Meetings with the remarkable part 2

Sandra Garner Lahire

I met Sandra when we were both students at St Martin's School of Art in London in the early eighties. We connected instantaneously. She was full of energy and intensity. I loved her! At first she was in the graphic design department upstairs in the white building on Long Acre but soon she was down in the basement with us doing film and video with Malcolm le Grice, William Raban, Tina Keane, Vera Neubauer etc. and students like Isaac Julien and amazing visiting film and video makers like Derek Jarman, Annabel Nicholson etc. It was a wonderful time to be a student there.

She and I would meet for lunch and she would talk non-stop, she was filled with ideas and telling me about her life also. She lived in Putney at the time in a most interesting house. I can say I looked up to her! She was older and crazier and I admired that!

Sandra made very unique films. A trilogy inspired by Sylvia Plath is perhaps the most well known and can be obtained through LUX cinema I think.

When I moved to the States after college I lived in the area of New England where Plath came from and I was really looking forward to Sandra visiting me there.

One time when I was in London I coincidentally ran into her at a LUX cinema screening n Hoxton Square. Guy Sherwin, Malcolm, Vera and many others were there. It was a blast from the past almost twenty years after our college days. It was so exciting to see her again and looking much like the picture above. To re-connect again. It was the last time I saw her, which I did not know of course. She died in 2001 at the age of 50.

I still have her e mail address and info in my address book NOT crossed out. I cannot bring myself to do it.

Happy Birthday Gerhard Richter b. 1932 today

The YIN and the YANG of it - For Linda

Creative couplings and friendships represent the Yin and Yang, the dualities so necessary for balance. A sense of harmony. I think that is what I am getting at in some of my postings. Drawing from the DJANG and being open to the yin and yang coming my way, our way.

Meetings with the remarkable part 1

Russell Epprecht

We met at a performance by Jeff Way at 75 Warren St in Tribeca in the spring of 1979. We were both redheads and there is definitely a magnetism and a recognition between redheads. We belong to the same tribe. We talked naturally and felt a kinship.

Sometimes you just know when you meet someone who will be a life-long friend. You connect. There is a click.

We became closer over the spring and summer then he left for Mexico with his long-time lover Anna, who was to become the mother of their twins. Many things changed overnight for me just before the Fourth of July that summer and I left NYC for London. We stayed in touch until Russell died of leukemia many years later.

He was a writer and a painter. I can say I loved him. I can also say I miss him, I miss the connection. At the time I was meeting remarkable persons at every cross road and became very inspired and influenced by these friendships. I did not realise then that they can become rare and now much later in life infinitely seldom. Connections are precious openings to another's world psyche. An honest genuine authentic open communication. I miss Russell. We spoke in short hand and had many memories and moments that we treasured together.

His mind was alive and his lateral thinking awesome. He expressed himself slowly and very clearly. No chatter. No blah blah blah. His paintings were very strong and singular and I wish I had one to show. His work was self-referential as that was the starting point for his explorations. My name was Jessica in his novels. It surprised me a lot. Anna was Ursula. Jessica?!?

Just before his death we met again in Pennsylvania on his family's farm, Echo Farm. We spent a whole night talking in his studio/barn and some how became clear on many of the hick-ups we had encountered in our friendship.

I love this photo of Russ on the beach.

Nothing Wrong with Thumbsucking

It is comforting, you always have it with you, it is soothing when you want to sleep, a jolly good suck can make a real difference. There are many good reasons to be a thumbsucker.

Dentists, orthodontists of course have another opinion but they also make a great deal of money from the habit.

It is more than a habit, it can be a way of life, of coping, it is a coping strategy for stress and sadness, and loneliness. The thumb is a constant friend and companion. It is always there when you need it. You even have two!

The mouth is one of our most sensitive areas and it processes a lot of information. Taste, temperature, texture, it is a very sensual organ, also expressing sound.

I always feel that most of my conscious self lives in or inhabits my mouth. If I were asked for instance; "Where do you "feel" yourself most?" I might say; "In my mouth." And in my eyes too.

From ODDMENTS an exhibition I had in Provincetown on Cape Cod

These are works made out of found odd socks and used brassieres as well as a small baby's t-shirt and a floor fan.

Titles;

My Unbelievably Happy Childhood

Fibonacci Spiral

Strokes

and

Sock Mandala

Between Lives - Dorothea Tanning

Painter and poet and final wife of Max Ernst, she is still alive along with Leonora Carrington who both "survived" the label of surrealist and lived to grow out of a cast mold. Max Ernst was certainly involved with some extraordinary women! There is a certain gaze that he has that betrays intelligence and intensity which is quite an aphrodisiac. I think for many women and men THAT is what they are attracted to. Here I want to show the diversity of her work and photos of her also. Enjoy. I especially like her sculptures.

Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore

AKA Lucy Schwob and Suzanne Malherbe they became stepsisters when young, instant soul mates and then lovers and collaborators. Active in Paris in the thirties, they then left for Jersey in the Channel Islands and lived on "a farm without a name" when there was threat of war.When working with the resistance they were incarcerated and suffered ill health after the war as a result. Writers, artists, photographers, partners, cross-dressers they have been far too ignored by the art world. Here are some photos that survive of and by Claude Cahun. I find her a most intriguing person, something fearless and yet vulnerable about her. They both had integrity.

Remedios Varo and Leonora Carrington

A creative friendship between kindred souls and here are some of their works and photos of the two.