Remembering Walter

On March 20, 2005 my uncle Walter died. I honor his memory today.

Walter loved artists. He had the most wonderful stories about artists. He also had some advice that has helped me as an artist.

When I was an impoverished art school graduate he encouraged me to do art. He told me that even if I was broke I should buy the finest paper that I could afford and draw on my kitchen table. He also told me I should draw every day. I don't actually draw every day. However, on the days I don't work my 13 hour days, I invariable do art every day.

Walter told me that when Giacometti was poor he walked around sculpting a tiny wax in a match box. He said that later when Giacometti had money he was able to get these waxes cast and that they were just as monumental as the larger sculptures he did in later years.

Walter told me of his friend Edward Kienholz who could assemble a sculpture studio "in no time". Walter wanted me not to delay making art. We talked often on the phone. No conversation was complete without his admonition "Don't forget about your art, Ahava". I haven't, Walter.

In one conversation I told Walter that I sometimes felt isolated and lonely since I lost contact with art school friends. I spoke about how this sometimes made it difficult to do art. Sometimes I felt that there was no point. Walter instructed me to frame a photograph of my favorite artist and hang it in my studio. He told me to direct my art making towards this artist; to have a "conversation" with this artist.

After Walter died I placed his photo and my favorite Walter quote to me on my studio door. It was after I had done this that I realized I had finally taken Walter's advice. But the person I most wanted to dialog about art with was him.

We buried Walter in the most beautiful cemetery in the mountains he so loved with a marker carved from local granite. I have some local granite from that site in the mountains from the weekend of his funeral. I surrounded it with bulbs.

Today I celebrate that this marvelous, intelligent, brilliant, passionate, perfectionist, idiosyncratic, and caring man was my uncle and in my life. I still miss him. But when I play jazz late at night, it is almost as if he is present like incense hanging in the air.