Born in Hollywood, California, we lived in Walt Disney‘s old house, the one he first moved into upon coming out west. The gardener said surely this is where he thought of Mickey Mouse, because of all the mice. In school I’m sure you remember kids like me sitting in the back of the class, not paying any attention just drawing classmates and dragsters and the anti Mickey, Rat Fink character over and over.
One day my mom dragged me to the LA County art Museum. I remember kicking her in the foot as I wanted to be outside riding my skateboard. I broke away from her ironclad grip and ran about 20 feet. She yelled, I turned around and behind her, the painting that formally looked like drips, blobs and squiggles just jelled as if by magic becoming a knife in a glass of water. I was dumbfounded. I could not believe anyone could capture something this real in 20 stokes with seemingly wild abandon. It was Richard Diebenkorn of course. And I was hooked.
After trying and failing in assorted fields of scholarly enterprise, I ended up going to Art Center College of Design in California. All the SoCal gear heads were there designing cars along with Japanese kids making brilliant industrial products. We all studied classical drawing for 8 hours a day with fine artists and designers. One teacher was Herb Ryman, the guy who sat with Walt and designed Disneyland. Adventureland, Fantasyland, Jungleland and so on. Walt said he had no money but offered him 200 bucks or a piece of the action. Of course the guy didn’t think it would go anywhere so took the two bills. Walt took care of him the rest of his life, enlisting him for Pirates of the Caribbean and New Orleans Square to design. Ward Kimball, the inventor of Jiminy Cricket would set up a fluidly moving washerwoman on stage. Our task was to capture this action in a flip book for animation.We were unworthy sods given an impossible task. Especially as Mr. Kimball would stomp about either whistling or making rattling chains and creaking door noises.
So around that time, I really needed a job and walked into the ad /min office where the woman tossed me a scrap of paper with a number. I called and it was CBS Records. They asked me if I had ever done posters, window designs and billboards. “Of course,” I answered, having never done any of these things. As it turns out the A&R executives were in London where a musician was playing 24/7 on the sidewalk outside the hotel. They drew straws, the loser having to sign the guy up. It was Elvis Costello and they gave me the job of making the posters. Which worked out well. As I ended up getting a gold record for artistic endeavors or something on stage with Bruce Springsteen at the Roxy. This worked out better than the fires we started in the windows with malfunctioning robots built for Tower records on Sunset for the War of The Worlds album. And getting the date, venue and name wrong on a poster for a Reo Speedwagon concert.
True to my lifetime goal of anything to avoid a real job, I started at Disneyland dressed up like a pirate drawing portraits in New Orleans Square. Much harder than it sounds as no one sits still. The victims’ friends and family were not shy about informing you just how awful you were and they should have gone to Claudia, the female pirate next to me who drove a lime green Gremlin to work. You were paid $3 per portrait. If they bought it upon completion. Brutal. I tried to make it financially worthwhile and realized I was just doing shitty pictures. And realized the only way to survive is to make it good and look like the subject. You could exaggerate and you could do whatever you wanted . As long as they bought the drawing. Being thrown to the lions was how I really learned how to draw.
I asked for a job at NBC Graphics in Burbank and they gave me a courtroom case drawing the Lee Marvin trial. I inherited this job from Howard Brodie, an ex WWII army artist who won an Emmy for drawing the Charles Manson trial. “Watch their hands” was his advice. Clasped behind behind back or deep in pockets, hands send a message. Gripping, expansively gesturing, explaining and pleading are told.
One assignment was doing The Tonight Show graphics for Johnny Carson. I was told by the boss who had a goiter the size of a grapefruit that “Johnny hates pink.” So of course all I could see was the color pink for the paintings of noisemakers and other New Year’s Eve stupid stuff to be used between commercial breaks. January 2, I was asked somewhat rhetorically . “You know you’re fired.” Yep. And since the neighborhood where I lived in South Central LA was rapidly deteriorating, it seemed like an ok time to move, try another city. New York might be fun…
New York City
On the plane back east I sat next to a guy who told me the best deal for lodging was the Seaman’s Church Institute in Battery Park . If they ask if you registered this year, as it was for sailors, just say yes. So I got a room with a view of the Statue of Liberty which cost $13 a night. On the back side of the building the rooms were $9. Seeing as it cost me 50 cents every time I looked out the window I moved to the later.
My first actual job was drawing people using little dots for the Wall Street Journal. A job I subsequently grew to hate, one day walking in the revolving door and walking out of the revolving door heading up to Times Square. Just the most gloomy Midnight Cowboy era godforsaken day. But once up there the clouds cleared I had an epiphany of sorts. The city exploded, in a blaze of expressionist color with this brilliant laser, white light sculpting the building, cabs, messengers, and scurrying figures, carting trucks, theatrical agents, women in high heels, and at once I realized my mission: Try and capture the narrative, the beauty, the magnetic pull of the epicenter, this dynamo of the urban city.