Diary Of An Artist In A New World

My Son, The Artist

Remember this name, Pablo Johansen, he is a very special artist. It seems amazing that one with such great talent and sensitivity could have a crisis of confidence, but Pablo has walked down some very black paths, and is only now regaining his passion for life, and sense of purpose. It has been a long journey, but now he has returned to drawing the model, and making exquisite marks on the paper. It is good to see.

Luciano Pavarotti Died Today

Pavarotti was always this marvelous voice that I loved for its richness and ability to send shivers along my spine. Very few singers can bring tears to my eyes. Fat Lucy could. My life is richer for what he brought to me. That is a great gift for a human being to give. I loved the romance and love that he found later in his life. It was clear from the gossip magazine photos that this was a special love. Many people would not have the courage to risk all for a pure love like that. Pavarotti not only risked all, but he embraced it and valued it with the full passion of his heart and gave his all. I think he is wonderful. He is in my iPod, my heart and my thoughts. Thank you for all you gave, rest in peace.

Astra Howard

I bumped into Astra Howard in the street a few days ago. It was really good to see her. I have a very high regard for Astra, both as an artist, and as a human being. I first came across Astra when she was in the photograph. There was a little tobacconist's kiosk by the railway station that had been vacant for a while. I saw a crowd around the kiosk, all very animated, and obviously interested in something inside.

The center of their attention was a tall woman, very beautiful, dressed in white. Although I am sure Astra gets lots of attention for being tall and beautiful and well dressed, that was not what was causing the excitement. It was what she was doing.

The kiosk largely consisted of glass panels. Astra had locked herself inside the little compartment and was surprisingly rapidly writing messages on the glass with a black marking pen. The remarkable thing was that she was writing backwards, so that those outside could see the messages the right way round. She was writing backwards faster than many people can write forwards. And with every word the crowd would follow what she was writing. The words would be read aloud, and guesses taken as to what the complete sentence might turn out to say. The crowd was enchanted and it was obvious that they were puzzled as to why this would be happening.

I myself can recognize a performance at a hundred paces and stood back enjoying the total spectacle. I never did get to find out what she was writing, it didn't seem to matter compared to the way she was engaging her audience. I was at the time busy with organizing an upcoming art festival, and I wanted to talk to Astra. Of course I didn't know her name at that time, but I wrote the words "phone me" on a card and slipped it through a crack in the kiosk wall. She saw it looked at me and nodded and went on writing.

She called the next day, and eventually she became an important part of the festival with several performances.

When I saw her in the street last week she gave me her card. She is working. It seems like most of us she has to get on the treadmill for paying bills rather than devoting all her time to art. It is a cruel world.

It was a lovely surprise to see her. She is a very special woman.

Joan Skiver-Levy Exhibition

The Internet makes for interesting social interactions. Because of my various web sites I often get people, especially in the United States, saying hello by e-mail. Joan is one such friend who kept in touch over time. She paints still life in which she zooms in on the subject.

Now Joan is having an exhibition at the Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, Illinois. It started on the 20th August and runs until the 26th of October. The reception is in just a few days, on the 7th of September between 4 and 7pm with Mary Ann Barnett playing piano.

My congratulations to Joan, and my apologies that it is too far away for me to attend personally, but I will be there in spirit. I hope it all goes well for you.

Graeme Putt Gave Me My First Job

A terrible thing happened to me when I was 16. Graeme Putt and his wife Yvonne were the only good part of it. My father did not want me to study poetry, writing, and art at University as I dreamed of. One day he gave me an "opportunity" to be "sensible". He told me I could only stay at school if I would choose a "real job" to work towards. I don't think he cared if it was law, or architecture, or accounting, so long as it was something he understood as being "a job". Art was not a job to him, it was a hobby, to be practiced on Sundays and upon retirement at age 65. I tried to reason with him. I said I wanted to  do a BA and study literature, and then see where that would take me, maybe teaching.

It was not good enough. My father distrusts people with university degrees, and I don't think he has ever seen the need for one. He left school very young, and was making money from his own small business when he was 12. He became a millionaire without an education and he knew lots of poor people with degrees. The only value he could imagine for art was as a commodity to be sold, but in his world, people want houses and food. It is his experience in the country that nobody buys art to put in houses except the people he distrusted.

It causes me great pain even now as I write this to say that 3 days after that discussion with my father he had taken me out of high school and found me a job with Graeme Putt. My dreams were shattered, I have never completely recovered from that first great tragedy.

Graeme Putt owned a dairy farm near Ravenshoe. Years later I bought 20 acres that shared a boundary with Graeme's old farm, but I could not know that then. He had Frisian cows, and a big bull that liked to threaten me. It put me up a tree once. I hated that bull. Graeme thought it was a quiet bull, but he eventually got rid of it when it attacked his wife I heard later.

My job was milking cows and general farm work. I liked Graeme and Yvonne a great deal but I was poorly suited to farm work. I was too inexperienced. There were too many things that frightened me like working the tractor on steep hillsides, and there was an ancient diesel pump that had to be started by hand with a crank that had a habit of kicking back and threatening to break an arm in the process.

As I worked the farm my mind and soul were a long way away in the clouds imagining music and poetry and meaningful discussions about existentialism in city cafes. A friend, Rick Anderson was studying poetry at university. I thought he was the luckiest person on the planet at the time.

A few weeks ago my father said that Graeme had contacted him after all these years. He gave me Graeme's phone number and I called him. Graeme said he would visit when next in Sydney.

Last Wednesday he phoned me, said he was at the airport, so I invited him to the studio and I made him lunch. He has had an interesting life. He is now a professional poker player, has been the Australasian poker champion. Won, or been placed highly in tournaments here and in Europe and in the Caribbean. The photo is of him playing poker at a tournament.

It was good to see Graeme. He may be part of a terrible time in my life, but he was the good part of that time and I have always remembered him fondly. He is a good man with a good heart. Thank you Graeme for the good you did for me all that time ago.

Whatever Happened To Peter?

In Forbes Street SCEGGS (which is a private girls school) has a new arts/music building next to old St Peters Church. Sometimes when I walk by I see the girls through the window, instuments in hand hard at work making music. Little do they know that on that very spot many years ago a mad artist made music in a very unusual way. His name was Peter and I often wonder what he is doing these days and where he went.

Back in the 1970's a little old brick terrace house stood where the SCEGGS music room is now, and it was in a state of continual re-invention by Peter. He had removed the floors so that walking in off the street it was a cavernous 2 story space with just the outside walls left and from the street one had to step down to the bedrock which once was under the house, but, by then, was his floor.

Leaning against the wall to the left as you entered there was the steel strings from the interior of a piano. These Peter would play with the back of a spoon. I still remember the sound that made. It felt like being in a magic garden full of wondous things to be at his place.

The exterior of the house was Peter's artwork. He continually painted it. One day it would be spaceships in the sky, then a forest would appear. All the windows had been removed and replaced with objects like a car windscreen. It was colorful and marvellous and I loved seeing it, but now it only exists as fragments in my memory.

So whenever I walk past that part of the street and see the girls making their music in their brand new building with their well dressed teacher I cannot help but contrast the sight with that zany music I heard all those years ago and the mad artist who was making it, and wonder, whatever happened to Peter?

The Starship Trooper's Birthday

Today is the 8th here in Sydney, but in Kansas City it is the 7th of July 2007, exactly 100 years after the birth of writer Robert Anson Heinlein. When he died of emphysema in 1988 I had one of those terrible moments. Besides feeling that horrible sympathy with his personal loss of life, I felt a loss in mine, and a feeling of neglect. For many years I had intended to write to him with a thank you for all he had (unknowingly) done for me. Then all of a sudden there was no possible way to thank him except in my heart.

Robert Heinlein was a very controversial author for many people but for me he was simply formative at an important time in my life. I must have been only 8 or 9 years old when I first read "Time For The Stars". Forever more I dreamed of being out there in space, a mixture of scientist and artist.

More importantly for me than dreams of being in a space ship, it was in Heinlein that I discovered my ideal of the strong and independent woman. She invariably had deep understandings of life and the unverse, a sensibility that men struggled to keep up with. For a boy on a country farm this was revolutionary thinking. "Space Family Stone" represented my boyhood ideals well, but his adult books like "Stranger In A Strange Land", and "Friday" were important as I worked out my personal journey in youth. I adored Friday and despised the publishing houses. "Friday" had a hero called Friday. Friday was like a science fiction James Bond. Heinlein describes this exciting figure with fast moving action. He allows us to like Friday and allows our prejudices to imagine the character. It is only when substantially into the book that you discover that Friday is a woman. Then much further into the book we discover that she is black. Heinlein could challenge prejudices and assumptions and he had several black female heroes in his books. His publishers, however studiously ignored the fact, and Friday, in cover art, was always white. Thats why I despised them.

I always loved the way Robert Heinlein thought outside the square. He never followed convention in anything. It is amazing how much convention is followed by most of those who consider themselves unconventional. If you are going to be left wing then there are certain things that you will always ascribe to. Same for those who are right wing. Heinlein, however invented his own path that was confusing for observors. "Stranger In A Strange Land" appeared to be anti war. "Starship Troopers" is claimed by others to be sympathetic to militarism. His philosophy, however, was always impossible to pigeon hole in neat categories like that. What he meant to me was a questioning of all conventional social ideas, a huge respect and love for women, a dislike of prejudices, and a love of individualism. Heinlein did things his own way so much that he constantly invented new words, several of them have entered the Oxford English Dictionary, like the verb grok (an internal understanding especially used in the computer world) and waldo (the name for mechanical arms that manipulate hazardous materials remotely).

My favorites of his story's are probably "By His Bootstraps", "Methuselah's Children", "The Man Who Sold The Moon", and "Friday". "Stranger In A Strange Land", however, while not my favorite, was one of those books that (along side books such as "The Catcher In The Rye" and "On The Road") was transformative for me as a young man. Thats why, I really should have written a thank you letter to Heinlein when I still had a chance.

Meet Violetta

Violetta has been doing my hair for most of the last 10 years. She is a very special human being whom I would regard as a friend rather than just the person who does my hair. She works her magic creating the sort of haircut that suits me. Others have done my hair, but I have never been entirely satisfied, but Violetta always manages to get it just right.

She comes from Bulgaria, which is a long way away. She often talks about her mum who is so far away yet so close to her heart. The last couple of years she has gone for long visits with her mum. I think she misses her.

I think too that while she enjoys styling hair, underneath it all she secretly wishes to be an artist and poet living the bohemian life. Perhaps that is why she works in Kings Cross, because here she finds the kindred spirits who help nourish her soul.

Terry And Fluffy

Last night there was a preacher at the corner of Bayswater Road and Darlinghurst Road. There are often preachers who are attracted to Kings Cross and what they see as our sins. The most famous of them was Ada Green in the mid 20th century. Most of them are not as memorable as Ada must have been.

Last night there was a passionate man who spoke with rhymes but sadly his only audience was his own dog, Fluffy. Fluffy listened enraptured by his master's voice. His master's name is Terry. Terry told me that Fluffy is nine years old. He told me how he first met Fluffy as a puppy when Fluffy jumped into his arms. In fact the only things he could talk about were Fluffy and Jesus. I just had to get some photos. Meet Fluffy and Terry.

TAP Gallery 18th Birthday

Lesley Dimmick has finally come of age. 18 years of running the best underground gallery in Sydney. Literally thousands of young artists have had their first show at TAP.

Ten years ago I met Lesley when I wanted to stage the first Real Refuses exhibition. That started a close friendship that has endured while I have seen TAP grow slowly year by year. I remember TAP's 10th birthday party. It seems like it was only a couple of years ago.

So tonight Lesley celebrated with an exhibition, with a band, with friends, and with a wall of photos of the madcap people and events of recent years.

Happy Birthday Lesley and TAP