Art
Subject: Wendy Pickles NW review of artists
Dear Ms Lark,
Would it be possible to get a message to Wendy Pickles concerning her review on NW art. It was great.
My name as a NW artist was Victor Jason while attending Cornish School in Seattle and after school painted under the name Victor Steven Rosenberg (born) finally settling on Victor Stevens.
I knew and studied with Guy Anderson in LaConner and knew Charles Krafft, Nordin, Kinney.
At 27 years old I began my first year at Cornish which was the first year Charles Stokes at the age of 24 began teaching painting.
Have I got stories to tell. I lived with Tom Robbin's sister for eight years. Knew Tom well.
Plus when looking at some of my images from the sixties, seventies, and eighties and even now the NW was and is the foundation of my art.
For the last 17 years I have reveled in the Sonoran desert and painted my ass off 'in the light.' I have a studio/display area in a little art village in Tubac, Arizona and rather than blah, blah on I would love to share with Ms. Pickles my insights and an early poem (below) about Cornish School I wrote in 1976.
I published a little book of poetry in LaConner in 1976-77 titled "Toothmarks in the Sand." The sand described was the sand of the slough that separated LaConner from the Swinomish Rez who I worked for.
victorart@earthlink.net
My foolish grin had no ears
Experience was paradox
The art club played flash
We tattooed Mickey Mouse on our chests
Sipping each other we became vortex drunk
Yin/Yang pies singed by dragon tongue
An art school cookout Monkeys in the net
As if the wind cared.
Hi, Victor: Thanks for your letter.
The review was written by Charles Krafft and Carlos Amantea who took the pseudonym of "Wendy Pickles" to protect the guilty from the innocent and vice-versa.
We sent a copy of your letter to Mr. Krafft, who responded,
Someone took me over to the house he was living in behind the Nelsen Lumber Co. in La Conner. It was well after noon and he was still in bed. Propped against the wall near his bed was an artificial leg complete with grimy stump sock and frayed leather straps.
I was certain he had only one leg until he jumped out of bed and sauntered into the kitchen for a beer on two perfectly good legs. I remember Victor Rosenberg. He did indeed live with Tom Robbins' sister, but I never met her. I'll never forget the day I met him.