So there I am, NYC.

Misako is covering most of the bills.

I have a rent-free studio for the first year or so in one of the buildings owned by the church.

I have tons of inspiration, lots of talent, and energy to burn.

How to proceed? What would you do?

Having stepped out of the art world for eight years, I was in a hurry to make up for lost time.

I determined to act on every inspiration I had, as soon as I had it, for three years. I’d then see where it got me, re-evaluate if need be.

My first inspiration was to get a body of work together that I felt really good about, before I even thought about approaching a gallery.

I also started to go to every cycle of shows, at nearly every gallery in Manhattan. I figured I needed to understand the terrain of what was out there, before finding my place in it.

I picked up where I left off in Covington. I started doing charcoal drawings that directly related to my cosmic experiences.

Once I got enough work together for what I thought to be an impressive show, I decided that I didn’t want to be just another of the thousands of artists dropping off a sheet of slides and a SASE to a receptionist at a gallery who would probably return the work without even looking at it.

I wanted to do something different right out of the starting gate. Something that I could completely control - something that was as much me as my paintings are me.

I decided to show on the street.

My first show was in Soho, on Greene Street, just opposite the old Post Office. It was of large (3 x 4 feet) drawings done with compressed charcoal and eraser. I mounted them under Plexiglas. The images were of abstracted landscapes. There was writing beneath the image.

The show was very well received. People seemed to really like it. I really enjoyed being there, out on the street, talking to everyone about my work. It was fun.

Someone, a woman, bought one of the drawings. After she left, someone came over to me and said, “Do you know who that woman is?” Turns out she was some hugely important person in the art world.

I made note, next show, to record names and addresses.

My second show was on Madison Ave, in front of The Whitney Museum of American Art.

I did a series of thirty paintings on Masonite panels – thirty images of what America means to me - “The America Series”. I built two slotted wooden crates, and put fifteen paintings in each. I then made arrangements with the superintendent of one of the buildings in the neighborhood to store the two crates, along with a two-wheel hand truck. The deal was, after the show was over, I would give him one of the paintings.

Then, for three consecutive weekends during one of The Whitney’s Biennials, I wheeled the two crates to the museum and lined up the thirty paintings along their front wall. I sat on the crates and waited to see what would happen.

I half expected to be asked to leave by security at The Whitney, but that didn’t happen. I think they liked me out there. I wasn’t just some commercial artist hustling watercolors to tourists. It looked like a real show. I think they respected that.

Many artists or art students would stop and talk to me. Lots of them told me that I had guts – but they had never sold flowers for the Moonies in bars full of peers. In comparison, this was nothing but fun. Showing my art to people and talking about it? You kidding me? I couldn’t imagine anything that I would rather be doing. I liked the realness, the unpretentiousness of the street. I was very comfortable there.

Most people would simply walk by without even glancing, but in any given hour, at least a dozen or so people would stop and talk to me. Some of them asked about purchasing the work, but I told them that this was a three-weekend show and I didn’t want to break up the series until the final weekend.

I met Andy Warhol. He walked by with two other people and rather pointedly did not look at my work. When he got to the corner, he stopped, turned around and stared at me. I had a camera with me, so I took his photo.

On the last weekend of the show, I sold twelve of the paintings for $100 a piece. Prior to that, I had been doing freelance interior construction to raise money for art supplies.

From that weekend on, I have never had a job other than art (as I write this – knock on wood).

I collected the names and addresses of everyone who bought or expressed interest in my work. I told them I would soon be showing in galleries, and that I would send them an invitation.

I went back to The Whitney on two or three additional occasions and did drawing shows, but those were not as extensive. There were no crates. They were all one-day shows that consisted of a dozen or so pieces that I would carry in a canvas satchel that I had made.

I’d go there whenever I needed money, and would always sell at least one or two things, sometimes more.

********

It was May 2nd, my birthday. I remember it as being a Thursday.

I decided that from then on, every Thursday, I would approach three galleries until I found one to represent me.

So I packed up my slides and my mailing list of over 100 Upper East Siders, along with a few original pieces, and headed off to the East Village, which was then becoming the next big happening scene.

I went to Saint Marks Place because I liked the feel of it.

The first gallery wanted the SASE thing, but I wasn’t interested.

The second gallery wasn’t looking.

I walked into the third gallery (the name of it was Eastmen-Wahmendorf). 

I walked up to the director’s desk.

Just as I got there, the phone rang.

The director picked it up and said, “Oh Hi! Happy Birthday!”

I knew I had found my home.

The director’s name was Joseph Sipos. He was talking to Eric, the owner of the gallery, whose birthday was the same as my own.

Joseph and me really hit it off. He liked my work a lot. I was in a group show the following week and had a solo show shortly after that.

Joseph wanted to open his own gallery, just down the street, about a half-block from Thompson Square Park, and so he did. I did all of the interior construction for free. He named the gallery Helio. It was almost like we were brothers.

We did really well in the East Village. I was doing two or three sell-out shows a year for a while there.

It was a magical time to be a young artist in NYC. Galleries were sprouting like dandelions. It was the scene that attracted the crowds – unending rivers of them. Everyone held their openings on the same night, so there was a constant stream of people walking in and out. The art was inexpensive, and all of that Savings & Loan money was flowing on the street like an open fire hydrant.

I was always looking for ways to promote my shows in the East Village.

On a couple of occasions, I took a large painting to Soho (West Broadway - which is the main drag), leaned it up against a wall, and stood in front of it passing out invitations to my show across town.

I met one of my biggest collectors that way (Chuck Zocolla).

Chuck worked for Chubb Insurance in Warren, New Jersey. Chubb insures a lot of major art collection and has an in-house gallery. Eventually, I had a couple of solo shows there.

While on the topic of New Jersey, I’d like to give an appreciative nod to Ron and Vi Huse at Kerygma Gallery.  A friend introduced me to them very early on, and I’ve never stopped showing there. They are very wonderful, kind people, honest and true in every way (and they’ve helped me out a lot over the years).

Another idea I had to promote my Helio shows was - I was walking past Macy’s on 34th St one day and I thought  “Why not hang my paintings in the front windows along with the mannequins?”

So I found out who did the windows and showed her my slides. She came to my studio the following weekend. She responded to my charcoals, more so than to my paintings, and asked if I could do them in a larger format.

A month or two after that, I had four and six foot charcoal drawings hanging in all the windows all along 34th Street. In each window was a small sign with my name and gallery affiliation mentioned.

Months later, I did a drawing show at Helio, and at the opening a woman asked me if I was the same guy who did the Macy show? I told her yes, and she said that she was a switchboard operator there, and that they had been inundated with calls asking who had done the drawings in the windows?

People in cars and cabs! They couldn’t see the little signs!

Live and learn.

Of course, I’m sure, the switchboard operator had contacted the window department and inquired as to my identity, and was not told. The window girl ended up ripping-off my idea, and recreating my drawings for an in-store display.

She also supposedly lost my book of slides, with the photos of Andy Warhol in it.

I only mention this because it happens so regularly in this business, maybe in all businesses everywhere. People are jealous of talent, and rather than celebrate it, they try to rip you off or hold you back.

The East Village was still a fairly rough neighborhood at the time. If you ventured over to Alphabet City (a few blocks East) it became downright dangerous. Rent was cheap, and so everyone was opening storefront galleries for their friends to show in. There were maybe 300 galleries at the peak.

With success, gentrification set in. Gallery rents soared. Heady gallery owners moved to huge spaces in Soho, where they could rent much larger rooms for practically the same amount of money.

About the same time, the stock market took a serious dive. S&L money dried up. Art market completely disappeared. All the new galleries went out of business.

********

Wayne Thiebaud saw one of my East Village shows and said nice things about my work. Wayne was the highest selling living American artist at the time. He was represented by Allan Stone Gallery.

So when Helio went bust, I thought to approach Allan.

Allan’s gallery was very special in that he didn’t look at slides. Every Saturday, any artist could come by with original work and show it to Joan, who was his long-time receptionist. If Joan liked your work, Allan would then take a look at it.

Allan’s gallery was still located on East 89th (I think it was), his original location, 2nd floor of a two-story walk-up.

Visiting Allan’s gallery was like walking into someone’s attic. There was art piled up all over the place. The show on the wall was just a sideline attraction. The main event was Allan, his staff (Joan and Duke) and the gallery itself.

Duke was originally from Vietnam and his English was so bad that hardly anyone could understand him through his accent. Sometimes, if Joan was busy or had stepped out, Duke would answer the phones. It was kind of hilarious as I’m sure the person on the other end didn’t have a clue as to what he was saying.

Duke always thought that everyone understood him.

Everything about Allan and his gallery was like that - slightly off kilter and rather eccentric. I always felt like I was in a movie when I visited there.

I brought Allan thirty small paintings to look at. Joan was very excited and told me to come back later in the afternoon when Allan would be there. Allan looked at them with me standing there. He picked out fourteen of them, and asked me how much? I told him, and he wrote me a check on the spot. Allan was a collector.

Allan, of course, already represented lots of other artists, and he was famously loyal to all of them. The only time my work was on the wall of the main gallery was for his yearly TALENT group shows for emerging artists, and then one time I was in a two-person show.

However, my work was always laying out somewhere, along with all the other piled-up art. This was especially true after they moved into their new space on East 90th   where they had more room. The second floor of the new gallery had an on-going salon show on the walls, and my work was always well represented.

Allan would sometimes talk to me about the indefinable magic that makes for great painting, and that my painting had it. He sold a ton of my stuff. I was his best client’s favorite artist.

When they moved, they closed for a year or two (I think Allan had health issues at that time) and when they reopened, Allan was playing a far lesser role in the day-to-day operation. He more or less retired and his daughter Claudia took over the business.

Sales dropped off, so I moved on.

Allan died a few years ago. It was such an honor to have crossed paths with such a great man. 

********

By this time, the NY economy was in bad shape. Art sales had come to a standstill. I decided to focus on Cincinnati, where I had never stopped showing (Cincinnati will have its own chapter in this book) and Japan.

My original connection with Japan was through people who I had known from the Unification Church who had started an art business there. They contacted me about participating in an “American Art Show”, and so I did. They really liked me and sold a lot of my work, so I was invited to have solo shows there.

I’ve been to Japan seven or eight times, shown in a number of cities, mostly Tokyo. They would always fly me over (one time with my wife, another time with my wife and kid) and treat us all real nice, putting us up in nice hotels and taking us out to dinner in fancy restaurants.

Japan was fun while it lasted, but I ultimately decided that it was not worth pursuing. There were just too many middlemen, too much confusion.

Hardly anyone owns a gallery in Tokyo, as real estate is so expensive there. Almost all of the shows are one or two-week rental deals. For every show, even if it was my third in Ginza (their Soho), the show was always in a different location. We’d work with a huge staff of people, professional sales staff who work for other galleries also, who were hired just for that show.

Actually, the premier location for art in Tokyo is in the gallery section of the large department stores. I had one in Bunkamura, which is (or was at the time) the best of the best. The problem there was that the department store would control the client list.

This being the case: the fact that the location was constantly changing, or that we lost contact with clients if showing in a department store – every show was the same as if it was my first. It was nearly impossible to make any kind of foundation to build on.

Added to this was the inherent difficulty in dealing with another culture. They would always say “yes” to everything (normally a very excited and emphatic “YES!”) but in Japan, yes does not mean yes. (I was once told that they have no word for “no”, but I don’t know if that is true.) Suffice to say that they would never say anything negative (even if the reality was utterly depressing) and were I to become critical or ask too many questions, it would always lead to huge misunderstandings and hurt feelings.

It was nearly impossible to get any kind of feel for what was actually going on until I arrived on location, and I was often very surprised.

My last show in Tokyo, I pulled all the work off the market half way through the show and personally reimbursed them for a lot of their expenses (which included buying six-thousand catalogue/books they had made of the series) because their sales staff had been sent to Korea for another show. Hardly anyone showed up (a hurricane was happening at the time) and I was afraid I’d end up selling one painting, thus breaking up a series that I had spent nine months creating. I wanted to save it, and show it somewhere else at some future point in time. I gave the entire series to my long-time interpreter friend for safekeeping. He still has it.

That was going to be the end of my career in Japan, except that, as a favor to this one woman who was always so sweet to me when I visited there, I agreed to go to Okinawa and meet a couple of her friends who had opened a gallery. I expected something like a poster/frame shop in a strip mall.

When I got there, I was completely blown away.

Bob was an American, a very wealthy industrialist in Okinawa. His wife was something of an Okinawan Princess, daughter of one of the old wealthy families. She opened this drop-dead gorgeous gallery in a traditional Japanese house with glass walls connected to what looked like an ancient Japanese tearoom - looking out on a garden with a pond.

It was the most beautiful gallery that I had ever seen. I thought my ship had come in.

Okinawa (at least at that time) had no gallery scene - no tradition of showing western art. It was like painting on a completely blank canvas. I loved it. It had this small village feel to it; with none of the pretense of big city art scenes. 

The first show went over really well. It was like showing for family and friends - real neighborly - very sweet and wonderful.

By the second show, it had all crashed and burned.

It’s a long story, but basically, Yoko, who has always been an extremely wealthy person, was completely out of touch with the realities of my (and anyone who wasn’t a multi-millionaire) life. Her expectations for my work and time became totally unrealistic.

Then she burned all of her bridges with all her wealthy friends by parading me around as if I was the newest charm on her bracelet. They’d all contact me privately and tell me that they loved my work and me, but could no longer go to Yoko’s gallery.

There was no business plan. Indeed, there was nothing in the way of conversation between us, as she had fired my longtime interpreter because he translated my questions and concerns – and no one ever questioned or said no to Yoko.

Bob also stopped responding to my emails. I think, all along, he just wanted me to take care of his wife for him – give her something to do. He didn’t seem to care about my future, or, at very least, I’m sure he didn’t run his business like Yoko was running hers.

So it all fell apart. Yoko cut off communication with me and never returned my inventory. (I had asked her to, once we parted ways, agreeing to pay for shipping; but she didn’t respond for something like eight months, by which time I no longer had the money, and honestly speaking, haven’t since.) Maybe she still has it. Maybe she had a tantrum and threw it all in the ocean. There is no way to know these things, without personally going there.

This was the second time that I’ve lost tens of thousands of dollars in money or inventory through no fault of my own.

When Helio went bust, Joseph claimed to have trashed his computer because he was so depressed, thus losing contact with all the people who had bought my work from all the Helio shows.

All those clients – gone.

Truth was, when he was going broke (I found out later) he sold off my inventory at sale price, never giving me my percentage. He just didn’t want me to find out who had bought what, at what price.

It’s kind of hard to roll with these kinds of situations as they are occurring, but ultimately, the way I look at it is, there is just no avoiding it. If you want to play the game, you need an education, and so you have to pay the tuition. This is how you learn in this business, and sometimes the lesson comes with a hefty price tag.

Still, I’m grateful for my time and experiences with both Joseph and Japan. Most of them were good, and all of them were mind-expanding. Sometimes, I even made a lot of money, but then there were other times.

********

 One time, I was supposed to go to Japan for what amounted to a three-city show. All the work was completed and ready to be shipped.

At the last moment, they pulled the plug, as their economy had tanked,

So I was sitting on all of this art and in desperate need of cash. I called my friend George at Gallery Hennock, as George had borrowed (and sold) my work from Helio and Stone for group shows in the past. It’s a high-end commercial gallery, not the best fit for my work, but it was street level Soho.

I told him about my situation, and asked if he thought there was anything he could do.

Amazingly, in a very short period of time, he was able to give me a solo show. I had a really great painting hanging in the front window. I didn’t think there was any way that I was not going to do well.

To my great surprise, not one painting sold. Not one.

By this time, I was totally freaking out. I didn’t know what to do. I mean, I had a retired wife and a young child. I had never had a job other than art. The end was clearly in sight. Did I really come all this way, simply to crash and burn?

Then the phone rang.

The guy said his name was Louis Newman, and that he was the director of MB Modern, which was a rather prestigious gallery on 57th St and a perfect venue for my work.

I knew of the gallery. Actually, shortly before this (another of my outreach projects) I had visited all of the representational galleries on 57th St, personally giving the directors a copy of my “New Yorker in Japan” catalogue / book. I had visited MB Modern, approached Louis, and he had left me standing there with my arm out-stretched, holding the catalogue, refusing to accept it. He explained some kind of anal gallery policy about not accepting anything over the counter.

I swore off approaching that gallery ever again.

But now Louis was coming to me.

He said that he had seen a show of mine on 56th St thirteen years earlier.

I remembered that show / gallery. It was a show I had done as a favor for a friend who had opened (and quickly closed) a gallery there (as there are no other galleries on 56th St, much less on the fifth floor of a building with a Japanese restaurant on the first floor). It might as well have been located in Oklahoma, as far as 57th St galleries and their street traffic are concerned.

I imagine all of five people saw that show. One of them was me; three others were staff, and apparently Louis Newman.

He said that he was very impressed with my work, but had forgotten my name, and had been looking for me ever since. He said he had been describing my work to others for years to no avail.

Shortly before calling, he had been cleaning out an old filing cabinet, and came across a resume of mine that he had picked up on the earlier occasion. I’m in the phone book.

He asked if he could stop by the following day.

I said sure.

He showed up on time, in his fancy suit. He had taken the subway, as he said he liked the authentic nature as a NYC experience.

I was waiting for him in front of the building.

I smelled art history.

Louis stayed for two or three hours. I had so much work to show him. He was really impressed.

He asked me if I’d like to do a solo show at MB Modern the following month, filling in for another artist who had unexpectedly left the gallery. I thought I was hallucinating. He took a few paintings with him when he left. He sold one of them the following day.

In my three years at MB Modern, I had two solo shows, and my work was prominently featured in two group shows. I was MB Modern’s art star. Louis sold nearly everything I gave him.

I remember one time. It was New Year’s Eve. I was alone in the gallery with Louis, fixing a warped stretcher on one of my paintings. My work was on the walls; most all of it was sold. I was looking out the window at the excitement of the crowds gathering on the streets below, and I thought: “Man, you have really made it.”

But truth is, I wasn’t satisfied. Not even close.

I always thought of my art as being the stage I had to build so that my thought would be considered. I didn’t really care about being an art star, or making lots of money per se. I’ve always wanted to change the world. I’ve always known that my thought, which grew out of my early life experiences, had this potential.

But as time went on, quite the opposite was happening. Try as I would, the directors of the galleries I was showing in never wanted me to express my thought. Louis didn’t even like the titles of my paintings. He said they made the potential buyers think too much.

Galleries that sell “traditional art” (and for the most part my work has always been straight-forward representational) are basically picture seller galleries that are not interested in anything that might complicate sales.

The more successful I became, the greater the pressure not to rock the boat.

It all started to feel kind of stupid to me. I’d go to openings, and everyone was waiting to meet me, but I always felt like they didn’t even know who I was.

Indeed, I felt like they didn’t even understand my paintings, as I’ve always felt that painting is little more than the external expression of the thought and character of the artist. My audience didn’t have a clue as to who I was or what I was thinking about or feeling.

So when MB Modern closed, I wasn’t sad. I was actually kind of glad.

I decided to switch gears, and allow my thought to be front and center.

I pretty much dropped out of gallery world, and started to do public art projects, centering on my thought.