Kienholz Wannabe
Art majors in their senior year at Occidental were required to submit plans for what was referred to as their "comprehensives". The intent was for each student to produce a large scale creative effort that would serve as a culmination of the dozen or so art courses they had completed. Students submitted a proposal describing their project in terms of concept, medium and exhibit details. Once approved, you were given some money to help cover the cost of the materials. The completed work was evaluated by a panel consisting of three members of the Art Department faculty. This final project was the last hurdle for me to graduate.
I had seen Edward Kienholz's work earlier that year (1966) at the Los Angeles County Art Museum. He was called a "raging satirist" who created massive and dreary assemblages that pointed out just how ugly the truth can be. He had also come to our college to give a talk to the art majors. When the talk ended, I came close to asking him to take me home with him. When I was nine years old, I wanted to be Mickey Mantle. Now that I was twenty, I wanted to be Edward Kienholz.
Inspired by my new hero, I submitted a proposal for my comprehensives that was an attempt to mimic the Kienholz genre. My plan was to recreate a life-size replica of the proverbial back row of a class room, complete with grease-ball degenerates. Granted, it was nowhere near as gut-wrenching as many of Kienholz's works, but he had done lighter pieces. I was going for something closer to his work entitled Mother In Law, which I feel should, if not replace the Statue of Liberty, at a minimum be erected along side it.
The panel approved my idea and I received $250 dollars for materials.
With the neighbor's permission, I took a section from her dilapidated wooden fence that would provide me with a 6 X 12 foot area for my classroom floor. I mounted it on half a dozen concrete blocks to both elevate the piece and make it seem like it was floating. Downtown Los Angeles has a place called School Days that sells used school furniture. I picked out four of those desks where the right-side armrest expands into the writing surface. They had to have thirty years of service as evidenced by the carvings, ragged condition, gum on the bottom of the seats and x-rated graffiti. I found three slightly damaged male manikins in the fashion district but without heads or hands. I would have to make these missing parts out of plaster. Three manikins meant one empty seat, but I was out of money and an empty seat would be a nice touch anyway. I had plenty of clothes left over from high school that were as authentic and weathered as the desks. It was really coming together.
The vision I had was that one of the three lowlifes would be sprawled out asleep; the second would be preparing to fire a paper clip with a rubber band launcher; and the third would be writing a letter to his girl friend giving her the phone number of the abortion clinic in Juarez (Roe v Wade was seven years away). In addition, many small items would stick out of their pockets and books such as: knife handles, prophylactics, marijuana baggies, girlie magazines, detention slips, truancy citations, cigarette packs, etc.
When it came time to make the heads and hands I was in trouble. The hands would be simple since all I needed to do was fill surgical gloves with plaster. The heads were a different matter. Heads have faces and faces elicit meaning. There is a universal language understood by all that is transmitted by the eyes, eyebrows, mouth and lips. Drawing, let alone sculpting the human face, to accurately represent an emotion, a mood, a trait, a characteristic – this was a talent I did not possess. This is where I shamelessly went off course. I grabbed the first thought that came into my head – using animal skulls for the heads. Definitely unoriginal, Kienholz had even done it with Mother In Law, but the way he did it was pure genius.
It was then that Hartwig took an active part in the project. I had been keeping him updated on my progress and when I told him I needed animal skulls he demanded to be included. I called up the Farmer John's slaughterhouse in Vernon; the one with murals painted on the exterior walls. I asked them what they did with the heads and was told that we could have them for free, and that "They won't have tongues, we use those." I said that we could live with that and that we'd be right down. We got in my VW bug, dashed down to Vernon where we received a 45-minute tour of the entire operation, as cattle were electrocuted, bled-out, skinned, eviscerated, disassembled and packaged. They gave us three cow heads in a plastic-lined cardboard box. The heads had the hide pulled off, and came with brains, eyes and some bits of raw meat and fat attached to the skulls. The goal was to transform these grotesque blobs into pristine, clean, dry, pure white skulls. Unfortunately, we knew of no way to accomplish this other than to leave them in the Mojave Desert for five years.
Perhaps some background on Hartwig will help establish the qualifications and experience that he brought to the enterprise. Hartwig was the most negative individual I have ever known. He sought out depravity, was thoroughly gratified when he found it, and relished the opportunity to share it with others. He had had some help arriving at this mental state. He was an outsider in high school. The first time he asked a girl on a date was to his senior prom. He rented a white tux, drove to the pre-party on the Alameda side of the San Francisco Bay at low tide, and parked on the sand that sloped down to the waters edge. He left his old clunker in gear to keep it from rolling into the water since the handbrake was toast, had a few beers, and took some ribbing about his big date. The ignition switch on the dashboard had long since given up the ghost, so when it was time to go pick up his date, he opened the hood to hot wire the car, a practice that had now become second nature to him. He did his best to keep his tux clean as he reached in over the top of the radiator. The starter turned, the engine fired, the car, still in gear, drove straight over Hartwig and disappeared into the bay.
Hartwig once filled out an application to the Columbia School of Broadcasting who at that time, advertised relentlessly via every means possible. He submitted a phony profile for a Sven Cowslavski, who had just arrived in the U.S., spoke Swedish exclusively, was seven feet four inches tall, and due to an unfortunate encounter with a door jam had lost all forms of any short term memory. The day Sven's acceptance letter was delivered, Hartwig was unbearable to be around. I had never seen him so ecstatic. For weeks, several times each day, he would pull out the letter, unfold it and read aloud,
"Dear Mr. Cowslavski, congratulations! You have been accepted into the Columbia School of Broadcasting. Based on the personal information you provided, we have determined that you are uniquely qualified to enjoy a successful career in broadcasting…….."
Then he would begin his rant, "Gardiol, do you realize what this says about the state of the perverse twisted world we live in, do you? These slime merchants have the balls to …………….."
Hartwig suggested we boil the heads. My dad was in on this too, he couldn't resist when he heard Hartwig had joined the team. My dad worked for the DWP and had access to some needed items. He brought home a thirty-gallon galvanized metal trash can and a white-gasoline-powered torch used to melt lead for street/sewer maintenance. We threw the heads in the can, filled it with water, fired up the torch and went into the house to play crazy eights. We checked on the heads just before sunset and it was obvious they had a long way to go. We refueled the torch and left it to run as long as it could on its own. The next morning we were overwhelmed by the noxious smell that was everywhere. I went outside and saw that the torch had gone out at some point in the night. I also saw a low lying layer of gray smoke, ten feet off the ground, stretching from our side yard to a half block down the street. A couple of neighbors were out in front of their houses glaring in my direction. Later that morning my mother closed down our operation.
Undeterred, Hartwig was ready with Plan B. We removed the three inch thick layer of fat off the top of the head soup, poured out half of the water, and put the trash can in the back of my dad's pickup. Hartwig gave directions to the parking lot behind the science building at the college. Hartwig was pretty sure that Dr. Stevens might be able to help us. I had never met Dr. Stevens but Hartwig took a chemistry class from him and said he was an okay guy. We met with Dr. Stevens and he suggested we fill the can back up with enough water to cover the heads and then toss in some tablets of something that I had to write down because I couldn't pronounce it and don't remember what it was to this day.
Hartwig and Dr. Stevens set up the trash can in one of the labs and sent me up a few floors to where I could check out chemicals. Never having been in the science building, it took me a while to find what I was looking for. I told the storekeeper, or whatever he was, that Dr. Stevens had sent me to get some ……and I showed him the paper where I had written down this word or words that included an "oxide"; that's all I can remember.
The storekeeper read the slip of paper and asked me, "How much do you need?"
Chances are good he was expecting an answer that was in grams or milliliters. I told him, "I'm gonna need about a quart."
He went off to get whatever it was and soon returned with a clear glass beaker that looked as though it would hold a quart. It was filled with round white pellets the size of marbles. I had to sign something, said thanks, and took off to try and find the lab where my cow heads were waiting for me. When I found the lab I spotted the trash can but Hartwig and Dr. Stevens weren't there. I was anxious to see some results because even after cooking for fourteen hours they still had a long way to go. I emptied the beaker into the trash can and waited for Hartwig to show up. I eventually gave up and went to the campus snack shop for a coke.
I later returned to the lab and found Hartwig and Dr. Stevens. The trash can was emitting a low rumble and I was given some concerned looks. I picked up the empty glass beaker that I had left in the lab, and asked Dr, Stevens, "Should I take this back up to the guy that gave me the pellets?"
Dr. Stevens said, "Never mind that, how many pellets did you put in there?"
I held up the empty beaker.
Dr. Stevens said, "You can't be serious." He went up to the trash can and placed his hand on the side of it and immediately pulled it away as though it were white hot. Things started moving pretty quickly, Dr. Stevens told us to get out and he locked the lab, called the fire department, and evacuated the science building.
Hartwig and I were standing in the parking lot with over a hundred other students and faculty who had come out to see what all the commotion was. The fire department had deployed two trucks to direct streams of water into the storm drain; I assume this was intended to dilute the head soup. Then the science building doors were held open as two firemen in hazmat suits made their way outside, cautiously carrying the trash can to the storm drain. A dozen other firemen and the crowd around us looked on. There was a steel grate covering the storm drain to prevent debris from falling in. The two men in the hazmat suits prepared to dump the contents of the trash can so that the lethal cocktail could find its way to the Pacific.
Hartwig and I looked at each other. Other than Dr. Stevens, we were the only two people observing this scene who knew what was going to flop out onto that grate. God, do I miss Hartwig.