JOE'S GROCERY STORE suddenly disappears. And I can't help using thoughts about my marriage's-end in creating my artworks/sculptures.

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JOE’S DEATH (1969)
About two months after school had commenced, I dropped by Joe’s grocery store to get a 25-cent sandwich and just check in with him, and was surprised to find a young kid no more than seventeen or eighteen years old standing behind the counter. When I asked him where Joe was, he said that there had been an accident, and that Joe was in the hospital. He explained that he was Joe’s replacement, flown in from Italy to take over. I asked what happened. He said that Joe had been sitting on the wooden stool, right there (pointing) where he always sat, sort of drowsing off, asleep one afternoon, when some burglars came in and just hit him hard over the head with a pipe or something, knocking him out. They had stolen the little money from the till, a few dollars at most. From what the kid said it sounded like Joe was probably headed for some retirement home.

I got the address of the hospital where Joe was being treated and went right over there to see him, about two miles away. I think the receptionist was a bit taken aback by my appearance, long hair, beard, and all, but I was finally ushered back to a room where Joe was convalescing. Two older Italian gentlemen wearing what appeared to be very expensive suits were standing by his bedside talking to him when I entered. Joe seemed surprised to see me, gave me a warm welcome, and then explained that he had to get back to business with the men. They were speaking Italian half of the time, but I got the basic drift from Joe’s answers. Joe was refusing to sign some contract or agreement that would turn over the store to the young guy I had just met. He told the men ––speaking in English for that stretch—basically that, “I’ll be back working. What do I need an assistant for?” By the intonation of their voices I got the feeling that they were absolutely sure that Joe would never make it back.

The “suits” said if he didn’t sign, “the store would...” (changing to a softer word), “...could...be lost.” They returned to speaking Italian for a bit, then returned to English again, something about all the people who owed him money (that ledger!). They occasionally looked over at me while they spoke, then continued, obviously figuring that it didn’t matter what some hippie guy heard.

“All those chits would be voided,” one of them explained. But Joe stuck to his guns, refused to sign anything, at least during the time that I was present in the room. I quietly let myself out. Joe gave me a warm look before I left.

The next time I passed the store, around Thanksgiving, I was shocked to see that his store’s corner location had been completely converted into a veterinarian clinic. I was totally disoriented. It was as if Joe’s grocery store and part of my life had never existed! All that was recognizable of Joe’s more than 60+ years of grocery enterprises, counting both stores adjacent he had occupied, was the red tile-work around the base of the large plate glass windows.

When I struck up a conversation a month later with one of the older countermen at Genoa’s Italian deli a block away, I learned that Joe had died and that the young clerk had been returned to Italy. As the deli clerk fixed me a sandwich with three kinds of meat, a couple of cheeses, hot peppers on a French roll, $1.75, he explained that Joe had pretty much singlehandedly supported the old Italian community. He said old Joe had been giving free food away for many years, just writing down worthless chits in some old book.

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That spring semester at CCAC, the last before graduating with a BFA, I continued forward with my Tube series, using my half-round mould to create larger patterns in wax, for more elaborate metal castings, put those in combination with painted wooden half-rounds to complete the pieces. At a certain point, all of my sculptural ideas seemed to be generating out of my current marital problems. The three main sculptures I did then were about Love (Marriage), Lust, and Sex.

I represented Love with two undulating white bronze rings connected together with a small heart made of silicon bronze (a golden look), which had the shape of a keyhole impressed deep into its surface. The two rings, together spanning 40” in width, were made in half-round proportions, so that the whole piece looked sort of like two cells either splitting apart, or beginning to merge. The “infinity shape” of the two rings, the locked heart, were part of my story.

The Sex sculpture was basically shaped like the piston shot from all those early X-rated movies. I guess it was showing the animal side of the sex act, like doing what comes naturally, no judgment, no thinking really. I used half-tube shapes cast in elegant red brass, combined with painted wood legs, the ends capped off with little bronze hooves that were slightly cloven. The highly polished red brass metal finish, and pink-colored 100-coat paint job, gave off a jewelry-like effect, fleshy, indecent, almost like a piece of incandescent candy.

Lust, the third and final piece of the set, was in the shape of a gigantic 8-ball. A 32” radius white bronze disk with a silicon bronze circular shape in the center (dark patina) was background for a 10” long white bronze half-tube “8” shape that fit in its center. The difference between this and a traditional pool-game 8-ball was that the number “8” was sort of squashed into a circular, abstracted-shaped penis, which entered the sculpture from the top edge.

White bronze and silicon bronze are contrasted in my large 8-Ball sculpture.

If you looked closely you could discover that the large white disk was in relief, revealing an equal-sized ball behind the front one, the penis shape emerging from between these two spheres. Testicles and a dangling penis branded with an 8-ball was how I saw that portion of my life. My sex-drive had gotten me into a lot of trouble.

PERSONAL STATEMENTS (1970)

Other sculptures done after the Tube Series also reflected on my failed home life. One kinetic sculpture was made up of four whale’s-tail shapes in white bronze, cast in halves so I could screw them together, clamp them down at each corner of a super- thin square piece of flash paper that magicians sell in magic stores. I’d have everything sitting on a small board underneath, which I would then lower slowly, until the paper was taut.

Encumbered with bronze weights, the flash paper hung suspended from the ceiling by shoelace-thin leather cords stretched between the whale’s tails and the four upper corners of the room. By touching a match or cigarette to the center of the paper, it would disappear (in a flash), freeing the four one-pound whale’s tail weights, sending them swinging back down toward the floor, where they smashed into four small house-shaped panes of glass mounted in different bases – only a moment before they had appeared to be parts of unrelated floor sculptures.

The sound of the crashing of glass after the sight of fire and flames said a lot to me, about the natural elements involved in a breakup of home life and marriage.

X-RAY FOR ART (1970)

To complete the sculpture that later became entitled “I Can’t Get It Up For You,” I enlisted Linda’s help, asking if she knew any doctors who did X-rays. I had envisioned a shot of my crotch area as the icon that the sculpture held up when I shattered the glass weight from that end. She said she did know one doctor who might cooperate and gave me his home number. On the phone, he seemed to actually get excited when I explained what I was after, and agreed to help me. I was instructed to show up at Highland Hospital in Oakland at a designated time and wait in the waiting room until my name was called. He knew an X-ray technician there who would do it for me.

A few days later I showed up at the hospital and sat amid the sick and crying in a room just off from the main hall, waiting my turn. Instead of the usual forty-minute wait I was called in almost instantly. A man with a sparkle in his eye and a Germanic accent ushered me into the X-ray room and started talking excitedly about my “art project.” I quickly filled him in on what I thought I was after and he seated me down against the adjustable bed and got to work. He swung the large X-ray machine over my head, then fiddled around with my hands, positioning them next to my pelvic area, and left the room. I couldn’t help noticing that he didn’t bother covering other parts of my body with the usual protective lead “dress,” to shield me from unnecessary rays.

Seconds later I heard a loud buzz. He said it would just be a couple of minutes and for me to wait there. Soon he returned with a large X-ray of the entire center of my body, chest to knees. But the image wasn’t right. It didn’t have any snap. No concept, we both agreed.

I thought hard (and so did he), and finally I asked if we could do one more, this time keeping the shot focused on just my pelvic region. And instead of keeping my hands side- by-side, I crossed them over each other, hoping that I’d see the bones of both hands and the pelvic area behind, as if shielding my penis and testicles (which, of course, would disappear in the shot). He got very excited, took the shot, but this time asked me to wait in the waiting area. He said that he would call me when the photo was developed.

I returned to the outer waiting room, which now had even more patients, more sounds of pain, people moaning, others sobbing. God, it was horrible! After about five minutes he peeked out of the X-ray room and called to me, saying he had something to show.

An older woman interrupted him, saying her daughter was in pain and could she please get in soon. He flared out at the woman, saying, “Can’t you see I have a patient here,” and firmly ushered me inside. Back in the room I was shown an X-ray that I felt was 99% there, the image doing pretty much everything that I could have hoped for. I told him I thought we were done. He looked a little disappointed, saying that he was prepared to spend the entire afternoon to get it right. He explained it had to be perfect, because, “I dig art!”

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Sculpture was selected for art show at De Young museum in San Francisco. Moment of impact by cane was caught in photo––glass shattered, and then x-ray would be lifted up with weight of glass gone.

Can you spot my fingers crossed in the middle of X-ray? As I walked out through the waiting area, X-ray in hand, I was concerned for that young girl crying from a real injury outside the door. I heard him bark again at the woman and her crying daughter. Looking back over my shoulder I was relieved to see him finally ushering them into the X-ray room.

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