The Brooklyn Rail

Philip Glass introduced me to Richard in early 1969. We both began working for him. The first order of business was that Philip and I would go to his loft around eight, nine in the morning. He lived on West Broadway in a small loft, which later was occupied by Mary Heilmann and then by Susan Rothenberg. We would then go to breakfast at the Odeon cafeteria which was across the street from his loft and talk about the day’s work: the videos of Hand Catching Lead and Lead Weight were filmed in his loft.

We started thinking of ideas for his first exhibition at the Castelli Warehouse uptown. Splashing, One Ton Prop (House of Cards) 2-2-1: To Dickie and Tina, etc., etc. The crew that installed that exhibit was: Chuck Close, Philip Glass, Spalding Gray, Robert Fiore and me. It was very dangerous work, as each of those lead plates weighed four hundred pounds. Philip and I aided Richard with the Splashing piece. This consisted of splashing molten lead against a mold: we then would pry the solid lead with crowbars.

After work Richard and I would frequent the bars late in the evenings into the early mornings. Eventually we were banned from a few.

I drove Richard and Eve Hesse a couple of times around the city while they discussed art in the back seat!

Richard and I remained friends all these years!