D.I.'S GHOST

 

    At seventy years old, a long career behind me, with future exhibitions in question, this Xmas Eve 2022 I want to share a piece I wrote about my old friend David Ireland.  

 I met David Ireland in his kitchen at 500 Capp st. in San Francisco in the Spring of 1978. I was  25 years old. David was 47. My friend, and fellow art student Tony Labat introduced us. Labat was videotaping David’s “maintenance action,” as he turned 500 Capp into part archeological dig, part social sculpture/site specific installation—the home as art. As Labat knew both myself and David to be working carpenters, as well as artists, he felt we would get along. He was correct.

    Initially my relationship with David Ireland was transactional. I knew enough of his work to ask him to be my advisor at The San Francisco Art Institute. In those days a student could ask any member of the Bay Area artist community to become an advisor. A small stipend was provided the artist and the community grew organically though an informal mentorship program. When David learned that I could swing a hammer he hired me periodically as construction jobs came up. He was my boss, my advisor and soon thereafter my friend and landlord. 

    Despite the age difference, David and I had much in common. I had a small town upbringing in New York, while Bellingham, Wa., where David was born in 1930, wasn’t much bigger in his day. We came to conceptualism from a similar hands-on, blue collar perspective. We were both printmakers early in our careers. We looked for a core of an idea to propel a project, shying away from over-intellectualization or didacticism. Material was important to each of us. He wasn’t afraid to explore the beauty in the banal, literally excavating the construction site for inspiration as well as object. But David’s greatest gift to me as an artist was his creation of context by example. I had never considered that context could stand alone, mutate, remain relevant, and prevail.

   500 Capp was first and foremost David Ireland’s home address. He lived there. It was not a house to be flipped or a neutral art project container. By the time I sat down at that kitchen table David had been at 500 Capp three years, and the building neared completion as a functioning  home. It was no longer a construction site, yet still a work in progress. Sealed in his special concoction of paint and urethane the sanded smooth, plaster walls literally glowed in the candlelight. I’d never seen anything like it. The atmosphere was mysteriously inviting and comfortable, yet contained some unexplainable twist….a bit of Hollywood fakery. You didn’t know if you were being put on with smoke and mirrors or following him willingly down the rabbit hole. 

    Google David Ireland and his more high profile “art world” career and easygoing persona will come through. A couple of videos are available of David sitting in his house in 2001, explaining his art philosophy, or calmly directing his retrospective at the Oakland Museum in 2004. He’s sharp, sincere and dedicated. But by the time of his retrospective his health was already failing and he’d soon have to leave 500 for the assisted living home. Labat and I went for a visit before he died. I hadn’t seen him in years. The same great spirit was trapped in his now fragile container. That laugh was still there.

    

     David Ireland circa 1978 was tall, erect, and could work a construction site with the best of them. He had a thick shock of blond/white hair and a big white mustache. He looked the part of the safari “bwana,” like John Huston shooting African Queen. His exploding laugh would rock you back in your seat. This fun loving, gregarious, extroverted side of D.I.was tempered with a quiet seriousness and a no bullshit attitude when it came to art. He didn’t suffer fools or posers lightly. When we talked art it was all business. His approval was not granted capriciously.

Back to the kitchen table:

     

     I laid a long stick in the shape of a cross and an old beat up shoebox on David’s table. Then I began to remove a few small objects from the box without explanation—a bandage, a broken pencil, a chunk of mud…..David scrutinized them, having no reaction. He would later confide how disappointed he was. He thought I had made these odd little objects in the studio and was already thinking of a way to cut the visit short. I laid everything out on the table alongside the stick. Then I picked up a small red book with the title Missionary in gold script embossed on the cover and began to read. “Missionary (the extended family as sculpture) “Things need cleaning up around here and someone has to do it.”- Darell Monroe. The artist as a friend—someone you can trust—trust with your children—let in your house. 

3/7/78 

Go to meet with Darrell and his parents today 4:00 pm very excited and nervous.” 

   I explained that these relics were generated though an “action” I had undertaken to get to know a 12 year old boy (not studio activity) and that cross was a homemade fishing pole. The mud had fallen from my boot on a fishing trip I had taken Darrell on. I looked up at David. I had him.

    

    From our first meeting to our last David Ireland was and remains influential in my work. His acceptance, without question, that what I was exploring in Missionary was valid was pleasantly unexpected. I was already in awe of 500 Capp and the banal objects he was still in the process of sprinkling with pixie dust. His approval went a long way. We both recognized intent as being the crucial factor in flushing that unicorn out of the ether. An early photo of the chunk of mud from Missionary shows me pointing my finger at the mud resting in the palm of my hand, above one of David’s Chinese chests. This photo was taken at D.I.’s direction. The pointing was an Eastern gesture of quietly drawing attention to something. That light touch is key to understanding the elegance David Ireland brings to the object or installation. It is something I still strive for.

    Since his death in 2009 David Ireland’s profile as a seminal conceptualist and influence on the Bay Area art scene has only increased. This is as it should be. The subtle nature of his work will take time to appreciate. The vessel that he created to contain his objects as well as historicize his rubric has not remained static. 500 Capp has mutated and prevailed. The context became the salable object, and then transformed back into institutional context. The process has not been without struggle. Google 500 Capp Foundation and you’ll learn more. 500 Capp continues to exist in a fluid, sometimes antagonistic uncertainty. Is there a there there? Time will tell. 

    Twentieth and Capp St. is not the same quiet backwater address it was in the 1970’s. The house now interacts with an unpredictably volatile, sometimes hostile community, on the cutting edge of change. Housing shortages, gentrification, “art washing,” economically disparaging narratives all play into the equation. David’s old house now becomes a lightning rod specifically because it remains a social sculpture. The conversations (if not the evictions) are unavoidable. The vacuum of responsibility no longer exists. If it ever did. One cannot detach the art gesture from a neighborhood struggling to maintain it’s character and adhere to the needs of its inhabitants.

   The “social” element of this sculpture will always exist. Because 500 Capp is now formalized as a “foundation,” instead of simply David’s home, navigation within the community can be precarious. Any and all moves will be scrutinized. There will never be complete consensus regarding any program that The 500 Capp Foundation adopts. This unavoidable new wrinkle to the Ireland work should be embraced and celebrated. It is a microcosm within a larger dynamic that questions the validity of our art institutions, political power structure and the needs of a community under constant threat of marginalization and disenfranchisement. There’s a reason this idiosyncratic sculpture resides in the Mission and not Pacific Heights. It is on the front line.    

         

   I have never done anything at 500 Capp. Although David gave me free reign at his other properties 65 Capp, where I did The Church (one service with Rev. Willie Dicks) and The House (a brothel for one night) and later MO David Gallery on South Van Ness, 500 was off limits, sacred, different from all other Ireland real estate; David’s baby. It’s difficult, even today, to separate the house from the man. His ghost is everywhere. To be invited in is a great honor. To be asked to add my imprint will be a challenge. But as David would advise, you have to accept it all as art—then point.