elected as the President of the
5,000 member Asian Women’s club. Madeleine accomplished this with the guidance of Meyling de la Cruz, who
was the proprietor of the Guam-based School of Music and Art which, in actuality was merely a platform for
Phillipina young women to find, hoepfully, gullible American boys. In my experience the level of musical talent in
that organization was minimal. Meyling was also the aunt to Ferdinand Marcus, the dictatotor of the
Philippines, a thief of his people’s wealth with a wife who liked shoes, and his political advisor which should tell the
reader a great deal. How else should a Jewish girl from a very small town in Minesota get to be President of the
Asian Women’s Association? What is that mental mechanism that encourages such a difficiency of thought?
What is truly mystifying for me is how Madeleine, who with her intimate political and personal relations with Her
husband, Ricky when he was governor and then with Governor Guttierez when Madeleine was his
Lieutenant Governor, managed , when both were indicted and Ricky convicted of serious illegalities and Ricky
sentenced, over which Ricky finally wrapped himself in a Guam flag, chained himself to a public statue of an early
Guamanian chieften and shot himself with a 38 at rush hour. to escape contamination?
Perhaps the answer lies in the fact that if enough guilt can be attached to one’s behavior and one is sufficiently
rewarded one quite likely become a loyal agent. …black mailed into obedience and the rejection of ideals .But this
analysis gives too much credit to Madeleine’s initial innocense, for as Governor Manuel Leon-Guererro indicated to
me Madeleine was ruthless when she wanted to discredit someone she thought stood in her way. Although she
chose the wrong path with me, fishing from anong the student body for improper sexual contact, she, together with
Marvin Montvel-Cohen had sufficiently immobilized my work that it was sufficient to encourage my departure. Now,
she is Guam’s representative to the United States Congress. Such is the title, but in pactice, however,she
represented the military establishment to the Guamanian people and tells them, in effect, what to expect and how
to behave. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SW5aFuw5MDM ;
Madelein’s talents at maneuvering were appreciated by the then Governor Manuel Leon-Guererro
who told me that she was envious of my contacts and wanted me off island. In this regard she
was not smart, for my aims were not political, but academic and cultural. She might have used my talents to assist
her in her political ambitions, but, if she thought at all, probably did realize that an enlightened public is harder to
control. I have always maintained that Madeleine was an enemy of education and cultural endeavor, despite the
glorious claim appearing in Wickipedia , Madeleine does not know enough to be interested in humanity, but she
does know enough to appear to be. She is not knowledgable about nor altruistic in her approach to important
matters, but is highly and personally ambitious which Steven Colbert probably realized when he produced that
famous interview with her. http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/167396/april-30-
2008/madeleine-bordallo
Also, after he had come to Guam, at a volunarily reduced fee as a favor to my efforts, Isaac Sterne
wrote me to tell me that he had not contributed to what apopeared to him to be malicious
efforts http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqAqQiP61co
Jean-Claude Gay Manlio Arena, Rome
Ceylon: I do not know why I have always had a strong fascination with this
island. I did visit in 1966 and found it both dignified and mysteriously frightening.
hoFtldsa
Harry Pieris was a most cordial host making it very difficult for a naïve American to believe
in Anglo superiority. Sri Lanka is, in its countty-side one of the most beautifully kept I have ever seen. As a final
note, the footholds in this rock at Sigayra are magnificent in their simplicity
Since during that period my domestic ill ease was increasing along with suspicions and evidence it was not exactly
an act of bravery, but a tactical device, to challenge Martin at a faculty meeting by providing evdence that there
seemed to be no material academic difference in what the students learned from those multisectioned classes for
which he ORDERED faculty members to agree on a single text to be used in all classes. At least he had the good
semse not to select the text himself, but ordering academic faculty to agree on an issue, aside from being normally
an unlikely event, it is, of itself, a gross violation of ideal academic goals …to which no-one, at the time, had
officially objected.However, I did, at a full faculty meeting and knew full well it would end my stay at the College. I
used it, hoping it would trigger a domestic decision as well and my reasons for accepting Guam were also related to
pushing the matter of a divorce ahead. So when Jean warned me that she would leave me if I chose Guam. I
thanked her and chose Guam.
Several years later I learned from a former student that some in some sort of authority had decided it would be
appropriate for the new Radford College Art Gallery to be named after Mrs. Martin. I cannot imagine why anyone
would have thought this appropriate as she showed absolutely no interest in art while I was there. Perhaps,
someone felt, it might compensate for her having married Charles Martin. The arts have a reputation for being
liberalizing, yet Mrs, Martin, outide her church would write down the names of students who appeared without a
hat and gloves.
AN INTERREGNUM……between “posts”
Paul Brach and what one shouldn’t be.either as a human being or an artist During
the late Spring I stayed with my father in Escondido, California while I searched for a position. One of the places I thought I
should like to be was the La Jolla branch of the University of California. I had an appointment fore an interview with Paul Brach,
then head, and, I think, newly head of the Art department there. I arrived, of course, on time but to find Brachvery much involved
with several other members of the faculty all very obviously very anxious to please him. He and everyone else knew that I was
among them, but it was as though, in fact, I was not there for Brach was leading their observations in regard to a faculty member
who was not present, a MacDonald or something like that when this MacDonald appeared in the doorway, paused for a moment
and very quickly explained, in a clearly Scots accemt, why he was coming to this room to fetch something. I was also clear that he
beca,me immediately aware that he ahd been the subject of conversation. When it also became clear to me that this Gentile was
not wanted among them, not I think, because his painting style was academic, it was academic, but it was also very knowledgable
and, in itself, referenced an entire period of painting after 1850, but because he was not a Jew. The Scots left and after a few
comments from the others with still no recognition that I was present I also left deciding that as attractive as Soputhern California
was, and the proximityies to my remaining family I could not, even had I been wanted, worked with a man like Paul Brach. I have
ever since loathed his personality and character and, as is my habit, wondered how his paintings were, somehow, an expression of
them. I think Leo Steinberg may have been very gentle in his criticism of Brach’s work, but, nevertheless, indicating the direction
one should go in order to arrive at the conclusion that Brach is a fraud, an egotistical fraud who augments his defensive measures
by adeptly recognizing a potential threat presented by any real talent showing above the horizon and killing it off. In this way he is
similar in this audacious chutzpa to Marvin and Evan Montvel-Cohen, Madelein Zeien Bordallo. I continue to meet up with
the type who, for some inexplicable reason find considerable success in offering the bogus to the masses who accept it. I suppose
the answer might be simple like the quality of the object matches the quality of the audience, e.g. QO=QA, or,perhaps,, to put it
another way, there is a negative correlation between sophistication and appreciation(understanding).
“sophostication”=the appearance of knowledge and “appreciation”=genuine response to stimulae, or to put yet another way
“talking the talk isn’t walking the walk”, or like Simon Magus in his approach to Simon Peter offering to buy the secret of raizing
the dead. Simon Magus didn’t accept the reality of the real, so, therefore, everything was fake and he simply wanted to make a
better fake. Forrest Fenn shows the same disbelief when he makes the assumption, though with some difficult hesitation, that
there is nothing to know about “art” except when it sells, so if it sells , it is art. The same is even more true of Gerald Peters. And
by contrast Fenn is an angel.
CEDAR FALLS---THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTHERN IOWA
Henrickson: transfer
transfer
transfer
Walter Ugorski was a faculty member at The University of Northern iowa when I
arrived and he made a point,. Along with his “nephew” to invite me to Thanksgiving dinner which the nephew at
which the nephew base the big turkey with a used oil paint brush and served me in the nude….the boy was nude,
not the turkey, well the turkey was nude as well in that the feathers were gone. All of the above was with straight
face for my hosts as well as for myself. I was perplexed by this performance but curious enough to see what might
develop. Nothing outide the above did develop, Later, The boy told me that he and his “uncle” had
wanted to test my responses to what they considered outrageous behavior. It was, of course,
outrageous, but not as outrageous as I thought, their arriving unexpectedly to my house in a herse
painted a bright pink, some months after Walter had been dismissed.
I was then and I am still am perplexed by the evident talent Walter had to graphically represent
whatever he wanted, was superlatively verbal, as they both, he and his “nephew”were, but their
perceptions of who they were in the eyes of society appeared to be a hurdle in their negotiating an
amenable solution. Who am I to talk? I have my own problems,.After all, the University did not even
acknowledge my research, answer its implications which were seriosly implicated the teaching system
in a structured policy to police the minds of mentors available to children. The fact that lying and
uncreative personalities were officially the preferred type to go inot the teaching profession could not
be brought into question. So, when the University was forced into hiring the racist bigot, Kenneth
Lash, to head the departmnent the university raised not a finger to prevent his limiting my research
interests. Well, it was no great matter since I had already decided on another course of action, but, in
principle it was wrong.
Thanksgiving in my studio
c. 1980
Tha Palace of the Governors, Santa Fe. The original name of this
city was “LA VILLA REAL DE SAN FRANCISCO DE ASSISI”. There had been representatives of royalty here,but
royalty themslves hadn’t come until relatively modern times. The latest, of which I am aware were, at somewhat
separated times vists from the King and Queen of Spain and Prince Charles and Princess Anne of Britain.Despite
the distinct claims of being a democracy the romantic attachment to those of elevated social status, regardless of
character, is a prominant part of the American profile. In line with that the red and yellow flags surmounting the
Palace, very reminiscent of Navarre, have nothing, of which I am aware, to do with either Aragon or Castile which
were the principle areas involved with “New Spain”. The crests below are, I imagine, there to represent the various
families which settled the area. Some people did, of course, settle the area before the Americans opened it up to
everyone in the later 19th century, but initially the majority of settlers were political exiles from Spain and its
Inqusiition which required Jews to forfeit property, convert to Christianity and leave Spain. They were awarded
vasts tracts of land which they subsequebtly sold and now would like to have back. The crests are misleading and
as evidence they refer to man’s romantic imagination…yet, they do have some practical touristic value. There have
been, however, some legitimate royal and nobel descendants who have settled in the area, among them,
Senutavich, de lusignan, Russell, Duke of Bedford, Baroness Rosen, de Guize, Pavlavi, Ngeum and others I may be
unaware of. After all, Royalty doesn’t exactly have a reputation for chastity.
Fritz Scholder was a nice enough fellow, but so tremendously well known
internationally and loved and repected by the Indian community as a critic I had real problems in recognizing how I
should handle the intellectual and social problems involved in writing art criticism about his work. Ideally, as well,
none of those aspects should play a role in criticsm. I do not feel I succeeded. Even without the rather burdonsom PR
assocuared with Fritz, his creative output while revealing readily identifiable and conventional virtues has not, to my knowledge,
revealed evidences of significant aesthetic search.
Anita Bryant at the time of her crusade to save the children, well intended, I have no
doubt , but exceedingly misguided. I have no dount as well that her instinct and her intuitions were functioning but
they had been warped out of shape by the teachings of procrustes. I felt her pain , wrote her to think something of
the torment she may be causing others (not homosexuall others) and her lawyer wrote back a gentle, but also
imperceptive letter referencing the numbers of Biblical references condemning homosexuality but, characteristi
cally not questioning the sources or the motivations.At the time I published in The Santa Fe Reporter under a nom
de plume an article citing the local research I had done among the churches in the area. When I asked one of the
ministers of one of the Baptist churches with a membership of 200 how he might respond were he to learn that 20
of his parishiners were gay or lesbian. He immediately accused me of being one (or you wouldn’t have asked the
question”) and he continued to say “They wouldn’t dare!”. Dick McCord urged me to allow my real name to be
used, perhaps thinking, and hoping, someother newsworthy development might come up. I emphatically refused
stating that I was not the only person living in my house and I had no right to put them into a potentially
threatening position…”besides, Dick, it is the issue that is important, not me.”
Many years later after Mel Gibson had had his regretable encounter with a Jewish policeman I wrote a letter to the
editor of the Santa Fe New Mexican, the other Santa Fe newspaper and at the very end of the letter had written
the suggestion that since Gibson enjoyed doing the research for his films he might be interested in researching the
historical relationship between the Jews and the Khazars . The whole letter apppeared once before I received an
email from Michael Odza, the then editor of that section stating that I had been blocked for four days for having
written that suggestion. The letter continued to appear, but that last sentence was deleated. I wrote Michael to ask
him who had complained and for what reasons, but he would not reply to the question. A long time later, in
answer to a different question, Michael told me he was no longer editor of that section of the newspaper.
In 1845 the United States confirmed the legality of The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo which put an end to the
Mexican–American war. That treaty provided for the recognition of the Royal ( Spanish) and Mexican land grants in
these new United States territories. Many of these land grants were confirred by the Monarchs of Spain on the
Sephardic exiles forced to leave as a result of the Alhambra Decree (1492) which exiled Jews from Spain.
Subsequently the owners of the lands sold the lands and they became the property of others. Now, for several
decades there has been a program to have these lands returned to the heirs of the landgrant original owners on
the grounds that the sales were illegal. Senators Bingman and Domenici have both sponsored a senate bill to
investigate the matter. Of course, the outcome is in doubt, but it is of interest to note that the people who are
known to me to be outspoken activists sponsoring the reopening the question of the treaty’s legitimacy are Rabbi
Hellman, Stan Eudis and the Converso priest at San Ysdro. Eudis spoke to me by phone of his role in this which
was to give advice to the heirs on how to have the lands returned to them and the priest, at a Mass of a 17 year-
old suicide, a grandson of Angelina Delgado, openly mentioned the advisability to frustrate the Anglo in his plans
for this area.
The grants in question, of course, have not remained idle, but have been “improved” and done so by those who
purchased them…not by the original owners. In their strong focus in having returned to them what had been
theirsbefore they sold it these heirs seem to forget that the land in question “belonged” originally to the resident
Indians who had been very cruelly treated by the Spanish and the young Indian boys enslaved to the service of
the military and the church…along with captured herds of sheep.
I believe it was this performance that really demonstrated to me the amazing powers of theater.
This production of “The Maids” by Camus left me with the experience of reality having been twisted. The
performers were not professional but “off the street” and the director of the performance was Swiss, AnneMarie
de Peury Thompson. It is possible, I imagine that the ywo male maid leads in this production of the maids were
lovers. Tom Armour, the one on the left, had been, I was told, a “call boy”. I am unable to imagine why anyone
might call for him. After I had bought my house at 428 Xamino de las Animas he and the woman he lived with,
whom I’d thought was his wife, rented my house while I still had had to remain as a faculty member at the Universi
ty of Northern Iowa. I had bought the house in July but returned at Thanksgiving to check on matters which had
quickly begun to deteriorate. I had been informed that fifteen people had been living in my house. Perhaps Tom
had subrented. In any event the septic system had failed and excrement was flowing down the Camino de las
Animas and past the house owned by Gustave and Jane Bauman. I was thoroughly revolted by this turn of
events and certainly was not turned on by the prospect of joining Tom and his wife in an erotic threesom. It was
not the first time such an offer had been made me , even on condition of employment at a state college in
W[sconsin. Somehow or other I had always had the impression that such enticements were rather beside the point
and I certainly had not considered them complimentary to my academic qualifications. In any event I have these
actors and Anne Marie to thank for having given me a theatrical experience that turned my understanding of the
theater quite on end. Perhaps it had been my momentary receptivity, but this piece, rather odd to begin with,
totally convinced me of those characters’ mindsets and “bent” the reality I was living in.
Revealing the score, or, so to speak. At the Ballard House, there is Alan Pearson, then Director of the
Governor’s Gallery. Next, a teacher of voice and wife of a St. John’s professor ( I can’t recall her name even though
she was for awhile my voice coach, she later recognized, without doubt, the improvement in vocal approach that
Niska taught me), next Corona Byrd, wife of “the Water Judge”, me and on the right Ruth Ballard and seated is
Louis.
Una Hanbury: I could not bring myself to accept any part of Una
Hanbury whom I regarded as a socially aggressive, inartistic fraud who supported herself mainly by her ability to
convince the ignorant that she was legitimate. When ever she departed from the purely straight-on academic
school training she tripped over her lower middle classkitchy aesthetic. The final event with her came when she
exhibited a bronze figure of an Indian woman and placed a real toruquis in the necklace the woman was wearing. I
was told by Conway B. Thompson, a sculptress friend of hers, and a colleague of mine from Virginia, that my
published comment about that figure really turned Una against me “There’s no wonder she hates you.” She had
told me. No one really likes being hated, I iamgine, but what made Una Hanbury expect that every one else in the
world was stupid and that there had not been real values inherent and very appropriate to art. Had she never
heard of Herbert Read, Roger Fry or Clive Bell? Had she thought it my responsibility to help her make a living
by pulling the wool over the public’s eyes? No way! It was not she lacked a talent, it was, however, a very minor
talent.
Eugene Shonnard at 90 Michael Naranjo
Naranjo of Santa Clara Pueblo has no eyes with which to see. His fingers and eidetic
imagry take over the responsibility of visualzing aspects of Indian culture. In addition to those abilities he is a
gentle man. When I visited him at his home, at his request, in Santa Clara Pueblo to discuss my writing about his
work he emerged out of his bedroom with a smile on his face and with a pair of very blue eyes. After some minutes
I could no longer resist commenting on that image and he smiled again and told me that when he felt particularly
patriotic he would wear the ones that had the American flag on them. Michael had lost his eye sight and his eyes
after having been the victim off an exploding hand grenade. It was not difficult to write glowingly of Michael’s
work, for even if he had been sighted his work would have commanded high respect. What his work suggests is a
strong relationship between one’s memory of human anatomy and its translation into form. I have not heard any
claims that he had help to realize the characteristics of human anatomy, nut this figure of an Eagle Dancer would
have been considered worthy and outstanding had it been done by a sighted artist.
Jacques Cartier had, over many years treated me well and with patient understanding. He
taught me a great deal. I could never understand the rather debased and bitchy comments published in the critical
work “A Spider In The Cup” by the nom de plume “Norman Males” although that author’s observations about the
nature of New Mexican Catholicism seemed “quite on”and the later, much later, emergence of the Arch Bishop
Sanchez’s liasson with the daughter of the Arabian alcohol importer did not help to disprove this understanding.
These characteristics cerytainbly made Concha Ortiz y Pino de Kleven’s job of adjusting the reputation of the
Hipanic among the Anglos of Santa Fe very much more difficult…nut then. after all, it has been rather well
established that these Hispanic are the Conversos of the Spanish Inquisition, dispossed by Isabella of Castilleand
exiled to the New World. Such a history might possibly explain the rather horrible annual reenactment of the
crucifixion.
A 1912 photo of Penitentes who even a half century later practiced their beliefs. Roaul
Julia in a film by that name documents this practice.
”Residence” was the name of the alternative learning environment to which purpose I had
placed my new 6 bedroom house at 428. This photo came from Rolf Koppel’s photographic class.
Helena Ruthling made herself and her two children, Doodlet and Ford quite locally, at least,
famous. Doodlet became Jacques Cartier’s stage manager and Ford, a painter of sorts, with the rather unusual
distinction of having some of his paintings of Indian pottery used as postage stamps. They were quite handsom as
stamps go and there was one time when purhasing a sheet or two of them I was so conscious of Ford having had a
hand in them that I made the check out in his name instead of that of the Post Office..
Gustave Baumann and Jane, his wife, were very important stabilizing influences for me during
my first stay in Santa Fe althouth they were probably unaware of it. If I hadn’t known that the Baumans were near
by the highly irregular life style of the Breneisers would have thorughly distressed me. . They were solid,
conservative in their personal behaviors and were Quaker, which I believe is apparent in his work.
Pansy Stockton was a woman of considerable interest in everything she did. What she did
was almost always off-center and egocentric. Rather than the traditional media of oil paint or watercolor Pansy
chose the stuff, the detritus from nature and combined this vegetable matter into very convincing landscapes. As a
woman of considerable size she was described when spotted sunbathing on her roof as a pancake. When traveling
with Jacques Cartier as a jitchhicker she came down to breakfast at the hotel wearing two leopard skins, one in
front and one in back and as she strode through the dining room at each step an expanse of naked flesh was
flashed. I met her at a party when I was 21 at a house in Seton village and she was wearing oen of those huge
paisley piano covers with a 12inch fringe and a turtleshell comb that Jacques Cartier had given her that ahd been
with Carlotta, the Empress of Mexico. My sister has often remarked that I tend to atare too long at things that
interest me , I guess I do for Pansy looked at me and remarked so all might hear. “You’re right! I’m not wearing
anything underneath”. It wasn;t what I had been thinking at all but it was an effective comment….egocentricity again,
that is, a validation from others that you are really there.
This is a Santa Fe art opening. At one time there were 14 in one day and they all served
white wine and bits of processed cheeze.
The Santa Fe Opera, for years the center of cultural achievment in Santa Fe. I knew the ranch
before it became the opera.
On opening nght the opera orchestra comes out onto the exterior balcony overlooking the entrance patio and plays
dance music for the audience and the singers come as well and dance with audience members. There is a
Venetian/Vienese sense of party.
Catha McCullum was both an actress and a playwright who, at middle age, had contracted
cancer and in her honor her theatrial friends from San Francisco came as a body to perform two of her plays for the
Santa Fe audience while Catha greted everyone in the lobby and called them by name. She was a most admirable
woman.
Jon Vickers with whom I had a gratifying telelphone conversation on the subject of
Peter Grimes, an operatic character Vickers created. I was writing a script of a play called “Pedro” for Elizabeth
Harris and the character of Peter Grimes played a role. I needed to check with Vickers on Grime’s character. He
told me he was a viscious man, yet, I believe, he was seen as viscious by an evil community. While we disagree on
that I can only commend Vickers for his generous civility in answering my call and leaving the rehearsal stage
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-juIqZGKdZA(Peter Grimes) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPET4RAe6yQ
(Samson and Delilah) Both these videosdemonstrate, I believe, Vickers controlled (barely) passion for the roles, the
distraught Grimes, the helpless Samson, What I sense very much in his performances is the sublimation of the
self to the part, the artist to his art. In addition, I can only very much feel gratitude for Vickers generosity is
helping me focus on his interpretation of Grimes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UQtTrmRwGEus
Ragnar Ulfang was a very popular longtime participant in the productions of The
Santa Fe Opera. I was particularly impressed by his enunciation of the name “Salome” in the Strauss
opera which was one of the productions. For me it carried some of the same agonizing pleasureable torment as
Vickers’ note in “Samson and Delilah”. He and his wife came tro dinner one time with, I think,
Doris Cross, Ragnar was very affable, his wife withdrawn and Doris quite mute..consequently most, if not
all of what was said was between Ragnar and myself, He saw a brown paper bag that had been disjointed and
laid flat upon which at an earlier time I ahd followed the genealogical family line as it had appeared in Sandeherred
Book…a book of the history of county farms . He recognized the name of KLAVENESS . The following videos
are from Ingemar Bergman’s delightful film “The Magic Flute”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMt74eFrWnw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UQtTrmRwGE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmfwzxjBN7k
vera Zorina, (Brigitta Liebersohn)Although she and I have never met she, too, was very
generous in giving me her support in connection with the Scandinavian Film Festival I tried to establish in Santa Fe.
What I noticed from that effort was that creative Scandinavians are, on the whole, much more generous and free
of vile that characterizes the uncreative ones. Swedish women, especially, should be spanked severely at least
once a month until they pass menapause and then there may be some doubt as to their lack of ambivalance.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oiro_d2Yr14 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZq8v6Dstw0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KpbYZi_DGA
(check out Scribd.COM) was, I had thought, someone who wanted to be a friend to me. I
thoroughly enjoyed his writing, especially in “Nambe Year One” but it developed that he was a rather traitorous
person which I have detailed in an article available on scribd.com.
Laura Gilpin. (I do not know the photographer.) Laura and I had met a few times and, it seeme,
we respected each other as human beings. In Santa Fe, that was not often the case as more usually extraordinary
Gunvar S. Miller, an admirer, who, despite her poverty brought me shrimp to the Sunday
champagne brunches. In addition to that she was also an intelligent and aware lady.
Forrest Moses: One of the most discrete, reserved, and aloof personalities in Santa Fe. I never published criticism of his work. I
suspect he might have felt relieved at that. He is accomplished and well-mannered.
Elizabeth Harris:…and at her feet “superdog” Elizabeth was quite influential in helping me to develop a
more workable sense of theatre. I had sent her a very short skit on the subject of boy becoming a man, her adopted Philippino boy
had just sprouted his first pubic hair. The script, apparently she liked and urged me to develop it. Well, I am open to much
experimentation so I did and developed the play “Pedro” who, because he is left unguided by his parents welcomes an imaginary
playmate who introduces him to other, now dead, Peters and whom he resusitates, who, by example, try to indicate that
“Pedro”may have choices.
In connection with the work, that is
really to say, the “mind set” of a creative person it seems important to record that they
almost invariably appear unable to properly defend themselves against the actions of what
can rightly be called, “the unscrupulous”.
It seems to me sometimes that I am very slow in recognizing the real value in what I do. I
have in mind, at this point, the psychological study I did while at The University of Northern
Iowa where I discovered that one of the characteristics of those identified as “creative” was
that they did not lie about themselves to others, nor to themselves and a corollary to that
discovery was that those who did lie were rewarded with higher grades.
Elizabeth is a creative artist. I learned a great deal about how to see things from her and the
last I heard was that the house she bought in a small Hispanic community north of Santa Fe
and was spending a lot of money in its renovationand a chance remark by the “former
owners” indicated that they knew something that would allow them to get this improved
property back whenever they wanted it. This is a repeat, an echo, of the agenda on the part
of the heirs to land grants, and quite nearly entrely supported by Jews, to have their once
sold, now improved, properties back, which, in the case of Santa Fe, itself, would mean that
1/3 of now very valuable property would be returned to heirs on the basis that the original
sales were illegal. There having been innumerable sales in the mean time is of no
consequence and, in all of this wrongly based intellectual activity, of course, the Indian, who
was here long before the Spanish, is forgotten.
John Galea brought me to Fr. Peter Serracino-Inglot here in Malta, once the Rector of theUniversity of
Malta and having had several appointments as governmental representative of Malta to various political-social-
economic sessions in Europe he was well-positioned. I do not know what John expected, but I recognized
immediately that Fr. Peter shouldn’t be seeing anyone and using what energies he had to some other person’s
interest. He died not long after. Language is at the centre of Serracino Inglott's philosophical work with Thomas
Aquinas and Ludwig Wittgenstein as the two critical signposts on his conceptual terrain. This last information
may indicate that John Galea’s instincts may have been correct in that the initial draft of “Pedro” was very much
concerned with language as a vehicle of thought and experiential response. As I see it now in the light of
Greenaway’s approach in “Pospero’s Books” language is a companion to visual symbol and movement in
transmitting ideas. Of course, I doubt that Michael Powell would have disagreed with that.
Michael Powel, film director of “Red Shoes”, and came to Santa Fe, read my script entitled “Pedro” and
kindly and generously told me he could not see it as a film. I was dissaitisfied with his comments, but, at that time, had not seen
Peter Greenaway’s film “Prospero’s Books” which had created the very texture I had sensed I needed. Not having heard of
Greenaway I was unable to reference it to Powell and wuiten possibly it might not have been the tactful thing to dom for possibly,
their filmic philosophies may not be compatible. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j72jnYTePU8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07saf8scSrgRed Shoes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7OfbmHWx94 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slo5FZyPtfw beginning
Doris Cross was given credit for having suggested a special effort to “celebrate the
Madonna” and the suggestion from someone very much a Jew the suggestion held a special significance. The
exhibition took place in an empty house on Canyon Road that was for sale. The image of the Virgin on the back of
this man is said to have been the subject of choice as an effort to avoid being sodomized while in prison. I have
found the intent rather perplexing…for most, I understand, but do not know, prefer virgins. In that light the image
might be seen as a provocation
Henrickson: “Barque of the Madonna” This work was
hung in this exhibition as to be seen only when one having reached the back room of the house and had turned around to leave
and, by chance, glanced up might it be noticed. I am sure this was a reflection of the admiration the orgnanizers had for my criticasl
efforts. Aslhough, surprisingly enough Geraldine Pricewent out of her way to tell me she found it admirable. Either way I am
unmoved. Some of my first attempts not to realize the human figure but to realise how it might
be pushed in and out, to and from, re-encompassing space.
Henrickson
“ The Pregnant man”. The first work I had cast. Portrait of a friend
with a severe decisional problem.
and I should not forget my High School Art Teacher James Foster Kenney for having provided what E. Paul Torrance later
called a safe space for exploration provided by the mentor.
All of the above had, in one fashion or another influenced my perspective on the events and goals in my life. Some
of the influences were direct, others indirect, some intentional as with Barbara Sessions, the first wife of Roger
Sessions, and some unintentional. Some I tried to avoid, others to moderate and still others I embraced, but they
all played a role, and, of course, these were not the only ones, but they are, I think, the major ones for this early
period.
Some one writing the class prophecy’s for the 1947 graduation class in Arlington, Massachusetts was, I must
admit, quite perceptive for whatever the time period in question was I was probably on a tropical island , on the
beach, in short pants, and painting…in short, I was a romantic little boy interested in art and preferred being alone.
But the year before I was in Puerto Rico and had my one-man exhibition at the University of Puerto Rico there,
owned a bar called “el Burito”that I was teaching at a strange private art school in Santa Fe, New Mexico called
The Hill and Canyon School of the Arts owned and operated by Stanley and Elizabeth Breneiser, where I did, in
fact, learn a great deal, very little of which I would have sought out. But while there I did some work of my own.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJ25Ai__FYU Jung
It seems to be an initation fee on the Hispanic males to spend prison time for
one or another social offense. Vincent, however was part Lebanese which may have
accounted for all the difference. The above example does not pass for the typical prison art
work, despite the comments Marcie Cate made me. It is atypical largely 1) for its not
being morbid, exaggeratedly devotional and burdonsomely sexual. It also, 2) qualifies as
“creative” in that despite both the absence of training and the usual art materials Vincent
manages to take what was at hand, a set of plastic stencil outlines, colored pencils and an
active imagination to produce an admirable amount of work which has a great range of
focus. He was in jail for some offense, and was allowed leave to attend a family celebration.
Took advantage of the leave, left for Florda to see his and daughter and returned some days
later and turned himself in. Petra Maes who was the judge in the case gave
him an additional 13 years. I am certain she did so to punish the mother for having married
a non-Hispanic.
Huicole matriarch
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QBBvNeXKxM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qd881fQQrnk
After Angelina’s having come on to me with her husband looking on, he died, and she
suggested I might consider taking over, but then added, “I suppose you wouldn’t be
interested after two husbands having died.” For me, this amounts to an admission of
something like murder.
Richard Marquez comes from a long line of Santa Fe people. I
met him after the contractor who was building my studio had hired him to be a mud boy,
that is, the fellow who mixed the concrete for the plastering on the exterior of my studio.
Soon after the contractor began his buuilding, ands I think he id an excellent and
conscientious job, I had to ask him to limit his contacts with me throughout the day. He had
come every 20-30 minutes to me throughout the day to ask this or that….all related to the
building…but the effect on me was to raise my blood pressure with the interruptions into my
own mental focus. Consequently, I asked him to tak to me only at the top of thre morning
when he came to work and unless there was a real emergency to leave me alone.
The first week when Richard came to work ended and the pay period was due I made out the
check for the contractor and he scampered off to his other intersts and I made a cjeck for
Richard, but he stayed. It was five o’clock and he didn’t leave until 9:30 when I told him I
needed to prepare my supper. Monday came and Richard arrived early by thirty minutes. I
was surprised at this so I complimented him thinking it quite unusual for an Hispanic to
arrive at work early.
He explaind that since he was living in his truck and had nothing else to do he thought he
would come. “Why are you living in your truck?”. “I left home, we had an argument.and I
have no money”. “What happened to the money I gave you two days ago?” “ I gave it to my
wife for the children.”
It also turned out he hadn’t eaten but for how long wasn’t clear. “I see”, said I, “I’ll give you
lunch when the time comes.” “You don’t have to do that”. “I know I don’t, but it would be
easier to feed you than to pick you up.” So, I prepared spaghetti with a nice meat sauce.
Actually, I enjoy feeding people. This was Monday and it soon five o’clock came and Richard
resumed the chair he had used two days earlier and started again to tell me his life story, his
separation from his wife, his children, the death of one brother over a girl and a second
brother who was being kept by an Anglo in Colorado. I had anticipated this so when 9:30
came again I told him I needed to go to bed and that I had prepared a place for him in a
back room.
For about a period of six monthsd Richard adapted to my life style and we enjoyed
eachoteher’s company. He never joined me on the Sunday brunches, not feeling comfortable
with a lot of non-Hispanic folk. But he voluntarily prepared the living room by vaccuming and
polishing. However, he had no idea how to set a table and this underscored for me the
nature of the origin of table manners and the purpose of the ceremony of dinner. Thereb was
atime when I wondered whether Richard would have any understanding of the dining
formalitities of a century earlier in England as depicted in “Greystoke” and with which I had
been familiar all my life.
Unfortunately, the curiosity that had made Richard a successful provider of his family for 15
years, that is, being a burglar did not keep him from observing a neighbpr’s house down the
street, getting caught and some days later having the Sherifs break into my house without a
warrant, the Sherrif informing me ‘We can kick doen you god damn door anytime we want.
Tom Kirby had more to offer , I believe, than he might have known. He
was one of the better painters in Santa Fe and unusually modest.
Dan Bodelson and wife: from my
point of view, one of life’s most pitiable failures, a modern Aztec victim of the wrongness of
the majority, and he, as well as the dim-witted she, have followed along willingly believing,
like those led by some Judas Goat, to their oblibion. This is a guy with technical ability and
no insight as to how it might be used. Sexy, charming and a beautiful set of teeth…oh my
god, what a piss-off! What a tragic figure, among too many, of a well trained, obedient good
boy, who solves life’s problems by doing what he is told, receiving support, adulation and ,
accepting without question, the vacuuming of his imagination. He is, to my understanding,
one of the many offerings of human sacrifice to the god of societal expectation. I disapprove
.
Anne Shille’s photo , dangerously secured because of the silly superstitious reastructions,
of a “Good Friday celebration “ at the Rancho de Taos. She was lucky they didn’t take her
camera.
Iris Brendel: The charming, but divorced wife of Alfred Brendel. The pianist/ Iris ,a ceamist in Vienna, visted
me , photographed by Borzoi living in an old airplane behind the house. Every Christman, Honaka, she sent me a
cartoon of herslef and her life. The, of a sudden, she seemed to have a problem and I received no more
photographs of her ceramic cartoons .This one of the American poet
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkX4MyDeIqI
Rintaro Yagi whom I met at The Barbican
Centre in London. I bought the only pievce that sold. What interested me, and, at the time I failed to understand
the significance of the information. The sculptor had somehow won $15,000 and used that amount to sponsor his
exhinbition in London in the hopes, of course, of furthering his reputation. Perhaps, indeed, he did. I cannot be
certain he didn’t , buit, it seems to me that an investment of $15,000 for a return of $800 is not adviseable. One
gallery director, a former gallery director, at the time she told me, all artists make suvch investments in their
careers. In short, they pay, or they rent, the gallery for an exhibtiion, the gallery doesn’t sponsor them, althougjh it
appears as though, through their excellently perceptive aesthetic view they know what they are doing, it is simply,
untrue. It is a conspiracy to pull the wool over the eryes of the public and one lie suppo rts another and the house
of lies remains because the ignorant buying public supports it. I must, in my basic nature, be extremely naieve not
to have seen it in that way before. I am a teacher, an educator, I cannot bring myself to support a lie. The Barbican
Centre gets the reputation at Yagi’s expense. This is not the wa it should be and Yago ‘s efforts should have been
supported by an honest and knowledgable directorship. It wasn’t.
Sara Melton tried to be a good friend, but on one important occasion, interferring in an
arrangement made between me and a former student Joanna Wilson that would have allowed me to take off for
Mexico for awehile and Joanna to pay ½ rent to me rather than full to another, but Johannachose to not send me
the money, MY money I needed inorder to live, put my life in danger in a country already on the verge of chaos and
walked off wi th a couple of thousand she may have believed I didn’t need as much as she did. Joanna wished to
reestablish the relationship after my coming to Malta, she got the point (good for her) that it was not welcome.
Darlene Parker Vigil is someone I met through jher exotic bird shop and learned to
respect both her sense of practical expediency and comittment to her business which, inb her case, was also her
profession. Her husband cheated on her and she dumped him, but soon took up with another woman’s hasband
who had been dumped himself by the mother-wife figure he craved, or required. In this arrangement the traditional
roles are reversed and twelve years after it begane she wrote to me …”We are still together…can you believe it?”
He, it seems, was jealous of Darlene’s and my mutual repect and affection for each other..something he could not
achieve and so attempted to destroy it by telling her I had groped him.
In the meanwhile both parties held me somewhat responsible for the other’s
behavior.
Theodora reported that in the early forties on a trip to Wahington D.C. she
encountered Alice Roosev elt Longworth and had been propositioned by her.
I have included this bit on Allen Dulles with the photograph of his father ( oruncle,
depending upon the true extent of brain damage and/or the reliability of childhood
impressions) because this Wikipedia article mentions only one child by name. Yet
the last time I saw Allen Macy Dulleswas in a parking building in Santa Fe when he
and I, pleased to see each other again, had begun a rather animated conversation
when a woman, presumably his sister, according to report, put a somewhat abrupt
ending to it. It had been Allen’s companion, a Charlotte Trigo ofColorado, a
lawyer I believe, who had from time to time filled me in on the event s which
surrounded Allen. At this time I held Sunday Champagne brunches at 428 Camino
de Las Animas and Allen and Charlotte, who shared a du plex several hundred
feet away, would often come. The purposes of the champagne brunches which I
had planned to begin at 10.00A.M., but the habits of nearly all who came, brought
them there an hour later, was to allow those who felt the need to be with someone
to chat about whatever could do so. Only once in the ½ dozen or so years I had
them before moving to Pojoaque had no one showed up. Usually there wer e seven
or eight. One time ther e wer e fifteen. Everyone brought something to shar e. I
offered the basic bread and butter and the Chudds consistently brought
Champagne.
A llen and I wer e able to play oral word games, that is, using words with a possible
double entendre, but for the most part there were only, mostly, four topics that
persistently were of concern to him. First among these were his own presumed
legitimacy, whether he was, or was not,his own cousin , the Biblical prohecies
concerning Jews, which the Chuddshad found offensive and threatened not to come
were he to be ther e and the characteristics and benefits of lithium…and, of course,
for some reason Andover Exeter. My particular interest was not in the gossippy
aspects of his ellocution but in the fact of the subjects’ prominence. There were
times when, like an old shellac recording, where there is an obstruction on the
surface the section with the obsticle repeats and cannot, on its own, surmount the
barrier. I looked forward to our being together in the hopes that somehow,
something might interject itself into my understanding so that all the pieces might
fall together. It was the theme of “The Manchurian Candidate” that kept recurring to
me but the only item in common there, I think, was Korea.
Allen did, at times, allow himself to perform some unual acts such as walking stark
nakedwith a book in his hand from his house to an empty field across the street.
Charlotte Trego, who was Allen’s nurse, caretaker and a lawyer, told me that they
had been married in a civil ceremony somewhere and that despite that, his family
had taken steps to assure that she would have no more to tdo with his life. The last I
heard from her was that she gave me his address and urged me to write assuring
me that of the people Allen knew it was I he trusted. I did write, but no answer was
forthcoming.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaKGCLTmqTg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ4Zkq2Vlhc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUW-frxo2X4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RAUm6l_t6k
Henrickson, drawing, private collection
Now actually, only one of these I had never met, Elliot Eisner, who for reasons I can only
conjecture, did his best to inhibit my getting the doctorate. All the others I knew, and, my
response to all of them, except Montvel-Cohen, was positive and accepting and non-
prejudicial except in the case of Charles Cohen who taught me both the technique and the
mind-set which determined their social responses to a non-Jewish environment and who
requested my insight into why he was unaccepted by the majority of goyim in that situation.
He accepted my analysis, changed his approach and soon rejected me. I now understood
better how the Canaanite horde felt after having been tricked by the wandering Israelites. I
also feel that I understand better how Hyman Bloom has been able to maintain a delicate
balance between what had been his classically academic training and the abundant visual
innovations during the 20th century.
Robert Beck, according to his mulato teaching assistant, whom Beck had advised to accept a
position at an all-black institution,tried his best to down-grade me academically and to
scuttle my reputation with the College Dean, a spinster who was energised by Beck, who
told me that as a “border-line:” student I should consider giving up on the Ph.D. and settling
for another MA. I responded that “You’re quite right, I am a border-line student in this
college, but it is the highest border-line one can have. In the other college I am a straight
“A”…and since I already have the equivalent of two Masters, a third would seem redundant,
so I believe I will drop this college as a major and reverse the position with the other and
accept their offer of an assistantship.” All my problems in getting my program approved
vanished and this may account for Reid Hastie’s comment regarding my being the only
student who had ever graduated so quickly from that academic program. In any event, what
I came away with from that experience was that the College of Education at the university of
Minnesota was, at that time, racist, being anti-black (which was certainly the impression of
Beck’s teaching assistant) and anti-goy. The experience certainly had one good result which
was I was forever inhibited from thinking that my intelligence was inviolate.
Perhaps the most disappointing of these relationships was that of Doris Cross , a person I
truly liked and who I thought liked me. At a time when she was my tenant at 428 Camino de
las Animas and the inflations had begun I needed to justify the relatively low rent she was
paying me and so came up with what I thought was a fair solution to both her and myself. I
figured out what the rent should be and used the difference as down payments on works I
chose. Consequently, I have three of her works, to very early ones and a column entitled
“COCK” which I not only found a good work, but an amusing one and one that seemed
autobiographical. It was this work that had been in a gallery for sale at $1,000. Doris wanted
the full $1,000 thinking that I had no right to the 40% the gallery normally got. I had to wait
another four months before she finally admitted that the work was not going to be sold
through the gallery and the $400 in question in effect did not exist. This experience of a
friendship I thought real was so crushingly disappointing I told Doris to leave and never to
speak or communicate with me again. I suspect that this sort of manipulative behavior to
benefit oneself at the cost of one’s friendships is a cultural expression and that it is in this
way that my enemies are secret, or, as the Norwegian film directors discovered I generate
envy in others….what an inconvenience.
I didn’t know Jo-Shawn Davis very well, mainly as the wife of the
painter who had come to my house at one time to interest me in buying, but I wasn’t and I
couldn’t. But, as usual, theatrical women have an easy time in attracting my interest.
art opening
Dorothy Brett
at Mabel Dodge Luhan's house
n.d.
Mabel Dodge Luhan Papers
Video
image of Doris Cross by Steinar Vasulka
Fritz Scholder Cover of a booklet about the
At about this time Douglas explained that the 17year old Hispanic who had been living with
him and I think was a sort of domestic had died as a result of a serious altercation with other
teenagers who resented his importance and advantages he experienced as Douglas’s
friend. The boy’s family had chosen him as chief mourner at the funeral and on that day had
given him the 16 year-old brother as a replacement. Great material in this for understanding
the role of religion in modern life.
One of the more unusualy openings for an art exhibition was when Douglas opened at a
down town gallery and the vast majority of thiose attending were some I had never seen
before at all…all, I was told, had come from the mountains and were heavily into drugs
which, I imagine, I had detected by the pallor and texture of their skin. I had never before
see so many people still talking who were not on their death beds.
Bradford Smith
Kumsal Sanzen
Henrickson: crayon
“Turkish Flying Carpet”
Ann Baxter:we met at Winnabel Beasley’s house, years after this photo
and I thought
Clara Apodaca, the wife of a former Governor of New Mexico, Jerry, was appointed
by the succeeding Governor Toney Anaya to the position of the State’s “Cultural
Affairs Director”. Apparently, Clara’s qualifying experience for the job was that she
had had an undergraduate course in art education, or so it was announced. At about
the same time Jerry Apodaca, a former high school sports coach, became
President of the Board of Regents of the University of New Mexico, and used that
influence to break the intend of the will of he artist Georgia O’Keeffe by having
her estate pay off certain unspecified taxes by means of a donation of two of her
paintings to the museum of New Mexico…an organization with which, during her life
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtigDNn3SyY 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybYfVwU1wg8 1
Lucy Lippard: Had Mrs. Lippard’s concern been more art than
politics, this would not have happened, nor would she have pronounced the indefensible
notion that all vital current vision stems from the feminist movement
Eugenio Arnal: photo of Paul Henrickson
Jacqueline de Lisignan
Henrickson: a satric portrait of Jacqueline when she could hardly restrain herself
from fondling Arnal’s dick. After the marriage she complained of how dark his penis
really was. I wondered what she expected.
. Jacqueline de Lusignan and her new husband
Tsitoris who thought to interest me in his attribute. Tsitoris was the 12th or the
13thhusband, Jacqueline had lost count while she told me she’d never gone to bed with
anyone without first marrying them. I think had Jacqueline been an actress, the professional
sense,she would have glowed in scenes of the marriage ceremony
Frank Ettenberg
Angelina Delgado, a tin smith. who, while her second husband was
alive and watching solicitously entertained me at tea in her trailor house, then he
died and she suggested a relationship and then wisely added” :After having buried
two husbands, I don’t suppose you would be interested.”
My last night in the USA June 26, 2000. Storm Townsend
was sending me off and I was quite purposefully “high” trying to avoid the crashing
Townsend: “Conquistador”
Wayne MacEvilly: a music faculty member at The College of Santa Fe during
the time I was a replacement faculty member for Carlos Naumer.He used our relationship
to vault out of an inappropriate marriage and may have used, I believe, his considerable
talents to demonstrate the Faustian challenges. I remember his telling me that when, in New
Delhi he was giving a concert and in a partifularly difficult passage he cheated on the finger,
thinking that no one would notice….but the critics there did notice. In a kind of linguistic
gymnastic language expression he changed his name to MacEvil…giving expression, he
made me think, of his self judgment and condemnation. What makes me very upset in
instances such as this is that society pressures unusual persons to conform to the norm
when, these people simply cannot be limited by these norms and the inner boilings they
experience often result in exaggeratedly self-destructive behavior. He wrote me once after
he left Santa Fe to go to Denver to enterain in a night club and he was quite unsure of the
results. Later when another friend of mine was particuarly mischievous told me that Wayne’s
daughter, whom my friend was seducing at the time, blamed me for her father’s departure.
Interesting, I suppose, that I should come up in a conversation during a seduction, it is like
being in competition with Casanova.
Joseph Bakos.: was an adequately trained painter who possessed both talent
and social charm used to support his reputation as an artist.
aConstceurw,Iblivghdm/copantre,guishlyxmpofanet,iuscdjgm.Inkhalwyerotsufgi,nmcparyot.Theslwibnvomthfe alirdwotcsbmnehpaurgslf,temindpchorvetsifnua.lImterhowd,Gnsf.vHamitecohlubndwasef-prvtiogy.Cncdamws’ehkotiblunrd,asemyivolwthdnuabemkiptjgonchsvlryumaipotcr’shd.
RolfKpe Herta Koppel was the loyal mother to Rolf Koppeland a lady
with a strong sense of social balance and negotiation. She had a quiet and gentle sense of humor and and felt
distress when the behavior of her son failed to exhibit those same qualities and cost him and me a potential
intellectual and cretaive development different from what either of us have actually experienced. Well, that is how it
goes…fate disposes. Rolf had shared residences with me, two in Iowa and one in Santa Fe and might have
continued to do so if he had fully realised that the sharing of facilties didn’t make them his, but he faild in that and
when he threatened to use the law courts to take them from me I threw him out. As an artist and a moderately
cultivated human being Rolf had much to offer, but he had a very weal sense of personal boundaries.
Henricoks:Expmt
Iodntmeasughikpvrycloedtgmaxsinhfrletd,byomsipcude,tafnmsbc.WhpeilyuaqtInor,sceid’tmhwlfoDrsat,xpeEci.Ifdonwulvrhaetbiydsngofmuprl,veatynAsigl.rIwoecathvDuxpsflnieatkorwhdygcfnsbelitmaVGogh… but “experts” are “experts” because, after all, they have the title, and they must be
believed and papa Murdock who brought the painting to Australia quite probably benefited
from the fraud, whereas all students and other innocent parties were being fooled, their
After the published review of the work of Shelby Matis, whom I did not know, I
received this amusing and good-spirited drawing from her together with an
invitation to visit her in her studio where, she, a woman of early midle age. told me
that I had correctly intuited the intent of her work and how, at 16 she had been
raped. This may not have been the start, but it gave an added impulse to my
emerging theory that the art product, if it is a genuine art propduct, tells us about
the person who did it. Now, I must clarify this statement. This does not mean that
another product which presents itself as an art product because “it is well done”,
“tells a story”, or what ever, but fails to be anything beyond a well-mannered
production isn’t an art product, or doesn’t tell us anything about the artist for it
quite probably does, for it is conceivable that there are individuals who for one
reason or another are unable, or have no compulsion to solve problems or concerns
symbolically. My interest is in identifying those people who do attempt to solve their
concerns symbolically and in discovering their means of accomplishing it. This
means, of course, that what the observer senses may be the concern of an artist is,
in fact, the artist’s concern. I think it abundantly clear with Caravaggio, somewhat
clear with Marsden Hartley and rather onsbcure with Paul Cezanne and Albert
Pinkham Ryder. My suspician is that were one to attempt to distinguish between a
creative artrist and an adequate performer this is the way to go.
and overlooked,
awkwardly in between
transsexual.
all speech
but preverbal, uttering nonsense,
I’ll play Ring Around the Rosy with you and Mother, may
and trousers.
knows.
One sharp jerk on your hidden secret umbillicous
Sandy told me that I had inspired this response in her…I am glad I could have done
so.
1. I think it important to add that Sandy left Santa Fe , taking her adventurous
self to Florda where she found emplyment with minimum pay with Mel
Fisher,the discoverer of the “Atocha” Spanish ship Nuestra Señora de
Atocha (1620) - Wikipedia, the free ...
*
Florence and Peter Van Dresser: Steven Van Dresser
thoughtfully gave me this photo after the death of Peter.There was a very quietly intense
relationship between the three of us.I would not be able to state that it was a mutually
balanced relationship, for what I felt was required were perceptions unfiltered by
individual needs. However, I suspect that is much too ideal to exist. What I most admired
about Peter was his ability to write scientific prose with poetic feeling.
Florence’s need to understand how carnal expression translates into spirit was a passion.
I had and still have the sense that Peter had interpreted my comment concerning our power
to change our worlds to be a kind of permission for him to forget to go to his appointment
for a blood change.
I feel I might not fully understand how Peter cared for me…for care, he did.
Forrest had developed one of the more prestigous art galleries in Santa Fe. It was
prestrigious not for its scholarship, but for its quasi-19thCentury ambiance and
theatrical authority.The staging was excellent, knowledge non-existant.
Forrest was unable to believe that there was anything more real than establishing
the reality through the weight of belief.
I was actually rather amused with this moderately severe criticism of an artist who, quite apparently, is simply giving warning ( a
reminder warning and quite justfiable) to anyone who might think of capitalizing on an image which is the product of someone
else’s imagination. But the law, as I understand, it allows photographic copies to be made in the general areas of education and
criticism where the intent is clearly not to misrepresent in any way what so ever. Also, as I understand it, there are insurance
company requirements that important works of art be photographed for identification purposes. I would come to the conclusion,
therefore, that making a copy of a work that is in your possession and reproducing it as a “Christmas card” for your personal use
would NOT be against the law. I am not sure that it would also NOT be against the law were you to sell such a Christmas card.
However, in regard to an attitude of the rights of an artist to images he produces itwould appear that when the artist dies all claims,
according to Forrest, by anyone else are legally void, which would mean thatanyone could use it, at any time, for any purpose, willy
nilly. This makes one wonder why so many owners of copyrights insist that those copyrights are valid. A century ago it was a
commonplace for art students to make copies of paintings in the museums. Would or should these people be punished for
attempting to learn?
At some time in the middle eighties I told Forrest thast I had a painting attributed to Bierstadt but lacked a professional photograph
of it. He kindly offered to photograph it and to send, as an added benefit, a copy to Kennedy Galleries in New York to learn what
they might think of it. I didn’t remark on that offer for, I thought, that just possibly there were people at Kennedy’s that might have an
interest in 19thCentury work. A buck is a buck after all. After a month having heard nothing from him I asked him what he ahd
learned. He reported that he had lost the letter from Kennedy’s and didn’t remember what it said, but within another two or three
months he held a small exhibtion of a few, or several, attributed Bierstadts one of which was ½ the size of mine, but dot for dot an
exact copy which being owned, or co-owned by Gold Galleries in Los Angeles was for sale for $18,000.
Subsequently, I took the painting to Gold Gallery and without tellingthem what I knew about the work except that I had had it since I
was 19 years old, asked if the y might tell me what they thought. Their response was arather telling silence. One of the fellows, not
Gold, himself, scanned it with a detecting light and announced with a tone of some disgust (obviously adopted to lower its value)
that the painting had been retouched. It had because it had recently been cleaned.
Another while passed and I made another qnuiry, but, int the meantime Gold had died and his estate was in his brother’s hands. He
kindly informed me that he would check the records. He, apparently, did so and came up with the report that the only clue he had
was that a painting answering the description had had a record in their files, but that the recod was withdrawn and a notice to that
effect replaced the record.
My most generous interpretation of these events, and in the light of Forrests’s assertions, would be that Forrest is naievly informed
about the applicatable legal positions as well as, and this is even more important sibce he professes to be an expert of sorts, unable
to understand that there are people with an infomed vision and critical faculties who undersatnd that there are real values inherent in
works of art…not all works of art, mind, for most genuine works of art are rare and it takes one as insightful as Bruce Chatwin to
recognize them. Forrest seemed surprised and unbvelieving hwne I demonsytated such an ability concerning a De Hory faked
Gauguin he had hanging over his mantel. I am sufficiently turned off by politicians of all strips to fully understand how Forrest and
John Connelly (the Texas governor who got shot) might think it great fun to put on an exhibtiion of fakes. Fortunately they
advertised the exhibtion that way for otherwise one might charge them with cultural deceit.
I often think about what appears to me to be a violent struggle of values going on in Forrest.
I do not believe him to be, basically, a dishonest man, although the above story is true and
the action dishonest and harmful in more ways than he might realize I think it might be a
consequence of the regretable dichotomy between military discipline where what is right
and real is what one is told and the world of the senses where one’s exersized and
developed antenae of perception intruct one as to what is proper.
It is this last characteristic which Forrest has shown most clearly in th decisions he made
regarding the property at Fenn’s Gallery where, it seems, every step of the way in terms of
the architecture and its emp[loyment he made only right decisions. It was the moral
structure of the military where the concept that might makes right, which I am certain, or at
least hopeful, that Forrest recognized was more than inadequate where he found it difficult
to accept , although he sensed it, that there existed a more approriate oriocedure in
assessing value.
*The circumstances may be differently asseumbled, perhaps, for a different understanding but these are what they
were. Along with 600 other Scandinavians a mid-summer night’s event was planned for the outdoor museum
established by the Finnish diplomat George Paloheimo. We were supposed to be costumed. All the Swedish women
were very excited about the event and the traditional costumes they would wear. The costumes vary from district to
dictrict throughout Scandinavia so I was a bit perplexed when a telelphone call from Elizabeth invited me to come to
her house for me to see a picture of the costume for the male. I tried to tell, but thought sh already knew it, that I was
Norwegina dn that, actually, I had solved the problem for myself, but she insisted, so I went. The maid was gone and
Elizabeth came out of her bedroom area wearing a powder blue jump suit and a freshly applied perfume. After she
brought out a children;’s book illustrating Swedish costumes and I needed once again to tlel her that I was Norwegian
and that I had, actually, solved the problem I had gained a sense of what was happening but was convinced of tit
when on the occasion of the winter celebration of Santa Lucia I arrived at their house just as James, her husband,
was returning from work his reception of me was so energized by penetrating hatred the air had become palpably
caustic.He stood near me outside the house, seemingly unable to move so I entered as though there had been
nothing, but knew she must have told him something other than what had actually occurred. People, male or femal,
who do not get what they think they want can be very destructive. I am still unable to understand how a wife could
willingly hurt her husband’s feelings in such a way…to say nothing at all of misleading himas to the character of
another male…and her own as well.
Towers Eclipse
Family
I cannot fault Kreigstein for her ability to follow graphic recipes in designing and executing social commentary
murals. I also must compliment Tom Lehrer for his witty characterizations, and accept his skills as a pianist. These
both of the ability to generalize, but it would be, I bel;ieve, an error to suppose that either muicianship or graphic
inventiveness were a part of their offerings to the public…not that the majority of the public would care. But, in an
ideal situation, it would be considered deplorable that a a nation such as The United States of America gets to be
represented mostly by fakes and con-men. It might even be true that these poseurs, for that is whatRutherford,
Kreigstein. Forrest Fenn and Gerald Peters get to be accepted as legitimate prophets…as if there were no reality. It
is difficult to prove, but creative and great art are not matters of opinion or dependent upon catelogue
pronouncements. Excelence is identifiable.
POJOAQUE
For me this was the most idylic place I have ever known.
For Jacques Cartier whi created the property, myself, Joseph Sablan and many others its
main charm lay in the acequia which flowed through the property and distributed the snow
melt throughout the summer. When I had ducks they too were overjoyed when the acequia
was flowing. It was, in fact, a material fulfillment of a divine promise.
I was lucky to have experienced it, yet, very regretably it was surrounded by evil. When
Jacues learned of my interest in living in the valley he warned me in a short statement
without explanation (and I didn’t ask for any) that the people there were “terrible”. The
emphasis he put on the word was all the explanation I needed at the time. That warning took
place more than forty years before I moved there. It was later I learned some of the ways in
which they were “terrible”. In general they are extortionists, liars, murderers, thieves
,adulterers and, they all go to church…now, of course, don’t we all?
Pojoaque was the home that Jacques Cartier had developed and I remember one time, very
clearly indeed,that Jacques told me that should I wish to live in that area I should know that
the people are “TERRIBLE”. They are.
One neighbor reportedly killed , or had had killed her husband because he wouldn’t sleep
with her anymore. Another whose sister was reportedly being abused by her lover and was
emplyed at the local hospital as a nurse obtained the drugs her boyfriend was known to
have needed measured doses, overdosed him and her brother and her son positioned the
body in a local bus stop shelter.
A district judge was dismissed from his position for stealing from a professional account,
then arrested for stealing three packages of cigarettes, and subsequently awarded another
legal position in a different country where the District Judge and the Chief of Police were
both convicted of statutory rape of a ward of the court and retained in their positions.
I recognized the moral crisis into which I had fallen and knew I had to leave with as little
notariety as possible.I managed it but not without out considerable loss, in part due to the
management of my Merril Lynch account.
Malta was chosen for a variety of reasons, but half of them were false. .
F
These older standing stones are illustrated here to simply point up the fascination there
seems to be for many in the uprightness, elborated, at times, with images or text, of
inanimate stones suggesting animation.
This Pojoaque home was an idyllic
location, psychologically isolated from the rest of the world where all forms of life
adjusted to each other’s needs. Storm Townsend thought there was a spirit of a
lady there, Janet Chudd loved it for its park-like character, Joseph Sablan was
fascinated by the acequia which ran through the garden bringing snow melt from
the mountains, and I because it was a realization of a dream brought on by a man
of great vision. It was, regretably, in the middle of a community where the Pueblo
Indians and the Hispanic settlers were at odds, although they had each other’s
children and the Sephardic Spanish basked in the aura of black, killed their
husbands and their lovers, harassed and cheated their neighbors and attended
mass on Sundays like obedient Catholics.
This residnce was the most civilized I had ever known, respecting privacy, delighting in the
nature of most things, with a few exceptions, of course, but the joy of its ambiance was onec
expressed when there peacocks at the same time spread their tails. I had fourteen of those
birds and they were all free, not caged and fourteen borzoi which with thre exception of one
or two were kenneled. Right beind my house there was a heard of Indian-owned buffalo and
they too were not a bother.
Anpu Anubis PooPooT
I realised at the time of the supper she refers to that there had been some serious
interference about which I knew nothing. Almost all astrologers who have checked my chart
have commented that I have many secret enemies. Actually, there are times when some of
them no longer remain secret…and that the underlying cause of this status is envy. I have
no idea why anyone should be envious of me for nothing in my life seems easy. But, on the
other hand, the perceptions of the subject may be warped by the very proximity of the
experiences, yet “on the other hand” no one else has a more immediate view or a closer
evidential position than the person involved.
My retrospective view of the Tamotsu episode is that a female Jewish friend of Louise, one
who had known me longer than they had known Louise told her I was a member of the
Libertarian Party. Actually, at about that time I was its Chairman in New Mexico. It is, in some
ways, perfectly mnatural for Louise to consult, or be advised by, another Jewish friend who
was, in all appearance, not a Jew about something as important as writing a monograph, but
for this advisor to suggest that a Libertarian, as a Libertarian, would denograte an artrist on
the basis of his politics knows nothing of the Libertarian philosoophy and certainly nothing of
me. Consequently, I suspect that motivation behind this bad advice was to limit my
exposure to the public. There are people who fit the qualities necessary to fill this role and
they, both dead now, were Doris Cross and Geraldine Price.
One of the places I checked out in response to my increasing restlessness was Costa Rica
along with Honduras, Latvia and Malta. I had heard many nice things about and a few rather
disturbing ones namely, that Costa Rica was a haven for Ex-Nazis. I didn’t believe that until I
came across this bank façade which stopped me still in my tracs. I photographed it and then,
our of curopsity wjent itnside to check for photographs or paintings of dignitaries.. There
they were …all Germans and the Nazi affiliation was cerytainly indicated by the logo
GOZO
CREATIVE REALIZATION….art, psychology …truth and aesthetic judgment
I sometimes have doubts about my own vision, but I generally return to the expectation that through the manipulation of plastic and
other graphic symbols a world is created.
That is one very fixed perception I have about the value of the value of the unconventionally designed, non-objectively imaged
puzzles I have designed. They were developed over a period of years beginning about 30 years ago and, seemingly, only during
periods of mental rest….a kind of mind-wandering state.
But it is in such a state, it seems, much of creative imagination takes place. I am certain that this particular mental process was a
result of experiences I had had with adult perceptions, contemporary school practices, and much of the seemingly politically
oriented push in modern art criticism.
http://guam.mvarietynews.com/index.php?view=article&id=6030%3Aflights-creative-
outsiders&option=com_content Marianas Variety notice
There are, or were, at least two California school systems which have hired as “webmasters”
technically trained, to some extent or another, individuals who have more unwarranted ego than
judgment and, I would assume no insight whatever as the needs of an educational environment and
perform as cherished virtues what are in fact mortal wounds to the highest held ideals of a
humanistic education.
These webmasters claim that in order to cut down on “spam” they will automatically exclude any
email address that is unknown to them. More xenophobic one can hardly imagine. Even on the
mundane level, the most ordinary minds realize that there is still a great deal to learn out
there from individuals one has never ever heard of and maybe a slightly fewer number will
grudgingly admit that having graduated from teacher’s college and, in addition, been accredited
by some organizational staff does not mean the end to mental growth….but such considerations are
not admitted into the reality of such webmasters as those who were in San Jose and Berkeley.
There is a certain hubris among those whose sense of success is attached to predetermined goals
such as 1+1=2.Surprisingly some never to be surprised or pleased or even recognize when and that they have
discovered something on their own. “I didn’t know I did that!!!”
Click here to view experimental video showing how the creativity packet puzzles are used.
There are several other rather odd manifestations which one encounters as one proceeds through the many, but not
enough, of the websites dealing with educational matters. On the other hand, there are, sometimes, too many
websites, depending upon the view point of the searcher and the quality of the website but, by and large, it is one
of the histories more important inventions and it renews the struggle between the sophisticated and naïve where
the naive have an energy-enriched chance to become sophisticated and to, at the very least, protect themselves
from the fraudulent . This is another area in which the puzzles are helpful for they provide the experience of testing
one’s own judgments against results whereas the traditional puzzle tells you what to do, how to do it and then
applauds your obedience.
Certainly, one of the impressions a searcher can get while looking around this territory is the difference in
vocabulary in referring to those who teach is the relative standing of those who have decided how a website should
appear. Many sites join both faculty and staff under one heading and fail to separate them but arrange them
alphabetically according to the name and some with even no further designation ”Staff” a term, which, in The
United States, generally refers to secretarial, maintenance, or administrative assistants…not generally, referring to
people of ideas, theories or more complicated technical expertise. One supposes that this may have something to
do with the overflowing of “democratic” concepts into areas where existing differences may imply some systemic
elitism. This situation which is quite real in certain areas of the world and most notably in my experience in Malta
where excellence is recognized only among the Maltese which, statistically speaking, in a population of only 400
thousand might suggest, even to the casual observer, a rather narrow range of accomplishment. The results bear
this out. An interesting development in association with this, seemingly, national characteristic, is that individuals
recognizing their limitations have attempted to compensate for these by successfully developing the façade of
interpersonal relationships based on intimidation. Where, in some areas and with some people, excellence is often
accompanied by a remarkable degree of humility whereas, in others, where the primary actor recognizes in himself
the absence of excellence (and the presence of a hopefully gullible audience) he assumes the cloak of bravado and
immense self-pride which tends to silence others who may be ignorant and the doubtful.
If you, the reader, will take the top most image , enlarge it, print it out, cut out and separate the
pieces and THEN attempt to assemble them in such a fashion as for the end result to make total sense to you
THEN you may begin to understand the relationship between perceptive thought and truth-telling and, as a result,
understand why, as the experiment conducted at The University of Northern Iowa in 1969 revealed, the relationship
between lying about one’s perceptions , including one’s self, was related to academic success , and as result the
education system there, then in force was allowing only uncreative liars to become the teachers of our young. It is
true that I do not, at present, know how or whether this correlation between social lying and unsophisticated
aesthetic judgment will hold up, statistically, but, certainly from many decades of observation we know that this
relationship exists. If indeed it does exist then the implications for the vast majority of educational principles
now in practice is that they are an enemy of the educational ideals we have publicly espoused.
As someone recently observed to me “the SIGNIFICANCE (of the lie) gets lost in the deception. The liar believes the
lie.” and consequently does not know he’s lying because he is supported by the majority in his environment. The
participants may not be aware of their roles in this process, but certainly the social architects are.
Those of you who may be interested in pursuing this matter further are free to contact me at : prh@tcp.com.mt .
Since my exilic arrival in Malta I have tried to consolidate my resources, and blend
my awarenesses and transmute my talents. Knowing very little indeed of the nature
of electronic connections,or world-wiode economic conditiosn, I created THE
CREATIVITY PACKET. My intention was to createn a platform for the expression of
what some people thought creative thinking was. My initial introduction to the type
of thinking characteristic of research psychologists into this behavioral area was
extreme caution. My instict was to doubt everything they claimed in part because
they never used the language of expression and that made the character and
degree of their understanding highly suspect. They tried to describe their awareness
in language that was aloof from involvment…of course, we all understand that this
is the “scientists’s” accepted stance…it is proper to be aloof, cool and uninvolved.
However,such an approach was very alien to me as a quick review of those whom
I’ve listed as sources of influence will indicate. I believe it was Drevdahlwho came
up with the description that a creative thinker was like a criminal evading the police
and that, somehow, for somereason, made sense. Substitute “the social majority”
for the “police” and “nonconformist” for “criminal” and the description made total
sense to me…and the way was paved for my active participation…but always at a
distance because, without intending so, my research results frequently revealed
the nature of the underdog’s struggle.
There is also some other Gozitan, or more generally, Maltese concept which excludes
everyone who isn’t Maltese from having their success and excellence recognized. Only the
Maltese can be recognized. If I should remain here until the end of my life, which is a
liklihood considering the probabilities,I cannot reasonably expect to have any of my work
recognized. There is no functional reason why the Maltese should be singled out for that
characteristic however. No matter where I have been the level of my appreciation has been
limited. There has been some but not a great deal.
Xuereb is a strange man, very confident in what he believes he knows, ready to critizes
others, especially aliens such as myself whether we are wromng or not…or, the way it
seems, most esopeicially if we are not wring as for example, when he criticised me for
“lecturimng” onb Maltese history when his facts were wrong..and he would not correct them.
Count Roger came to Malta in 1091…not 1061 and the name Warhol in America is
pronounced “War hole”, not “Waral” as in England…but Xuereb would have none of that.
When I one time mentioned he wa a seductive man, he, and his wife, took the meaning in its
most common form..thus, missing my point entirely…but I would not correct him.
Not only did he get the painting for a damn cheap price he also did not hesitate to ask for a
gift in addition…and I thought the Jews were exclusively demanding of value without
sacrafice. Even Doris Cross had a mite more self-respect when it came to dealing with a
sale.
Politically and historically Gozo entered Europe in 1091 when Roger Giscard de
Hauteville liberated Malta from the occupying Arabs.
For me this events has more than symbolic significance since if the Genealogical
records are correct (bearing in mind there are numerous types of errors possible)
the ancestprs of Roger and those of my fasther join three generations earlier and
the granddaughter of Roger marries an ancestor of my mother. I think the favorite
artifact from this period is the coronation cloak worn by Roger II showing a lion
subduing a camel.
hills Malta is a republic, or, at least, it poses as one. There are only about
400,000 inhabitants and thought to be the mnost densly populated space on earth. That alone, of all
other statistical information, might have kept me away, but still it seemed to offer me more than other
places such as Costa Rica, Honduras, Montserrat, Micronesia or Guam, even Latvia. I can only suppose
that all communities offer distinct characteristics which make them communities , that is, a group of
people who live together and share the same opinions. So, therefore, it becomes important that one
consider whether thosre opinions are compatible, more or less, with one’s own.
a 7millenia old statue…a so-called “goddess”
*The “Cart Wheel” tracks which I doubt are that for the main reason there seems to be no indication
of the tracks of the power drawing the cart.The other theory is that they are irrigation chanels. This
makes more sense.
rom the veranda, …and down from the top of the stairs.
Henrickson: montage, mixed media “Three Graces” sketch for Lazarus
painted sculpture”Crucifixion”
This is Iona Miller. I have never met her, but she has acted as a
sustaining force in both intellectual matters and creative matters in what has been
for me a more than traumatic experience in becoming an exile from my home and
from the one most beautiful home I had in Pojoaque, New Mexico. Iona has
published many articles and these are availabel on her site. Go to: Iona Miller.
This quote I discovered on Iona’s latest website: “The artist is not a person endowed with
free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize its purposes through him. As a
human being he may have moods and a will and personal aims, but as an artist he is 'man' in a
higher sense - he is 'collective man,' a vehicle and molder of the unconscious psychic life of
mankind.” (Carl Jung, Psychology and Literature, I compell myself to express joy at her having found
this Jungian assertion and more so for having used it for it comes at a time when these concerns are my
primary ones and for some reason she always knows where my mind is….or she seems to.
When Jung states that the artist is not “endowed with free will” I believe I know what he means, that I
have experienced that bending of my will in response to another outer, or inner call and am quite
convinced that Jung had heard and reacted to that call on numerous occassions and that, quite perhaps,
this is the experience seers, oracles and psychic astrologers experience when they come up with what
they come up.
For those interested in learning more about my interests which are roughly grouped
in the following three areas, education and psychology, art criticism and intellectual
commentary. These are available at www.scribd.com under my name.