Some Artists I Love

 I was raised with a lot of art in our house. Not expensive, just copies, but still, lots of it. And I later worked in the art world for a few years, pulling paint on silk screens, delivering artist's proofs, setting up a gallery's shows. So I posted a couple of beautiful pieces of art by my friend Larry Lavalle and then my friend Mac McGee wrote that they were nice. Now I used Mac as an illustrator for stories sometimes when I was at High Times, a lifetime ago. He was poor but fantastic, but he had no idea that I had ever worked in galleries of shops. So I wrote this to him:

Thanks. Means a lot coming from the freaking brilliant artist that you are. And I do not think every artist is brilliant. i love Bosch, Oldenburg, Larry Rivers, the pointilists, and some others. I worked at Multiples Art gallery on 74th and Madison for a couple of years in college, then went on to work for "the impossible man" Dave Basanow who had a huge loft in SOHO where he worked with polymers for artists like Rauchenberg, Marisol and so forth, so I was one of the people filling those molds, mixing colors for the artists to choose from and so forth. I later worked at Chrysalis in SOHO where we pulled the squeegees filled with paint to make the silkscreens for Warhol and Indiana and dozens of others. So I am particular -- I do like Cristo and Tommy Christmas and Jasper Johns and Haring and Klee, Georgia O'Keefe, Vinny Van Gogh and a thousand others. But you, Mr McGill, and my friend Larry Lavalle should be picking up $25 grand per piece, just for starters. Go up to a lot from there. You are that good and there should be that demand.