...and Patti Smith sang of Horses

The first time I saw Patti, it seriously disturbed me. Late at night I am up watching SNL and The Patti Smith Group performed. Something from her cracked something inside me. I didn't know what she was, I didn't know why she was the way she was. I feared drugs. I feared the devil. I feared the worst. The next day at church me and my friends discussed what in the world could possibly be wrong with her...her drummer destroyed his drum set at the end of the song My Generation. It is 1976 and I am 9. A few years later my cousin Shelley had the album Easter. I was mesmerized looking at this album cover...Patti had hairy armpits.
It was August 1988, and I had just moved to New York City. I was invited to go to The Whitney to see the Robert Mapplethorpe retrospective. It was a thursday night, and the museum was open for free after 5pm. Looking at his photographs blew my mind. Something from him cracked something inside me. Why would you put your genitals inside barbed wire and a trap? Again I feared drugs, excess...the devil.
I lived on 24th street, between 7th and 8th. I would go up to the roof of our building and stare at The Chelsea Hotel. All the years I lived in NY, I never went inside the Chelsea. I was afraid I wouldn't come out...I would stand on our roof and smoke and watch the sun set, and the lights inside the hotel come up and I thought about all that transpired there, not knowing exactly what or with whom, but feeling it. Sensing it. Rumors and stories would float in the air to me and slowly over time I would understand.
I wanted to be free, to be brave, to allow. In my own ways I was as free and naked as Patti and Robert, although I didn't think so at the time.
In Manhattan Patti lives across the street from my dear friend, Byron. He tells me that Patti owns the building next to his; a ground floor empty space that she uses as a studio. Bright open windows is all that separates her studio from MacDougal Street. One day as I leave Byron's apartment I pass the studio and look inside  and Patti is inches away from my face. Paper is pinned to the wall and she stands there, drawing as intently as I have ever seen another artist work. I freeze, and I imagine in that moment all the things that Patti and I will never do together, beginning with her sharing some of the wall space so I can paint with her. Tonight after I watch her interview on Tavis Smiley I dream of Patti and that studio. In my dream it is 2001 and when I pass her studio, I stop and knock on her window and she invites me in...
It would be a few more years before I would even own a copy of Land, and I would be living in Los Angeles. It may have arrived in my studio via iTunes...but as the hoofbeats of Land pounded their way through me it was as if time ceased to be a format and Robert, Patti, and I were brought together..."Horses" would chant in my head for years to follow, and I would begin work on a series that remains today un-concluded. It is about freedom and adolescence...two things that Robert and Patti cracked in me.
Just Kids is the book Patti writes about her story with Robert, New York, artistry, and love. It is about the struggle I have with myself and my work, and it reads like an unfolding dream. It is beautiful and it explains to me what I feared back in 1976; Myself. Today I don't have that fear anymore, but perhaps a few of the daemons remain...coaxing me to unfold myself further. I have a love for Robert and Patti that will remain unrequited, but feels as real as any love affair I have ever had because emotions and artistry defy logic, as that is what they have taught me.

White Horse

60"x76"

Oil, Oil Stick on Canvas

2010/2012

www.michaelgardnerart.com