Lawrence Ferlinghetti
History of The Airplane
Lawrence Ferlinghetti is author of A Coney Island of the Mind, one of the most widely read books of contemporary poetry, with 1,000,000 copies in print. Though imbued with the commonplace, his poetry cannot be simply described as polemic or personal protest, for it stands on his craftsmanship, thematics and grounding in tradition. His latest book, How to Paint Sunlight: New Poems, was published in 2001. Ferlinghetti published Allen Ginsberg's Howl, for which he was tried on obscenity charges. He was declared innocent, a landmark victory for artistic speech (Click here for Ferlinghetti's complete bio).

Visual Artist: Ed Paschke
Ed Paschke was born in 1939 in Chicago. His childhood interest in animation and cartoons led him toward a career in art. As a student at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago he was influenced by many artists featured in the Museum's special exhibitions, in particular the work of Gauguin, Picasso and Seurat. Although Paschke's interests leaned towards representational imagery, he learned to paint based on the principles of abstraction and expressionism. Paschke received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1961, and his Master of Fine Arts degree from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1970. Between his graduate and undergraduate work Paschke traveled and worked a variety of jobs amassing the experiences that would shape his artistic style. During a brief period in New York, he was exposed to Pop Art philosophy and began to incorporate elements of this style borrowing images directly from the print media and other elements of popular culture. Themes of violence, aggression, and physical incongruity prevail in his work of this period. Returning to Chicago in 1968 he exhibited with other artists whose work, like Paschke's, shared references to non-Western and surrealist art, appropriated images from popular culture and employed brilliant color throughout a busy and carefully worked surface. Known collectively as the Imagists, their work attracted attention both regionally and nationally (Click here for Paschke's complete bio).

Design: Amy Rowan and KC Clarke


Remembering Ed Paschke

I called Ed Paschke during the Summer of 2001 to ask if he'd get together with me to share some of his memories about Paul Carroll. I had been doing research about Paul, The Poetry Center's founder, and found several mentions of Paul's friendship with Ed.

Ed invited me to his Howard Street Studio. After he aquainted me with the goings on of his studio, and after I waited for him to take a phone call from his daughter (during which I flipped through the most recent copy of Playboy Magazine that I picked up from a small table beside me), he recounted his memories of Paul. For most of the time we talked, he worked on a painting that resembled this. I recorded our conversation and hope to share a transcript of that interview soon.

As I was leaving, Ed gave me a copy of the April 1980 issue of Andy Warhol's Interview magazine. Amongst the ads for Polaroid's SX-70 Sonar, "The world's finest instant camera," Leonard Cohen's 1979 album "Recent Songs." and a letter from Truman Capote, is an interview of Ed by Paul Carroll. Ed said that our conversation reminded him of that interview and that I should read the article. I asked if he though it would be a good idea for the interview to appear on The Poetry Center's website, and he said he thought that is was.

A year later, I called Ed to asked if he would create an image for a broadside (image above) that The Poetry Center would publish featuring a new poem by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Ed provide three images for me to choose from -- all oil paintings. After I selected an image to work with, he coached me as I transformed his painting from an image containing hundreds of color variations to a two color image that could be letterpressed. He picked the colors black and red, saying that those colors best fit the poem. The Poetry Center printed fifty of the broadsides.

The last I heard from Ed was in April of 2004. The Judy A. Saslow Gallery hung The Poetry Center's broadsides to help The Poetry Center celebrate National Poetry Month. Ed showed up to the gallery opening early, before anyone arrived and left me a note: "Ken, great show."

After learning of Ed's passing, I dugout the Interview magazine he had given me during our first meeting. I figured it was time I did what I said I would do. Please find Paul Carroll's interview of Ed from April 1980 below.

--KC Clarke

"There's life and there's TV"

ED PASCHKE

By Paul Carroll

In ED PASCHKE's new studio on HOWARD STREET in CHICAGO, the walls look like a gallery of pin-ups. There's TEDDY KENNEDY with rosey cheeks. There are strippers and muscle men, advertisements for body building schools, and great a great deal of display of lingerie - both from porn magazines and from advertisements. The pin-ups themselves look like a gallery that will be transformed and has been transformed into Ed Paschke's art.

PAUL CARROLL: What I'd be interested in hearing about the Paschke gallery is why there is a preoccupation with hermaphrodites, transvestites, hookers, tramps, fetishists, studs, pimps and dominant nurses - the whole underworld of sexual aversions.

ED PASCHKE: The interest in those things comes partially from the fact that I've always been attracted to urban situations, nocturnal situations, the things that happen in the streets. The subjects that you mentioned are part and parcel of the whole panorama that happens in that situation. Part of the process by which I work is intuitive, some of it is conscious. As far as making statements about what I paint, I leave that partially to the observer. It's lie collage where a juxtaposition of elements can be reacted to in a variety of ways, based on where the person is coming from. I always line the walls of the studio with lots of visuals, things that in some way or another interest me. The things that you mentioned are things that have found their way onto the walls of my studio. The way I work is by a process of addition. When I'm forced into a situation, when I'm looking for an answer, I frequently scan the walls and find something there that will fit a work in a particular situation.

PAUL: What do you think first attracted you to subject matter from the streets and from the nightlife of the city?

ED: Really, it goes back to an interest I had in the circus and the sense of theatrical exaggeration that occurs there, a kind of garishness, a kind of bizarreness.

PAUL: Did you have this interest as a kid?

ED: As a kid and just out of art school I felt a release. I knew that I could pursue exactly what I wanted rather than the academic thing that was forced on some students. It was okay to pursue things that you saw in everyday lilfe. I think Pop Art triggered a kind of green light in me. It opened up an acceptance of that kind of thing and gave me a psychological boost that made me tap my own personal resources. Things that were charged with a confrontational attitude always excited me.

PAUL: A lot of the early critics praised the contrast between the garish and the bizarre subject and the painting quality itself. Yet, the attention paid to the art is largely due to the subject matter.

ED: It has bothered me that critics or those who react to the work in some way never seem to get past the superficial aspect that drew their attention to it.

PAUL: Often, in your earlier work especially, critics said that you were creating satire or mocking American ways. I was thinking particularly about your series of shoes where the shoes have hair. In terms of what you've just mentioned about the basic incongruity, I wonder if you felt affinity for someone like Magritte who would paint a pair of shoes with actual toes on the shoes.

ED: I think it's basically the thought process of juxtaposition and ironic combination. I think that growing up in a place like Chicago where surrealism was always endorsed on the part of the collectors probably played a part. I'm always interested in how the mind works and how, during the creative process, this kind of thing takes place. A lot of it has to do with avoiding the predictable, avoiding what one might expect in a given situation. In the case of early paintings the subject matter had a lot to do with it. But in my subsequent work and in what I'm doing now the subject matter has grown more oblique.

PAUL: Has your enthusiasm for the incongruous always been with you?

ED: I've always felt like an outsider. I'm sure most people in the arts have felt that way. You grow up and realize that it's okay and perhaps even better because you avoid the mainstream. I think innovation is a big part of what we're talking about. When you're dealing with predictable thought processes, it's probably not very innovative. The idea of a controlled accident, of embracing the random occurrence is very important. Accidents frequently occur when I'm working. I love it when that happens. I really don't believe in mistakes. I think that when a mistake happens you go with it and the thing begins to tell you what it wants to do. If a brush falls out of my hand and hits the painting on the way down, I try to work with that mark rather than remove it.

PAUL: I am fascinated that you say that the painting often reveals itself to you as your doing it. It recalls Michelangelo's statement that there was a figure hidden in the stone that he released by creating.

ED: I never make sketches before I paint. I like to take risks on the canvas. At any given time, of course, an artist works with a fixed visual vocabulary, the things that interest them at the particular time. But aside from that I really don't know where it's going to go. It's like DR. Frankenstein. I try to start with as few starting ppoints as possible so that my field is as wide open as possible. As you progress through the painting, your options are limited.

PAUL: What do you think you'd be doing if you weren't painting?

ED: I don't know, I'd probably be out in the street, in a gutter somewhere.

PAUL: You've said that often when you paint there is a feeling of meanness or aggression that comes out.

ED: I've always found that I work better when I'm hostile about something. That kind of energy gets translated into the paintings themselves and they contain it.

PAUL: Is there anger in personal relationships or against society?

ED: Well, I think if you get pissed-off enough you're going to become ruthless about the decision you make in your work. If everything is comfortable and wonderful you tend to maintain the status quo.

PAUL: You once said that when you were a kid you moved around a lot and felt that in every new place you had to prove yourself. You recalled at one point you could have been called a delinquent.

ED: I guess for a while I was headed down the wrong path. I really think that there are great similarities between the criminal mind and the creative mind. Not that everyone in Alcatraz was a creative person, but there is something similar. It has to do with breaking the rules and going beyond the set boundaries that we are given.

PAUL: And making up your own rules.

ED: I did some wild things. But painting brought things into focus. I learned that if I could be responsive to my life experiences I could channel that energy in the work itself.

PAUL: How then does your concept of the theatrical enter in?

ED: The early things were like a punch in the face. They made a visually aggressive assault. As the years have gone by that has been modified in such a way that the current paintings emphasize the theatricality of the gesture, the subtle classical gesture, and that presents the essence of the shared experience.

PAUL: The painting your' working on here of the head of a man with what looks lie a cloth mask putting his finger up to his mouth. That seems to show what you're saying about a shared experience.

ED: There is a conscious effort on my part to break down the traditional figure-ground relationship. In the sense that these things, what you call a mask , are fluctuating, are ghost-like apparitions in space. They are molecules in space or whatever was in that particular place arranged in that particular way. The ideas have been very vaporous.

PAUL: Like an image on a TV screen as it's warming-up?

ED: Yea. Television sets that are out of focus or don't work right interest me a great deal. It doesn't matter what it is but how it is presented that interests me in TV. It's not the form, it's the content. I think that to degrees that we're not really aware mass media elements are a tremendous part of development and forming the consciousness of society. I don't think we realize how ingrained in us that way of seeing, that format really is. There's life and there's TV.

PAUL: You've said that for an artist to be successful it is essential to have great discipline, yet you do live as a husband and a father.

ED: This is something that comes up a lot when people meet me. They assume that I am some sort of raving maniac or deviant but I am really relatively conventional.

COPYRIGHT 1980 BY INTERVIEW ENTERPRISES, INC.