Sand Balls & Second Acts: The Creative Life of William Attaway

In this episode, Seano sits down with renowned Venice artist William Attaway for a raw and inspiring conversation about art, healing, and transformation. William shares stories from his childhood in New York and Barbados, his journey through addiction and recovery, and the creative process behind his iconic public art. Together, they explore the power of community, the importance of staying true to oneself, and the role of art in personal and collective healing.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
And in the corner of my eye, I could see
this kid putting his gun signs and you know, death
signs behind my head, and I just whispered to him.
I said, come here, man, come here, And in front
of the whole forty kids, I whispered in his ear.
You embarrass me, in front of these kids. I'm gonna fine,
You're off.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
My guest today is a man whose art doesn't just
hang on walls. It breathes, it heals, It tells the
story of Venice itself, from clady murals to the spirit
of community. William Adaway has painted prayers in the streets
and left fingerprints on the soul of this city. He's
more than an artist. Yeah, man, he's my brother. For starters,

(00:45):
he's my true brother. He's a keeper of culture, a
healer with color of voy, a voice for Venice. Brother William,
Welcome to the Sino Show.

Speaker 1 (00:54):
Thank you, thank you.

Speaker 3 (00:55):
Wow, this is something else.

Speaker 1 (00:57):
Huh, Yeah, this is Things are moving fast.

Speaker 3 (01:00):
So let's let's just go back New York City.

Speaker 1 (01:03):
Yeah. I was born in New York City. My parents,
my father was part of the Harlem Harlem Renaissance and
he was a writer, musician, and my mother was an artist.
She came from upstate New York, but also ended up
hanging out in those areas and won the jazz and

(01:26):
the blues and everything was happening in Harlem.

Speaker 2 (01:30):
And and for those who don't know what the Harlem Renaissance,
I mean, it was a lot of things shifting Black culture.

Speaker 3 (01:35):
But one of the things that it brought jazz to
the world.

Speaker 1 (01:38):
That's the truth, right, great writing, jazz, poetry, many many
other things, from ballet to all the arts. It was
really a renaissance. It happened in New York and then
it included a lot of other cultures also, you know,
it wasn't just exclusive to that.

Speaker 3 (01:57):
And talk about the great coffee shop in soho Ah,
The Sage, The Sage.

Speaker 1 (02:03):
The Sage was a coffee shop that my father and
Harry Belafonte had my godfather, and it was twenty five
cents for hash Browns, five cents for coffee. This is
when they were just coming up and and they performed there.
They'd have poker games at night and everybody'd be there,
Marlon Brando and you know it was real. It was

(02:27):
a hang you know, And that's my Actually, my mother
had a date with Harry and he didn't show up,
and so my dad took her on a date and
the rest is history as his sister, so they say.

Speaker 2 (02:43):
And in near New York and then and then Martin
Luther King is assassinated.

Speaker 1 (02:48):
Yeah, Martin Malcolm and the Kennedy's. My parents were around
that circle, and being a multicultural family, it was things
were happening. Just walking down the street to my mother
with two brown kids, and my father just decided to
get us out of there, and we moved to bar
the island of Barbados. When you were that must have

(03:09):
been about three four, yeah, right there, Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I lucked out. I got the golden ticket.

Speaker 2 (03:17):
You got the golden ticket ticket, brother man, I'll tell you,
I'll tell you.

Speaker 3 (03:21):
Yeah, yeah, and yeah. And so walk us through kind
of in those early years on the island there.

Speaker 1 (03:26):
I was there in the sixties, so it was before
television came in, and lights would come on at six o'clock.
You need, the power would always go out. You'd get
ice for refrigerator. I mean, it was very simple. The
radio played a big part. There was no toy stores. Christmas,
I didn't know what that was, Halloween, none of that.
But we played on the beach and we made toys.

(03:49):
We take a bicycle rim and with a stick and
run down the street with it. You know, it was incredible.
I mean it was where we lived was a very
very poor area in Saint James and Barbadi when I
first moved there, and they were a few larger prominent
houses along the way. But my father would if he
bought something like a scooter, he'd have to buy seven

(04:11):
scooters because all my friends could have one, because he
didn't want me to feel for them to feel like
they were lacking. You know.

Speaker 3 (04:17):
He was that kind of man. He was that kind
of man, right.

Speaker 1 (04:20):
But the funny he bought all the scooters and and
all the kids took all the wheels off and made
him into go kart. So he was like, what the
you know. But we always made something out of nothing,
and that was really a big part of Barbados. We'd
make rings and Christmas wreaths out of Casuarina trees go
sell them to tourists. You know, we were industrious.

Speaker 2 (04:40):
Yeah, you had a hustle eving back then. Your mom
said you're going to be a great artist.

Speaker 3 (04:45):
She called it in.

Speaker 1 (04:46):
She believed in Creative Visualization. She bought me that book
when I came to America. But all along she kept saying,
you're going to move to America, You're going to have
a big studio, You're going to be a famous artist.
I've seen what fame does. I'd rather just be successful.
I've achieved infamy, but I don't want to be famous.

(05:06):
Yeah right, but you know, all the stuff, and she
always supported me. If I didn't want to go to school,
she'd say, all right, we'll sit and draw till the
end of school one or the other, right, yeah, don't
you know, and then you can go out. And I
always had all the art supplies. I had a pottery
wheel right in our apartment, clay everywhere. You know, they
didn't care Marshall stack my guitars. Once we stayed in

(05:28):
the house, you know, I mean, you want to go
drink some beer. No, you know you're going to go
drink beer on the porch. You want to smoke some weed,
just sitting out there on the porch so we can
see you don't get trouble by the police. And you know,
they came from a different era. So when we came
back to America in the late seventies, they were still

(05:49):
you know, my mom would go rent the apartment before
we got there because she was afraid that no one
had ran an apartment to my father and two mixed kids,
so that we we operated in. They were almost like
my grandparents in a way. My father was born in
nineteen eleven and my mom nineteen thirty five, so they
were miles apart. But my mom really was an old soul.

Speaker 3 (06:13):
And you won the Queens competition tell the idea.

Speaker 1 (06:16):
Yeah, there's a competition for art through all the colonial
states that England had, you know, so Barbados was one
of those. Barbados is not a colonial state from England anymore,
but so all the kids would do art and you'd
get chosen. So I won the competition to represent Barbados,
and because I was born in New York City, it

(06:38):
got sent back. There were some complaints, and rightfully so
by other kid's parents. You know, why is this kid
getting But that broke my heart and I just decided
I wanted to come to America, you know, and my
dad was working in Hollywood. He was one of the
first black writers and television and screen and movies and stuff.

(07:00):
So I took the chance came here and I fell
in love. I went skateboarding at Rita del Ray's Skatepark.
But was Berkeley before La, right, yeah, but we came
here first.

Speaker 3 (07:09):
Oh, he came here first.

Speaker 1 (07:10):
And then some things happened where we decided to take
off to Berkeley. My dad, my dad was blacklisted and
he you know, back in the days when they call
you a communist, So we had a hard time finding work.
He had to always never put his name on it.
And he worked for a man called Brad Dexter who

(07:31):
was one of the Magnificent Seven, and so he was
writing a film for him at MGM. And I got
a job actually at seventeen, to be a limo driver
three grand a month. I could work till like three o'clock.
I'd have to be there at five in the morning.
Great deal. First day of the job, I get there
with my dad and he says, sit here at five o'clock,

(07:53):
half hour goes by. They watched the screening of the
film he worked on, and he always put his name
at the end, but they didn't put it there, I guess.
So when all I saw was him beat the hell
out of one of the Magnificent Seven, the security guards,
the head of MGM. They're going at it and I
jump out and they all stop. He gets in the car.
We drive through MGM A lot, hitting them the MGM lot.

(08:14):
The streets are teeny and he's he went through the
security arm, right through it, spun around a cover boulevard,
pulled into the first bar right across the street, pulled
into the back and he's like, he told me. She
sat there for half an hour smoking a Stagram. And
I'm like, well, what about my job? He goes, forget

(08:34):
your job. These people are serious. They're gangsters, you know.
He's like, first of all, you can't tell your mom.
I'm like, what about my job? My job? And anyways, Wow.
He disappeared for about three months, and they had some
weird detective dudes outside of our apartment and I got

(08:55):
it into it. I went and pissed on their car
and they didn't like that. They out their stuff and
we started getting into it. My best friend's black belt
from New York. So then when that happened, Brad and
my dad got back together. They cooled everything down. We
went to dinner. Still didn't get my job, but after
that my dad said, I'm out the skilled too to

(09:16):
Berkeley and he started working up there. I went to
Berkeley High for a bit, you know, junior high school,
junior high school for a little bit there.

Speaker 3 (09:26):
And he had a little LSD experience. Let's just say
I'm experienced.

Speaker 1 (09:31):
You know, I've been to Jerry Garcia's house. Let's put
it that way, you brother. I turned the pages of
the wind, and I always saw what was behind me
when it was in front of me, and all the round.

Speaker 3 (09:41):
Okay, but you got you saw the light, something dropped in.

Speaker 1 (09:44):
I saw the light. I didn't need to take any more.
After I took what I took it. It was a pretty
large amount, and I was about sixteen. Five days later,
I was still but everything opened up like a giant
book for me, and the colors and the pages. I
think because I was raised in Barbados, in a peaceful

(10:04):
place I was. For me, everything was beautiful, even though
it was like building and breaking down or all around
me and breaking all the norms that I knew. And
I never really went back to school after that. You know.
It was like I just hung out at school. I'd
skateboard and draw on.

Speaker 3 (10:20):
My books, and then you eventually made it back here.

Speaker 1 (10:23):
And then we came back to Hollywood because my dad said,
all right, let's make some real money. I'm going to
go back to work, you know. And I got into
high school here and I just I was when I
got to America, I was really far ahead. Schooling in
the Caribbean is way more advanced. So I couldn't believe

(10:44):
multiple choice. You know. My first question I was like,
do you realize that multiple choice? So you could just
guess it and you might have sixty five percent chance
of I think it's somewhere around that. I might be wrong,
but I just didn't pay attention. And they that year
at Union High School, they brought the computers in, and
the computers they said, well, if there's any problems with these,

(11:07):
uh your choice of electives or your history class, your geography,
please let us know. The computer gave me art art
art art art art art. And I went to my
friends and I said, this is an act of God.
And I really believed it. And and at the same time,
I just found a little studio in Venice.

Speaker 2 (11:28):
Right here, three.

Speaker 1 (11:30):
Four Sunset Avenue, and I had a little space in
there for one hundred bucks. There was all these old
ladies there and i'd be blasting by Bob Marley. You know,
they'd be like going nuts. But after missing at about
one hundred and fifty days of school and going to
the art class, probably two of the classes. The art
teacher was great. He was the head of the our

(11:51):
apartment Yale also mean not Yale at UCLA, and so
he could see my potential. I'd do his project and
he let me just do whatever I want in the class.
And he started noticing I was there all day. He says,
what about your other classes? And I said, look at
the card. I saved it, I put it away. I mean,
this is an act of God. He says, you're going
to get me in trouble. And then right then the

(12:14):
principal came in and the whole thing went down, got
a little funky. So it was about one hundred and
fifty days I was behind, and the principal said, I
want your father to come in, and so I had
to tell my dad. I took him to the studio
in Venice, and he was not happy. He didn't he
was he was one of the first blacks to to.

Speaker 3 (12:32):
He didn't know about the studio.

Speaker 1 (12:33):
No no one knew, No one knew My friend, Brian Scheller,
and I moved in there and it was amazing, you know,
a learning experience from me because I knew really little
about ceramics. But he saw what I was doing and
he was just he was one of the first blacks
to go to Illinois State. He really believed in higher education,

(12:53):
you know, and you know, we work on Latin together,
and it was he wasn't good for me. I didn't
love mathematics. I didn't you know, I'm quicker with other things.
And so we went and saw the principal afterwards, and
he didn't speak at all. And we went in and
I had long, nappy dreadlocks at the time, you know,

(13:16):
and I would go to school. Let's just say I
would go to school to do business sometimes, just put
it nicely, okay. And the principal was sort of onto
it me. And he just told my dad, he says,
he's hanging out with the wrong people, and we believe this,
and we believe that. And my dad looked at him
and he just says, fuck you, how dare you speak
to my son? You know. So, and he knew how

(13:39):
much I partied, you know, we were lightweights, you know.
We'd go to a grateful d show. Yeah at that time, yeah,
I was building. The storm was just starting. That that's
a good reference point. He says, you know, my son's
been down here making pottery, you know, and goddamn it,
he's going to take the GED. Doesn't need your school
if he guess how you speak to your students, you know,
and my dad I smiled. My dad says, don't you
smile at all? So we went outside told him. He

(14:02):
asked me how much the rent was. I said it's
one hundred bucks. He said, I got it covered. You're
going to take the GED. Blah. So I guess that
year I was going to take the GED, and Bob
Marley came in town at Royce Hall, I think it
was a UCLA somewhere, one of those venues there, and
I did a little bit more of the psychedelic thing,

(14:25):
you know. And that next day, the morning was I
slept in the GDS home at UCLA and I woke
up to go take the test. There was three hundred
kids in the auditorium. I went down and got my
paperwork and I'm looking at it and I got my
pens out. I just drew over every page. No, lie,

(14:46):
I drew over every Oh I love that man. About
forty five minutes into it finished and the people are
looking at me and they're like, oh my god, Oh
my god. I walked down to him because there's a party,
didn't I swear? It wasn't even that. I just was
on a path. I just knew I really believe that

(15:07):
this this is I went it down there and I
smiled at him, and he goes, what is this And
I go, It's an act of God. Yeah, And I
walked out. And and so my dad was going through
some serious health issues. Cancer was just starting to hit him,
and and so I just put it on the back.
I put it away, and when the paperwork came, I saw,

(15:30):
you know, of course I failed. I just told him, oh,
I passed Flying Colors, and he goes, where is it.
I said, well, it's at the studio. I'll bring it back.
And they've forgotten. Yeah, never got mentioned again. And so
from that point on, I was full time at the studio.
I started doing like the Compton Swapped Meet, you know.
I'd go to Westwood Art Show next, and then the

(15:50):
Beverly Hills Art Show, and I won all the awards
at the Beverly Hills Art.

Speaker 2 (15:53):
Show, and I want to interrupt you. And it's I
think it's extraordinary. Think of like a seventeen year old
in venice but fully committed to make an art.

Speaker 3 (16:02):
It's really powerful.

Speaker 1 (16:03):
Man. We'd worked for three days straight. We were were
we go to zookies at like three in the morning,
and we'd have cash in our hands, you know, and
we were we were really pretty sober about our business
and everything. You know. Yeah, I didn't. I had no clue.
You know.

Speaker 3 (16:22):
I want to tell a great story, and there's so
many to tell.

Speaker 2 (16:24):
Buddy, would you break into UCLA?

Speaker 3 (16:28):
Yeah, tell the audience about that story. It's so good.

Speaker 1 (16:32):
So we lived around UCLA, so that was our playground
for skateboarding and everything. We found this geodesic dome that
could go in there and hang out and sleep at night.
There was security was very lax, and so we broke
into the pool area. This is before the cameras and
all that stuff, and we'd climb in and we'd swim
all night and play. And then I found the ceramic department.

(16:52):
I forgot to tell you. My grandmother moved to Barbados.
She was a very eccentric old lady. She was very
abusive to my mom. She would take her to France
and lock her in a closet and put a plate
on the table while she was going up dancing with
Charlie Chaplin. I mean, she was very exotic nineteen twenties,
like serious wow with came from the money, you know,

(17:14):
upstate New York. And Grandma Tit was her name, and
she'd she'd do snuff, you know. And she had a
thirty year old rasta man boyfriend. You know, I'd never
seen dreadlocks. This isn't Barbados, you know. So she bought
this house, a ceramic studio on chalky Mountain, Barbados, and
there was it's been there for five hundred years almost,

(17:36):
and so there's only these old black potters. And this
white lady comes down there, who they called the witch.
And she did look like a witch. I'll tell you
she scared me. I didn't let her touch me. I
don't learn her near me. Grandma Tit. My mom would
get there and go inside and I could smell the
old milk and all the food. She died from that eventually,

(17:56):
But I'd go sit in the kilns that were cut
right into the mountains side with these old men. They'd
be playing dominoes in there, and they said, boy, they
send your grandmother is a witch man.

Speaker 3 (18:06):
And I'm like, yeah, I know, I know. He goes, well,
why don't you go in there?

Speaker 1 (18:10):
I said, it smells bad. I could smell it from
all the way out here, you know. But this rich lady,
you know, she died from drinking drinking old stuff. And
she left me the pottery studio and my sister, and
so my mom, not thinking of it, she said, well,
we're going to move back to America. Why don't we
sell the place and we could take a cruise. And
I was like, yeah, I'll take a cruise if I

(18:33):
had known. Now, I mean, I go to the studio.
It's still there, and it's a beautiful tourist attraction. There's
a lot of pottery going on. But it breaks my
heart that I won't have that connection. So I always
had ceramics in my mind, you know. And so I
got into the UCLA department. I got my own locker,
and then finally there's no teachers. Really, these are like that.

(18:53):
I found that the guys who came at night and
the women who came at night, they were advanced, so
I was just making a mess. I didn't know what
I was doing, you know, And this teacher comes in
and goes, what are you doing here? It's late, It's
like nine o'clock, you know, And I said, I'm an
exchange student from the Caribbean, and he's just like what.
He goes, where's my mother dropped me off? She's going

(19:15):
to be back in a little bit. And then so
like the next time I came in, he was like
he wanted to meet my mom, you know. And then
the security guard who saw me one night coming out
of the pool area said, no, I know this kid.
He's always around the campus, right. So I took off,
never went back, skateboarded down all the steps, went back.
I don't know what happened, but flashed to twenty five

(19:38):
years later, I'm teaching at that class. That class, Yeah,
I'm telling his story, you know, like it was actually
a group of people's students came to my studio in Venice.
So I after showing them all my stuff, I flashed
back to the story and I got them. The teacher
was everyone was laughing, you know, but but yeah, I

(20:00):
was always interested in ceramics. So the studio was booming,
and Brian Scheller and I just started Our pots started growing.
I mean my pots went from little cups to pots
that were seven feet tall and one thousand pounds and
having to use a torch to even get them to
stand up, and inventing our own ways of making large
scale ceramics that nobody was doing.

Speaker 2 (20:21):
We were all self taught, basically all self taught, right,
So it's extraordinary, yeah.

Speaker 3 (20:27):
Right, self taught. Talk about Larry Albright.

Speaker 1 (20:29):
Larry Albright we shared the studio together, and he was
an amazing glass artist. He's the one who did most
of the stuff for Star Wars and really gave it
that authentic look, the original Star Wars. And he also
designed that Tesla ball that came out in the eighties
that you could buy and your kids put the hands

(20:50):
on it and the electricity would go and shock and
it wouldn't shock you. But he had one of those
giant in the studio and when you'd come in there,
all of a sudden, he make it crack and it
make this it was like the ground, it was like
the world tearing apart, and this flash would go across
the studio and he had glass pipes everywhere like ten
foot long, and and you know it was he eventually

(21:13):
got another studio, so that became his supply area and
he'd store stuff there, you know, and that's where I
had my big killings up back, and and that was
that was an interesting time. You know, I was really flourishing.

Speaker 3 (21:26):
Then.

Speaker 1 (21:26):
I was doing a lot of work, started working for hotels,
and you know, I won pretty much every award of
the Beverly Hills Art Show, and I was getting a
lot of accolade. You know, I was doing pretty well.
You know, I had just done a show I was
dear friends with. Well, what happened was we started applying
for the metros, That's what happened. And so I applied

(21:47):
to do a metro station in Pomona and one and
I applied for Glendale and I won both at the
same time, and no one had ever won both, so
I had to decide. I took the one station in Pomona,
thank you. I got it all set up and done it,
but the city didn't finalize the concrete around it, and
that actually deteriorated and fell down. And that was heartbreaking
because that happened right when I was doing the column

(22:09):
on the Venice Boardwalk, and I had learned a lot
of things what to do and what not to do
from the Pomona station. And at the same time when
I was doing all that, I was living at Elizabeth
Montgomery's house from Bewitch, the TV show. Yeah, her son,
William Asher got me into clay and I got him

(22:29):
into guitars, and now he's a great guitar maker, and
I'm doing what I'm doing. But anytime we'd went a project,
she'd take us to mister Chow's, you know, and we'd
sit in there and I'd look at Basquiat's drawings, you know,
and mister Chowie said, oh, here's your page, and I'd
draw on it, and you know, I think I had
a tab there for a year. I could just go
once a week and eat at Chow's, so I could feel,

(22:52):
you know, she's she'd tell me the same thing, you
know you're going to be big. You know you're going
to be big. But at the same time I was
dabbling in a lot of other things, you know. And
right about the time I got this, her Lizzie's agent,
Barry Cross, he was an agent for all the big stars,
took me on and he's I don't know what to
do with art, Well, I'll get you a show. And

(23:14):
he got me a show with Bryce Martin. I didn't
know who he was. He's a big time artist in
New York or something. And down the road Bosquiot was showing.
It was on Melrose. But I was already dipping into,
you know, things that probably weren't good for me, you know.
I got introduced to cocaine, you know, And and by

(23:36):
the time I was seventeen, I was full blown, you know.
I was always working loan, so I never no one
ever saw it, but I was very very quiet about it.
And right about then, I think I remember at the
show Bryce Martin's show. Bryce said to me, he goes,
you want to go meet Bosquiocht and I'm like, who.

(23:58):
I didn't know who he was, you know, And I
just wanted to get back to the studio because I
had a big pink rock there, you know, And I did.
I went back and within that that year, that's the
year that I used one of Larry's long glass pipes
and I a six foot pipe and I smoked it

(24:20):
all down to a three inch pipe kept cracking on
me and I collapsed my lungs burnt them up, and
I was By the time I woke up in the hospital,
I was dead. I was above my body looking down
and I really hadn't talked about this at all. It's
not easy. There was a lot of little steps that

(24:43):
really don't matter that got me there. But the important
thing is, like my mom got me into this hospital
right down the street. We were living on the bray
in Sunset, and it was a little teeny place with
probably twenty rooms, you know, and I had proper insurance, luckily,
and the doctor my dad's cancer was pretty blown away,
you know, it was pretty bad at that time. He

(25:04):
was still working, but he had trache out of me,
so I didn't want to bother him. I didn't want
him to know. And I suspect I guess I didn't know,
but I was blocking out what was going on. And
I was working three four days straight, you know, I
was just and making money, you know, it was. And
so I woke up in that hospital and luckily I

(25:26):
didn't die. They saved me. You know. I was on
a big breathing machine for a good week, and then
one day I woke up and there was these Colombian
dudes there and I owed them a lot of money.

Speaker 3 (25:41):
And let's just say, if those Filipino nurses weren't there, man.

Speaker 1 (25:47):
I would have been gone. You know. They came in
with scalpels, you know, and they were like, get out,
and they were like, I don't know what you do,
but you were. They took me each another room, and
then I had to leave, and I went away for
I just didn't go back to the studio for a
long time. I forget maybe three months, and then I
started going back. I didn't see these guys at all.

(26:09):
And by then because six months later, crack had hit
the streets. So I was lucky. If I had been
doing this when crack was around, I would have been
used that gasoline lace stuff and my brain would have
been rotten. But I was using ether and anyway, so
these details. I hate talking this shit, but if it
helped somebody else, you know, I made it through that stuff.

(26:30):
And for me that I hit such rock bottom, I
was dead. So I never went back. You know, I
can look at it, I can see somebody. I have
no cravings. I do not care.

Speaker 2 (26:42):
But you saw a lot of people destroyed by that,
including a partner, right.

Speaker 1 (26:46):
My first girlfriend. She's lost, my oldest son's mother. She
was taken from us in a crackhouse and Oakland and
a lot of dear friends who worked with me, I've

(27:07):
lost it. And a lot of the people I worked
with who came out of prisons, who relapsed and didn't
make it, and a lot of them did. It was
an upside, you know, Smiley and oh my god, so
many different characters, you know, I met while while I
was doing all these projects for the city and the Metros.

(27:27):
At the same time, I forgot to mention I was
working with at risk youth, So anybody, some people have
ten year bids coming out of prison. So the city
supplement me with twenty two to fifteen hour to hire
these people to come work for me, and I worked
through Venice Community Housing Corporation. We started a job training
program there for just ceramics. We had the kilns in there.

(27:47):
It was a really good time, you know.

Speaker 2 (27:49):
So it always from you when you always want to
help people, You always want to inspire people, right even
in when you're just.

Speaker 1 (27:55):
To my detriment, to my detriment, how does art heal?
I can only say for me, like through this period
right now and it's been I guess how long have
I been here? Two weeks? A little over two weeks,
little over two weeks, and I'm I'm I had one
little I'm sobersh you know, but I'm I have I've
only had one drink since then, and I really I

(28:20):
feel so centered, I feel so grateful. I'm so blessed
to be in a place where it offers like sanctuary.
You know, I feel like I'm in you know, when
you put that shell to your ear, and I mean,
I'm coined and everything, but you know what I mean,
you hear that when I'm When I walked into the
first meeting and I really didn't want to come here,

(28:41):
I was just like, fuck, what are you talking about?

Speaker 2 (28:43):
Well, well tell us what you did not want to
be here? And then why have to say I'll give
you a hundred bucks if you go to the meeting. Yeah,
so I expressed it.

Speaker 1 (28:54):
And then and the result, I said, I want to
go someplace I can't sit in these meetings. And you know,
here more dread stories and dreaded, you know, and more stories,
and everybody's trying to outdo them with their best story.
And when I walked in the door, she said to me.
She goes, look, I'll give you a hundred bucks. Go.
And they're sober, and they kept calling and they were worried,

(29:18):
and I guess I didn't really see it, but I
was slipping, you know. And and so I came in
the room and and it was like people were laughing.
And most of the stories were uplifting and not like
the gory details to gott in the blutz but you know,
the scab and the wounds and and and the how

(29:41):
the two. I'm learning the tools, and I'm like fucking
tools to what tools to communication? And I never thought
of it that way, but I used tools constantly. And
so for art, for me art through this period, I've
been drawing. I mean I send you drawings all the
ti time. You asked me to write things out, and

(30:02):
I'm not that good with writing things out. I'll write
a poem and i'll send it to you, or a song,
I'll play a song or record it. And I love
the freedom of that, that approach that you have. You
really the it's I don't know what I had. I
thought it was like there's going to be like chains

(30:23):
in here. You get locked to a bench and like,
you know, when you said do you want to stay there?
And I'm like, oh shit, do I get a key?
Can I go outside? Well? I see, you know, yeah,
but it's not as tormented. It's actually way easier. And
for me, it's it's given me a breath of fresh

(30:44):
air to think about reflect back on my family and
how I've dealt relationships. And I have seven beautiful children
from four different beautiful women, and and I haven't always
been there. I am a number one workaholic, you know,
Number two selfish workaholic, and number three. I used to

(31:09):
always say, I'm an overachieving alcoholic, right, you know, but
after a while, you know, I'm sixty one now, and
after forty years, I can feel my interest and everything
was fit and waning. You know. I just was not
interested in conversation with people, and I'm cynical and I'd
always have another conversation in my head while I'm talking

(31:31):
to somebody, and it was starting to overlap into my
family and not being as present for my kids. And
now in the last two weeks, it's just been so wow,
I'm amazing. You know. My son just turned twenty one
BETA and I was there at his birthday and Grandma's

(31:52):
making Mark, making jello shots for him, and I'm drinking
a non alcoholic beer, you know.

Speaker 3 (31:57):
And well the kids are shocked. Yeah, they're just to
see you not have a beer in your hand. They're
shocked to see.

Speaker 1 (32:04):
Yeah, my thirteen year old, he's just like that. I've
never not seen you with a beer in your hand.
It's like, huh. And then I thought back of my dad,
and you know, he always had a rum and coke
and a cigarette in his hands, you know. And and
then I thought, wow, you know, I really started partying

(32:24):
when I was thirteen, you know, like dabbing and stuff,
you know, and being interested. And I really the main
reason I decided to go full steam ahead is because
I just want to make sure my kids see it
on the side of me, you know. I mean, they

(32:45):
know the lovings, they know I care, they know all
that stuff, but there's a lot of things that haven't
been dealt with, and I don't want to see my kids.
I always say, no matter what you do, just be
you guys, don't be me, and I'll tell them a
lot out of my faults. But that only that doesn't work.
You got to see it with action, you know, And
That's how I learned all my art skills. And I

(33:08):
was watching other people make art and then I just go.
You know, it's like going in the gym. You got
me a thing to go to goals gym. I don't
know how to work out, but I'm watching everybody and
I'm just I'll just copy what they're doing afterwards, and
I realize it's not enough just to say it. It's
an action action program. And that's what I like here too.

(33:30):
It's like everything's action action. What are you doing today?
Where are you going? Right? And I like the plan?
You know. I love when you and I go to
a museum and we go out dinner and we talk
in a different environment and not just sitting here. I
feel like, you know, I'm talking to a shrink or something.
You know. It's it's like your your ability to echo

(33:51):
back and listen is truly a blessing, my friend.

Speaker 3 (33:55):
Thank you brother. What's it like to be in an
environment where you're not judged.

Speaker 1 (33:59):
I've never been judge or at least you see, okay,
I've always been accepted as a wild man. So I
was just out of way, you know what I mean.
But I didn't realize because now once after you you
have one family, and then you have another family, and

(34:20):
then the old friends from that last family they see
their new family. And a lot of the time those
you lose friends, you know. But I see that look
in their eye some people, you know, And I let
some people down, you know, And and I let myself down.
I you know, there was a time in Venice where
we lost fifty people in one summer, you know, and

(34:42):
it was I was teaching a lot of kids then.
It was really rough, you know. I saw some I
didn't want to tell you. I saw a point blank
one of my students do the worst thing he could
ever do. And I was there when the police came
and took them away. To the next day. I just
en Rose riding down and I see helicopters, and I
see him getting out of the car with the gun

(35:02):
that I saw him with last night in a plastic bag,
putting into a mailbox. And I rode by him. He's
just looking at me, and I'm looking at him and
I'm crying, and I'm just like, oh my god, wow.
And you know, it was so I I came home
one night at three in the morning after that, and
I got to my door and all these gangsters in
front of my house and I put the key in

(35:24):
and I could just hear the bullets going around my head.
Just shut the door, laid on the ground, shaking, crying,
you know, and I called American Airlines and I went
back to Barbados for a while. You know.

Speaker 3 (35:38):
Oh wow, it was that heavy hot.

Speaker 1 (35:40):
I quit teaching. Yeah, Venice was that hot. What year
was this? Fuck? Man, this was the nineties. It was
on San Juan and I mean these people, one couple.
I was teaching this Ethiopian families, kids i'd work with
through the Venice Arts Mecca, which is now the Venice
Arts We teach kids, you know, every weekend. There was
an arts department, photography, painting. But this Ethiopian family had

(36:04):
two houses on San Juan. And this is how bad
it was. They took over the houses and they couldn't
get them out, not even the police. So they came
to me. He said, we're going back to Ethiopia. We
love what you're doing. Here's the deeds for the two houses. Yeah,
and I'm looking at them right and I'm like, thank you.

(36:25):
I don't know what to say. So I went over
there and it was so rough. I mean I I
it was bad. It was real bad.

Speaker 3 (36:33):
In the nineties. For a period of time, Venice was
the murder capital.

Speaker 1 (36:36):
Okay, so this was ninety five. I'd say this was
one that was happening in and I saw three and
two two weeks and it was too close to home
and it was too close to my head. Yeah, And
so I stopped working with the youth because I even started,
I started talking differently. You know, I had one student,
you know, I had twenty one time I had forty

(36:57):
kids in my class because the poetry teacher came and
crying because the kids had but abused her so much.
She had twenty kids. So for the summer, I had
forty kids. And in the corner of my eye, I
could see this kid putting his gun signs and you know,
death signs behind my head, and I was I just
whispered to him. I said, come here, man, come here,
And in front of the whole forty kids, I whispered

(37:17):
in his ear, you fucking embarrass me in front of
these kids, I'm gonna bite my year off. And he
jumped back and I said, I'll bite your motherfucking ear off.
And he's like, oh, you crazy, you know, and I'm
like yeah, and then all the kids respected me after that.
It's like, but I had to get really just you know,
it was hard to not be physical and angry, you know,

(37:39):
like you're getting twenty two to fifty an hour. I'm
doing this for free, and you're you're abusing me, like
and they and they say you stupid, and I'm starting
to think I am stupid. But I made a lot
of money this year, so I decided to give back.
After the uprising and what went down, you know with
Rodney Kingting and you know, it was it was a

(37:59):
rough time, intense. It's not what Venice is now. I
mean you you wouldn't go on at the kinney after
nine o'clock, you know. And I would ride in the
middle of the street. And that was me, you know.
And I had a kiln that was ten feet tall,
four foot around. The kiln would go for two weeks straight.
At the end of the firing for two days, I'm

(38:19):
checking it out every two hours. So I'm leaving my
house on Rennie coming down the street. So what did
all those sellers think? I am a tweaker? You know,
the police think I'm a tweaker. Yeah right, And so
the police finally figured it out, but they would it
was it was you're always nervous, you know.

Speaker 3 (38:37):
I always had two pit bulls with me, always.

Speaker 1 (38:39):
Had the bats ready. You know. It was you just.

Speaker 2 (38:43):
Watch your back, you watch and then how long when
you decided? It's how long were you gone for? After gone?

Speaker 3 (38:50):
When you went when you flew out and said I called,
Oh yeah.

Speaker 1 (38:52):
I went for three months. I rented a little shack
and I just ate spiralina. I didn't drink. I just
hung out with these uses and played drums and sat
on the beach, you know. And I didn't tell any stories.
Just had to change my narrative. And I feel like
that's what I'm doing right now again, is changing The
most important thing is is you know, after a while,

(39:15):
you start to acquire a story and it gets good
to you, and that stops you from growing, you know.
And that's one thing I've learned here. It's like, I
don't like my narrative. I'm changing it and I'm retaking
it back. You know, that old side of me that

(39:37):
didn't ask for help and did everything itself, and it's dead,
it's gone. I'm not leaving any stone unturned. I'm gonna
do what I'm supposed to do. Right now. When I
got twenty strong years of physical strength, I feel great now.

(39:58):
But I want to do as much as I can.
I got what I can going on.

Speaker 2 (40:03):
Tell the gang about hipping us to the forgive me.
I always get the name when you go out to
the beach and you make the little balls.

Speaker 1 (40:09):
Oh yeah, sand balls? Yeah yeah. I at the Instagram
site is sand spheres. Yeah, I think I think it's
gonna have to go with sandballs. It's easier to say, but.

Speaker 3 (40:19):
I learned that technique and tell.

Speaker 1 (40:21):
In Barbados, we didn't have any toy stores, like I
was telling you. I mean most of the kids didn't
even have bathing suits. That's what I'm talking about. It
was only boys on the beach on the weekdays. But
we'd make little wars with those. And in Barbados, because
of colonial there was colonialism. There was cannons all around
the island and stacked up cannon balls but were welded together.

(40:45):
So I suspect it came from when the kids are
playing on the beach and way way back and they
started making the sandballs. And but so we'd do it
in one town. We'd draw a line and we'd make
our little armory and dig a hole and we could
we just start throwing sandballs at each other. And so

(41:05):
once we started, you know, you told me that it's mandatory,
you have to go to the beach and run.

Speaker 3 (41:11):
Yeah, mandatory.

Speaker 1 (41:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (41:12):
I was just like, okay, dude, you fucking jump right
at it. Man, you were there six fifty ready to
roll barefoot too, man, barefoot.

Speaker 1 (41:22):
You know, we did it as a kid, and and
I just remember the older kids, like these guys really buff.
They could do backflips to backflips, and I mean it
was calisthetics. Work out every day on the beach for
these poor kids. Yeah, and they were not poor. They'd
eat well. We'd fish, you know, we'd have breadfruit, we'd
have all kinds of vegetables and stuff from the land.

(41:43):
And but that's the way we started making it. And
they would work out with them and use them as
weights and walk down the beach with their arms out.
And it's like like calisthetics, you know, like there's I
don't I see them in gym. They have the handle
on them, you know, the balls, the kettle balls, right,
And so we started doing that, and I said, I'm
gonna make some sandballs and stack them on the rocks

(42:04):
down here like I used to do in Barbados. And
that I led me to realizing that I haven't been playing,
you know, like even my art has gotten I'm doing lately,
I've been doing a lot of stuff for hotels and
things I don't want to do, but it pays the bills.
You know. Whatever, you got a thirty football, you got

(42:24):
a ten football. I win hotels. I'll do lamp shades.
That's what I've been doing, lamp shades for the brat
Pack room at the Wind for the last six years,
you know, five hundred at a time, wow, you know,
or a seventy fish cut out of skateboards for another hotel.
But stuff, it's not really it's not playing, you know.
And when I really blossom is when I I'm not working,

(42:49):
I'm doing something I really love, and that's when it
becomes playful. You become a kid, and the art of
getting older is still are being that inner child while
knowing you know.

Speaker 3 (43:04):
The things that you shouldn't do. You know, you learn
from your mistakes. You get older, but you still got
to be able to play.

Speaker 1 (43:09):
You know, and I think that's the most important thing
about art, and that has really going down there every
day has got me more interested in coming back and
sitting at my table and drawing or presenting something for
another project that's that's been due for a while. You know.

Speaker 2 (43:29):
Well, the thing that was so beautiful about that, I've
never seen I've been at the I go to I
swim every day at the beach.

Speaker 3 (43:34):
I've been down there for the last call.

Speaker 2 (43:37):
It thirty years. I've never seen anybody do that. And
what you do is you make these balls in the sand. Yeah,
and then you roll them and you you run a
little bit and then you make them.

Speaker 3 (43:48):
It was a fucking unbelievable word.

Speaker 1 (43:50):
You take the wet sand. It's just like you take
wet sand and you go to the dryer sand and
you just right you bounce it and it and it
turns into it's like making a you know, when you
go to the snow. It's the same thing.

Speaker 3 (44:02):
But I was it was hard to do. Those are
the hell work. But the thing that so blew me
away was one I got to see your inner child.

Speaker 1 (44:09):
It's free exactly.

Speaker 3 (44:11):
It's God's jim. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (44:12):
Well that was it. None of these kids had weights.
So this is how I figured it out. Yeah, that
was it, and let me go.

Speaker 2 (44:19):
Let me just jump on that because I visited your
studio and what I I mean you see things that
people don't see. You take your thing is I mean
you get tha things out of garbage and you make
beautiful art out of it. Man, talk about like some
of the different things at your studio and pieces that
you found and you make into It's incredible.

Speaker 1 (44:40):
I've been well venice the turnover of brand new things
and antiques that are left out on the street. You
could find anything you want here. So the new studio,
all the tables, everything in there, pretty much I found
on the street. Just put it in, except for the
windows in the sink. But I started looking at these

(45:00):
really beautiful chairs I'm seeing left out, and I was like,
the feet of the chairs, I don't know, if you
look at old Victorian chairs, a lot of them are
fashioned after animal's feet and they look like paws or elbows.
And so I started chopping them up and turned them
into works of art that looked like they have tails.

Speaker 2 (45:22):
And they're incredibly beautiful pieces.

Speaker 1 (45:25):
They're pretty wild. And the funny thing is is that
I thought I was onto something new, and somebody who's
an old Venetian historian told me that in the beginning
there was a whole group of people that were making
chairs art out of chairs here in Venice. I want
to find out more about that who they were, But

(45:47):
I'm not really trying to sell those I've got. I've
got a dining table I chopped up. I just got
a grandfather clock.

Speaker 3 (45:54):
I saw that. What are you gonna do with that?

Speaker 1 (45:55):
I think I have to leave it outside and let
it age a little bit. It's got a weather, you.

Speaker 3 (46:01):
Know, got a weather not quite ready for your match.

Speaker 1 (46:04):
It doesn't look like father time yet, you know, look
at that.

Speaker 3 (46:07):
I talk more about your art work here. I would
love to know what.

Speaker 2 (46:11):
Was the first wall cameras for piece really made you
feel like an artist in Venice?

Speaker 3 (46:15):
What was that moment where you've like, fuck, I'm in.

Speaker 1 (46:18):
My first big commission was for Dudley Moore and I
must have been twenty two, and that was at the
same time I was taking care of my dad when
he was dying from cancer and Dudley's we designed a well.

(46:41):
There was an architect involved who was a pain in
the ass. This guy was just a prima donna. And
you know, I have the most beautiful job for you.
You know, please don't talk to the owner. You know,
this is between you and me. And of course he
was gouging me for money, you know. So it was
Dudley Moore, and so I go down there and I'm like,

(47:03):
Dudley Moore, Oh my god, and Dudley Moore at the
times the height of his fame. Martha just come out
o Arthur. And I loved that movie. It was one
of my favorite movings. I really identified, you know. So
I did for his rooftop. I did a ten foot
table with a red and white table checker cloth and.

Speaker 3 (47:20):
Pizzas carved into it. Whatever he wanted on there.

Speaker 1 (47:23):
There was a twenty foot shower for his son, which
had tiles that were one inch by one inch that
were little teeny waves. I made spickets for the sinks
that were hands coming out all the tile for his
hot tub. But downstairs we did this one installation and
it was like a ten by ten small bathroom wall

(47:44):
and I had done the sink, carved it out and
the spickets and everything, but the designer was really hardballing me,
and he says, no, I'm not going to pay for
install what you have to install it. I said, well,
I've never done this, and he's like, you know, it's
really I just didn't know how to say no, so
I said, well I could do it. I didn't know

(48:05):
you're supposed to do at the most two feet high
at a time. So I decided to keep going. And
then anybody's slipping. So I got wood and I shim
eat everything in and I made this. I put did
ten by ten wall put it in there, and mind you,
these tiles, some of them are twenty pounds apiece, you know,
and they're thick, and oh boy, and everything's set up.

(48:25):
I come out, da da, you know, I want my check.
And it was I think it was three thousand dollars.
It was nothing, yeah, I mean, you know, twenty thousand
dollars ball I was doing for three grand and Dudley's
just like marvelous. I said, well, you can't see it
right now because it's got the paper, and I put
wood up, but tomorrow we'll take it all off and

(48:47):
i'll ground it. And he's cutting me the check and
the designers there and he's like, thank you Bill. You
know I knew you could do it, and all of
a sudden and the whole wall dropped right and oh fuck,
I'm pretty much crying, and I know my dad is dying.
I gotta get back to him. I gotta go take

(49:08):
care of him. I mean, I'm I'm vacuuming like four
inches of liquid out of his lungs through his chechotomy
pretty much every couple hours at that time. And leaving
him alone used to scare me because if he fell asleep,
he couldn't do it himself, you know. And Dudley is
laughing his ass off. He's just laughing. And Dudley goes, Bill,

(49:32):
don't worry about it, and he's like, you'll have the designer.

Speaker 4 (49:34):
You'll never work in this town again, young man. And
I'm like crying, and I'm like, my dad's yning. I
gotta go. I don't care a fuck his job, you know.
And Dudley Moore is like, no, what did you just
say to him? No, No, do not talk to Bill
that way.

Speaker 1 (49:51):
His father's dying, you know, Like tell me more, and
he goes cut him under the check, he said, And
then he found out that I didn't know how to
set tile, and I said he may me do it,
and he goes, you're covering that, and then we'll get
somebody to teach him how to set tile. And that's
how I really learned how. One of the guys on
the site said I can help. Yeah, and Dudley and

(50:11):
then he goes it takes me to the side. Dudley
was smoking a joint, you know, he said, gives me
the and we have a glass of wine. He goes,
tell me about your dad, and I said, I got
to take him back to barbara you know, eventually when
he dies, I want to take him back to Barbados.
And he goes, when that time comes, I will pay
for your flight and you can take his ashes back.
Don't worry about it. Of course, my dad died and

(50:33):
I have to remake the whole thing. So that takes
two months, and my dad dies a week later. So
I go down there and I tell them I'm taking
my dad's ashes back. I don't really know how I'm
going to afford it, and and Dudley just says, I
told you I was gonna He gave me four thousand
dollars and he says, take as long as you want.
And the designer's sitting there just fuming. And the crazy

(50:57):
thing is the designer died of AIDS that next year.
Turned out he was angry all the time because he
was sick and he wanted this job done so we
can get paid. It was a lot of things. Oh wow,
it was sad. But but I came back and Dudley,
we did the whole thing, got it all set up.
I did the rooftop tile. He loved that. And you know,

(51:18):
I was doing the rooftop tile one night late, finishing up,
you know, early in the morning, and I hear turn
around and I look around. It's Robert Graham with a
magnum gun just pointed straight at me from across the
building and he's what are you doing on the Utley's rooftop.
I'm like, don't shoot.

Speaker 3 (51:37):
Robert, Robert sculptor. Yeah yeah, and I'm like, sir.

Speaker 1 (51:41):
I mean, eventually we became friends, and he gave me
all his clay when he passed away, you know, and
I have a sculpture done on that. But but it's
like Venice, I was very fortunate, you know.

Speaker 3 (51:51):
Dudley. After I finished all that, he took me to
seventy two Market.

Speaker 1 (51:54):
Street, the famous to that was incredible, seventy two Market
Streets Staples. I got there and it was like Goldie
Hawn on Barbara streisand on the piano, and I'm shaking.
I mean, I couldn't. I've never seen so many stars
in one room. And and you know, Angelica Houston was there,
and Robert Graham and I think Madonna was there, you know,

(52:16):
every it was every magic. I went to the bathroom
and I walked out and never went back, you know.
And I didn't deal with him. I heard he died
years later, broke and one of his fans took care
of him, Dudleymore. It was he was the sweetest guy though. Man,
he was Brussels sprouts in the morning and eggs he'd
make me. I'd be like, oh god, it was awful,

(52:38):
but I'd eat him. Yeah, he was like, but Brussel,
you know. But then years later it's crazy because seventy
two Market Street would become part of a fixture for me,
because like when I was working on the column on
the boardwalk, I got it all done, and that was
the place we'd meet up at the end of the day,

(52:58):
you know, and and that that's where I met Jack Hoffman.
And his christ Jack Shout the King. I've been seeing
him every morning on the beach when I'm down there
making my sond He's always been an inspiration to me.
So I go in there. And then a new group
came in called the Globe, and they didn't know an

(53:19):
hang about me. But the guy he's from New York.
He walks down to my call um and sees the
column there and he's like, this is incredible. I got
to find this artist. The person next to him was
the lead architect on the boardwalk, and he gave him
my number from Globe Restaurant. And and so he calls
me and like go down to seventy two market again.
And I'm like, Dudley's like calling me in here. You know,

(53:40):
it's like the spirits, and he's like, you can eat here.
This guy was great. I made all the plates, the bulls,
the paintings on the walls. I did these giant mosaic
sculptures for the place. And that became my staple, you know,
that became I take, I take twenty of the poorest
kids in Venice. Sit him down on the big table,
just feed them all steaks, go on the back and

(54:01):
cook you know he'd have. It was like I learned
a lot in there. You know, Wow, seventy two is
still it's not the same anymore. But it really was
a special time there. It was a special yeah hows
and seventy two market houses and.

Speaker 3 (54:15):
Seventy holes on ABOc.

Speaker 2 (54:16):
Kenny talk about the sculpture, the legendary sculpture and where
can people go see it?

Speaker 1 (54:21):
At the totem, I call it it's it's a ceramic
totem that's made on a pottery wheel, so it's five
tons of clay and it's stacked on top of each
other with reebar and concrete on the inside. I call
it dreams come true. I had a vision when I
was a kid on the boardwalk in one of those

(54:41):
altered states. There was like four bums around a trash can.
There was no people sleeping down. Then they'd light a
trash can on a fire and keep warm. You know,
it was very It was a little safe for then.
And I told them I'm going to build a big
sculpture right over there. This is thirty years before, you know,
but that that piece came together, I was I saw

(55:04):
the you know, the RFQ that came out and I
decided to go for it. And by the time I
had already been working with Venice Community Housing Corporation and
Venice Arts Mecca which is now Venice Sartz. We had
gotten the lease for the pavilion and we had it
for a dollar a year, and we were gonna do

(55:24):
an arts program there, a job training thing, all that stuff,
mosaic it all out stage in theater. But because of
the problems of getting across the boardwalk and bringing kids
across there and the logistical stuff, they vetoed it. And
the building was made of us Best's also, so they
tore it all down. But through that I met all
the architects and the city people, and then I was

(55:46):
on the inside track to get the boardwalk. And so
when all the RFQs went out to apply for it,
I had drawn all the outside drawings around the brochures
to go out wow. And so when the time came
to go into the meeting, which was crazy because I
got there a car broke down. I had to take
a bus to get to Westchester, and I'm sitting there

(56:07):
waiting and a limousine pulls up and I'm the last,
second to last, and the person gets out is Robert Graham,
and I'm like, fuck, I'm not going to get this
job now right. And he has no art with him,
no paperwork, just a cigar and he walks in there
and I'm like, damn it. I got stacks of stuff
I had to bring. I had miniature sculpture. I had

(56:29):
a Clay's miniature of it so you could really see
what it looked like detailed. And he went in there
and apparently he told him. He says, I'm I love
Robert because he just told him. He says, I don't
have to show you anything. I'm just gonna make it. Yeah,
he was badass man, and he was I love him, man,

(56:49):
I love him. And but so I went in after
that and they were the thing that these people didn't know.
I had already worked with the city on helping plant.

Speaker 3 (57:00):
A lot of them know about your artwork.

Speaker 1 (57:02):
So a lot of their images that were on the
RFQ corresponded to my sculpture, and they were like, how
could this He's literally they know that I was already
on the inside track. You know, things were ordained. I
think they the community, the black community in Venice, insisted

(57:22):
that they have somebody of color, little public art down there.
So there was that entity that was involved and and
real time politics. That's how it works, baby politics. You know,
once you I'm bull evil, you know. Once I get
in there, I'm going to eat my way out, you know.
You know that's my I go three hundred miles per

(57:46):
hour once I get started, you know. Yeah, that's why
I'm glad to be here. Man, You're I could feel
like you're this. That was the spark when I was like,
I just like, okay, this is action. I've been to
a lot of meetings and the flies a buzzing around
and they have the crew is drunk, and that it's
all war stories. You know. Here that last meeting yesterday,

(58:08):
we laugh as a whole hour. I I just couldn't
believe it. I and we talked about real things, you know.
I usually open up, usually in airports or in other
countries with people who can't speak too good English, and
I'll spill my guts a Frenchman who can't understand me,

(58:30):
you know, or you know, or when I was drinking,
I'd go to a bar and you know, people forget,
you know, but you forget. And I'm realizing now it's
like there's not much time left and I really want
to have those compensations with my kids and my family
and my friends and to feel things again. I'm tired

(58:52):
of being numb, you know. And in this climate of
where we're going in our planet and our our lack
of compassion and our lack of you know, our mean
spiritedness in this country right now, I definitely don't want
to be on the side of that and being angry
and bitter. And and why, you know, it's, I know why,

(59:16):
It's because I just haven't been putting in the work.
You know, I put it in just enough work. But
I am through our conversations, I come away with so much,
you know. And once again I got to thank you brother.

Speaker 3 (59:28):
No, I know you think me by how you live
your life.

Speaker 2 (59:30):
Because basically what I just said, and in sto language
early on, is are you done?

Speaker 3 (59:37):
I I I are ready to move on from this
sad story.

Speaker 2 (59:41):
Yeah, that's in a very kind, kind of poetic way
that I can deliver it through God's grace. And I
looked you straight in the eyes and I got a
sense that you were yeah, and listen, people are going
to be going listen. Okay, great, he's a couple of
weeks sober cut jack back in a month. Maybe you're great.
So we're what but so what what do you want
to say to somebody? No, the cravings early on. I mean,

(01:00:01):
you fucking kicked here. You're a real alcoholic. Let's just
be super clear. You're not a casual. You're a fucking
stone cold out. I can drink, Yeah, you can fucking drink.
So you detox here, you know you got And I said,
how's it fill the hold of paint brush without the shakes.

Speaker 1 (01:00:17):
It's very good. It's very good. It's you know, usually
it's it takes it takes, you know, a couple hours
in the morning to get your engine going. And I
just built this new studio and I'm fine when I'm
just drinking beer. But I'll tell you I started drinking

(01:00:39):
some whiskey in the evenings, you know, after working all
day and that hard alcohol. It's just it doesn't I
don't become a good person. I don't. I'm you know,
I'm just hearing what I want to hear, you know.
But it feels good. It It hasn't been easy, and
it's still not easy. But I don't have that circle

(01:01:03):
of thoughts in my head anymore. That's all changed. I'm
not beating myself up over things that I that are
sort of ineffable, that they're really hard to articulate, and
some and actually in some ways don't even need to
be there. There, that's my own private thing, you know
that I just have to let go. It's it's done,

(01:01:23):
you know, and and focus on the real time right now,
because I find myself getting a little depressed. Yeah, and
then I I find it also the other side of
it is I was like, Wow, this is more fun
that I thought it was going to be, like you know,
like we have fun here.

Speaker 3 (01:01:42):
Yeah, you have fun here, brother, We had a dinner party. Fun.

Speaker 1 (01:01:46):
Yeah, And that part I always thought like, well, how
am I going to have fun? And I realized, you know,
I went to opening the other day and I'm I've
done stuff I had. I went to I had a
dinner party with a few friends and and it was
just wow, I it was amazing how I cleaned the

(01:02:07):
dishes afterwards, like you know, I brush my teeth and
not like I don't, but it's like I took my time.
I was really present, you know, like just putting the
socks away and like before I just.

Speaker 3 (01:02:19):
Throw stuff over there and go straight to the drawing.

Speaker 1 (01:02:22):
Table, you know, and then I you always have a
pile to clean up, you know. And and with artwork,
I'm very structured with my artwork, so I I that
takes precedence over everything, you know. And I've realized that
if I don't do the other stuff, the artwork, when
I get the rest of the house clean, the art
works better. It's all balance, you know, It's it's I mean,

(01:02:45):
art is really hard because you get one one stroke
and the whole thing's fucked up, you know, and and
you got to start again. And and that's life, you know.
And I know I'm gonna have to go through a lot.
And I don't really give a fuck what people think,
you know. I've already been judged, you know. And and

(01:03:09):
you know, my kids are cool with me, My exes
are cool with me, and the friends who know me
know me. You know. I try not to burn bridges.
But I'm definitely not trying to go hang out with
people don't want to hang out with me. There's no
I'm not here to please anymore. You know. My studio

(01:03:31):
used to be open twenty four hours a day. People
could just walk in, you know, it was like I
was like in a zoo, you know, come see the
artists and you know, and there was a part of
that theatrical part with me. And you know, sometimes the
band would be playing, you know, or I'd be making
giant pots and you could come help, you know whatever.
It was just always going on. And now I love

(01:03:53):
my privacy and I love being alone and taking my
time and gathering in these groups and sharing so much stuff.
I feel complete. I don't have to go out, and
you know, I I even call my my friends and
called me, How you doing? What's going on? You want
to talk? I'm like, not really, how are you doing?

(01:04:13):
I'm more interested in what thea how are you doing? Yeah,
because I have been talking about myself for a long
time now, since I lost the studio. That was my identity,
and it really was. I'd run to the studio in
the morning five day. You had the studio for thirty
seven years.

Speaker 2 (01:04:28):
Right, and then last Tuesday, Oh Jesus, unbeknownst to you, Yeah, well.

Speaker 3 (01:04:34):
I left here.

Speaker 1 (01:04:35):
We did a session, we talked and it was great,
and then I wrote down shell and I passed my
I realized my first first studio where I hit rock
bottom is right down here on Shell on Millwood, and
I've been passing it. I haven't thought of it. And
and then I said, you know what, I'm going to
go see the old you know, three three four sunset.

(01:04:58):
And now there's this beautiful studio there and I mean
it's immaculate and I always wanted to go in there,
you know. And then there's a guy at the door.
I'm like, where do I know this guy? And he's
one of the one of the Shell crew, one of
the Shell crew. He's like, got a way, come on in,
and I said, this is your place. He goes and
I thought he said yes, but it wasn't his. And

(01:05:18):
then he goes, well, if you want to look around,
go upstairs, you know, yeah, come on up. So I
go upstairs and there's a circle of guys and it's
another offshoot of Shell, the SLA meeting, you know. And
I'm like, oh God, damn it, I can't get away
from these mother for everywhere brother, these mother love is
and and so I sat down. So that was like
two hours that day. I kicked like I'm being cornered

(01:05:40):
by you know. And at the same time, most of
my dearest friends that hang out with now or stay
at their houses. Are all you know sober? Which is interesting.

Speaker 3 (01:05:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:05:51):
So one of our beloved members, brother Tim Case, I'm
gonna give you a shout out. How's a company called
Supplying de Man And I helped him buy that place,
convinced him that that's a mecha. There's an energy there
and needs to be around there, And ironically had no
idea of your backstory being in that space. Your space
originated out of healing, race and art, and it's still
being continued, just in a different fashion. And now you

(01:06:14):
were there for a twelve step meeting to heal.

Speaker 1 (01:06:16):
Yeah, it was wild and got to look around the
place and brought back, you know, some tears. You know.

Speaker 3 (01:06:23):
I bet a lot of history, man, a lot of
history I had made. I made children there, you know,
made there that was crazy.

Speaker 2 (01:06:33):
Let me let me just drop in on something too
that I always believe in. And you've exemplified this, you know,
And I'm just some rapid fire questions that I'll leave
you low for the rest of this beautiful sunday.

Speaker 1 (01:06:45):
Okay, Okay.

Speaker 2 (01:06:47):
I always tell people, if you do the right thing, Yeah,
if you get sober, you'll find a higher power that
works for you. You clean your side of the street up,
you make amends to people where you make amends, and
then you have to care.

Speaker 3 (01:07:00):
You have to help people. Do you got to help people?
Stay right.

Speaker 2 (01:07:04):
I've watched you do all the above. When you came here,
money was tight, a lot of shit was fucked up,
and even in a short period I think. Actually, we're
coming up on three weeks now. Okay, people are noticing
your energy. I sold some you sold some artwork, You
got your bills.

Speaker 1 (01:07:22):
Yeah, I had clients coming from France. I've had my
dear friend Ceci Pounder, the actress, came through and she
supported me and and her foundation, and John and Angela
Witherspoon and their foundation came through and helped me out
out of the blue. It's it's just it's I mean,

(01:07:45):
yesterday I went and bid some incredible jobs in Point Doom,
massive jobs, and and that that all came through. Show Actually,
which is that mad? Yeah? So I'm I'm it's moving
very fast and I'm ready to work. You know you are.
I'm in the process of where the city and I are.

(01:08:09):
We're doing a restoration on the column, the totem on
the boardwalk. Dreams come true. And what's going to happen
is it's like the wats towers. It's falling apart because
of the rusting of the rebar. So I have to
take some of the tile off and redo that. So
that's going to start, hopefully in the next three months,
and we'd ready for the Olympics when they come get

(01:08:29):
all that done. So there's a lot of That was
another reason I really needed to. I mean, I go
into those meetings, meeting sharp. I don't play around when
it comes to business. But it physically, it's totaling. It's
going to be a lot to get up and down
on the twenty five foot column and the scaffolding, and

(01:08:50):
it's physical work, you know, working in ceramics and setting
mosaics and doing tile work. And I really that's the
part my body. Man, I'm way more fit in three weeks,
I am. You know. I can't wait to go running
in the morning right now, right yeah, especially with your
new shoes. I got the new shoes. I got a

(01:09:11):
different kind of hookah.

Speaker 2 (01:09:13):
Where to do some rapid park questions jump for I
got it you ready, brother, Okay? Venice Sunrise or Venice
Sunset Sunrise, Clay paint or mural.

Speaker 3 (01:09:24):
What's your first love?

Speaker 1 (01:09:26):
Wow? I see them all as one, clay, paint or mural. Well,
I think you know painting.

Speaker 3 (01:09:34):
Painting all right? One word that describes Venice Beach.

Speaker 1 (01:09:38):
She'll give you what you want, but careful what you
ask for. Hey Man, a color that heals you, bright
bright light. First artist that ever fucking blew your mind Vassarelli,
and then Picasso because Picasso did ceramics and so many
different things, and then to see how it's work changed. Yeah,
I would say that. I'm sure I'm gonna because somebody else.

Speaker 3 (01:10:00):
It's okay, budd, that's all right, just top, we're just
having fun.

Speaker 2 (01:10:03):
If your brother, if your art had a soundtrack, what
song would it be?

Speaker 1 (01:10:07):
I wasn't gonna just keep hearing please.

Speaker 3 (01:10:12):
All in my mind?

Speaker 1 (01:10:14):
All right?

Speaker 3 (01:10:15):
Who in history would you most want to collaborate with?

Speaker 1 (01:10:18):
Who in history would I most.

Speaker 2 (01:10:20):
If you could get down make clay paint, who would
you want to just be side by side with?

Speaker 1 (01:10:25):
I think if it was clay, I mean, if it
was mosaics, I'd want to be around Goudy. If it
was painting, I would I would, you know, it would
have to be like who's the cat who painted Mona Lisa.
What's his name again? The great he did all the
he did so many different things. No, da Vinci, Yeah,

(01:10:49):
how can I Yeah, da Vinci because he was he
was like everything scientists, you know, like if anybody would
be Da Vinci, I think, yeah, that's probably my favorite
artists too, you know, not because of the Mona Lisa.
I don't like that painting, but it's because of his
things that move and all the mechanical stuff and the
way he used would and inventions that he did. They're

(01:11:11):
all artistically done, you know now.

Speaker 3 (01:11:13):
Right, all right, what's your your personal definition of beauty?

Speaker 1 (01:11:17):
Balance? Balance?

Speaker 3 (01:11:19):
Fill in the blank?

Speaker 1 (01:11:20):
Art is everlasting?

Speaker 3 (01:11:23):
Right on?

Speaker 2 (01:11:24):
Final thoughts to the audience, anything else you want to
say to your family, to your fans, to you know,
somebody's struggling right now.

Speaker 1 (01:11:33):
Yeah, if you're struggling, man, fuck it, it's easy. Don't
struggle anymore. Just say yes. I know it's easy to say.
But the quicker you try, the quicker you're there. And
to my family, no matter what you do, just be
fucking you. Okay, don't be me.

Speaker 4 (01:11:55):
No.

Speaker 1 (01:11:56):
I love my family so much. I have seven beautiful kids,
six boys and one girl. My young kids are thirteen, eleven,
and nine years old, and they're amazing, and I just
want them to have a free path far from what
I went through, but with all the joy and creation

(01:12:17):
and accolade and in doing whatever they love to do.
You know, I want them to do it with as
much passion as I've done. But definitely, you know, take
the Claro path, you know, take that claro because it's
it's a it's an easier path. And they are they're
my kids are very special. Yeah, they're very special. But

(01:12:41):
I regret not I spent a lot of time at
the studio. You know, my older kids really missed out
on me a lot, and so my younger kids. And
you know, I'm working to be financially secure so I

(01:13:02):
can actually be around them a lot more. I mean,
it's not easy when people aren't families are on different
states and you know, in different Oh my god, this
is the hardest to see. This is the hardest part
for me. I mean, you're cutting this part out right, Okay,
I mean, okay, I mean, if I I love I

(01:13:25):
just want my kids to know how much I love them.
And really, what I'm doing this is for them as
much for me. I want to be on this planet
for as long as I can, and to watch them grow,
to watch them go through there and struggles and achievements,
and be there to help them on in any way

(01:13:48):
I can, and to be an incredible man, to take
care of everything around me to the best of my abilities,
you know, to to open that door, you know. And
I've I enjoy creating, and I know people enjoy what
I create. And I am so blessed to have a calling.

(01:14:15):
It's I don't take it lightly. I know you don't.

Speaker 2 (01:14:17):
Yes, sir, Yeah, we're not gonna cut that because no,
and it's gonna happen.

Speaker 3 (01:14:23):
Okay, I'm gonna watch you do it. Yeah, I'm gonna
be there. It's there, and you will close with this.

Speaker 2 (01:14:29):
Brother, You've had a lot of angels in your life,
and one of the angels I just want to say
to Jamie and Penny Hellwig out of Dallas, Texas, who
are kind enough to see something in you and made
it possible for you to stay here and get all
the great help you're having.

Speaker 3 (01:14:41):
So j and Penny thank you for that gift.

Speaker 1 (01:14:43):
Yes, Jenny and Penny, thank you so much. It was great.
To talk to you the other day and wow, it's
I don't know what to say, but I'm going to
show you.

Speaker 2 (01:14:53):
Yeah, and you know you always you're very gracious in
thanking me. But I want to thank you because what
you you brought the Shell, the energy that you're bringing
around here, the creativity, the people want that are learning
from you about art and the different things. But to
have your family out in the back while you're cooking
them one of your dinners. That always, that's why I'm

(01:15:14):
a billionaire. Family back here at Shell is the best
gift in the world. And then people are realizing you're
a great cook and sniffing around, we have some pretty
interesting cats.

Speaker 3 (01:15:23):
Wenesday you're making your ox tel So. But but thank you, yeah,
thank you for your.

Speaker 2 (01:15:29):
Trust and your faith and allow me to witness greatness
in real time.

Speaker 1 (01:15:33):
Thank you man. Okay, I wanted to add something. When
I was on the beach this morning and I'm making
the sandballs and and this young kid comes up to me.
So I was at the meeting the other night and
I was like, what's your name? I've I've forgotten his name.
I apologize, brother, but I taught him how to make
sand balls. This morning and and it was pretty cool.

(01:15:53):
He was like, this is a workout and I was like, yeah,
it's a little bit of a workout. But the connections
are everything. Really connection. Community, Yeah, connections. Community.

Speaker 3 (01:16:05):
You got a real community and real contribution.

Speaker 1 (01:16:07):
You know, what are you going to contribute and how
are you going to contribute? And and I've always my
family has always been about that, and that's what Venice is.
Venice has always been about taking care of other people.
And we are really if you think about it, you know, skateboarding, art,
we really kicked off, you know a lot of things, acting, music.

(01:16:28):
Everyone comes through here to be inspired, you know, to
vortex here. And that's why I say be careful what
you wish for in Venice, because it'll give you all
of it and a little bit more. So. Check your score, baby,
check your score.

Speaker 3 (01:16:41):
Amen.

Speaker 1 (01:16:42):
Thank you brother, Yes, Siah, thank you Venice Peace Signed Baby.

Speaker 2 (01:16:46):
The Sales Show is a production of iHeart Podcasts, hosted
by me Cina McFarlane, produced by pod People in twenty eighth.

Speaker 3 (01:16:55):
Av Our lead producer is Keith Carlick. Our executive producer
is Lindsay Hoffman. The marking lead is Ashley Weaver. Thank
you so much for listening.

Speaker 1 (01:17:03):
We'll see you next week.