Jeb Feldman, Urban Homesteader, Talks About the Arts Explosion in Braddock, PA

Note: I will repeat all the links that are inserted in the text at the end of the post.

This interview was done quite a while ago ...like.. a year.....which I am mortified about. But I did some editing to update it, and it should give the reader a good (if partial cause so MUCH is going on) idea of the exciting changes going on in Braddock.Braddock doesn't have a lot of urban homesteaders, but they are very busy ones: reclaimingproperties and working on a long list of projects, including UnSmoke Systems, Obscurae, Pointsof Interest, Transformazium, also the farming project...a print studio...............etc etc.and did I mention the business that turns vehicles into green vehicles (Fossil FreeFuels....http://www.fossilfreefuel.com/fossilfreefuel_flash.html).....You get the idea. Lots ofgreat energy in Braddock.

My introduction to the new Braddock came on April 27th 2007, when I attended the opening ofan exhibit of art work by Swoon (an internationally known street artist) and two other wellknown artists Chris Stain and Leslie Stem. Not only was the art, which was ensconced in a spacebelow the mayor's home, amazing, the scene was a revelation.

Clearly, a LOT of people wouldcome to Braddock for an interesting event.There were hundreds of people there. OK, many were drawn by Swoons fame and her ties to alternative culture...but it was amazing. For informationon Swoon see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swoon_(artist)I met Swoon at a talk in Braddock early this fall. She told me she will be in Braddock morefrequently starting in 2010, as work on her project with Tranzformazium begins in earnest.Braddock has had loads of press in the past year. John Fetterman the mayor, has been interviewed and interviewed in the national press. Videoed left and right by news media. It is a fascinating story, and one good summary can be found here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/01/us/01braddock.html (the accompanying New York Times video is particularly good).

The primary focus of the interview with Jeb Feldman is the vitality brought to Braddock by those in the visual arts. One could make a case that Braddock isn't being so much renovated, it is being repurposed as a fabulous art cooperative.

Jean: How many people would you say have kind of moved here to live here that are what youmight call urban homesteaders? I mean, is it less than 50, is it more than 50, is it . . .Where are they mostly from?

Jeb: there's been about, somewhere between 15 and 20 people who've moved into town. I meanin a town the size of Braddock with, you know 2500 or 2600 people with of not many peopleflowing in, I mean, certainly not enough to stem the sort of the continuing diminishment of thepopulation here..........but I think that it's exciting to think about 20 new people who are here to revitalize and build and , save properties and establish energy in various pockets of town. You know, when those 20 people are here for that sort of common purpose, I think it is, it seems like a lot of people and it's an exciting number.

Jean: So one newer resident, Jodi ( one of the organizers of the Obscurae photo project) she's from Brooklyn?

Jeb: Yes, she moved here from Brooklyn . She's one of four or five Brooklyners who have moved here, so for whatever reason, we've been poaching Brooklyn. But people have moved from Chicago and Alaska and Portland. I guess with the exception of the Alaskan it's primarily people from urban centers who have moved here, and I think for obvious reasons, from expensive urban centers.

Jeb continues:It's been interesting to watch people sort of move here from all over the place, and it hasn't just been one place, and it certainly hasn't been people {moving here} from Pittsburgh so much. I think three years ago when there were very few of us involved in this, the conversation about how to sort of try to develop some more energy and how to bring some people down here. Then I think it was assumed that we'd be targeting Pittsburghers. But with the exception of one artist, named Josh Tonies, who has been fantastic, and he made the move down here, we haven't actually seen other Pittsburghers move here.

Jean: Really.

Jeb: I hope that at some point we'd love to become sort of a legitimate option for Pittsburghers when they survey the landscape and think about where they might want to move in town. That when people are looking and they say, well, typically you move to Bloomfield, Lawrenceville, Shadyside, Squirrel Hill, you know, these are all your sort of neighborhoods,that people think about, but it would be nice for some people to think like, well, there's a lot going on in Braddock and that might be one place I'd consider. Actually it wasn't even in the conversation for a very long time, for anybody.

Jean: Oh, I wouldn't think, because it just wasn't.Jeb: And that's exactly it. Like I said, it doesn't have to be in the conversation for every search, every type of person, I mean it's not, this is not a neighborhood for everybody.

Jean: OK. Well, while we're on the topic, if, I can guess, but, other than that people are coming from places that are ridiculously expensive where it's just very hard to live, as even Brooklyn has become, what would attract someone to come to Braddock? What sort of person would be interested?

Jeb:I think there's an opportunity here to sort of shape at a very ground and base level, that you know you don't have in other neighborhoods that have charted their trajectory already.

Jeb continues: And I think that that's really compelling for a lot of people.Then there's sort of the chance to kind of reshape it and actually sort of develop sort of a new vision for this place. It is really I think the main reason why people are finding themselves here. So the people who are coming are builders, people who want to sort of introduce energy of one sort or another into a place, And then I think there are other aspects of this, including the fact that Mayor John Fetterman has sort of opened himself up,along with the people he collaborates with, including myself, to try to facilitate, projects that revolve around community energy and revitalization. When you have a person sort of at that level in a community like this helping push those kind of projects along, I think that that's another sort of carrot for people . . .

Jeb Continues: People get really excited about the notion that a local leader would be, you know, willing to put himself out, try to help, and be so transparent and so accessible in helping make projects happen. I think that those are the sort of the main sort of things that are dangled out there in front of people, but you know, a lot of it has to do also with, setting a niche for the projects that are here. So, you know, we're trying to build around, the energy generated by art and art-related events, green businesses, etc.

Jean: That's right, it's not only creative people who are coming here, arts-related people, it's also the green . . .

Jeb: Right, and I think that they're far more tied together than a lot of people realize. You know, a lot of the people that I think can move here, that maybe would, you know, move here as artists, or that we consider to be moving here because of art things have ended up being a lot more sort of agriculturally oriented and have been doing more sort of farming and gardening than we had anticipated. So it is a very cyclical thing where a lot of the art projects start to look like they're going to be leaning more towards global food growing, things like that.

Jean: Interesting.

Jeb: Because we're trying to tie this to the community that's here already.

Jean: Right.I wanted to ask you about the outdoor artwork that is all over Braddock.John Morris and I had taken that tour around, looked at all the "points of interest" (ie the art points of interest as designated on the Transformazium website).

Jeb: Great, really that's, you know, oftentimes when we talk about the art and the artists here, you know, I can't give enough credit to this group of women who, most of whom have relocated here from other places. They call themselves Transformazium and they're here for a large project.

Jeb continues- They have taken over (legally) an abandoned church that was terribly dilapidated and basically waiting to be razed.
While they've been waiting for that to happen and for the title to transfer to them, they've been working on all sorts of community related projects and a lot of them have been tied into sort of local agriculture as well.

Jean: Oh, that's interesting, yeah.

Jeb: working with the local youth on teaching them how to farm and learn outdoor practices.

Jean: And that's the project Swoon (given name Caledonia Curry) is involved in?

Jeb: Right .

Jean: OK, yeah, yeah, but the rumor that I had heard is that she had bought a church, but that's not accurate . . .

Jeb: She became the sort of point person early on and the request was made to her whether she wanted to take on this sort of troubled church building. But she, as she sort of travels the world, there's a group of four people working down here on a daily basis . . .

Jean: Okay, yeah.

Jeb: Plus we're entirely involved. (The four women here)while they've got their hands full with the church they've also been doing any number of projects like points of interest which you referenced. For information on the Transformazium group go here: http://www.transformazium.org/whatandwhy.html

Jean: Mm hmm.

Jeb: And a number of other things.

Jean: OK, yeah, cause being the small world that it is, uh, when I was in New York {September 2008) and I saw the Swoon exhibit, at Deitch Projects Gallery, and I know there was some guy I talked to and he said he was coming down to Pittsburgh to work on the church for a couple of weeks.

Jeb: They have a lot of people involved in their sort of community there and they have an amazing amount of people float through town that know to do this or that here, as well as for that project, especially recently. I guess it was three, maybe four weekends ago there was a fundraiser for their project in Brooklyn.

Jean: Yeah, I was going to ask you about that..........

Jeb: Um, and, you know, they obviously attracted more people out there than they ever would here, more arts buyers you know. They are just very well, you know, connected out there {i.e. in Brooklyn}.

Jean: Sure.

Jeb: So it made a lot of sense for them to do it out there. It was interesting to be out there and watch a fundraiser for Braddock happen in Brooklyn.A number of, most of us, you know most of us actually traveled out for that.

Jean:Yeah, that's really great. So, the church then is going to be, I mean I know this is probably in process, but if, you know, it gets taken over, if it's fixed up, then it starts as an art project, then at some point it becomes something else, like some kind of community center?

Jeb: You know, you'd have to ask them exactly what their sort of a mission and the, you know, the vision for the whole project is.

Jean: Where is the church?

Jeb: It's in North Braddock, actually. It's up on Jones Avenue.

Jeb continues: It is, you know, it's actually what I think a lot of people envision as really one of the focuses of energy that's going to happen in this area, because Library Street becomes Jones Street you have, uh, you have a number of properties at the intersection of Library and Braddock Avenue that I think are really pivotal. Then you have John's church (Mayor John Fettermans ) that he's been sort of holding on to for a number of years now, and the nonprofit that we run is working to turn that into a community center.

Jeb continues: So, hopefully, in a few years down the road that'll be a place sort of teeming with activity. Across the street you got Braddock's, Carnegie Library, you know, whichis a.......

Jean: A beautiful building.

Jeb: Very beautiful, you know, historic, Carnegie's first library in America.

Jean: Oh, I didn't even know that. Wow!

Jeb: Right, then you head up the tracks and you have, you know, you have a middle school, you have the Braddock Field historic site, then you have the Schwab mansion, which, you know, is really sort of a real estate relic of, sort of, of the sort of the steel magnet era, and then you continue to head up the road and you hit Transformazium's properties.

Jean: Oh, OK, yeah, we passed the Schwab mansion the other day, I was wondering what the story was on it.

Jeb: It's really beautiful. I mean, it's, really, in a lot of ways it's just sort of a, it's a less refined version of the Frick mansion in Point Breeze.And it's really beautiful on the inside, in a lot of ways it could be everything the Frick mansion is, it's just going to take some time and energy, and actually, Dr. Bruce Dixon, uh, who's the Director of Allegheny County Health Department, he's the owner. From what I understand, he is meticulously restoring the property.(See a slideshow on the mansion here) http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07214/806408-30.stm

Jean: Oh, that's great. OK.

Jeb: So, I saw that he's been working on recreating the historic greenhouses on the back of the property.

Jeb: From what I hear he's restoring the equally meticulously, so it should be amazing. I mean, I don't know if it will ever be open to the public, but it's certainly going to be a beautiful property.

Jean: Now,with the properties that are on Braddock Avenue., . OK, are they, the storefronts and things, I mean, are they just in all various states of vacant, not vacant, liens on them, not liens on them?

Jeb: That's it, yes, yes.

Jean: That sums it up?

Jeb: Basically, yes. They are in all various states of sort of neglect, distress, some of them less distressed than others, but by and large,the community has become a bit tattered, especially Braddock Avenue, the corridor, and . . .

Jean: Yes.

Jeb: Uh, you know, you can go in and out of a number of those properties; you know, it's strange to just be able to sort of walk through distressed properties that are sort of falling apart, but you know, people are beginning to sort of take care of and then it really depends on where on the avenue you are.

Jean It seems like...there are definitely, there are some things around that are buyable and reclaimable?

Jeb: I think there are amazing values in the properties here, but it's you know, it's still one of these things where you have to find the value in it for yourself, because the odds of you actually sort of making money on it, are unrealistic.

Jean: Uh huh.

Jeb: It's not a speculative market. There's not, you know, there's not a big profit to be had in a property anywhere in this community, as far as I can tell. We're.....we've been party to that, you know,transactions for houses that are, you know, for $5500, and, as cheap as that might sound, I'm not sure that the properties are ever going to go for much more money than that.

Jean: Mm, hmm.

Jeb: And, you know, you can take some of these big commercial properties and put a bunch of money in them, and they still might not be worth anymore than what you bought them for. So like I said, I think the value really has to be,sort of the reward of the space that you're happy in and that you can use to create energy.

Jean: Yeah, yeah.

Jeb: That might be a business, for example. Say you might be able to come in and find a property that you can run a business out of, and that business could be very profitable, but, the actual property itself, isn't a speculative venture.

Jean: One thing I didn't know too much about till lately, and then I was reading that it might not come about, and I know it would be a problem for Braddock if it did ...... is the whole Mon Valley Expressway thing?

Jeb: Yes.

Jean: That would really pretty much mess up Braddock Avenue. Then I was just reading something online saying that it appears the Mon Valley Expressway (through Braddock) will not happen?

Jeb: Right. Well, I mean, I think, you know, given the state of the economy, and look around, and, you know, taxpayers just bailed out the banking industry to the tune of 700 billion dollars . . ...

Jean: Yeah, that's quite a chunk!

Jeb: It's hard to imagine where they're going to sort of scrounge up the money for a road that they had no way of figuring out financing for for the last three (now four)years. I think we were really confident last year that this wasn't happening, and it's just been a matter, you know, I think there's even sort of more confidence that, you know, it's going nowhere. I mean, from what I can tell, and I feel pretty educated about the project, the Mon-Valley Expressway or the Mon-Fayette Expressway has run out of financing options. So they've sort of stopped planning at least the Mon Valley Expressway portion of the project. They put a hard stop on that and they said they were going to look for money, and they've been looking for money for a number of years, but then every year they reassess the estimated cost of the project, and it seems like every year they release the estimated cost, it jumps another billion dollars, so . . .See a Post Gazette article here: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08258/912103-147.stm

Jean: Oh my gosh.

Jeb: You know, as time passes you have to feel more and more confident that that's not going to happen and that at some point they're going to have to adjust their thinking away from the sort of road building, old school, Robert Moses mentality of sort of urban planning.something different, and hopefully it will lead us to a more sustainable and more progressive solution, you know. perhaps a more elegant solution to the problem of moving people around the area,might just come out of an inability to do something they wanted to do will lead them to something actually better.

Jean: Uh huh. Yup, right.

Jeb: Like a multi-modal sort of solution to local transportation has been proposed and is out there already.

Jean: And what would that mean?

Jeb: That would mean having, you know, having commuters and people move in a variety of ways and I think it would pivot around the notion of public transportation.

Jean: Oh, OK. Yeah.

Jeb: You know, trains and buses and . . .

Jean: Mm hmm.

Jeb: And perhaps even using the waterways, but, you know, multi-modal.

Jean: Uh huh. Well, it would be interesting to use the waterways, that's something that (laughter) . . . probably hasn't happened around here in a long, long time, right?

Jeb: A real long time, but, you know,there's really no reason why, you know, Braddock being 8 miles from downtown Pittsburgh or whatever, you know, if you had a boat and didn't have a street light between here and downtown Pittsburgh, you know, instead of having to......

Jean: That's a pretty great idea.

Jeb: You know, I think we could get to downtown in 10 minutes.

Jean: Yeah, that's a pretty great idea. Well, it's and it's also, it's not like the rivers around here freeze up or anything, that I know of, do they? I mean, they're always passable, aren't they?

Jeb: I believe so.

Jean: So, how did you end up getting involved in Braddock?

Jeb: I was just in school here. I was going to Carnegie Mellon and I was becoming more and more certain that I was going to do some sort of community development. That was where my interests lay, and right then, probably at just the right time, I met John Fetterman, who was the mayor-elect of Braddock.I think that the connection happened because I'd been sort of coming down to this neck of the woods for a long time. Like, I'd been really fascinated by Braddock myself. I think a fascination that a lot of people, I'm learning, have. I was sort of awestruck by a place where the last mill in the area was still steaming and flaming. And, also by a town that had obviously lost so much, but had of the sort of architecture still left here, and it was very puzzling as to what had happened here.

Somebody, you know, put one and one together and decided that John and I should sit down and have beers, cause they had met him somewhere. And so we sat and talked and I think our ideologies really aligned. He was working with disenfranchised young men, trying to get them jobs, so I started working with him.Nice piece on Mayor John Fetterman from POPCITY here http://www.popcitymedia.com/features/fetterman0425.aspx

Jean: When was that, roughly?

Jeb: That was, that was late 2005.

Jean: Uh huh.

Jeb: But 2006 is when I really started working a lot down here. But I was still in school, and so what I would do initially was a lot of research, which I think really served me very well, because now I know where I am and what's happened here. Um, but, you know, I started helping John sort of facilitate and manage some of the projects he had going on. {For example} I was trying to recruit people for the start of a studio space we had going on, and trying to figure out if anybody was interested in this concept of this community center in this big old abandoned church, and in the meantime we were running events through this old abandoned church without windows, so we were doing all these kinds of things, just trying to sort of figure out where we could establish some traction.

Jean: Uh huh. I was at the Swoon opening, when she did the work which was exhibited below the mayor's residence, shall we say? (laughter). And ofcourse next to that, in the the church they had the bands. Yes, that was great, that was an amazing thing.

Jeb: Yeah, you know, I mean, everything that we've got going, in a lot of respects is, there are still extensions of those kind of activities, it just, um, things have sort of evolved a little bit, and, you know, instead of having uh, you know, Swoon show in sort of the mayor's residence, in his basement, you know, we actually have a gallery now, and instead of having studio spaces in a building that we had entree to because of a kind of a handshake agreement, we now own the building where the studios are, and . . .

Jean: Which is this building?

Jeb: Right.

Jean: Yeah. Now, did you, I was looking online, and did you get an Arts Management degree?

Jeb: I did.

Jean: Degree from CMU? OK, OK, yeah. So that's what your background.

Jeb: Yeah, it's part of my background.

Jean: Where did you move from when you came to CMU?

Jeb: I guess I consider myself, uh, a transplant from California, although I had sort of a layover in Wisconsin.

Jean: OK (laughter).

Jeb: And I grew up in New Mexico, so I've been around, a little bit.

Jean: Uh huh. OK. Is Unsmoke Systems what you're primarily involved with now?

Jeb: I feel like I'm involved with everything, but I do have to do the day to day on Unsmoke Systems. I mean, there's the cooperative of people, the artists in here and a few other people who have been sort of working on this project, there are, other collaborators on it, and then I sort of have to sort of um, kind of agitate things occasionally and sort of keep it going, and so this is, I guess, yes, partly because I am sort of the, actually, I'm the proprietor of the building, it's . . It sort of falls on me to make sure that, you know that things sort of stay on course here, I'm also involved in most of the projects that the mayor is involved in, uh, and the sort of partnerships that Braddock Redux, the nonprofit that we sort of run projects through. are involved of stand beyond the realm of Unsmoke Systems.

Jean: OK. Well, and, how would you describe Unsmoke Systems ?

Jeb: Uh, I think Unsmoke Systems is a cooperative of artists and a venue, slash arts and gallery space, uh, and that's to me really, you know, what Unsmoke Systems does. But it also serves, it serves the kind of greater Braddock community as a place where, um, sort of anybody can use the venue itself as a place to sort of entertain or, you know, like undertake whatever they'd like to do, I think it's a very flexible space, the 2400 square foot gallery slash venue, with you know, rectangular box for whatever kind of projects people want, so . . .Jean: The gallery space opened, in spring (2008)

Jeb: We had the grand opening, I guess, technically in July (2008).

Jean: OK.

Jeb: In partnership with, I'd actually call it wildly successful grand opening, in partnership with the Carnegie Museum of Art and their Carnegie International.

Jean: Oh, right, yes, OK.

Jeb: Which was great, I mean, something like 16 artists installed all over the building and there were, you now, anywhere from 700 to 900 people out here, for a number of hours; it was fantastic and really well received, and it provided a lot of sort of momentum for this project as a whole.

Jean: Yeah, yeah. How many artists have studios here now?

Jeb: Mmm, there's 9 visual artists and a writer.

Jean: And they're basically renting studio space?

Jeb: No, they're basically, they're basically helping with utilities.

Jean: Oh, really. OK.

Jeb: The actual space itself is, I guess, technically free.

Jean: OK. All right, uh, I had met the people, I don't recall their names, who had moved here, and live next door. He is going to do furniture making and they're fixing up the car dealership?

Jeb: Right.

Jean: The abandoned car dealership, or maybe not abandoned, I don't know, closed?

Jeb: Yes. John owns the dealership across the way and I’ll be making furniture out of that property; there’s an old convent building behind us, sort of here at the back of the parking lot. We hope that that becomes the coffee shop . . .

Jeb: And then there’s this building which has been sort of the hub of sort of arts activities.

Jeb: Not to a lot of fanfare, we’re not sort of the fanfare type, but you know, I think they had a good turnout on Saturday and hopefully, you know, over the course of the next month we’ll see a number of more people come down. You know, we’re obviously not a sort of a foot traffic community, so you sort of have events, and people come out when they determine that it’s a good time for them to sort of make a day trip out of Braddock or whatever. You know it’s been great.

Jean: I was wondering, is there kind of a mixture of all through Braddock of the newer residents plus the older residents? That is as far as residential location is concerned.?

Jeb: Well, I mean, you get, you know, there aren’t that many newer residents, so, I mean, where we’re located and where, you know, the new residents are is sort of centrally located on this side of town, but, I mean, there aren’t enough of them to sort of say, well there’s a pocket of them sort of anywhere. Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, older residents of Braddock are, you know, throughout Braddock really, and they don’t have a specific sort of space. You know, the community’s where it is, but it’s um, it’s certainly less than it used to be.

Jean: Yeah. Yeah.

Jeb: You know, even I think in the eighties it was, you know, even 8,000 people and now we’re down around 2600, so.

Jean: Yeah. Well, there’s some very nice buildings over in the other section as well, (between Braddock Ave. and the river)some nice homes, and then there’s a couple of, you know, nice large brick, I don’t know what they were, warehouses or something, so. And there’s a great Swoon piece that looks like it’s been there for awhile, it’s kind of aged, but uh . . .

Jeb: There’s a lot of them actually, sure we have uh, we have as many Swoon pieces per capita as any place in America perhaps.

Jean: Uh huh, yeah.

Jeb: It may be perhaps that we might even have as much public art as any place per capita in America, to tell the truth . . .

Jean: (laughter) That’s true.

Jeb: With 20 pieces or whatever there is here . . .

Jean: There is oh yeah, in terms of just all the public art, yeah, yeah. Yeah, which is very worthwhile for people to do the points of interest tour which is on the website.

Jeb: I mean you have points, in addition to points of interest as well. You know, James Simon has been working down here for awhile and just uh, he just placed a beautiful mosaic sort of piece in a small kind of little pocket park . . .

Jean: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I saw that from afar and then we never quite got back to it.

Jeb: Yeah, that’s great and that, that was just installed um, over this last summer (08) and he actually just sort of put two mosaic totems up uh within the last few weeks, and you know, the County participated in that and landscaped the space for him, and donated the land, you know, because they developed or just built the new bus stop right on the avenue, so um, you know, there are a lot of sort of colorful things happening around town and hopefully um, sort of projects and work that, you know make sort of people here proud of their community.

Jean: Yeah.

Jeb: You know, I certainly am proud of being here.

Unsmoke Systems Artspacehttp://unsmokeartspace.com/home.html

Tranzformazium (includes information on "Points of Interest")http://www.transformazium.org/whatandwhy.html

Braddock shop helps clean Third World countries' waterhttp://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09039/947753-82.stm

Obscurae Photo Galleryhttp://obscuraegallery.org/

Move to Braddock PA and Afford the Life You Always Wanted, or Why Small Towns Are the Besthttp://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/10/move-to-braddock-pa-and-afford-the-life-you-always-wanted-or-why-small-towns-are-best.php#ch01

Mayor John Fetterman (from POPCITY)http://www.popcitymedia.com/features/fetterman0425.aspx

Braddock Reduxhttp://www.braddockredux.org/node/27

Braddock in the NY Times (the video is great)http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/01/us/01braddock.html

The Post Gazette Slide Show on Scwab Mansionhttp://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07214/806408-30.stm

Swoonhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swoon_(artist)Monvalley Expresswayhttp://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08258/912103-147.stm

Fossil Free Fuels
Posted by Jean McClung at 10:12 PM
Labels: Braddock, John Fetterman, pittsburgh, pittsburgh arts, Swoon, unsmoke Systems

Ruth Levine: Artist, Wit and Urban Dweller

Photo by: unknown

Ruth Levine is an artist who has lived in Pittsburgh since 1998. Her work can be seen here.
She is a natural for this interview blog, being both an urbanite and an artist. Also, she tells a great story.

This interview was originally recorded in the summer of 2008, and with some updates, is finally being "blogged" now.

Jean: You had told me a story about Andy Warhol. And I think you said you got a call....that's how it started?

Ruth: Yes. In the early nineteen eighties, I was working at a very large Jewish community center in Rockville, Maryland. And although we had some National Endowment for the Humanities grants and we were starting to make a name elsewhere, it was with some slight sense of shock that I got the following phone call: Somebody got on the phone and said, "Hi my name is Ron Feldman. Do you know me?"And I said, "If you’re the Ron Feldman I’m thinking of, no I don’t know you. But I know that there’s a gallery with your name on it in SOHO, in New York."

He said, "Well I’m here with Andy Warhol who wants to talk with you". And that started the first of my series of saying "right" [ as in" yeah, right"] Because I was very dubious that indeed Andy Warhol wanted to talk to me. And Feldman goes on to explain that Warhol had only done images of live people and that his mother had died. Julia had died. And he discovered that people could have influence long after they died. And he decided to make a list for images of the ten great people of the twentieth century. I continuing in the role of wise ass said, "Why not twenty great people of the tenth century or fifteen great people of the fifteenth century?"

And Feldman who wasn’t about to laugh at anything I said, said, "Oh no, he only does tens." He continues with his story that in the course of drafting a list, that he [Andy}discovered that many of the names were Jewish. And that he decided to call somebody that worked for Jewish agency and get the names of ten great Jews of the twentieth century.

I called in my partner who ran the gallery. I tended to run the grants and the arts school there. And I said "Ron Feldman’s on the phone and he’s about to put Andy Warhol on the phone and get a list from us of the ten great Jews of the twentieth century."And my friend, Susan, as expected burst out laughing and went, "Right."

So now we have two people saying "Right". Warhol gets on the phone and he said would you give me your list? So I started with the Marx Brothers because I didn’t really believe any of this was happening. And I had an uncle who knew two of the Marx brothers. We went on from there and tried to get a little serious with Kafka and Judge Louis Brandeis, and then we went a little berserk, adding Gertrude Stein and Sarah Bernhardt. And we went through a list of ten entries.

And then we asked if that was what he was looking for. Andy, who said very little, said it sounded fine to him. I assured him that if he didn’t like some of the images that attached to these names, he could very wisely use the four Marx brothers in four different images as opposed to just using the one image. And he said, "I’ll get back to you in six months with the images." And we burst out laughing and in chorus said, "Right." Much to our surprise six months later a package was delivered and there were ten images (ie screeprints by Warhol) And the first one was of the Marx brothers.

Jean: All four of them?

Ruth: All four of them on one image. And they were very nice. Very interesting, and he asked if we could have a party. And we invited a lot of well-to-do and culturally in the know Jews from the Washington and Rockville area. And all of these people in a moment of group think, not only came, but came armed with Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup cans. I gathered Campbells for Andy to sign.

Jean: Tomato or one of the others?

Ruth: No just Chicken Noodle, and Chicken Noodle because I guess Chicken Noodle seemed Jewish to them. And they of course wanted him to sign them. I don’t know how that ended. I think he signed a couple and then backed off. We had a great opening. The show went on to the Jewish Museum in New York, and we had our first five minutes or fifteen minutes of fame a la Warhol. When Hilton Kramer wrote in the New York Times, "Ten great Jews of the twentieth century has opened in the Jewish Museum in New York. This is very possibly the worst thing to happen to Jews since the Holocaust. And who in god’s name are Susan Morganstein and Ruth Levine of Rockfish, Maryland" {Note to reader, this is not a typo}.He didn’t even get Rockville...

Jean: He put that in the New York Times? Oh that’s a riot.

Ruth: At that point I only wanted to bury my head in the sand; ignored the rest of the tour and hoped that the whole thing would go to bed. But it showed up a couple of more times in my lifetime. The next to the last time it showed up was just before I was moving to Pittsburgh, Andy Warhol’s home town.

The University of Maryland art gallery decided to do their holdings of the Ten Series. And included Ten Great Jews of the twentieth century. And in this case the reviewer felt compelled to say that, "The ten great Jews were very interesting, but he hadn’t realized that Andy Warhol was so anti-Semitic as to have started out with the Marx Brothers, given all the famous and intellectual Jews around." I in turn felt compelled to call the reviewer and emphasize that my name was Ruth Levine, and that I had given this list to Andy Warhol. And mostly I had done it because I hadn’t expected it to come to pass. I came to Pittsburgh, and dined out on the story. Until one night I was seated next to Tom Sokolowski, someone made the usual disparaging remarks about the Marx brothers. And Tom, who runs the Warhol Museum, said actually that’s my favorite [piece in the series]. And so that was the end of my Warhol encounter.

Ruth Continues And the only PS to the story is about three weeks after the tour had finished I got a call from someone whose name I no longer remember, who said he represented Salvador Dali. And I hung up on him. He called back to say that we had become disconnected. And I decided to listen to him this time before I hung up on him and he said that Mr. Dali would like to make giant bronze menorah to sell at the Jewish Community Center for seven thousand dollars a piece. And I pointed out that I no longer wished to do Jewish objects by non Jewish artists. And I didn’t frankly think that a menorah by the man who had done the Last Supper was going to sell very well in the Jewish Community. And then I hung up on him.It turned out nobody bought this menorah, except one person who gave it to the Israel Museum in Israel. And the Museum hated it so much they gave it to Lod Airport, and put it in front. And everybody there hated it so much that they tried to blow it up. So I was right.

Jean: You were right. So knowing the situation with Dali then, he probably never even touched it or knew nothing about this phone call. Because he was on the decline.

Ruth: He was on the decline,but I think was an original Dali. It wasn’t like the prints where somebody was signing off on them. But it was truly a very ugly menorah. It looked like a weapon of war by some underwater god. And so I was glad that I couldn’t be blamed for that one too.

Jean: Well there are scurrilous stories circulating (about the Ten Greatest Jews series) because I read something in the New York Times...... where they were talking about the series and then they were crediting someone else for the list of names...I can't recall who.

Ruth: Ron Feldman claims that he had put the names together. And then he, I had Susan call him, so he put her name in. I was just as happy not to have my name in. And the series went back to either the Jewish Museum in New York or one other just recently. And in the catalog because the person who wrote the article wanted to track it down, he called me. He put both of our names in. So I don’t know that I want the fame, need the fame. I’m very happy in Warhol’s home town.

Jean: So was that your first connection with Pittsburgh? The Andy Warhol thing, or even though he of course didn’t live in Pittsburgh at that time. But that was the first................

Ruth: Absolutely. And now life has been very good because I’m no longer connected with that.(ie just with that story). But I’m on the board of the Warhol Museum. And enjoy the shows. And have come to appreciate Warhol.

Jean: Well I’ve heard many people say that from seeing that. Because once you really see the prints, and see the lithographs it really makes an impression.

Ruth: It’s astonishing. It’s really impressive. So I was sorry I was so snobby with him then, and I’m paying my dues now.

Jean: So your uncle knew the Marx Brothers where? In New York?

Ruth: One of my uncles was a lawyer for a lot of theater people. And he belonged to and was on the board of governors for an organization called the Friars Club. And like the Lamb’s Club which was purely theater, the Friars Club was theater , and Hollywood and stand up comedians etc. And my uncle who truly enjoyed a leisurely life as a lawyer, only saw clients briefly. And then went to the Friars club, would play bridge and would go out with, I think it was Harpo and Chico.

Jean: Was this in California?

Ruth: No this was in New York City. And I would get to meet them and Milton Berle and Danny Kaye, and Eddy Cantor. It was terrific. It was really nice. So yes I had an aspect of my childhood that was very interesting with my New York uncles. And their trips between the track, and the night clubs and the Friars Club roasts.

Jean: That’s pretty wonderful.

Ruth:It was terrific.

Jean: Yeah I think I had said to you that I was very disappointed to read that Danny Kaye was kind of a jerk.

Ruth: Yes.

Jean: Because, although his comedy can be kind of over, no, a lot over the top. I always thought he was so charming and so attractive (from his apperances on the old tonight show with Johnny Carson) and he just seemed so great. And I was just like what? , no!

Ruth: He apparently and unfortunately was a jerk. And his wife was a brilliant song writer. She wrote, Sylvia Kayp wrote most of his Patter songs. And he was a brilliant cook. And apparently had a long affair with Olivier. Laurence Olivier.

Jean: Oh he did? I missed that.

Ruth: Oh Yeah. All the bits and pieces that come floating back when you’re seventy two. You suddenly, you suddenly remember all of this.

Jean: Well if he was gay in that time period maybe he had a right to be a jerk.

Ruth: No, I don’t think he had a right to be a jerk. Life was pretty good to him. There was a wonderful kind of section of New York that my uncles inhabited. And when they would come to visit me in Connecticut, you always had the distinct feeling that that they would have felt better if somebody had issued a visa so that they would be sure that they could not only come into Connecticut but get out again and get back to New York.

Ruth: New York was astonishing. There were all these places that people went. I learned to drink when I was still underage in the back room at Lindy’s. Because my uncle knew him also. So my two uncles, the bachelor uncles sat me down and it was a bottle of Scotch. And they gave me my first drink, and my second drink, and my third drink and I threw up.

And all they did was say "Now you know two is your limit. And never drink anything sweet". This was the education of bachelor uncles. Yeah, it was a different time.

Jean: How old were you?

Ruth: I was fifteen.

Jean: Fifteen.

Ruth: I was fifteen.

Jean: They didn’t want to start you on anything easy. They just went right to the Scotch.

Ruth: No, they went directly to the Scotch. This was also (ie one of the two) the uncle who played cards so marvelously, he would play with people like the owner of Ceil Chapman( a ballgown designer). I would get ballgowns. I also got a fur coat. And you have to understand, we had no money. And I had this wonderful fur coat that he had won in a card game. And this same uncle was playing with Mike Todd one day. And he raised Mike Todd and he [the uncle] died and the payoff from that game was enough to take care of my uncle’s funeral. So they were very colorful men. Very colorful men.

Jean: And well of course, I know you were in DC for many years.

Ruth: Thirty-one. My husband and I got married in New York, and moved to Chicago for medical school. And then moved to Minnesota for internship and residency. I all the while pining for New York. And then because my husband got drafted, he was able to get into the National Institute of Health, this was during the Vietnam War. And it was supposed to be a two year stint. There was a doctor’s draft. And we stayed for thirty-one because he got appointed to various jobs. And although it wasn’t New York, it was close enough so that I could take the train in. And I rather loved that. And I thought we were going to stay in Washington forever. Made a crowd of friends, raised my kids there. Went back to school, got a masters in painting, had all of my jobs there. And in ninety three decided I would just paint. And he came home one day and said, there’s this very interesting job in Pittsburgh. And I said "Pittsburgh?" And I came and I liked it. And we bought a wonderful house.

And although I missed my friends in Washington, I met a crew of people living in Shadyside, or near Shadyside in Squirrel Hill, artists from CMU and from Pitt. And artists from other venues who were part of a group, called Group A. And we would have coffee and we would talk about art supplies and shows in New York. And what we were working on. And it filled a wonderful space in my life. So I’ve been here since ninety-eight.

Jean: So had you ever set foot in Pittsburgh before?

Ruth: We had come once for a cousin’s wedding. And had gotten very lost. Because I think it was before Sophie Masloff{Mayor of Pittsburgh } put up all the street signs.

Jean: Right, which are still only so improved but they are a lot better than they were.

Ruth: And the highway that we came in on, apparently the numbers increased and then decreased. And we didn’t know that about the exits. And so we couldn’t figure out if whether we were supposed to get off at the first number or the second time the number appeared. And of course we weren’t supposed to get off the second time. So I learned a little bit about how distracting it was to drive in Pittsburgh. But it was a lovely wedding, we had a very good time. And never thought we would ever come back because these cousins then moved to Philadelphia and there didn’t seem to be any reason to come here. But we came and we’re staying.

JeanNow this may require a little bit of thought or maybe not. But how did DC change in the thirty-one years you were there?

Ruth: Oh it changed profoundly. We went there in sixty-seven and which was the kind of Post Kennedy era. There was one French restaurant, one fried fish restaurant and it was a very sleepy southern town. Slowly but surely it became a very sophisticated town and on top of that got a subway. Which meant that you didn’t have to drive through hectic Washington traffic. And as I held a number of jobs there. And had a really good time there. And the restaurants, the movie houses, the theater all of this increased and it became very sophisticated.

Jean: Became very sophisticated, yes. It seems so different to me than it used to be, even 15 years ago.

Ruth: It really became very sophisticated. And a lot of fun. And I complained bitterly, because as I said to somebody I’m leaving Washington, they finally got bread into Washington. And now he’s going to move me to a town where there’s no bread. Well now I found bread in Pittsburgh so I’m staying.

Jean: Why do you think it changed so much?

Ruth: I think that, one of the things that’s happened with Washington is that every four years, every two years actually, definitely every four years, there’s a new influx of people. And the weird thing is, that the people who were of the previous administration never leave. So the population just piled high. And then with all the different government bureaus and the NIH etc. There was a lot to attract people. And once you get a quantum mass of people, and you get a lot of foreigners. One of the best things about Washington in those years was that, there were great restuaurants Indians, so Ethiopians, there were Vietnamese. There were sixteen different kinds of Chinese Restaurants. There was Sichuan, and Cantonese and it really reflected populations.

And Virginia moved out of it’s sleepy mode with a huge Asian population. And really good school systems. And essentially people did very well who lived in Washington. Of course they still didn’t know what was happening in the rest of the country. We were like that too, now suddenly we see the world from a Pittsburgh point of view. It’s a little more realistic and a little healthier.

Jean: Really, you mean because it’s more.......................

Ruth: It’s tuned in to what people think outside, what they call outside the beltway. In DC the people who live in Washington in DC and parts of the burbs are living inside the beltway and have no idea what’s happening in the country. They assume everybody’s doing well because house prices went up in Washington. They really have no idea what unemployment or job situations or changing economy where we don’t produce as much, what kind of impact that has on people. Because there’s always a job in Washington.

Jean: Okay I see what you’re saying. So it’s much less of a cross section.

Ruth: Absolutely, it wasn’t until I came to Pittsburgh that I knew about neighborhoods. There are no neighborhoods in DC. Everybody is from somewhere else. Even if they spend their entire life there, and they’ll say I’m from Ohio or North Dakota. I would say the thirty-years I lived in Washington we’d go to New York, and somebody would say where are you from. And I’d say well I’m from New York, but I live in Washington. After thirty-one years I was from Washington, but I just wasn’t prepared to admit it. Now I say I’m from Pittsburgh.

Jean: If we could let’s talk about your work and your exhibit in DC, the one that you had at Gallery 10.{ i.e. "Patterns:Echo,Shift and Rescript"}

Ruth: Ok about nineteen ninety-six, nineteen ninety-three I decided to paint full time. Nineteen ninety-six I joined a gallery, which was an artist run gallery at DuPont Circle in DC called Gallery 10 because originally there ten people in the Gallery.

Now there are a greater number to support the rising rental costs and other costs.Every other year I would have a solo show there and the last show I had there was this year ’08. And it was called "Patterns"I became very much interested in patterns because I saw and owned patterns from Africa, where the patterns change. And I thought it’s only in the West where we make things line up left and right. And top and bottom. African patterns, like life, change and seque into different shapes. So I went at it from a very abstract and geometric point of view.

And then I started thinking about the other meanings of patterns. And found some wonderful paper in a New York art supply store that was simply labeled, " Pre World War II Japanese paper" It was a dollar a sheet. And I bought two hundred sheets. And my husband said, "What are you going to do with two hundred sheets?" Eventually,I decided to turn them into books. The papers were then layered with photo-transfers of Japanese newspapers from Tokyo from the years 1931 to ’34.

I didn’t know very much history, but I did know about the invasion of Nanking by the Japanese was their designated start of the World War II. And what I didn’t know, which I subsequently found out, and what went into these newspapers, was that it really had started much before then. Because the Japanese army had had its appropriations cut by the Emperor, who was afraid of the army's influence. And the emperor made a big mistake when he cut their appropriations because they staged an incident in Manchuria. Claimed the Chinese had done it, and got their appropriations and more back. And went on to invade a number of places. And that was a change in the pattern of a nation. So I had these wonderful papers. And they were up on old newspaper poles, stuck in tables on a ledge. And I had a video of all of these news paper pages running continuously. And felt very good about it.

Jean: And then also, with the photo transfers on the paper there’s also painting as well.

Ruth: Yes, there’s painting and with different kinds of metallic and non-metallic water colors. And there are stamped images, Benday dots( which are like the dots that newspapers traditionally used). And so some them have a lot of verbage and some of them have a lot of abstraction. One is prettier but not as clear, the other is clearer and not as prettier.

{For installation images, click here} http://relevine.com/pattern_shifts_rescripts.php

Jean: And there’s a video of the work.

Ruth: And there’s a video, and the title of then show changed to "Patterns: Echo, Shift and Rescript". The rescript was because the emperor, when he realized that the people of Japan really loved what the army was doing, issued what was called an Imperial Rescript. And he said, everything I’ve said so far was wrong. What I really meant to say was that the army has saved our country. That it has saved our honor. It has honored the emperor and we salute the army. So that was the pattern shift and rescript.

{For the video of these works,click here} http://relevine.com/pattern_shifts_rescripts_video.php

Jean: Okay I had forgotten that it was that blatant when you had explained it me before.

Ruth: Yes, Imperial Rescript.

Jean: Which of course we have all the time.

Ruth: We have all the time, yes Imperial Rescripts are the order of the day.

Jean: They’re referred to know as what ......, misspoke I think is one,

Ruth: Yes. I like Imperial Rescript. I think this is ..........

Jean: It’s more honest.

Ruth: Yeah, you decide to issue a statement and all the previous statements should be erased because I say so. That’s good, that’s good. So my art starts out abstract, turns political, starts political, turns abstract. I play with shapes, I play with words. I mostly draw, I mostly draw or make small marks.

Jean: And there are also paintings,

Ruth I have a number of paintings on canvas, there were some between sheets of plexi. They were abstract, actually made by rubber bands soaked in Sumi ink on one side. And on the other side a block that I had found in San Francisco that was called "hundred happiness". And so one side was fairly rigid, grid like pattern. And the other side was a pretty loose abstract pattern. It was my show, I decided to call it Patterns. And I decide therefore everything that was in it was a pattern. I ended up with three pieces that were twenty inches across and sixty-two inches long, each of which was called Three Flags. One was called Three Flags Black, one was called Three Flags White, and one was called Three Flags Grey. And it was a little joke.

Jean: And in Pittsburgh, what you’ve shown with Group A, you’ve shown with Gallery Chiz right?

Ruth: Yes, and Associated Artists of Pittsburgh, and Gallery Chiz.

Jean: Right of course.

Ruth: And so I've really had a chance to work here in Pittsburgh.

Jean: { Note to the reader, the tense is changed in this section due to the lag between the time of the interviw and the time of the posting} You are in the catalog, and were in the exhibit, for Two Hundred FiftyYears of Art in the Making exhibit at Fe Gallery in Pittsburgh.

Ruth: Which is just great. So I’m going to be one or two hundred and fifty artists from this area whose work got selected. And a piece from each of us was hanging up on the wall. And I gather it was in celebration of the two hundred and fiftieth birthday of Pittsburgh. So now I am a Pittburghian.

Ruth: ...............and I’ve been reviewed. Not as often as I would like. But I’ve been reviewed here in Pittsburgh, and also in Washington. I think in Europe but it’s always in somebody else’s language. And I just have to be happy that my name is there and hope that there is saying something that isn’t too disapproving.

So again we’re back to Andy and his fifteen minutes of fame.

Jean: Thanks, Ruth.

NOTE: You can see two works by Ruth Levine at Carnegie Museum through Nov 8th, 2009 as part of the 99th Annual Exhibition of the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh

Victor Navarro Jr; Coffeehouse Denizen, Artist at Large, Survivor of the 60's and Muse to the Avant-Garde

photo: J.McClung

Victor Navarro Jr: Coffee House Denizen, Artist at Large, Survivor of the 60"s and Muse to the Avant-Garde. interview 1

Quotable Quote "Anarchy is the Spice of Life through anarchy we learn our Art,
Music and Literature"

Interviewed: in late November 2007, Crazy Mocha Coffee House, Bloomfield Neighborhood, Pittsburgh PA. Posted March 15th 2008.

Note: Victor is an old hand at this...he'd been interviewed for City Paper on more than one occasion, by various college students for a host of term papers, etc. etc. And Victor is always on stage ...not faking it (well OK he exaggerates, but I'm not always sure he knows he's doing it!), but always onstage. He is a person where one could say that he and his art are one, 24/7. Victor is also sort of my brother in law, as he is my significant other's brother. The reader may notice some family-like squabbling from time to time....

Jean: Why do you think it
is that so many people who are in their twenties like to talk to you?

Victor: Well, because they may think because I’m so old that I maybe
have more experience than them. Or, because of what they’re
into, like their art or their music or their writing. I have published
three books, I have done a lot in fine arts since I was thirteen years
old. And I’ve been trained musically from age three on by two professional
pianist that I grew up knowing and took lessons from for twenty years. So
I know quite a bit about those things. Some from my own studies...self taught..... and some from professionally taught professionals like the piano which I
studied for about twenty five years until I was around thirty years old.

Jean: Well but don’t you think it’s more then that though because, I mean
that’s part of it probably..........but

Victor: My accomplishments have something to do with it.

Jean: Yeah, but what else?

Victor: But even if I had no accomplishments, I have definite ideas
about the arts, music and literature which they seem to like, therein,
their artistic ideas. And a lot of these young people who are more
advanced then we were in the sixties, the fringe element of these young
people they are very, very astute and very intelligent, much more
intelligent then the majority of young people today. That’s why I
look in coffee houses and out of the way places to find the, the winners,
instead of the average loser.

Jean: So they, ah, part of it is the fringe element factor............

Victor: These people are on the fringe of society, they have no
money. If they have jobs at all they’re crappy, they do great Art, Music
and Literature and get virtually nothing for it, in fact they lose money
at it. In fact let’s face it, they’re on the fringe they are no-accounts.
That’s the way I always was and I’m happy being that way and I’m happy
having a few people appreciate my work.

Jean: Yeah okay, because part of what I’ve always thought is, part of it
is the connection between like you were a bohemian hippy type and still
are, right?

Victor: I was a rich bohemian when I was younger. When I was{in contrast to} these
people in their twenties, when I was in my twenties, I was very wealthy, I
was a bohemian, there’s no doubt about it.

Jean:(Confused) Now you weren’t very wealthy.

Victor: I was very wealthy and I had a lot of money, what in those
days was a lot of money.

Jean:(tentatively...more confused than ever) Okay..........

Victor: It’s virtually nothing now. The way prices are going up. I
mean in those days I had a ton of money. I mean I was a big investor in
stocks and bonds. I played the ponies, gambled on football. I had money to
burn.

Jean: (perplexed) That’s not true.

Victor: That’s not true?

Jean: That’s not true.

Victor: It is true. You didn’t know me in my twenties,

Jean: Well yeah but,{turns tape reorder off, vigorous debate with Victor ensues. Much discussion about what does "very wealthy "mean?we reach a compromise.}

Jean: But okay, well anyway, so you
had more money than they do, now.

Victor: I had more money in my twenties, a lot more money in my
twenties, and a possible chance to become very wealthy as opposed to these
young people I know today, most of them have nothing compared to what I
had. Some of them had nothing growing up compared to what I had. So I feel
that if I were worth millions of dollars I would pay them handsomely to do
their Art, Music, and Literature, so they wouldn’t have to work these
crappy jobs to pay their rent.

Jean: Well okay, you’re not always sitting around talking to them about
Art, Music and Literature right?

Victor: Pretty much am, except for these goof balls who want to talk
about the weather and their dog and all the other shit.

Jean: Okay. Well. Okay, so do you think, not to be too leading of a question
here, but do you think that any part of it is because you’ve kind of
maintained your own individual identity? Do you know what I mean? I mean
you’re not like the typical fifty-nine year old person. I mean you’re
like, you’re sort of your own unique person.

Victor: Well I am, I succeeded in having a small public pretty much
late in life. Into my late forties, and into my early fifties so in that
sense the last ten years I’ve been succeeding more and more as time goes
on. So in a sense I’m about twenty eight years old in terms of my success
rate. I usually start around sixteen or eighteen getting your stuff out
and by the time you’re twenty eight you’re pretty much into it. I’ve only
been getting my stuff out since I was about in my late forties, early
fifties.

Jean: Yeah.

Victor: So that’s why. Another reason why I hang out with the up and
comers is because I’m still up and coming.

Jean: Okay. Well what you say that, and we’ll get off this subject in a
second here, but what would you say that the twenty something people, what
would you say they would say, they like about you?

Victor: Well they might think I’m entertaining. Verbally I’m a very good communicator.
I kind of spoof language and
I kind of try and be humorous. And I think it’s my humor that is that has
attracted a lot of these young people towards me, my iconoclastic and
artistic humor. Oh these people can all go to hell,but let’s laugh at them
and sit back and enjoy it, rather then be all gung-ho about killing them or
doing damage to them.

Jean: Okay, yeah.
Victor: It’s kind of a non-violent philosophy mixed in with
iconoclasm that really would liked to see everything ripped down, but I
don’t want to be one of the rippers, or one of the rippees either for that
matter.

Jean: So what have you read lately that you’ve liked?

Victor: Well I like reading magazines pretty much rather than books.
I subscribe to about five weekly and monthly magazines.

Jean: You do?

Victor: Yeah, I’m pretty well informed. I subscribe to TIME, US News,
New York Magazine, you’re getting me subscription of the New Yorker
supposedly.

Jean: Yeah, I am.

Victor: I appreciate that very much. I used to get that for many
years. And Art Forum.

Jean: How do you get those magazines?

Victor: Subscribe.

Jean: You do? I had thought there was a
problem..... Tony said with like you would get the magazine subscriptions and
you wouldn’t pay them and he’d thought you’d been blacklisted from every
magazine on the planet.

Victor No, absolutely not.

Jean: Okay.

Victor: Now if a friend of mine that writes the books, if I know them
fairly well, or know and like, an acquaintance or friend that I like
writes a book, I would maybe buy or get it for nothing from them and read
that. I’ll read that cover to cover. Like Che Elias wrote all those books,
I read all his books cover to cover. I sold and gave you some of them and
made money for Che and he dropped me as a friend, and back then he was my
friend and I won’t do it for him now but I did then.

Jean: Yeah.

Victor: He’s done nothing for me in over a year and refuses to
publishes anymore books when he said he would publish everything I ever wrote
ever did write in the future. So he lied to me. And that’s why I call him
Che’ liar instead of Che Elias.

Jean: It's too bad you'all had that falling out...you are both pretty sensitive.

Jean: Now you were in New York {City} quite a few times during the sixties.

Victor: I’ve been to New York about ten different times.

Jean: Well you were there a lot in the sixties weren’t you?

Victor: I was there three or four times in the sixties, yes.

Jean: What do you remember about it, anything interesting?

Victor: Well in the sixties when I was in New York, I was kind of a
hotel baby. I stayed around my hotel room and just kind of went out as if
I lived in the hotel and had lived there for years. I was familiar with it
by sixty nine when I went. I stayed a month and I kind of didn’t go to too
much music or art or anything like that. I kind of stuck to the, well, the
strip places that kind of thing.

Jean: What hotel was it?

Victor: The New Yorker.

Jean: Where was that?

Victor: Thirty fourth and eighth avenue.

Jean: Was it a dive?

Victor: No, just antiquated. It was very clean, antiquated, very
inexpensive. In sixty nine it was like twenty dollars a night. Now it’s
probably two, three hundred easily.

Jean: What was Pittsburgh like during that period of time?

Victor: Pittsburgh in the late sixties? Oh the acid, grass, I was
into speed which was a really a rare thing for people to be in to, but
there was some people who loved to speed and sped with me and we did speed
all the time, and smoked grass on the speed, did very little acid.
But some people were heavily into acid and downers like, what are they.....
Phenobarbital and heroin and stuff like that. I never got into that. I
was only into speed. Dexedrine,methamphetamine , that kind
of.............

Jean: Okay. There were more than just drugs on the scene I assume?

Victor: Yes, that’s evident in my novel, Victorious Delusions. All that
speed taking is very nicely cataloged in that novel that I wrote
Victoria’s Delusions, which I think should be in area because I’d like
people to order a copy of it from Borders, Barnes and Noble, or Amazon.
And......

Jean: I thought it was out of print?

Victor: It’s not out of print. Borders can get you copies regular
price....it's a hundred dollars on Amazon.

Jean: Oh, really.

Victor: {Leans into tape recorder and speaks loudly and distinctly}Go to a Borders bookstore and order it.

Jean: You’re so subtle.

Victor: It’ll tell you all about the sixties in Pittsburgh, it had
nothing to do with activism, the Vietnam War.

Jean: Oh, come on.

Victor: Nothing to do with that, the book.{that is} All it has to do is with
the speed, acid, and artistic pursuits of people then and the love
interest. That’s it. A life style, not anything political, or social.

Jean: Okay. Well so let’s see. Now was, Andy Warhol was long gone I guess?

Victor: I was never a fan of Andy Warhol until ninety one. Then I
got into him heavily, read everything, read everything he ever wrote, and
read maybe twenty, thirty books about him or about his work. Critiques and
artistic critics writing books. And I found that in the years
up until Warhol was shot, { shot but not killed by Valerie Solanas
} the film making and the artistic pursuits and music making {in NYC}were similar to what happened in Pittsburgh with
us except it was on a much, much more in larger scale with a much larger
audience.

Jean: So would Warhol have made you a superstar if he had known you?

Victor: He might have. I don’t know. I don’t know if I have this kind
of persona back then. I was kind of, there’s so many like me, in the
background. I wasn’t a great star back in the sixties, but I was friends
with many of them.

Jean: You mean you were introverted then?

Victor: Yeah I was more introverted then, I kind of was in the
background. They ask for my opinion, they gauged how they were going by
what I thought of it. But other than that I was just another creep who was
making the scene.

Jean: So what got you to starting, I know it’s a different name now, but
the Delusionals?

Victor: The Delusionals was my first band 2003, Paul Teacher, The Preacher, Wynne
Lanros and I started it in summer of 2003. We did about thirty gigs as the
Delusionals, thirty music events, performances and then, we broke up.
The new group is the Anonymous Schizoids and we have done one gig.

Jean: I thought you were the Psycho Phonics? What happened to the Psycho.....?

Jean: No the Schizo Phonics, but there’s another group with that name so
we had to change it.

Jean: Wow. Okay, well what moved you to start doing the Delusionals to
begin with?

Victor: The Delusionals was Paul Teacher, The Preacher and I. I got him an
Irish tin whistle. I had already been playing it for a while, and got him
a harmonica, and he showed me tremendous talent on both of them. And I was
developing my harmonica style and we decided to do a weird band where we
just had wind instruments. Flute, Irish Whistle, harmonica, and
incorporate Wynne Lanros in with violin. That was, we three were
the original Delusionals.

Jean: Well and you had Tony (Navarro, Victor's brother) in the very beginning?

Victor: Tony, Tony did solo, with the Delusionals. He did not do
group ensemble. So The preacher, The Preacher was also solo.

Jean: Well I remember,for maybe your very first performance there was a message on Tony’s answering machine from you saying, "Dude, dude, you have to come tonight. You’re the only one who actually knows how to play an instrument."

Victor: Yeah, right. {Victor notes he was also afraid not enough of the players would show up...other people, Wynne for eaxmple, is professionally trained}}
Victor Continues:Well I know keyboard, but I don’t like keyboard.
I don’t think I’m that good on keyboard, compared to the keyboardist, we
have four keyboardist in our group now, me, Nathan, Eric and Jessica, and
any one of us can go on for fifteen or twenty minutes but I think Eric
and, Eric, Nathan and Jessica are far superior to what I am on keyboard,
which is why I don’t play it too much anymore. Our group now, we record
one or two albums or every month. We come out with one or two CD’s every
month now.

Jean: What?

Victor: Yeah, starting this December {2007}. Yeah, we’re going to be coming
out with one or two CD’s every month. Our own burning, we’re going to burn
the CD’s about ten, twenty copies, and whoever wants to buy them, can come
to Crazy Mocha Dreaming Ant, in Bloomfield, and purchase one from either
me or Nathan, they’ll be ten dollars if you want to purchase one. They’ll
be new ones every month. You can have a whole set of them if you want. If
you’re a good customer I’ll reduce the price eventually.

Jean: You’re starting to sound like
your uncle Hugo.

Victor: Yeah well I worked with my uncle Hugo in advertising and PR
for about ten years and the PR is getting free public relations. Free
advertisement is very important for an up and coming artist, musician, or
writer, very important, very important. Otherwise you’re not going to make
any money.

Jean: Well you guys{the Navarro family and uncle Hugo Iacovetti} had various people come to the house right? Performers who were in town?

Victor: Oh yeah. Tony Bennett had dinner at Hugo’s many of
times, he was a good friend of Hugo’s.

Jean: Tony Bennett did?

Victor: And Phyllis Diller.

Jean: Phyllis Diller, Tony told me.

Victor: Rodney Dangerfield, Hugo even knew Bob Hope on a first name
basis. I didn’t know Bob Hope though, but I met Tony Bennett, Frankie
Lane, Phyllis Diller, Tiny Tim. I knew them all.

{Shifting Gears}

Victor: First of all there are quite a few anarchists in my little
scene here in my little, it’s a real big clique. It involves maybe ten or
twenty small cliques and then one, but it’s all like one big clique, people
knowing each other as acquaintances and knowing who they are. And there
are quite a few anarchists involved in it. And quite a few who are anything
but anarchistic, but they all seem to interact and be doing the same things
which are, art, music, literature, film making that kind of thing.
And I really think that the scene is fruitful for seeing how people go about
getting some support. Whether it’s an audience or actual financial support
for their work,
I’ve known some people who’ve gotten grants from Sprout
Fund to do murals and have made a little bit of cash. And they’re mural
is going to stand there for a long time. These are really, these people
have turned on other people to it and they’ve been successful because they
knew those people, they’ve started becoming successes at their art. Now
art is a more, art is a more lasting thing then music or writing, because
it will be there to be seen you know if it’s a mural it’s going to be
there. It’s right in front of a lot of people.
But I think that music and
writing can get you a much bigger audience nationally then art ever will
and that’s not why I like music and writing better, I just think I’m
better at music and writing.

Jean: Well your art {The interviewer is specifically referring to painting here}is pretty darn good.

Victor: Art’s my main love, I like painting and sculpture but it’s
just very difficult to get much of an interest in that especially when
you’re self-taught.

Jean: Well, but yeah like you were saying, people having a community is
really important and that’s part of why
artists tend to congregate in urban areas because then there’s this
support, I mean of other people at least and a chance to talk about
things.

Victor: Musicians too, musicians thrive in urban areas because they
can get love, they can sell CD’s and get gigs for maybe fifty or a hundred
bucks a week. But you know that old maxim starving artist will let their
art go cheap. It’s so true because most of them are in a sense starving.
They’re starving for a public that they’re probably never going to have
but you have to give them credit for keeping up and going it anyway. And I
do it for the sake of doing it. I don’t do it for some kind of big reward
down the road.

Jean: And a lot of people, well not a lot, but a fair number of people
come to think of it that you know aren’t artists though right. I mean
they’re people who......

Victor: Well there’s a few people I know that aren’t doing something
artistic or creative but they’re really rare in this particular life style
that I’ve had the last seven, or eight years.

Jean: Oh?

Victor: I mean you, Tony you’re all creative in musical, art for you,
music for him

Jean: Right.

Victor: I mean Al is the only one that does nothing, and Shannon does
nothing, the rest of them were artist at one time.

Jean: Candice? Does Candice do anything like that?

Victor: Candice was a musician, a singer.

Jean: She was, oh I didn’t know that. What about uh, she had the dreds and she cut them? I can't believe I can't remember....

Victor: Hillary. Hillary brought herself a banjo a year ago and she wants to
be a musician with a banjo. She’s going to be a school teacher, but she’s
still wants to play banjo. She’d like maybe to be in a group some day.
There’s nothing wrong with that.

Jean: And Andrew writes some right?

Victor: Oh, and Andrew is a musician.

Jean: Oh he is?

Victor: Yeah. He has a band, Hot Dog. Andrew McKeon from City Paper.

Jean: And I guess in a way Dean, well Dean does the film thing, in terms
of the, he has the film store {Dreaming Ant}

Victor: Well he was interested in making films about three years ago
but he’s been so busy with his two stores, he kind of, he had me doing his
pod cast on the internet. I did about six pod cast and we haven’t done one
in over a year. But he has dipped into that, he’s dipped into the creative
element of it. He’s a pretty good director of film, he knows how to direct
the film and knows how to make a digital film. Yeah I know a lot of
filmmakers. There are a lot of filmmakers around here in Bloomfield,
Friendship area, Garfield.

Jean: Well, I see what you mean! Ofcourse You know Jae {Ruberto}did photographs of
you and then well at least several people............{Victor interrupts, but I was going to say have made movies with Victor in the film, or drawn Victor and incorporated him into their artwork. Ladyboy, a Pittsburgh artist, has done some great images of Victor.}

Victor: Jae was a, Jae started out when I knew him, he was an artist
and filmmaker. Now he’s a photographer full time. But he originally was a
filmmaker. Jay Ruberto, the photographer, he originally was a filmmaker
and I appeared in several of his films. Some of them short films, some of
them full length feature length. So in a sense I started out my whole
thing with this particular crowd here as an actor in film. Which I’m
really not into, but I happen to publish the books already and anything
else. So I still, I broadened out into a fourth dimension music, art,
literature and film acting. So I don’t know.

Jean: One thing too, I think one would say that also when they talk about
somebody’s life being their art, you can kind of say your life is your art
because it’s sort of all.

Victor: My life is not my art, the art is what I do. If somebody does
something that has nothing to do with their daily activities, they go out
and seek materials or seek a pen and a pencil to do it, that’s something
they are doing, that’s what this remains. But on my lifestyle might be a
little different then being the lifestyle of an artist, musician, or
writer it’s more of a critic. A walking critic. One who criticizes the
life of the society, one who criticizes the money interest in America and
the world that kind of thing.

Jean: Yeah that’s true and that might be, a good thing for us to......

Victor: And I’m especially sharp as a critic, a critic of art. Not
necessarily a painter painting, but a critic of painting I feel I’m on the
mark. And a lot of artists will agree with me I am. A critic of literature,
a writer of books but also a critic of literature. A critic of music, I
mean I’m not just a musician I also am a promoter of music and a critic of
music. Almost more of that then I am an actual performer. So far anyway.

Jean: Yes.

Victor: And I already know I couldn’t get any where doing art, music
or literature so I never got anywhere at it. I’m an example, if you want to
wind up like me, then abandon it for something else. Get into science or
computers.

Jean: Yeah, although you certainly though do have a lot of independence
right?

Victor: I have a lot of independence. What I can do for others I’m
limited too, I don’t have the financing. These people need money to pay
their rent and everything like that. They can’t, I mean, I’m retirement
age, I got an income. But some of these people have to work, work like
dogs to make as much as I do. I feel bad about it.

Jean: So back to, what were you saying {before the tape went on}about Van Morrison, Dylan outpaces Van
Morrison?

Victor: No Van Morrison is greater than Dylan and Dylan is greater
then Donovan and Donovan is greater than Lucinda Williams and Iris Dement
is greater then all of them.

Jean: Who?

Victor: Iris Dement.

Jean: Who’s that?

Victor: I-R-I-S D-E-M-E-N-T. Iris Dement. Excellent singer
songwriter, alternative country, turn it off so I can....

Jean: Okay, who’s that?

Victor: So you’ll have to do some extrapolation.

Jean: Extrapolate.

Victor: Anarchy is the Spice of Life through anarchy we learn our art,
music and literature. I’m not an activist at all. I don’t protest, I’m not
against or for the Iraq War. I think that most of the world and most of
the people in this country are complete fools and idiots. I just have no
hope for them, but these young people some of them, I believe they’ll get
through it all and go on to a greater life and greater things and if they
don’t their grandchildren or descendants will and that’s my political,
that’s my social stance right there. I don’t, it’s like Dylan said in that
one song, "My debutante gives me what I need, you give me what I want."
{??}

Jean: Do you have any kind of regrets that you haven’t had a more
conventional sort of life?

Victor: No, none at all.

Jean: Well how so?

Victor: I had conventional growing up with, and I turned against
convention. I rebelled against conventional at age 16 – 17. I went the way
of poetry and literature.

Victor: Of course I did nothing most of my adult life.

Jean: Nothing?

Victor: No, I did nothing until the last five or six years.

Jean: What do you mean by nothing?

Victor: Nothing musically, nothing writing, nothing writing
artistically, I had no success at all with it.

Jean: But some of the paintings you did are older then that, aren’t they?

Victor: Yeah I did paintings and wrote books, but to no avail. I got
no, I had no public. Now I have a public. Small public, but a public all
the same. Maybe a few hundred people know about it. That makes a pretty
big public, compared to some pople have no public at all.

Jean: Well that’s true. But You do have a public, you do have a public now.

Victor: But I’d like to be known nationally, maybe even all over the
earth as a decent writer or musician or artist.

Jean: But when did you write Victorious Delusions? {One of several books he has written, and my favorite}

Victor: 1987.

Jean: Well I thought so. I thought it had been a while. The Smoker, the
painting of Smoker when did you do that?

Victor: Smoker was done ’90 oh I say it was done about ’86, or
Jean: Okay that’s a while. So it’s just you didn’t have an audience but
you were doing............................

Victor: No. I was in programs for the mentally ill, they didn’t help
at all with writing, art, nothing. She even said none of you will ever be
published. We do this writing just to keep you busy. She can eat crow now
because I’ve been published three times. I don’t know. It’s just, these
organizations that are out to help you, they don’t do any harm. They don’t
help and they don’t do any harm. They waste your time. They’re a waste of
time. Group therapy and outpatient renaissance center it’s a waste of
time. It’s a fuck off place. It’s a place for you to go and fuck off.

Jean: OK.

Victor: They key to great writing is to sit down and write your
story, poem or book or essay or biography, to write it, to stick to a
topic and to finish it. I have no problem sticking to the topic. I have no
problem writing, I can’t finish a damn thing, that’s why I’ve abandoned
writing. But art, I can finish a painting, I can finish a sculpture, I can
finish a song I’ve written for music. I can finish a performance, I can
finish an album that’s why I’m sticking to painting sculpture and music as
opposed to writing, even though I began as a writer.

Jean: You know recently.....what did you say, "I’m not nearly as
great as I say I am." I’m not sure what that was in reference too, but ...... {I was going to say, but Victor interrupted me, that one never knows what he will say}

Victor: I think my music is great, my writing is average, and my art
is below average.

Jean: I don’t think so................

Victor: My music is on the great level, my writing is average among
writers, and my art, my painting and sculpture is below the, below the
norm of the artists I know.

Jean: I don’t think, I don’t think so..............

Victor: Well that’s just the way I see it Jean. I’m sorry and I’m
quite a critic remember.

Jean: Who are visual artists you like?

Victor: I don’t know too many visual artists except the locals here.
I like Jae Ruberto, I like Eric Hauser my keyboard player, realistic
artist, does beautiful art. I like the Preacher’s water colors. Michael
Antonopolos, his water colors and I like your art Jean, I like the newest
installations. Jen Bechak is a good installation artist here in
Pittsburgh. Jennifer Bechak B-E-C-H-A-K, Kate, her sister Kate is a very
good artist. She’s also an architect. Tommy, Lady Boy is a good artist.
Carolyn a friend of mine, twenty one year old Carolyn she did a fine work
of art for me. I can show you that at my apartment a beautiful thing, bird
of paradise a very good art. Laura Borrasso my friend here she’s an artist.

Jean: Oh you are too? {Victor is referring to a young woman who at that moment was sweeping the floor at Crazy Mocha, sort of provingVictor's earlier poinnt about struggling artists}

Victor: She sticks to drawing but she does great illustration, great
drawings. They’re a bunch of them, I can go on and name.

Jean: What about some of the famous people? I just got this great
biography of Pollock, I never saw it before. It’s like nine hundred pages
long. It won a Pulitzer Prize, I had never even heard of it. What do you think
of Pollock?

Victor: Oh I thought it was good. He was definitely creative,
original, now it’s passé now what he did. I think the one that’s still
living on today even though years ago fifties is Willem Dekooning.

Jean: De Kooning , yeah.

Victor: I think De Kooning, I’ve seen his realistic work before he did
that weird shit and he was a hell of an artist. A hell of a painter, yet
he did this creative stuff and it really comes across, it’s greater then
Pollock in my view. Pollock was great but De Kooning was one of the greatest
of all the abstract expressionists in my opinion. Wassily Kandinsky the
originator of it {abstractionism} Can’t be touched. Unbelievable.
Jean: Yeah, I agree. I agree. Did you ever read any of his stuff about art?
Victor: Yeah "Concerning the Spiritual in Art."
Jean: Yeah, isn’t that a great book?
Victor: Yeah.
Victor: Well I don’t know, we should close this out Jean for a while.
Jean: Okay that’s good.

NOTE: THE ANONYMOUS SCHIZOIDS will be appearing SUNDAY MARCH 30th, 2008, at Howlers, Liberty Ave. Bloomfield, Pittsburgh. 9 pmLinks:
The Anonymous Schizoids are: Victor Navarro Jr.,Wynne Lanros, Nathan Kukulski, Eric Hauser, Richard Jarik, and Jessica Trinlath.

Images of Victor by Ladyboy

http://www.flickr.com/photos/48638850@N00/82137480/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/simple-pleasure/24385987/

Dreaming Ant: A great video store. Unbelievable range. Now with 2 locations. AND
Victor has been employee of the month....and employee of the year.........

http://www.dreamingant.com/dae/about/EotM/EotY-2003-Vic.shtml

Photos by Jae Ruberto

http://www.flickr.com/photos/patrujo/

Victor's coffee house of choice these days is : Crazy Mocha in Bloomfield

http://www.crazymocha.com/

Barbara Garcia Bernardo: The Brains and Beauty Behind Get Hip Records

Barbara Garcia Bernardo :
The Brains and Beauty Behind Get Hip Records

Quotable quote"Okay you know what he probably has to take some steroids to make those jumps up and down, right?"

Interview Date: 10/21/07 Interview post :3/14/08

Pittsburgh often seems like the land of hidden hippness (some of it is not so hidden)....that is it's there, but you just have to know where to find it. For example...Get Hip Records, an indie music label and distributor based on the North Side. Get Hip is run by Greg of The Cynics fame , and his wife Barbara Garcia-Bernardo. Here, Barbara talks about Spain (her first, and now second home), The Cynics, the music business, why American culture is so popular,and also the aging of rock and roll musicians.

Spain: From Franco's repression to one of the freest societies in Europe.

Jean:.you were telling me at dinner that gay marriage {ie civil unions} are legal in Spain. This is totally astounding to me because the last time I ws there (a long time ago), it was so unbelievably repressive there. I know Spain has become very different, but this is quite a change. Actually Franco was still in power when I was there.

Barbara: That’s not that long ago when you think about it, well yeah ’75, but it’s still, it’s not really that long for a big change.

Jean: Well, for example,couples couldnt kiss in public. Pretty amazing. And I mean just kiss, period.

Barbara: Well yeah, that’s the kind of culture that we have.

Jean: But not now...? Well you mean, you’re losing me. In Spain, in Madrid.

Barbara: That was part of the censorship then, there were all kinds of things, there were so many things you couldn’t do.

Jean:This something I was planning on asking you about in this interview, actually {the changes in Spanish culture} And the gay marriage thing puts a whole other spin on it.{ie how the society went from so much less liberal than the USA to more liberal than the USA}
Jean continues: When I was there the thing that I remember and is that people seemed depressed, downtrodden. And I didn’t know if people really were depressed or they just seemed like they were to me. The few people that I met when I was there,who didn't seem miserable were college students who were home for the summer. They were like going to school in Paris, or France or out of the country to go to college so they didn’t get drafted or something. They were reasonably happy except they were back there during the summer and not happy about that. At all.

Barbara: Yes, thats the way it was. There’s several reasons for that. One is when the US instituted the Marshall Plan in Europe they skipped over Spain, because obviously Spain was not part of the war. They stayed out of the war, but they were Hitler sympathizers. So Spain was depressed because of the war, {and the effects of it} but they didn’t get any help. So that carried on through the sixties and the seventies, that and being isolated. So really the way you saw Spain in the seventies it was closer to like the fifties. There was the {political }oppression you know, as well. But there was like, it was hard times in general for people and there were a lot of things going on. The people from the country would migrate to the city trying to get jobs, And it wasn’t happening. Things like I always remember, what I can recall from the Franco days. Everything was just gray it’s not even black and white. And also, because we only had black and white TV, but I recall it was like a gray time. Everything was very gray.

Jean: Physically, Madrid was so beautiful.. The city was beautiful {ie the architecture}and also w there were vegetables, fruits, markets everywhere. But then the people just looked like unhappy. What you’re saying because the whole oppression......

Barbara: One of the things I recall when there, when Franco died I was like seven or eight years old. Up until then, We only had one hour of TV, of children's TV a day. So I remember with my brothers we’d be watching the black screen like this now, waiting for a half hour of cartoons, and then bad programs. And there was nothing very exciting in black and white like that. And that was it you know. So that’s one of the differences and I think I had no idea like how things were in the US. Because we were pretty isolated. And then I’m just realized, the kids in the US we were watching all of these great cartoons in color for hours. Just if you look at that in perspective from an eight year old that is what was going on really. You know for everything............

Jean: Was it because there wasn’t the money to put the programs on? Or was it a censorship thing?

Barbara: No, no, it was a censorship in general. There was only one channel. It was controlled by the government and they would have like these few things. We always had some American shows..... News or something really clean cut like Bonanza. That was kind of like how it was with everything. Everything was just controlled and a lot of censorship, and you know a lot of things like that. Of course I was in a military family so it was not that bad.{ie the family wasn't seen as suspect} But for somebody that was like liberal more the oppression was a lot bigger. I mean you couldn’t have a party in your house it was considered, what was it the word?

Jean: You’re kidding me?

Barbara: Yeah like too many people together you know they could come into your house and say that you were having a meeting.

Jean: Or some kind of a demonstration?

Barbara: Exactly unless it was like a family thing, if you had some kind of group of people in your house. The police came over. I mean you could expect that.
Barbara continues: I mean there was like for example, music there was no Rock n Roll. everything in music had to be Spanish, and it had to be controlled and censored by the government.Of course there was music. But in Spain it was only like the richer people that would travel to, say, London, and see what the music scene like was there and kind of copy it and bring it back. And they would do versions of American or British hits in Spanish. But otherwise there was absolutely no Rock n Roll music played in Spain at all. I mean like in the sixties people didn’t know much about the Beatles for example and it was a phenomenon and in Spain nobody knew who they were at the time cause that’s how isolated Franco made the country.

Jean: Thats really fascinating. I think of Russia {before glasnost}
Jean continues: So how did it because some how I have a feeling, okay if it was the United States and the United States was like this at a certain point in time and then thirty years later I couldn’t imagine they could go from that to the Spain of today. . I was surprised enough to here about the all night partying scene that sounds like a 7 day a week thing.

Barbara: But that’s the thing about in Spain. There was this underlying culture of people that would go outside {of the conventions and the rules}and still know about what was going on outside Spain. When Franco died the whole change was very fast and also very peaceful and very smooth. And that’s what I’m proud of being Spanish, because I’m like "look at it".
You go from a dictatorship to a full on democracy in no time peacefully and happily and that is what I think makes Spain really unique.

I’m Spanish, I tell everybody Spain is one of the best countries in the world. But a lot of people I know, a lot of American people when they go to Spain they tell me you’re right and everybody that has gone there tells me it’s really one of the best places in the world. If you get the right experience, some people just happen to have a bad experience and that can ruin the whole thing.

But as far as the change, I remember right after Franco in Spain there was a thing called Movida Madrilena, which was a like an art and music movement. And it was really fast, really creative and really, really avant-garde. I mean it was so avant-garde that everybody in Europe was looking at Madrid for that. And this happened three or four years after Franco died. Just like that. And then it was like everything was very liberal. Everybody was out in the street, there were all these bars.

All the people and it happened really fast. And a lot of people tell you that it didn’t and I’m like" no, it was". And I remember watching programs on TV that, to this day, there isnt anything like that, in public or national TV anywhere that I know of, I mean in Europe. And in America it would be impossible. It was a program that had really advant-garde arts stuff and that was in 1980. And that’s really early.

It was right after Franco, and I remember watching this punk rock band and I was a little kid and I was like, a really full on punk rock band with Mohawks,an all girl band. Now you’re talking 1980, all girl punk rock band and the song was called I Like to be a Whore. Why it’s so liberating to be a whore. Now you tell me like anywhere in the world where you can see that on TV, you can, not with national TV. And that’s how the level of openness that happened right after and still to this day, it’s a very open country. For example, know the thing about nudity and the Spain it’s like normal we don’t care much about it.

Jean: Oh really, well yeah that’s very different from here.

Barbara: Compared to America, I’ve gotten used to it. Cause in Spain oh a nude person. Go to the beach and see topless people. It’s normal. We don’t think much of it. I don’t even want to go there, it’s so ridiculous. And that’s a problem I have. It’s some people, I’ve gotten used to it but I had such a huge problem with it and how, a lot of liberal friends that I have here, they have that sort of prudery over nudity especially. And it shocks me.

Jean: So your introduction to Punk music, when you were eight years old?

Barbara: Punk music, oh yeah when I was little, I see these three girls with the Mohawks singing "I want to be a whore".

Jean: That’s wild. Do you know what the group was?

Barbara: The Vulpes, Las Vulpes..

Jean: Oh wow, and they were a Spanish group?

Barbara: Yes. I still know about them. If we see a record, I tell Greg get that record.......... That’s a very good record. Cause he still buys, and then there was a few other punk bands and I still have their music, they’re still playing.

Jean: So what does that mean? Las Vulpes translated into English what would it be?

Barbara: I have no idea. I think it was made up name.

Note: Barbara later found a video of the group on youtube! ..........."and here's the TV show I was telling you about with them. Now I realize that they basically copied the Stooges "I I wanna be your dog" changing the lyrics to Spanish" There is a link to this at the end of the interview

Get Hip REcordings : indie label and distributor, based in Pittsburgh

Jean:So with Get Hip, how many artist do you have now? Well I guess currently have?

Barbara: Active artists........... I’m not sure, probably like seven or eight really active that I’m in touch with every day.. Eight of them and then we have put on music for, I try to keep it down to so many that I can really be in touch with. We kind of extend a little bit more beyond our means. I don’t know we’re like too optimistic.

Jean: So the seven or eight people you’re, or ten or whatever are the ones you’re doing recordings of or the ones you’re touring.

Barbara: Yeah exactly. They’re actually doing touring or doing something and we do promotions for and they just play. Some of them play more then others.

Jean: Are any of them from Pittsburgh?

Barbara: Well actually the Cynics are the only one, well the other one that is from Pittsburgh is Break Up Society which is Ed Masley but he moved to Arizona. So now he’s not really from Pittsburgh. He had to go there for work, but he considers himself from Pittsburgh. He’s having a record release party on November 10, so he’s flying up for it. And of course he’s having a record release party in Pittsburgh because that’s important for him. And that’s the only two bands. Oh and I have Highway 13 and they are from Pittsburgh too. And they’re still here, they’re active right now, they weren’t for a few years.

Jean: Come to think of it actually how did that all start? Okay cause Greg then was in the Cynics and he was doing.

Barbara: Greg started a label because there was no other label that he could do the job as he wanted to do it for his own band. So he started the label to put his own records with the band. And because all the bands were telling him the same thing. And just because he was interested in every part of the music business. It would be a natural progression for him to get into the business.

Jean: So were you and he already? That was before you...............


Barbara: He started the label a couple of years before I met him. Probably six years or so, I met him in 1990, he already had that. With the band he already had three albums, and the label started

Jean: So he, but you were already doing something in Spain right?

Barbara: I was actually working with the promoter over there that brought the band over. I was doing free lance work. Promoting, helping with the store, go to all his shows. I was a very good customer at the store. I was trying to get into it actually and I would posters for parties and things and DJ’ing with one of the guys that he’s the promoter’s best friend who worked at the store. He had a DJ gig, and I was his substitute when he couldn’t make it or he had breaks then I would fill in. That was a very, very popular bar in Madrid. And when Cynics made it over I met him because I used to always meet all of the bands. Okay let’s go take them here, that them to dinner here, and to the bars and show them around and all that stuff. I used to meet a lot of people that way. Really liked it.

And the person the promoter, worked with me too, that’s really nice.{ie we worked well together}. We had our up and downs. He would always think that I would want to go to somebody else. I’m like why would I? Unless you die, I don’t want to go to anybody else. We always work with you and I consider you a personal friend, more then a friend, almost like family. I like to look at the business in that sense. Friends and family. Cause the music business other wise can be really brutal and ugly.

Jean: If you don’t have that kind of relationship ..................

Barbara: I try to make it to be friendly and just have a personal relationship with them because I don’t want to be like, because let’s face it both Greg and I are in this because we love it. Not because we think it’s a money making kind of business. Maybe it was at one point, but right now for some people but you have to be cut throat, very cut throat. That’s not what I care to be.

Jean: The people that are on the sampler recording that I have from a couple of years ago{note to reader...which is terrific by the way ...titled "grass is Always Greener (on the Other Side)"} that’s from some of those people you still have or some of them are,

Barbara: Right that’s right I have the really like very close friends with, five I think, then there’s a few that longer on the label but they’re still friends. I keep in touch with. And then a couple I just completely cut off. I can tell you like, it’s two that I don’t care to know. They’re that type of people,

Jean: You don’t want to hear about them.........

Barbara: That I feel like, just the kind of people that use you to go to the next level. One of them we had actually an argument with, just to kind of talk. But it’s just one of those things where you can not go back, it’s something bad happened. But for the most part I either we’re friends with and we work with or we’re on friendly terms. But they move on to something else.

Jean: You know and actually that brings me to one of my written questions. How, from having, for a while, quite a while actually I was the president of this artist group, Group A, in Pittsburgh and then I was working with the administrative part of it before that. And it was and is a small group. It wasn’t that hard to keep people doing what they were supposed to be doing but it wasn’t easy at times. Artists. The expression "herding cats" comes to mind. So how do you keep musicians?

Barbara: I don’t know. It’s incredibly hard. First of all when you deal with artists, you deal with egos. I have an ego. So then you kind of have to deal with with musicians, I don’t know I think with musicians it’s bigger. A different breed of people. To me sometimes it’s hard. If I just really cared for somebody you have to, it’s not that I have to watch what I say but you kind of like be like in this straight kind of mind so you don’t get miss understanding or get the ego crushed or anything like that. And sometimes to balance that is very hard. I find myself sometimes trying to find the right moment to tell somebody something. Which is not the greatest thing in the world but. I feel it’s necessary to do.

Jean: Well like what kind of stuff?

Barbara: For example if I have a good plan, a touring idea, or some kind of recording idea, how maybe that’s not such a good idea. And somehow I feel like, you have to put it like it comes from them not from you. Because I don’t think that.

Jean: I see what you mean.

Barbara: I don’t think that artist in general like to be told what to do. I mean I know I don’t like to be told what to do personally. So you have to always try to balance, how to tell somebody what to do without sounding like you’re telling them what to do. And some people as a manager, okay you do this now, you do that now. But a lot of times it’s like well I don’t want to sound that way. I just want to sound like, maybe we should do this because it’s the best thing. And it’s like, a very small line there that you have to make sure you don’t cross. And as far as telling people what to do or how to balance what you said. If it works out fine, if not fine too.
That’s why a lot of times people it’s a revolving door, people come and go. I know one thing it’s a small world and I believe that the world in general is very small. And like a music world or like a genre music or a niche market, which is what we are is even smaller. And it’s like a revolving door. And people if they’re going to go out they’re going to come back and I know it. And somebody I might not like or something I know I will see them again. So I try to stay on good terms with everybody on a level. So you can always go back to that.

Jean: Because you don’t want.........

Barbara: I believe you can solve almost anything. And I don’t want not talking to somebody and just find that person in a public place or something can be very awkward. That has happened to me, in the worst of times. When I find somebody I just had an argument with and I see them in a place with tons of people and an argument happened. And that’s the worst feeling. It’s really bad and I just realized, you know what that’s not necessary I’m going to try to avoid it at all costs.

Jean: You mean an argument in public.

Barbara: Yeah. I had an argument, a huge festival in New York with somebody and that was the worst thing. That was really bad. And I was like I don’t want that to happen again.

Jean: So that’s how you keep artists, and musicians.

Barbara: I don’t want to be the hip hop scene where I go to those awards show and they start shooting each other.

The world's love affair with American Pop Culture ...... and America in general..or maybe I should say the world's love/hate relationship with America


Jean: Which actually brings me to another thing. The cause the thing that I always read and I hear from people I’ve had young people here tell me is about how music the people like in Europe is different then here. Because here at least supposedly I don’t know if it’s actually the case, but supposedly it’s kind of really rap not even hip hop I guess so much, really rap kind of rules.

Barbara: Well I’m not sure about that. There’s rap and hip hop every where including Europe as well. Of course if you think about it, there’s the whole hip hop culture, and there’s black people here that’s been here a lot longer. Like in Spain it just kind of like a migration thing recently. But I mean it’s just growing just as fast, and also among the white color poor neighborhoods, it’s huge culture. And then of course we have all kinds of South American immigrants bring their own type of hip hop culture with them which is very unique and huge.

Jean: They value it. Cause the thing that I’ve heard, is that music that’s more traditionally Rock n Roll derived is more popular in Europe.

Barbara: Yes.

Jean: Then it is here? Is it because it’s American? or is it. I mean if you were like a Danish Rock n Roll player would you be popular as an American?

Barbara: They just look at it kind of, I don’t know a lot of time, you idolize. You watch a movie, you watch Memphis anywhere in the US and you see the highway, the typical American highway. Which to us, when I got here I was like well you know, over there it looks glamorous like driving on some deserted highway with some crummy diner. And it’s because something about the, it has to do a lot with the movies. It has to do with that.

Jean: Like in the forties, fifties, sixties ?

Barbara: Anything.

Jean: Isn’t that something.

Barbara: It is. That whole thing. And you just think about it, Johnny Cash, Rock n Roll the movies, Hollywood movies all that is American stuff. Burgers, baseball caps, baseball all that stuff, that is American. And in Europe it’s glamorous, and as much as {European} people like to say how they condemn a lot of things about America and not liking the McDonalds and that, I mean everybody there wears New York Yankees baseball caps, it’s the cool thing to do. And a lot of things, it’s like that dichotomy sometimes, loving a lot of things about America and not liking American politics. But it has nothing to do, and the thing is American culture is just fascinating. I mean lets face it, is. There’s nothing like it in the rest of the world. I mean that you can compare,

Jean: No it’s true I supposed, I never thought of it that way actually.

Barbara: You’re in it, you grew up on it. And that’s what you know, that’s your life. But if you like take it out of context, just think about it and it’s pretty amazing. And Superman and Batman you go on and on and on. It’s so much and so creative and so colorful.

Jean: Well, that’s true I suppose.

Barbara: It is. It is. I mean you talk about people like the Danish and the Dutch, they’re kind of dull. I mean you think about Danish.

Jean: Well of course they {in Europe} had two world wars though on their soil, too. That didn’t help come to think of it.

Barbara: Well the US had it too.

Jean: But not on their soil.

Barbara: Yeah but I think the difference about the American, the resilience, it’s an immigrant country and everybody that came here had to be resilient. It’s something about resourcefulness. And resilient and reinventive,

Jean: Reinventing, that I can see. That I can see. Because people had to come and ...............

Barbara: And resourcefulness, when you’re dealing with people, you have an immigrant population and some Polish and some Irish and so how the heck can you live with each other. And you have to find a common ground.

Jean: That’s true.

Barbara: Something comes out of it. And that’s just so embedded in American culture.
Barbara continues: Certain countries and you think about other people that came to live here, escaping from the war. And you’re talking about like the worst of the worst situation when you come with absolutely nothing, and that shapes up a person and anything around, like I mean I wouldn’t, I don’t want to know how can that be. I know, you come here, coming from escaping a concentration camp. You can become a movie mogul for example. And the how you go from there to there, now that’s the United States period. That’s what shapes this country to everybody else.

Jean: Well somebody that I knew from Britain, I know that he had said and he was a little older then I am but not by much. So it’s around the same generation. He had said that Britain still, I don’t know if still right this year, but this was not too long ago we had this discussion. He was saying still there’s really a class structure in Britain for example. Where you know, there’s it’s not impossible but there are very definite restrictions. Definite things you do not have access to.

Barbara: Absolutely, look at how many, for example. Look at India now, people of Indian origin in Europe. They’ve been there for a long time, and India hasn’t been a colony for a long, long time, and those people have migrated like a very good relation with Britain. Take a look and see how many people of Indian origin you see in politics or running a big company? Do you see a lot in England? No. Do you see they voted this Indian, really young guy governor of Louisiana? I’m like.....

Jean: Of Louisiana?

Barbara: Yes. I can’t remember his name.. This thirty six year old guy.

Jean: Well good for Louisiana, cause Louisiana has not always been at the forefront of the...........

Barbara: Not only is he the youngest governor of the country but he’s like from India. I’m like I’d like to see that in England. They have a lot to give.

Now in Spain it’s different. Anybody can be anything.

Jean: Anyone can be anything?

Barbara: I mean we have terrorist in Congress..he was voted in. And of course the guy says, you’re a convicted terrorists, I’m sorry even you were voted you can’t be in congress.

Jean: So they didn’t let the person in?

Barbara: I mean he’s in jail. They guy’s a convict. And he got voted.....

Jean: Okay well that’s pretty interesting.

Barbara: Italy where they voted a porno star.

Jean: She married an American artist eventually. Yeah so.

Barbara: But I think, you’re talking Italy. I think Italian people are pretty amazing. I mean look at them, they come over here, the influence of Italy in the United States is so huge and all over, like South America and Argentina for example. So I like, Spanish and Italian people are kind of similar, you go and now you bring your very strong culture that you just sort of take over. Spanish in this country no body wants to acknowledge it but it’s this bilingual country. And nobody wants to acknowledge it. So they don’t want to make it Spanish a second language, but yet I got to the store and everything is in Spanish and English.

Jean: I know well it drives me a little bit carzy sometimes {that people aren't more accepting of immigrants} of course you know they had ancestors that came here from other countries, because everyone here did.

Barbara: It’s a natural thing. It’s just like English is the international language and it will be. They tried to change it like internet and each country should have. I’m like come on internet, that’s an English word to begin with. All of it, any technology thing is English is just natural. So you can’t complain about that. So now what Spanish now is taking over. I’d say we’d just start learning Chinese because we better.

Jean: Probably yeah.

Rock and Roll and Age

Jean: So when did the Cynics get started?I don’t really know that much about the Cynics. I mean Tony’s told me and then I forget....

Barbara: Cynics oh they started in the Middle Ages, no I’m just kidding.

Jean: We’ll edit that out.

Barbara: They started in 1984.

Jean: That’s not that long ago, well I guess it is.

Barbara: Oh my god, I’ve got this friend from New York and she’s in her forties, that sounds so scary. And they’re still touring, though, so that’s good.

Jean: Well that was actually, and then we’ll got back to the Cynics, that was one of my other questions. Do you think given this past couple of years I say the Rolling Stones, who of course however old they are, they’re pretty old. We saw, you were there too, Patty Smith who is sixty isn’t she?
Barbara: If you look at Jazz and Blues musicians, they’re old.

Jean: Right, they can be really old.

Barbara: Well Rock n Roll is based on Blues so I think it’s a natural, the Rolling Stones they were accecpted by Blues people. when the Rolling Stones started their idols were in their fifties. Joe Cocker, Chuck Berry, they were already old by then. They were popular in the fifties, and some of them a little bit older. Or like jazz musicians you know. And Rock n Roll is the next thing. In the beginning you started wondering on the Rock n Roll, they’re pretty old, sure you’re not going to jump up and down that much. I don’t think they should.

Jean: Well they do actually. Mick Jagger

Barbara: Okay you know he probably has to take some steroids to make those jumps up and down right?

Jean: That’s a good point.

Barbara: No they do.

Jean: Really?

Barbara: No, they do. I know. And they just shoot his knees with some kind of like steroid.

Jean: Oh they did.

Barbara: Yep.

Jean: Okay that’s interesting okay.

Barbara: And some people just have natural energy. I’ve seen people over eighty years old...... my mother for example she’s a very natural person. She’s pretty old, but I’ll tell you what she’s more active than anybody. She goes up and down those steps like fifty times a day and she’s fine and dandy. So it depends on the person. If you’re young at heart if you feel like doing that. If that’s all you know how to do. What makes it safe, you should stop at a certain age you know. Keep going. The thing right now, is that this is new. Rock n Roll just started in the fifties, sixties, so therefore now you start seeing older people because it didn’t exist anymore.

Jean: Well and of course with Blues and Jazz I guess you could say there wasn’t as much of a sexuality thing, you know where as Rock n Roll

Barbara: Oh you think?

Jean: Yeah.

Barbara: Ooo you ever heard Blues lyrics?

Jean: Well you’re right ...................but what am I thinking of? I guess I’m thinking of the performance aspect of it.

Barbara: Blues, the performance yeah.

Jean: Like the physicality,

Barbara: The physicality part. The music it’s self I don’t think it’s much different. To me I like the music. I look at the music, if something really moves me I don’t care how the person looks like. I’ve seen, Junior Wells when they were in their eighties with Johnny Copeland I thought it was unbelievable. A lot of Blues people I saw and they were very old. And I thought it was, or BB King you know. And I never really cared much, if somebody is good to look at, well that’s better, that’s like a plus. But I never really bothered me. I saw Thaddeus Monk I was like he’s pretty old and for a moment I would think about it, but I was just enjoy the music. Me I like music. you know I don’t like being the jury of it.

Jean: Cause I know with the last, well the last Rolling Stones tour is just over because it was long, long, but Mick Jagger, it was a little insane. Did you see the last, he was unbelievable. I mean you don’t know how he could, it’s hard to imagine, for someone young to do it. He wasn’t just singing and walking they said this in the New York Times and they were absolutely right. He wasn’t just singing and walking fast, he was like running. It was insane.

Barbara: What was the headline..........

Jean: And it was good too but, it was just mind boggling.

Barbara: There was a headline in Spain, I can’t remember right now.

Jean: Oh you mean it was critical kind of......

Barbara: Yeah. What was it.........

Jean: Maybe he was worn out by Spain.

Barbara: It was something actually you couldn’t understand in English. And it was not good, like dinosaur or something like that.

Jean: But now you’re making me wonder about steroids. Maybe that’s how he does it. Yeah I can’t understand how he’s still going.

Barbara: Did you hear about that thing that he snorts some of his father’s ashes?

Jean: Keith Richards....oh yeah but then they said that wasn’t true.

Barbara: Oh yeah. It was true.

Jean: It was true?

Barbara: Well, what they did was .....they recalled the thing because you can’t say that. I’m like "the guy said it.' He said it and then his publicist pulled it.

Jean: I bet his publicist pulled it after his publicist had a heart attack. Can you imagine, I mean it’s one thing to have an "on the edge image". But it’s another thing to say...........................

Barbara: Snorting your father’s ashes, I’m like okay. I believe that. I’m mean you’re talking about somebody that’s been putting all kinds of junk into his body. Hey let’s see how this feels like. I honestly I can see that happening. And that’s why I believe it, you know.

Jean: Yeah I can see it too. I remember years and years ago. This might’ve been the seventies or early eightie. I read this long Rolling Stone profile about Keith Richards and they were following him for few a few days. And he didn’t sleep all that time. I don’t know if he was doing speed then or heroin. But it was just crazy. So how he can even be walking around........

Barbara: . In Spanish we say it’s bad weeds never die.

Jean: That’s a very good expression.
Jean continues: So you should write that to him. He would like that.

Barbara: Bad weeds never die. I’m sure they know that.

Back to CYNICSJ

Jean: Okay back to the Cynics. They have how many records now? Records, CD’s?

Barbara: Eight, eight studio records and two live records.

Jean: And they tour in Europe a lot?

Barbara: This last trip they’re on right now. This is the sixth time they went to Europe this year so far.

Jean: Oh, that’s great.

Barbara: We’re making the airlines rich.

Jean: Do they tour in the United States much or not?

Barbara: Touring in the United States is really tough. So what we do is we do trips. We just went to New York. We did a show in Brooklyn, and one in New Jersey and a radio show. And been to Austin a few times. Right now the problem is they don’t have a rhythm section here in Pittsburgh.

Jean: The don’t have a what?

Barbara: A rhythm section, a base player and drummer. They have guys in Austin play with them. So of course we can go to Austin and all that. And the next trip I’m planning is like a Seattle, like a Washington trip for a weekend. And in January (08)we’re going to Mexico City for two shows.

Jean: Oh really?

Barbara: That’s about it, we’re not doing a whole lot here.

Mexico City and Frida Kahlo

Jean: Have you done Mexico City before?

Barbara: Three times in and one time with another band. It’s because I have really good friends there who don’t mind Rock n Roll. They actually used to own a record store and then when they had the crisis the economic crisis in Mexico they had to close the store but they’re still involved in things. So they do stuff. And I just kind of convince them to do it and they really, really love the Cynics and they really like us.
So we do something there once in a while. Mexico City is a huge city but there’s not like a huge Rock n Roll scene. There’s not a whole lot of bands that tour there. And I find that hard to believe because it’s an amazing place. I know from big bands that I know and a few Spanish bands that get to play there. American bands I don’t know that many. REM is the only one that I know. but its a straight jacket But I love it, it’s unbelievable.

Jean: What Mexico City like?

Barbara: It’s too big. I used to stay there in the center area, and go there to the Frida Kahlo neighborhood. Really cool and the museums. I got there every time. Just kind of nice to go.

Jean So kind of the neighborhood has her home and .........

Barbara: The house museum, Diego Rivera and then we would stay usually in the centers. They have these gardens in the fine arts museum, they have this special museum for Diego Rivera with some of his paintings that are related to that area with the park and stuff. That was amazing. And then in the same area there’s like this big square, this humongous square called Pocalo and that’s where the ministries are. The government office, and that’s where they have the murals. And that is just gorgeous. The murals are so beautiful. They’re pretty amazing actually. Just being there and you just feel like really great. But Frida Kahlo’s house is actually spooky.

Jean: It’s spooky?

Barbara: Yeah. Well the one thing that is spooky is that they have her bed and you know the whole crippled thing and how much she suffered, and she was this is the bed and I was like I don’t know. It looked very spooky. With the canopy and they had the mirror. It’s like the way that it was.

Jean: The mirror?

Barbara: They had a mirror because of course she couldn’t move. So she had the mirror so she could see around and she could see herself.

Jean: This is when she was recovering from the accident?

Barbara: Yeah that’s when she was recovering from the accident.{The artist Frida Kahlo was in an almost fatal bus accident at age 18. She suffered from her injuries for the rest of her life} So you see the bed and I don’t know I thought it was very spooky. And then they had the wheel chair and it was really very, very hard to maneuver wheel chair. And you’re like oh my god.

Jean: She was like that for a couple of years or something?

Barbara: She suffered with that through her whole life really. But she was very young and then she was bed-ridden. For years so and they actually have a lot of her pieces and her jewelry. It feels very real, and they have the gardens. You see that whole park and then you see the bedroom and, and you’re like, "ooh". And then you see the studio of the wheel chair and then you see the garden, "ah". So you can see actually she probably felt so good going into the garden because it was really pretty and all that. I don’t know to me it was the whole experience it was so vivid. It was great. I just love it. I want to go again.

Jean: That would be a hard thing to recover from even in this day and age.

Barbara: Back then, yes exactly because it was having your back totally messed up. I think in this day and age, they drug you so you don’t notice anything. I don’t want to think how much pain she had. Feel so intense about it.

Winding down and Changing Gears....

Jean: My fluff question, is where do you get your boots? Do you buy them in the United States or do you buy them...........

Barbara: My boots?

Jean: Yes you have great boots.

Barbara: I buy some in Spain.

Jean: Spain is big on leather.

Barbara: Spain is big on shoes. But here.... this girl that used to live in Austin {told me about} and she’s really into flea markets and Austin so great for that. Specials here, and I like to go buy things in Spain. The way that you can buy in the US in variety at that price, you can’t do that. That whole thing where you can buy brand names like at the Marshall’s someday out of the blue you can find a pair of boots for ten dollars. I like boots.

Jean: Yes I know, that’s why I’m asking.

Barbara: All year round, I’m like summer I’m going to boots.

Links:
The year in local rock: Cynics waited till their 40s to release best yet
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07354/842992-42.stm

Get Hip Records
http://www.gethip.com

The Vulpes on Youtube!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meO0RgAvPw0

Photos and Review: Frida Kahlo
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2008/02/28/arts/0229-KHALO_index.html

Note: A retrospective: Frida Kahlo is at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Benjamin Franklin Parkway at 26th Street, Philadelphia, (215) 763-8100, through May 18. It travels to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, June 14 to Sept. 28.

Photographs:Digging Pitt in NYC and The Chelsea Hotel

No interview...photographs only this time. The images are from:

1) The opening of an exhibit in NYC by Digging Pitt gallery...the Blogger Show in the front gallery, and an assortment of mostly Pittsburgh artists is in the back gallery. This NYC showing will be up through November 30th, 2007.
Address: 170 East 2nd St.
The gallery is in the East Village ...an area that, while still avant-garde, is continuing to gentrify with an almost shocking vengeance! It makes me think that I want to get back there as much as possible while the remnants of the old cutting edge NYC are still around!

For more info on Digging Pitt in NYC go to (and scroll down)
http://diggingpitt.blogspot.com/

2. The Chelsea Hotel (small unrenovated section+ main staircase).

NYC's Chelsea neighborhood seems even further along in the gentrification process. The London Terrace, where a girlfriend of mine lived decades ago, is now a chic address for the wealthy or those aspiring to be wealthy.

Down the street from the London Terrace is the famously counter-cultural ....The Chelsea Hotel...now a $500 a night and up lodging... ..(renamed The Hotel Chelsea). Also it is currently up for sale. I had an opportunity to photograph one of the 5 rooms (and an adjoining hall) that have not yet been renovated...and they certainly exude the sex, drugs, and rock and roll style of the old Chelsea. The final image is of a hallway in the main hotel.
For more info on the Chelsea:
http://www.hotelchelsea.com/history.php

(Two interviews will be posted on Urban Bytes in December: Barbara Garcia-Bernardo , The Beauty and Brains Behind Get Hip Records and Victor Navarro Jr.- Artist, Writer, Musician, Survivor of the 60's, Coffee Shop Denizen, and Muse to the Avant-Garde )

John Morris: NYC Artist, Pittsburgh Gallery Owner and Raconteur

John Morris: NYC artist, Pittsburgh Gallery Owner and Raconteur

Quotable Quote "One of the weird and I guess kind of great things about Pittsburgh is that people and things that would cause riots in other cities go unnoticed here."

Residence Pittsburgh, PA, USA (Neighborhood, Lawrenceville)

Interviewed at Digging Pitt Gallery on August 11th, 2007.

Why Did John Leave NYC to start Digging Pitt Gallery? Part 1

Jean: There are a number of really terrific gallery spaces in Pittsburgh, but when I came in to Digging Pitt the first time, it felt like a NYC gallery to me. And in fact, you came from NY City here to open a gallery in Pittsburgh.{Digging Pitt...Butler near 45th Street in Lawrenceville neighborhood} How did that happen?

John: It's a long story my sister lived here {at one time} So I'd been through town. And, by the way ......actually I don't get out that much, so it's not like I'd been to that many cities. I will admit to the fact that I'm pretty much a life long New Yorker and I didn't have that much to compare {Pittsburgh to}. I didn't know the town at all ....but after driving around but it actually kinda resembled NY, the rivers coming to a point isn't this NY without Donald Trump. So I thought wow it's kind of a nice town. It surprised me as being interesting, and then I was aware of how cheap it was. So that was a big factor. And then I was an artist, and in spite of being "successful" I wasn't that successful, you know financially, so cheapness was important. I think, this is a psychologist on the couch story.

Jean: Well you don't have to tell me that much!

And who is John Morris Anyway?? A bit about John Morris Artist from NYC
Jean:Actually, when I first started coming to the gallery, I didn't realize that you were an artist and then I found that out. And then I looked on line and I thought your work was fabulous. I was just so impressed. {John is represented by NYC gallery D'Amelio Terras}

John: Actually in an odd way it comes across well on line, it becomes more ethereal, a lot of my work is ethereal, and online it becomes more ethereal. You can't see what the hell it is. But the spirit of it comes out ...it becomes more "What the hell is that?"

Jean: But I've seen it also in person, and it looked pretty darn good too, because then totally coincidentally a week later I saw some of your pieces in a New York gallery, how weird is that?. But any how you've gotten into some pretty prestigious collections, to say the least! Which are let me think,.....the Museum of Modern Art,The Whitney, the Guggenheim.

John: Also Queens Museum, you know its on website, I think the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston. And the Fogg Museum {Harvard }and then there's a couple of others. And now the only one I was actually shown in {as opposed to being placed in collection archives} was MOMA.

Jean: What was the show at MOMA (Museum of Modern Art). mmmmm You don't remember the name of the show? Could it have been acquisitions. I know they do acquisitions.

John: It was new acquisitions, new drawings I had probably talking around 2000. The Guggenheim and the Whitney bought my work out right, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston bought my work out right, MOMA bought my work out right and Queens museum was like Academy of Arts and Letters. I got an award from them and then they donated the piece to the Queens Museum. But the Guggenheim, which actually I believe was 19 or 20 pieces, that was a collector who donated his whole collection.

Jean: I am really surprised you are willing to talk about this! I n the past you’ve been reluctant to do so. ...I know people have been urging you to clue people in on the recognition that you have received for your work.I think it will be very interesting to Pittsburghers, especially in view of the mythology is that successful people don’t want to live here..and that is so untrue. . Are you doing any of your own work now?

John: I continuously doodle, but whether I'm thinking about it as working seriously as an artist, I don't know.

How did Digging Pitt come to be? part 2

John: I should say that like so many artists, I had a really, really hard time as an artist, my art career didn't develop immediately. And Pierogi Gallery was so crucial in the development of my career...that’s part of what go me so interested in starting a gallery of my own. And then it developed in this very particular way, where I did these little drawings and I didn't have any money to photograph them, a lot of them didn't photograph really well, anyway. And then one day I read this story in the NY times that gave this profile of like these art dealers that were like looking for new artists in about 1997. And so it mentioned Pierogi 2000,{now a famous gallery} which at time Pierogi had just opened. That's how my work got out there.

Jean: Oh I didn't know that.

John: So I was always very grateful that that had happened. And that it was so great. And definitely when I saw Pierogi, I was obsessed with this is the greatest idea in the art world. But I didn't actually think that it was a money making idea although it might be... almost like a Home Depot.

Jean: (laughs) We'll edit that out.

John: Well but it is.

Jean: It does allow people to buy things at a cheaper price because things aren't framed. You can keep quantity. And do a lot of posting images on the web. I know you have some well known artists in the files one of them being, Polly Apfelbaum, for example, who was on the cover of Art in America last year, and her name is everywhere. On a kind of different note, how many artists would you estimate you have in the flat files here?

John: I round it up to around 200.

And Why Open a Gallery? (at all)

John: I had this in the back of my mind, then I hooked up with D'Amelio Terras. And I had my shows and it was a lot of pressure. And in a way I enjoyed it but I never fully, I did struggle and make a living in NY doing this. And again a "living" is like, I was living with my mom in other words, this was an amount of money that could have provided me some kind of living in NY. Anyway it was like a struggle.

{John continues}
And then I gradually I didn't feel like I had the freedom that I wanted there. It didn't seem fully fulfilling. And I just started going back to this obsession that the art world seemed to be sort of broken. And there was this idea like wow, that the solution to the art world, that is a gallery like Pierogi, that's thethe ultimate nirvana. And also {he is part of}this trend of like artists being forced out of the city. It's too expensive, and you know this situation where, cause Ironically NY is like, there's now this divergence, where the cities that seem to be places to do work aren't good places to sell work.

And at some point I just started obsessing about it, originally I wanted to have a partner because I didn't think I would be good as a business person.

Observations about the fair city of Pittsburgh

Jean You have become very involved in documenting the cultural scene in Pgh.....in your writing on the Digging Pitt Blog and on Pittsburgh Metroblog. I really enjoyed what you said about "One of the weird and I guess kind of great things about Pittsburgh is that people and things that would cause riots in other cities go unnoticed here." Now why is that both a weird and great thing?

John: Well.......{Pittsburgh} it's very unique in a world where things are becoming homogenized...Pittsburgh isn't like that. Its also isolated in some ways. Pittsburgh is sort of Its sort of this weird island which in a way is great. You're discovering this weird island. Someone was telling me that one of the major opera stars was in Pittsburgh. And no one recognized them. They loved it. Someone who couldn't walk around anywhere is not recognized by anyone. You know wow like that's great.

{John continues}Likewise there's a lot of interesting things ...architecture...where people also don't notice them You know that train terminal restaurant thing?

Jean: What's that? Oh um the Grand Concourse.

John: Yeah I mean that's a good example. Or the Union Trust Building or definitely that church in Millville or I'd say any of that stuff like in Polish Hill. I mean you know if this was anywhere else it would be this instant tourist attraction.

Jean: That's true. People kind of take it for granted, the people that have always lived here kind of take it for granted . They don't realize how special Pittsburgh is.

John: Pittsburgh is, you know I'm not saying it's a 100 % good thing, but Pittsburgh is unique. But its unique in a time where a lot of the world isn't that unique anymore. Pittsburgh is still very distinctive.

Jean: You know its funny you should mention this, because that's part of the reason I want to do these interviews. Because one of the things I'm really loving about Pittsburgh is that Its not so developed that people, interesting people are getting driven out in droves because they can't afford to live here. There is still so much room to be your own person here. As much as I love New York City, a place I visit frequently, and where I lived briefly, that's a problem there.

{Jean continues} And you can access things that would be so overrun with people in NYC that you couldn't enjoy the experience......for example the Swoon exhibit opening in Braddock over the summer {SWOON is an internationally known and immensely popular street artist}

John: That’s a good example of something like that.

Jean: So its really a benefit because if somebody wants to be involved in something really interesting its still open enough to be able to do it. Really accessible.

John {In NYC} You can't really live a regular life. You can't really be just a regular guy., San Francisco is a good example of an extreme a city that's gotten very difficult for most people to live in if you took pictures of San Francisco it would look like Pittsburgh but life in San Francisco is not like Pittsburgh. Its about money it, its not about whatever is the fun aspect of the city. It looks laid back. It's not that laid back.

Jean: Because there is a certain freedom in Pittsburgh. People aren't thinking about how am I gonna pay my which allows for a lot of freedom.

Jean: You know a lot about art but also a lot about Pittsburgh. In fact, you know much much more about the history and architecture and sociology of Pittsburgh than most Pittsburghers do.

John: It is an interesting city.

Jean: Like the thing about skyscraper..., well no one would ever call it a skyscraper today.....it's the tall building in East Liberty was one of the first skyscrapers in the United States. Is that the Highland building?

And What About the Blogger Show??!!Those Aforementioned Rivers are Going meet NYC and Pittsburgh.....THE BLOGGER SHOW opening simultaneously in NYC and Pittsburgh in early November!!!

{INFO on the Blogger Sow from Johns New York MetroBlog Post "In November, Digging Pitt (Pittsburgh PA) will begin a joint effort with Agni Gallery (170 E. 2nd Street, New York, NY) and Panza Gallery (Millvale, PA) to present The Blogger Show. The exhibits showcase the work of thirty artists whose common interest is in clarifying artistic discourse through their blogs. All of the exhibits will take place between November 3rd, 2007 and January 12, 2008}

Jean:So tell me a little bit about the Blogger show?

John: Well first of all have you looked at the RSS Feed? That Susan {Susan Contanse, John's multi-talented and super hard-working assistant and also an artist} set up? It’s cool.

Jean: Not yet

John: I never even had a computer before I started this {the gallery} I was completely, so its not like I knew that much about blogging or whatever, but after I came here, I always knew that part of the gallery is like an online concept. It's a combination of virtual gallery and physical space. It's this merger between the two.

John continues}The purpose is like that to create some kind of interaction between the gallery and the wider world and blogging has become like this sort of dialogue between artist and the wider world. I think a lot of the art world has been high jacked by experts like you know, whether its gallerists, curators museum people and a lot of time artist are the final rung with that .

Jean Good point

John: They're {the artists} almost like an add on. So a lot of blogging I think is almost like an attempt to reclaim some of the dialogue among artists. Cause there are people who have blogs, some are famous and people who aren't and they interact with other people. and instead of just saying well this is what this curator thinks of you or just waiting until your review comes out, we can say what we actually thought of each other's shows. or what we liked. So it relates a lot to the purpose of the gallery which is to sort of do it yourself.

Jean:So then the exhibit is gonna be partly in New York and partly in Pittsburgh right?

John: I'll send you the link to this. Hopefully it will be an ever evolving thing where I'm going to be renting this New York space, as far as I know its going to be like 400 sq feet in the East Village. It'll basically be a clearing house for the sow. As far as I know right now there is probably 25 to 30 artists in the show, so that means this is probably a small works show. Most people won't {physically} see the whole show, they're gonna see little parts of it and then it will have an existence online

And now, What are some links of interest??.

LINKS:
John Morris Art work http://diggingpitt.com/morris-port.htm

and more http://www.artnet.com/artist/12121/john-morris.html NOTE the artwork of people on the beach is not work by this John Morris....it's an artnet error!

DIGGING PITT Site- http://www.diggingpitt.com/

THE BLOGGER SHOW- NYC and Pittsburgh http://thebloggershow.diggingpitt.com/

and http://www.fimp.net/bloggershow.html

John Morris Bio http://diggingpitt.com/morris-bio.htm

D'Amelio Terras Gallery http://www.damelioterras.com/home.html?dt=1

To the reader.....If you care to read more.......

Jean: Ok, To finish up with a real fluff interview question......Now, I think this game is probably out of date by now but who would play you in a movie? {explains idea to John, who is uncharacteristically stumped and silent} .

Jean I have a couple of suggestions. One would be a much much much younger Woody Allen like circa 1970. or Steve Buscemi.

John: This is an example of my not knowing who famous people are .......{referring to a previous conversation we had}

Jean: You don't know who Steve Buscemi is?

John: I am actually so out of touch with.....

Jean: He's famous his like, also avant-garde, independent movie actor...Wow,so you can't answer the question. He has also been in mainstream movies and was on the Sopranos for awhile. Well what about the much younger Woody Allen, Yes, no, maybe, well if you have nothing to compare it to though.

John: That seems a little too....

Jean: Too what?

John: I hope I don't seem to be a bad imitation of Woody Allen

Jean: NO of course No! No no no nono, this is who would play you in a movie, this is not

John: That sounds good.

Jean: That sounds good enough, Steve Buscemi might be better but since you don't know who he is..............J

John: Well that's a prior discussion Jean: You don't really have a Tv......... There aren't movie theaters down here in Lawrenceville. So.

John: I try to, but I am amazingly out of touch with a lot of Pop Culture.

Jean: Thanks for being my first interview for Urbanbytes!!

Stella: American Pit Bull Terrier, Unofficial Ambassadress for Pit Bulls, and Family Pet

STELLA: American Pit Bull Terrier, Unofficial Ambassadress for Pit Bulls and Family Pet

Quotable Quote: "DQ Anyone?"

Lives in Pittsburgh, PA. USA (South Side Slopes)

Interviewed 10/06/07 at her home on the Slopes.

NOTE: MARK YOUR CALENDER FOR OCTOBER 20th, 2007!!!! The First National Pit Bull Awareness Day!!!!!!

http://www.blessthebullys.com/id86.html

Stella is a black and white 3 year-old American pit bull terrier
The scene: Stella enters the room and races around at what appears to be at least 90 miles per hour, skillfully dodging various obstacles. After about 3 minutes of this she comes to a screeching halt in front the interviewer…. looks at the interviewer with big, beautiful brown eyes, and jumps into the interviewer’s lap. And is nose to nose with the interviewer.

Jean: I can't really do the interview with you this close.

Stella: Why not?

Jean: The tape recorder won't be able to pick us up.

(Stella reluctantly climbs out of the interviewers lap)

Jean: I'd like to start out by talking a little bit about your early life ..........while the Urbanbytes interviews are meant to be mostly fun and lighthearted, I think people would be interested to know how different your early life was.

Stella: Well, compared with some pit bulls, I was lucky even in the beginning. I had been selected to be bred ...and bred a lot....so I was never fought or anything like that. But the vet said that I had had two litters of puppies by the time I was a year and a half old!! That’s way too young the litters are too close together. He was breeding me too early and too much to have puppies to sell. Fortunately he left me and my two puppies at a friend's apartment and he never came back.

Those nice people took me and my puppies to the Animal Rescue League of Western Pennsylvania on Hamilton Ave. The Animal Rescue League is a wonderful place!!!!! I was there for about six weeks weaning my puppies and then when they were adopted I was put up for adoption and I was adopted in less than two days.

(Stella suddenly begins to move all four paws simultaneously, and quickly, too…..wiggling around her whole body, eyes shining, tail wagging…sort of like doggie tap dancing.)

Jean What was that?

Stella: At home we call it a “Stella dance”. It’s a terrier thing

Jean: Well, as Snoopy said “To dance is to live”

Stella: Who is Snoopy?

Jean: He was before your time.
{Jean continues}

How did you come to be called “the unofficial ambassadress for pit bulls”?

Stella: People seem to find me really approachable. I'm very happy and for a pit bull I'm little (50 lbs). And I have one black ear and one speckled kind of polka dot ear.

Jean: Yes, and that cute half-circle around your eye.

Stella: Thanks. So when people meet me, and then they find out I am a pit bull, it makes them rethink their misconceptions about pit bulls.

Jean: But….I guess some people won’t pet you.

Stella: Not to brag, but no. They always do. If they are around me for even 5 minutes they warm up (vigorous Stella dancing ensues)

Jean: What are the main characteristics of the pit bull breed?

Stella: Well we are known for our comical personality, high energy level (we need a load of exercise), intelligence, desire to please our owners and our unrelenting love.

Jean: Don’t you mean unconditional love?

Stella: No, I mean unrelenting love. Ask any pit bull owner,.....and by the way one of the slogans for the first ever National Pit Bull Awareness Day is "pit bulls are for lovers"

Jean: And that is on October 20th 2007, right? What a great idea!!!!

Stella : Yes, October 20th. There are over 70 major American towns and cities participating this first year. Pittsburgh was one of the first 10 cities to embrace the idea!!! It doesn't surprise me at all, though, cause Pittsburgh is known as a very animal friendly city. In addition to the Animal Rescue League, we have The Humane Society, and Animal Friends.

Jean: I know you’ve said you have a great owner. Why do you say that?

Stella: Well, not only is he as loyal to me as I am to him (and that’s high praise for a human…they are sometimes not so great in the loyalty department…). He also knows how to have a good time. We get out and do a lot of stuff..,,we go to the dog parks, out for walks, watch TV together, play fetch, go to Dairy Queen

Jean: You go to Dairy Queen?

Stella: Sure... dogs love ice cream. He doesn't give me that much. McDonalds cones are good, too. Though the one girl who was working the drive thru freaked out when she saw us sharing a cone…….

Jean: I can imagine she did. Where else do you go?

Stella: We eat out..(places with outdoor areas mostly allow dogs...the Post Gazette had an article about this recently........but they left out one of our favorites, "Double-Wide Grill" on Carson Street. And we go shopping.

Jean: You go shopping? Where? At Pet Supplies Plus?

Stella: No.....more and more human stores are dog friendly…he looks at stuff for his girlfriend….

Jean: Like where?

Stella: Oh, at South Side Works….The Black and White Store… Urban Outfitters. And in Shadyside, there are some stores too…….American Apparel is one.

Jean: Don't people ever complain?

Stella: ( looking rather offended) Well one time I had a crowd around me petting me, and a woman started complaining.

Jean: Did they throw you out?

Stella: No, of course not. and one sales-girl leaned over to me and she said sotto-voice “Now there two bitches in the store”.

Jean: Thanks for being the first animal interviewed in Urbanbytes!

ADDENDUM:

Jean: Sorry! I almost forgot your "fluff" question..which is, What would be your theme song?

Stella: That's easy! It's "Dogs Just Want to Have Fun"......using the Cyndi Lauper tune but with doggie lyrics................{and ofcourse, vigorous Stella dancing ensues}

For more info on pit bulls! LINKS
National Pit Bull Awareness Day http://www.blessthebullys.com/id86.htmlThe Real Pit Bull http://www.realpitbull.com/
Very informative and well-done
http://www.bulldogbreeds.com/americanpitbullterrier.html
Excellent overview of pit bulls as a breed
And: To adopt a dog...or cat or bunny the Animal Rescue League of Western Pa! Or just to learn more about this terrific organization http://www.animalrescue.org/