On January 1st, 2010, it will be ten years since Barry Cohen passed away. I often wonder how much influence I should attribute to Barry for my interest in folk art and its subsequent influence on my work.
I was just out of art school when I met Barry. He was the close friend of an aunt of my then girlfriend, Barbara. Her aunt Sally asked me if I'd ever had a desire to teach art or do workshops with kids. It turns out that Barry headed an organization (which was actually government-funded at the time!) called Community Environments and sponsored all kinds of teaching workshops for kids in NYC.
But before I got involved with teaching, I was a handyman, building this or that and doing minor stuff for friends or friends of friends in need. Barry wanted a loft bed built for his tiny 1st floor apartment on Sheridan Square. this was no mean task-when I went to size up the project, I saw that every square inch of his place was covered with his collection and his art. This would have been in the late 70's.
There were huge stoneware jugs displayed everywhere. he showed me handgrained doors (I didn't have a clue about their existence before this), weathervanes, decrepit but stunningly beautiful for their simplicity and their very primitive-ness and all sorts of other "smalls". Barry had just started collecting old hand cut valentines and excitedly showed me several of these.What he showed was not lost on me, but it was all fairly new to my eye and took me some time to absorb-but I certainly could appreciate its age and see the maker's "fingerprint".
I wish that he had spent more time in showing me his work, which was almost indistinguishable (to my unlearned eye) from his collection of folk art. What I remember most were some recent drawings he had done using strong tea as pigment. But he never explained his constructions, which to me looked like shelves and containers for holding even more fragments from the past.
The worst part of the job was getting the lumber into his apartment and not damaging anything before it was put into place. I learned the value of his collection much later-after I'd nearly glazed huge stoneware puzzle jugs with 2x4s or almost backed into delicate displays with power tools. I got the bed built and hurt nothing (well, maybe I scraped the bedroom ceiling once).
The image of his apartment has set with me many years. I wish that I'd had more time with him now to talk not only about his work, but with his absolute obsession with collecting.
I was just out of art school when I met Barry. He was the close friend of an aunt of my then girlfriend, Barbara. Her aunt Sally asked me if I'd ever had a desire to teach art or do workshops with kids. It turns out that Barry headed an organization (which was actually government-funded at the time!) called Community Environments and sponsored all kinds of teaching workshops for kids in NYC.
But before I got involved with teaching, I was a handyman, building this or that and doing minor stuff for friends or friends of friends in need. Barry wanted a loft bed built for his tiny 1st floor apartment on Sheridan Square. this was no mean task-when I went to size up the project, I saw that every square inch of his place was covered with his collection and his art. This would have been in the late 70's.
There were huge stoneware jugs displayed everywhere. he showed me handgrained doors (I didn't have a clue about their existence before this), weathervanes, decrepit but stunningly beautiful for their simplicity and their very primitive-ness and all sorts of other "smalls". Barry had just started collecting old hand cut valentines and excitedly showed me several of these.What he showed was not lost on me, but it was all fairly new to my eye and took me some time to absorb-but I certainly could appreciate its age and see the maker's "fingerprint".
I wish that he had spent more time in showing me his work, which was almost indistinguishable (to my unlearned eye) from his collection of folk art. What I remember most were some recent drawings he had done using strong tea as pigment. But he never explained his constructions, which to me looked like shelves and containers for holding even more fragments from the past.
The worst part of the job was getting the lumber into his apartment and not damaging anything before it was put into place. I learned the value of his collection much later-after I'd nearly glazed huge stoneware puzzle jugs with 2x4s or almost backed into delicate displays with power tools. I got the bed built and hurt nothing (well, maybe I scraped the bedroom ceiling once).
The image of his apartment has set with me many years. I wish that I'd had more time with him now to talk not only about his work, but with his absolute obsession with collecting.
This one is titled "What Calls You"-I built the figure up from chicken wire and cloth
and the built it up with modelling paste. Trying to break away from the carved head
is tough -the results from the armature/modelling method are pretty unpredictable... is this a good thing or a bad thing?
