Art in New York

In 1962, I moved from Minneapolis to New York city. I worked in Rambusch Decorating Company and the Mel Greenland Studio. I wanted stained glass to be as expressive and free as painting. I began to create stained glass windows, too. However, I continued oil painting. These works are in relatively chronological order from 1962 to 1965.

• Pacific Ocean, a large mixed media work from the west coast. There I gathered strength to face the big city. The oil painting glazes over newspaper clippings of the distressing current events of 1962. Collection of Marj Spoerri. See also a photo of Leo Geary at the breakwater.

• Revolving Rose, an oil painting where midwest crone meets NY in a financial district revolving door. 1962. Continues in a QTVR immersion image.

• Lower East Side. 1963. Contradictions and contact of cultures. American and Russian flags furling in the wind. A billboard breaks the sound barrier in the sky. Polished nails change the diaper-rashed babe. A homeless bum is twisted under feet rushing subway. Arm whips a belt near the endless fire escape. A large dark mouth opens.

• Harold Rambusch getting old.

• The Fish Died, Early in the Morning.

• Bomb. 1963. The bomb falls from a decorative church arch, rising in a mushroom cloud.

• Manhattan, screen painting, overview of the island.

• Spring rain, a narrow vertical oil painting.

• Grape Arbor, a 3D box painting of the four sides and top, inside out.

• Passage of a Leaf is the first stained glass window that I cut, stained, painted, fired, leaded, and puttied - all by myself. A painterly vision of the growth, death, and fall of a leaf, with my footprint and handprint spanning the reach. This window was destroyed by firemen in 1971. (See a larger graphic.)

• JFK/Rock and Roll is a four-panel oil painting of the funeral for John F Kennedy, 1964.

• Access to the Cloisters, a stained glass commission for the office of J. Tatkin. 1964. This panel was part of a show at the Museum of Contemporary Crafts in 1965.

• Portrait of a NY Person, Iwin Klein, oil painting. Face, (or large) water color. Photographer, watercolor.

• NY to SF, three people fly up from New York city below, in 1965. Car crashes in the middle. In 2009 only the woman with wings down survives. The boy and the man, poised with wings up, have flown on (beyond the golden gate). Another watercolor on this theme shows the people huddled between time and over the rainbow.

• Grass/Path, choice of the defined or the undefined path. A screen painting in five hinged panels. This is a sequel to the 1960 Path Through Weeds. I finished it later, out west.

After a few years, I began to long for the sun and cosmic connections, eventually moving back to California.