July 5, 2024 • 35 mins
Episode Three: The Cassilly Chronicles
"Mostly Dull Conventional People" w/ Bill Christman
Welcome to episode three of The Cassilly Chronicles. I'm Max Cassilly, and today we delve into the colorful world of Bill Christman, an artist whose imagination and creations have left a lasting imprint on St. Louis's cultural tapestry. From his legendary artworks to his role in shaping spaces that spark wonder and curiosity, Bill's story intertwines with the city's creative evolution. Join us as we explore his artistic journey, the impacts of his work, and the indelible marks he left on both the City Museum and the community at large.
- Introduction to Bill Christman's artistic contributions
- The evolution of Bill’s work and its impact on St. Louis
- Personal anecdotes and stories from Bill's life
- Reflections on the early days of City Museum and its creative journey
- Max Cassilly
- Maria Cassilly
- Chris Naffziger (from St. Louis Patina)
Excerpt:
*We will check back with Bill in a minute, but now let's set the stage. While I love to shoot from the hip, to riff, and to share a laugh, there are times when reality steps in and the curtain behind the entertainment is pulled away. This isn't just another edutainment podcast. Here, you'll dive into an authentic experience. My life has been a tapestry of artistic people, and let me tell you, they can be quite the characters. Join me, my wife Maria, and our friend Chris Naffziger from St. Louis Patina, as we uncover these fascinating stories.*
If you've enjoyed this episode of The Cassilly Chronicles, consider supporting us on Patreon. Your contribution helps us create more episodes, uncover fascinating insights, and share exclusive content. Join our community to dive deeper into the journey and help us keep the stories coming. Head over to our Patreon/CapturedPlanet) and become a part of the Chronicles. Every bit of support makes a difference! Plus, get access to ad-free content, exclusive videos, full interviews, and more. Thank you for being part of this journey!
**Tags:**
#CassillyChronicles #CityMuseum #ArtPodcast #StLouisArt #SupportCreativity #Patreon #BillChristman #StLouisStories #CreativeJourney #ArtHistory #PodcastEpisode
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
And the other thing was, is that every single person that I knew, and I know mostly very dull, conventional people said, that's never going to work.
Nobody's going to come down to Del Mar on 16th street.
It'd be a total failure.
The negativity in the community of St.
Louis was palpable to me, and I had no doubt whatsoever that this project of Bob and Gail's was going to be a huge success.
(00:25):
I mean, that's one of the things that I think Bob liked about, was that I believed in 100%, and I saw that it couldn't possibly fail.
And one of Bob's really simple creeds was, if you make something that children like, their parents are gonna like it and their grandparents are gonna like it.
So his thing was to appeal to children, and it was a great, a simple but brilliant idea, and it's still working 25 years later.
(00:54):
But so then the museum opened, and 25 years went by, and that's all I know.
25.
Welcome to episode three of the cast of drops.
I'm Max Casley, and today we delve into the colorful world of Bill Crisman, an artist whose imagination and creations have left a lasting imprint on St.
(01:20):
Louis's cultural tapestry.
From his legendary artworks to his role in shaping spaces that spark wonder and curiosity, Bill's story interwines with the city's creative evolution.
Join us as we explore his artistic journey, the impacts of his work, the indelible marks that he left on both the city museum and the community at large.
(01:40):
We will check back with Bill in a minute, but now let's set the stage.
While I love to shoot from the hip to riff and to share a laugh, there are times when reality steps in and the curtain behind the entertainment is pulled away.
This isn't just another edutainment podcast.
Here you'll dive into an authentic experience.
My life has been a tapestry of artistic people, and let me tell you, they can be quite the characters.
(02:02):
Join me, my wife Maria.
Hello.
We're also, as usual, joined by our.
Friend Chris Nafsiger with St.
Louis Patina.
So today we have an interview with Bill Chrisman that we recorded a couple years ago on a snowy day.
We sat with him and his dog and drank some coffee while it snowed outside.
(02:26):
Get the frogs out of my throat.
I want to introduce my dog lucky here.
Hello, lucky dog.
Hello, lucky.
Let's see.
All right, so my name is Bill Chrisman.
I was invited by Galen Bowd to be part of the city museum.
And from the beginning, I had a venue there called the Museum of Birth Mystery in Mayhem.
(02:48):
Secondarily known as Beatnik Bob's.
And people would say, why didn't you name it?
Beatnick bills?
They go, well, beat Nick Bob's is more alliteration than two B's.
So it was kind of a replica of my experience as a teenager of Gaslight Square and going to Greenwich Village in 1963.
(03:09):
And I was just.
I was transformed by that period of american culture.
So I thought it would be interesting to make a little revival of it.
And my friend Joe Willette, who went back to grade school, he helped me build the thing.
And I guess over a period of about six months, we worked every day, seven days a week, twelve hour days.
(03:36):
And Joe Willette and I primarily built the thing.
And I had a lot of the stuff previously built.
It was a great spirit of everybody working there because I knew a bunch of other guys who were working.
They were, you know, on the crew and stuff like that.
Every night, Bob would have this guy named Shadow come and barbecue for all.
(03:58):
And that was the Venice Cafe.
Yeah, there was just this great kind of.
I felt like it was a WPA art project that was being sponsored by Bob and Gail.
And there was.
Seemed like there was about 40 people who were being employed on this big ass project to make a museum.
And you had been involved the first nights previously before the museum opened.
(04:21):
Yeah.
And then the last one was city museum was part of it.
And I had all these people up there.
We made this little beatnik kind of a thing.
And people were drawing portraits on old telephone, yellow page telephone.
I had really good guys in the caricature department there.
Coyote and another guy named Ben Teagle, who was really good.
(04:41):
Until city museum, my stature as an artist in St.
Louis was fairly low.
After city museum, I was, you know, it really gave me a perch to land on financially and to give myself credibility as an artist.
And I.
I've always been kind of an artist who was not that connected to the elite Snooki world of arthem.
(05:09):
And I know Bob wasn't either.
He came up with a formula to bypass the gallery scene and all this stuff like that and just open something that the public would support, not by buying the art, but by just coming and paying an admission and enjoying the creation.
As far as I'm concerned, that was a pretty new idea for an artist.
It had been done by guys like PT Barnum and people who were in the kind of entertainment business with public entertainment, stuff like that.
(05:36):
But no one had ever put fine art or work by fine artists as a public entertainment thing.
And, of course, now there are imitators, such as the Meow Wolf people.
I feel like they actually imitate you more than the city museum, even.
Maybe.
I would say so.
Yeah, because it's like they don't have the big architectural stuff.
(05:58):
No.
And their first one, they built into a bowling alley, so they didn't have anywhere near.
I mean, Bob had, you know, 20 foot ceilings.
Square footage is crazy.
Yeah.
And I never met the people meow wolf, I mean, who started it, but I met a bunch of the guys who worked on it, and they.
They have a school bus in there.
I guess you've seen them.
A yellow school bus put on edge, which they put in there as a.
(06:20):
As a tribute to Bob.
Homage.
Homage.
Yeah, it definitely had a little trailer in there, too, that.
Yeah, no, we sat in the trailer.
And I was like, hey, I'm back at work.
Where did that trailer come from, by the way?
That came from new city school, one of Max's many alma maters.
(06:42):
They used it for a Christmas tree lot, and that was where the people stayed to get warm and take the money and stuff.
So I knew Bob Duffy, who was the art critic at the post dispatch.
Hey, what are they gonna do with that trailer on the Christmas tree?
These.
Ollie, they're getting rid of it.
And free.
You'll take it off.
(07:02):
Take it away.
So that was the other thing about city museum.
It was just like the little rascals building a clubhouse.
Like, we would just troll through the city of St.
Louis, which has been tearing itself down for 80 years, and we'd get all this great free junk and we would take it back and make it in the city museum.
It was like a great recycling project.
(07:50):
It also did remind me of the WPA.
It was definitely a collaborative effort at WPA that was called the Works Progress Administration.
Roosevelt started to employ artists and photographers and dramatists and all kinds of people to give them jobs, and they would do all these murals and public art projects.
(08:13):
And, I mean, he was, you know, now everybody's calling him a communist and socialist because he, you know, he was using government money to give jobs to people.
And it wasn't.
Bernie Sanders would be the equivalent.
And anyway, the world is a mess right now, which, you know, doesn't even need to be said.
Back in 1997, it was really kind of a.
(08:36):
It was the 20th century.
Now we're in the 21st century, and I don't belong in the 21st.
I belong.
I was.
I fit in reasonably well back then, but I'm a fish out of water.
But that's all right.
I don't really.
I've had my fun.
Yeah, I might be there with you.
The one other thing, one thing that Bob and I didn't see eye to eye on was music.
(09:00):
And Bob, I gather I'd have been from growing up around Rudy to read.
I mean, I would say that, but I'd also say the heavenly catholic upbringing, because that they were.
Yeah.
So I'd say that their influences were classical.
Yeah, I think Rudy Torini played a lot of classics on opera in the studio, and Bob had a taste for a higher echelons of music.
(09:25):
Two, Mozart.
And I kind of came to know that.
And when I tried to put music in it, city music, you know, I asked.
Bobby was sure, fight.
And then all of a sudden, I had to get through all the next steps, and I hired a couple of bands to play at PN Fob's, and it was at night, and they didn't want to have the museum open.
(09:54):
Basically shut the elevators down, so we couldn't use the elevators.
And it was just.
I got zero cooperation.
A fair amount of hostility.
Max, you were eleven years old at the time.
You were.
Yeah.
We're literally a child.
Yeah.
Kind of full blown imbecile as an adult.
Oh, adult.
(10:15):
I hope so.
So it's probably.
I wish I could say something really pithy.
St.
Louis is a city that is really midwestern to the core.
A lot of southern is in it, too.
And the receptivity to arthem is very low.
And I know this because everybody I grew up with, they think that art is a foreign language, like chinese algebra, or else cigarette holder, wear gaily colored scarves and just idiots and can't balance a checkbook.
(10:50):
All artists are children who never grew up, but they are also groovy.
Yes.
Flaky.
Yes.
Art can be had by every human if they exercise the muscles that are.
I believe that entirely.
And if you're gonna do some bad art, do some bad art, nobody's, if somebody's judging you, then they're just not.
(11:15):
Your music is the same in the same ballpark.
Music, art, theater, all those things are part.
Well, this is the great quote of Rallo may that says, what if art imagination are not frosting after all, but are in fact the fountainhead of human existence.
(11:46):
With like, it shows that artists can be responsible and, like, functional and doing that part.
It's not just this weird elite eccentric.
Oven that can't relate to anybody.
Respect the other artist in St.
Louis that has done arguably more impact.
Mary Englebright.
Mary Englebrook.
Well, she's an ellist.
(12:07):
That's a way that you can make money on art, is to not knocking it, but sell out on that level where you're selling something that's.
To everybody.
I feel like the city museum, it does commodify it, sort of, but without taking that angle, like, you're still making these giant sculptures and these whole worlds, these buildings.
(12:31):
I mean, little kids.
Like when my grandson Miles was five, you know, like, I took him down there, and he climbed up that inner dome on the roof, you know, where you actually end up going upside down.
And I was literally sweating bullet.
I thought, oh, my God, he's gonna.
You know, but he was a five year old kid, and I was seeing teenagers give up on whatever that thing is.
(12:55):
You're crawling up almost an upside down ladder.
And I was just very nervous, but I just bit my tongue and he did it.
I mean, so it was a great thing to build his confidence.
And then you'd see kids, like, helping each other, like, go up the slopes on those ramps and stuff like that.
It was.
(13:15):
There was a whole lot of things that took place there that I don't think anybody could have predicted or foreseen.
The way kids interact through play and form kind of bonds with a total stranger to help each other and stuff like that.
Really.
I do feel like the seeing people in the museum kind of activates a lot of the sculptures.
(13:37):
I mean, they're gorgeous on their own just to walk around in.
But then once you see people crawling through it, it's like a whole other level to that piece.
Yeah, that's another thing Bob said, because I was always trying to build mechanical sculptures, and they were just.
They're really hard to do because they keep needing weekly maintenance and calibrating and oiling.
And once I build something, I don't want to have anything to do with it.
(14:00):
And so all my machines are always breaking down.
And Bob said, well, he goes, because I learned from trying to make mechanical stuff other than the puking pig, which was gravity.
He said, machines are just very impossible.
He said, but this place is animated by the people in it.
In other words, it's a machine with people performing the function of the movement.
(14:24):
Mechanization.
Mechanization.
Like little ants in the machine.
So you went to college?
Yes.
Where'd you go to college?
I went to the University of Missouri.
Was that for art?
Was to avoid the draft?
Well, I was from listening to Bob Dylan.
I was sick of school by high school, but I had to go to college to keep out of the art, so.
(14:50):
And I studied art.
And it was later on, that's where I met Bob, you know, in Rudy's Faridi sculpture class.
Yeah.
Was that Ed fontbow?
Yeah.
And Rudy Turini was a really great teacher.
Yeah, better than any teacher I had at Rudy school.
I went to thoughtbound after I graduated from college, just to take some more sculpture classes and work from a model.
(15:11):
And that's what Bob was still there working on, his master's degree.
Yeah.
So he was, he was, you know, running into each other every day.
Clams.
So.
Do you mind talking a little bit about Joe's cafe, how that started?
Well, Joe's cafe, I really started it because I couldn't get music.
(15:34):
And I went to see art Dwyer was playing at this really nice kind of a restaurant on Union Boulevard.
It was in.
No, I forget the name.
It was right near Forest park.
And I went there with Ian Hawbrick, his girlfriend, and there were about six people in the audience.
(15:55):
It was there playing outside.
It was really nice summer night.
And he had these two wonderful guitar players.
And they were playing because there was nobody there.
They were mostly playing latin american jazz.
And I go, I thought you guys were blues playing, having fun.
Yeah.
And so I said, well, I'll tell you what.
I think I could have you guys play in my sign shop art studio, and I could probably get to 30, 40 people.
(16:23):
I said, why don't you try it next Thursday?
So they showed up the next Thursday, and I had about 40 or so people, and they played outside, and it was.
It was magical.
So then they played the next Thursday and next Thursday.
And then Art Dwyer said, he goes, you know what?
He said, you better get somebody else because this crowd is going to burn out every Thursday.
(16:46):
So then I started inviting Tom Hall, Charlie Pfeffer, other musicians that I knew and liked.
It just went on, just started from there.
And initially, I still had all my tools from my shop, and it was like, tools on the wall and cans of paint.
(17:06):
It was a totally half assed affair.
And then it just kept.
Because I really love music.
It just kept slowly building.
And Joe Willette, who helped me build those things, and Earth mystery may, he was going to be the cook.
(17:27):
Joe is an excellent chef.
And we were gonna have food.
And then Joe got cancer.
Yeah.
He lived right around the corner here.
And he died very quickly.
Yeah.
And otherwise.
Otherwise, Joe's cafe would have been a cafe.
I always say that Joe's cafe is the number one foodless cafe.
In America, it is.
(17:49):
You need postcards.
We don't have food.
You bring your own food, and then you can't complain about it.
I like that, actually.
So.
And this food's terrible.
You brought it.
It's not our problem.
The other thing that occurred to me recently, like I say, bob and I have this ongoing connection through dreams, and his spirit is still potent to me.
(18:14):
So cement land was, I think, going to be his crowning achievement.
I think that was going to really, you know, and I don't think he ever really intended to open it.
It was just going to be his experimental playground.
But it would be nice to have a conference in his honor.
(18:35):
Creativity and risk taking, Bob.
Defying creativity and risk taking in a way that no person in St.
Louis ever has.
Maybe no person.
And, well, through that conference to speak, like Frank Gehry, the architect, if you're familiar with him, he's a sculptor who's an architect.
(18:58):
Another great sculptor is James Terrell, who's building this giant astronomical sculpture in the desert of Arizona.
James Terrell is incredible sculptor who uses light.
I used to go to this artist retreat center in rural Indiana.
(19:22):
It was interesting.
It was an old nunnery.
The nuns all died off, and they turned it into a retreat place for artists.
And I used to go there, get away from my kids, going down to Monsieur Francis for a week just to get, you know, get some peace and quiet.
(19:45):
And they had this conference down there, and they invited Kurt Vonnegut as a speaker.
They invited Paolo Soleri, who was building this place in the desert of Arizona called Arcosanti.
It was a community of self sufficient.
I think it was under a dome that they were going to build this geodesic dome, and it was going to grow its own food.
(20:06):
And it was a self sustaining community in the middle of the desert.
And one other person, they invited them, and all of a sudden they realized, yeah, we'd love to come.
They go, holy shit, now we got to come up with.
And they needed $25,000 to put this conference up.
So they had no idea where they were going to get it.
(20:27):
So what are the women?
It was all run by women through this whole program, said, well, my husband is a plumber in Louisville, Kentucky, and they have a huge fund, and I'm going to see if they would put up 25,000 to put this conference on.
So the whole crazy conference on creativity, risk taking was funded by the plumbers of Louisville, was proven.
(20:49):
If something is meant to be, it'll find a way to.
Yeah, and I mentioned this idea about a conference in honor of Bob and Gail.
Cancer.
The people that knew Bob and Gail and all stuff might be dead.
We will.
Well, I will.
No, I might not.
But there's a chance.
You know what?
St.
Louis is really a city that is a sleeping giant point.
(21:11):
The creative people who were attached to Bob, and Bob was a magnetic, charismatic person.
He attracted people who got on board.
He was a leader.
And these people all said, yeah, let's do it.
They followed him blindly into this crazy project.
They're still here.
(21:32):
Like, Kurt's still here, Ricky's still here, Bobby's still here.
All these castly crew people, actually, a lot of them don't work there anymore.
Yes.
They don't work at city museum, dirty Dave Bloom, world on fire, and there's, like a dozen or more people who would, you know, come together in a spirit of creativity and what we call a collaboration and work on a project.
(22:02):
You know, there are a lot of people that really are going to have to come from the billionaire sector.
Like Paul.
Right.
Well, that's.
That's why you have to have some other kind of motivation to stay in it.
I've always taken pleasure in living.
(22:25):
I was felt like when I was a kid, I wanted to live like an abandoned house, like the boxcar show.
Yeah.
Remember that book?
Oh, yeah.
I wanted to live like the box.
And there was something completely beautiful, appealing to me in that kind of romantic, romanticized way of living.
(22:47):
As you can see from my humble abode here.
This is.
No, you know, so it's a nice place, but it's.
That's because artists decorate.
It's not a showy mansion, you know, but it's.
It's, uh.
I mean, I have more material goods than I ever thought I would ever in my life.
(23:07):
So, I mean, it's, you know, if you want Rolex watches, you probably don't want to be an artist.
Or lamborghinis.
If you want a Lamborghini Rolex watch, don't go to the arts.
(23:34):
What about some of the sculptures outside.
There, you know, that you put together.
Some of them, at least?
Yeah.
It's really kind of a hodgepodge.
I mean, that's another thing that I.
Part of my creative is I will use anything that's available.
In other words, I don't have to have made it necessarily, if it's a found object or if it's something that another artist made.
(23:55):
A 3d collage.
What, you're a 3d collage artist?
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I don't really, if I need to make it, and I can't.
If I want something and I can't find another way to get it, then I'll make it.
When did that change for you?
Have you always been that way?
I kind of think I was always a kid going through the trash, and if I found something that was neat, I'd put it on the wall.
(24:19):
In other words, like, to me, if something is interesting, there's actually a thing downstairs in the art gallery next door, which maybe I'll show you on the way out, which is it's just so beautiful, and it's like a surrealist found object sculpture.
So I actually majored in art.
(24:39):
I minored in art history.
So 20th century art and I guess the dadaist movement.
And, you know, all of those early movements, I mean, they just gave me a big boost.
Because everything is art if you look at it in the right way.
(25:06):
Not.
An artist or some of my favorite, like, a lot of books on.
Oh, and another one of my favorite artists is Jean Tangley, the swiss guy who made machines.
And some of his machines are, like three stories tall, and they actually move.
And one of his earliest ones, it's self destructed.
It was at the Museum of Modern Art, like, 39.
(25:27):
He made this machine that just went crazy and then set itself on fire and destroyed itself.
So it's.
The idea that art can be humorous is another thing that it doesn't go over extremely well.
It's considered low brow.
I think if you make art that has a kind of a humorous subtext, but that doesn't, you know, I mean, I like art that's humorous too.
(25:57):
I think the pop art had a sort of a humorous connotation.
So.
And I think the people, the public, for whatever reason, a million people a year prior to Covid were paying $17 to go to city museum.
I mean, that's a whole lot more than the art museum.
(26:17):
It's like, probably triple the art museum's attendance.
Well, I mean, the fact that we're competing in a lot of.
Since a lot of the institutions in St.
Louis are free, I think the people that.
People that come in, they see the free stuff, and we'll go to that too.
But then they'll also still go to the city museum, I think speaks a lot to how fantastic it is.
Yeah, well, my kids never tired of going there.
(26:41):
And my grandson Miles would go there.
If you gave him six choices, that would be number one with him.
The other thing is he goes because he likes to meet kids.
Usually he's an only child, so he doesn't have siblings, so he'll be out on a city museum within ten minutes.
He's playing with total strangers, which is.
(27:02):
That's great.
Yeah.
So naturally, I don't have anything bad to say about city museum.
You know, if somebody were to ask me, oh, you know, give us the low down dirt, to me, it was all the best thing that ever happened to me artistically was to be part of it.
And I'm very grateful and to both Gail and Bob, because Gail and I became really good friends from working together.
(27:28):
And my respect for Gail for putting up with all that administrative shit.
I mean, I would have put a bullet through my head if I had to do what she did.
And Bob got to do the fun stuff, and Gail did the drudgery of making all that stuff happen in the real world with paying bills and answering correspondence.
(27:52):
Were you the bill?
I did get paid.
You know, I want to get involved in something big and creative in St.
Louis in the next ten years of my life, because I'm itching to get involved in something, and I'm not going to be a participant in city museum.
It just isn't in the structure of the thing that they don't, you know, they don't really request me or see a spot for me.
(28:18):
But there's a lot of other empty spaces in St.
Louis that could be turned from a broken down north city wreck of a building or an empty lot or something like that that could be brought into something else.
Thanks for listening to this interview with Bill Chrisman.
(28:39):
And thanks for listening to the Cassley Chronicles.
I'm Max Cassley, joined by my wife Maria, and Chris Napoleon.
Is there anything that you learned today from Bill?
I think what I really loved about your interview with Bill is how much he dives into his influences.
(28:59):
I thought it was really, really interesting to learn about that influence of Castleight Square, Greenwich Village toys of the 1950s.
I think it's really cool that Bill was able to just really readily share all of his influences.
He doesn't pretend like he just made everything up just from out of nowhere.
(29:26):
He's really nice and open about what he's very much indebted to.
I thought that was really cool, that he was able to just talk so quickly and so easily about those really fascinating.
Any influences in his life.
I definitely think that having a sense of humor is not only imperative, but it.
(29:48):
It shows that Bill doesn't take himself too seriously.
Now, people who are close to Bill will be like, no, he takes himself very seriously.
Yeah.
So I held my favorite part of trivia for the end here, and that's this.
I was a partner in Blueberry Hill when it opened.
And that was fun because I got to, you know, basically demolish the old.
(30:10):
The pool hall and, you know, tear up the floors and tear the place apart and then rebuild it.
You know, I designed the logo and, you know, and my creative instincts were.
But then I had the ten bar, and once the place opened, I go, oh, this is horrible.
(30:31):
And I didn't last long after that.
It's like, it's fun to.
But running a business is not very enjoyable.
And dealing with the public, many of whom are drunk and morons, is just not in my skill set.
Well, it's also.
You kind of have to chuckle when you start.
(30:52):
You know, he sort of talks offhand about all the different places in St.
Louis where he's been influential.
I mean, blueberry Hill, I didn't had no idea, you know, recently, you know, also the Cherokee Indian, which, of course, really kind of is sort of humorous.
He just.
Which he.
Yeah, he completely disowned.
He's like, tear it down, I don't care.
(31:13):
Get rid of it.
It's fine with me.
I think it takes a really.
An artist with a really strong sense of self esteem to just say, I don't care, just get rid of it.
That's fine.
I really chuckled at that as well when I read that.
I think in the riverfront times or somewhere when people were.
(31:34):
The momentum was building to finally get rid of that sculpture, he was just like, do it, I don't care.
I don't even think he wanted it back.
I have no idea what happened to it.
It went someplace.
Yeah, obviously, whether it was a landfill or somebody's warehouse.
Yeah, somebody took it somewhere.
Right.
(31:54):
But, yeah, I think that sort of sense of, he's a serious artist, but he doesn't take himself too seriously, I think is maybe the way to describe him.
We can find Chris at st.
Louisbattina.com.
we are captured planet, and you can find a us on Patreon at captured planet.
(32:16):
And thank you for listening.
Seriously, thanks for listening.
This is my friend, David Wolk, aka cranky yellow and me.
We released this song.
(32:40):
Do you want to be another single soul would be the crime?
Everything you did on copycat, apex predator in the womb?
You're my twin I love you honestly.
You wanna fly me when we were one?
He'll ever be I fly?
Fly over you when I fly?
(33:01):
But kisses through when I fly?
Fly over you when I fly?
Go kiss this turtle?
(33:33):
Apex predator in the womb?
You're my twin?
I love you?
Honestly?
Mixing my good than you'll ever be?
(33:54):
Look at connect the dot song in the sky?
Constellation in the sky?
Connect the dots?
(34:15):
You've always been in all of that?
Everything you did?
I'm a copycat predator in the womb?
You're my twin?
I love you, honestly?
You want to flunk me?
We will belong to Ben?
You'll ever be?
When I fly?
(34:37):
Fly over you?
When I fly?
No kisses too it.
And the other thing was, is that every single person that I knew, and I know mostly very dull, conventional people said, that's never going to work.
Nobody's going to come down to Del Mar on 16th street.
It'd be a total failure.
The negativity in the community of St.
Louis was palpable to me, and I had no doubt whatsoever that this project of Bob and Gail's was going to be a huge success.
(00:25):
I mean, that's one of the things that I think Bob liked about, was that I believed in 100%, and I saw that it couldn't possibly fail.
And one of Bob's really simple creeds was, if you make something that children like, their parents are gonna like it and their grandparents are gonna like it.
So his thing was to appeal to children, and it was a great, a simple but brilliant idea, and it's still working 25 years later.
(00:54):
But so then the museum opened, and 25 years went by, and that's all I know.
25.
Welcome to episode three of the cast of drops.
I'm Max Casley, and today we delve into the colorful world of Bill Crisman, an artist whose imagination and creations have left a lasting imprint on St.
(01:20):
Louis's cultural tapestry.
From his legendary artworks to his role in shaping spaces that spark wonder and curiosity, Bill's story interwines with the city's creative evolution.
Join us as we explore his artistic journey, the impacts of his work, the indelible marks that he left on both the city museum and the community at large.
(01:40):
We will check back with Bill in a minute, but now let's set the stage.
While I love to shoot from the hip to riff and to share a laugh, there are times when reality steps in and the curtain behind the entertainment is pulled away.
This isn't just another edutainment podcast.
Here you'll dive into an authentic experience.
My life has been a tapestry of artistic people, and let me tell you, they can be quite the characters.
(02:02):
Join me, my wife Maria.
Hello.
We're also, as usual, joined by our.
Friend Chris Nafsiger with St.
Louis Patina.
So today we have an interview with Bill Chrisman that we recorded a couple years ago on a snowy day.
We sat with him and his dog and drank some coffee while it snowed outside.
(02:26):
Get the frogs out of my throat.
I want to introduce my dog lucky here.
Hello, lucky dog.
Hello, lucky.
Let's see.
All right, so my name is Bill Chrisman.
I was invited by Galen Bowd to be part of the city museum.
And from the beginning, I had a venue there called the Museum of Birth Mystery in Mayhem.
(02:48):
Secondarily known as Beatnik Bob's.
And people would say, why didn't you name it?
Beatnick bills?
They go, well, beat Nick Bob's is more alliteration than two B's.
So it was kind of a replica of my experience as a teenager of Gaslight Square and going to Greenwich Village in 1963.
(03:09):
And I was just.
I was transformed by that period of american culture.
So I thought it would be interesting to make a little revival of it.
And my friend Joe Willette, who went back to grade school, he helped me build the thing.
And I guess over a period of about six months, we worked every day, seven days a week, twelve hour days.
(03:36):
And Joe Willette and I primarily built the thing.
And I had a lot of the stuff previously built.
It was a great spirit of everybody working there because I knew a bunch of other guys who were working.
They were, you know, on the crew and stuff like that.
Every night, Bob would have this guy named Shadow come and barbecue for all.
(03:58):
And that was the Venice Cafe.
Yeah, there was just this great kind of.
I felt like it was a WPA art project that was being sponsored by Bob and Gail.
And there was.
Seemed like there was about 40 people who were being employed on this big ass project to make a museum.
And you had been involved the first nights previously before the museum opened.
(04:21):
Yeah.
And then the last one was city museum was part of it.
And I had all these people up there.
We made this little beatnik kind of a thing.
And people were drawing portraits on old telephone, yellow page telephone.
I had really good guys in the caricature department there.
Coyote and another guy named Ben Teagle, who was really good.
(04:41):
Until city museum, my stature as an artist in St.
Louis was fairly low.
After city museum, I was, you know, it really gave me a perch to land on financially and to give myself credibility as an artist.
And I.
I've always been kind of an artist who was not that connected to the elite Snooki world of arthem.
(05:09):
And I know Bob wasn't either.
He came up with a formula to bypass the gallery scene and all this stuff like that and just open something that the public would support, not by buying the art, but by just coming and paying an admission and enjoying the creation.
As far as I'm concerned, that was a pretty new idea for an artist.
It had been done by guys like PT Barnum and people who were in the kind of entertainment business with public entertainment, stuff like that.
(05:36):
But no one had ever put fine art or work by fine artists as a public entertainment thing.
And, of course, now there are imitators, such as the Meow Wolf people.
I feel like they actually imitate you more than the city museum, even.
Maybe.
I would say so.
Yeah, because it's like they don't have the big architectural stuff.
(05:58):
No.
And their first one, they built into a bowling alley, so they didn't have anywhere near.
I mean, Bob had, you know, 20 foot ceilings.
Square footage is crazy.
Yeah.
And I never met the people meow wolf, I mean, who started it, but I met a bunch of the guys who worked on it, and they.
They have a school bus in there.
I guess you've seen them.
A yellow school bus put on edge, which they put in there as a.
(06:20):
As a tribute to Bob.
Homage.
Homage.
Yeah, it definitely had a little trailer in there, too, that.
Yeah, no, we sat in the trailer.
And I was like, hey, I'm back at work.
Where did that trailer come from, by the way?
That came from new city school, one of Max's many alma maters.
(06:42):
They used it for a Christmas tree lot, and that was where the people stayed to get warm and take the money and stuff.
So I knew Bob Duffy, who was the art critic at the post dispatch.
Hey, what are they gonna do with that trailer on the Christmas tree?
These.
Ollie, they're getting rid of it.
And free.
You'll take it off.
(07:02):
Take it away.
So that was the other thing about city museum.
It was just like the little rascals building a clubhouse.
Like, we would just troll through the city of St.
Louis, which has been tearing itself down for 80 years, and we'd get all this great free junk and we would take it back and make it in the city museum.
It was like a great recycling project.
(07:50):
It also did remind me of the WPA.
It was definitely a collaborative effort at WPA that was called the Works Progress Administration.
Roosevelt started to employ artists and photographers and dramatists and all kinds of people to give them jobs, and they would do all these murals and public art projects.
(08:13):
And, I mean, he was, you know, now everybody's calling him a communist and socialist because he, you know, he was using government money to give jobs to people.
And it wasn't.
Bernie Sanders would be the equivalent.
And anyway, the world is a mess right now, which, you know, doesn't even need to be said.
Back in 1997, it was really kind of a.
(08:36):
It was the 20th century.
Now we're in the 21st century, and I don't belong in the 21st.
I belong.
I was.
I fit in reasonably well back then, but I'm a fish out of water.
But that's all right.
I don't really.
I've had my fun.
Yeah, I might be there with you.
The one other thing, one thing that Bob and I didn't see eye to eye on was music.
(09:00):
And Bob, I gather I'd have been from growing up around Rudy to read.
I mean, I would say that, but I'd also say the heavenly catholic upbringing, because that they were.
Yeah.
So I'd say that their influences were classical.
Yeah, I think Rudy Torini played a lot of classics on opera in the studio, and Bob had a taste for a higher echelons of music.
(09:25):
Two, Mozart.
And I kind of came to know that.
And when I tried to put music in it, city music, you know, I asked.
Bobby was sure, fight.
And then all of a sudden, I had to get through all the next steps, and I hired a couple of bands to play at PN Fob's, and it was at night, and they didn't want to have the museum open.
(09:54):
Basically shut the elevators down, so we couldn't use the elevators.
And it was just.
I got zero cooperation.
A fair amount of hostility.
Max, you were eleven years old at the time.
You were.
Yeah.
We're literally a child.
Yeah.
Kind of full blown imbecile as an adult.
Oh, adult.
(10:15):
I hope so.
So it's probably.
I wish I could say something really pithy.
St.
Louis is a city that is really midwestern to the core.
A lot of southern is in it, too.
And the receptivity to arthem is very low.
And I know this because everybody I grew up with, they think that art is a foreign language, like chinese algebra, or else cigarette holder, wear gaily colored scarves and just idiots and can't balance a checkbook.
(10:50):
All artists are children who never grew up, but they are also groovy.
Yes.
Flaky.
Yes.
Art can be had by every human if they exercise the muscles that are.
I believe that entirely.
And if you're gonna do some bad art, do some bad art, nobody's, if somebody's judging you, then they're just not.
(11:15):
Your music is the same in the same ballpark.
Music, art, theater, all those things are part.
Well, this is the great quote of Rallo may that says, what if art imagination are not frosting after all, but are in fact the fountainhead of human existence.
(11:46):
With like, it shows that artists can be responsible and, like, functional and doing that part.
It's not just this weird elite eccentric.
Oven that can't relate to anybody.
Respect the other artist in St.
Louis that has done arguably more impact.
Mary Englebright.
Mary Englebrook.
Well, she's an ellist.
(12:07):
That's a way that you can make money on art, is to not knocking it, but sell out on that level where you're selling something that's.
To everybody.
I feel like the city museum, it does commodify it, sort of, but without taking that angle, like, you're still making these giant sculptures and these whole worlds, these buildings.
(12:31):
I mean, little kids.
Like when my grandson Miles was five, you know, like, I took him down there, and he climbed up that inner dome on the roof, you know, where you actually end up going upside down.
And I was literally sweating bullet.
I thought, oh, my God, he's gonna.
You know, but he was a five year old kid, and I was seeing teenagers give up on whatever that thing is.
(12:55):
You're crawling up almost an upside down ladder.
And I was just very nervous, but I just bit my tongue and he did it.
I mean, so it was a great thing to build his confidence.
And then you'd see kids, like, helping each other, like, go up the slopes on those ramps and stuff like that.
It was.
(13:15):
There was a whole lot of things that took place there that I don't think anybody could have predicted or foreseen.
The way kids interact through play and form kind of bonds with a total stranger to help each other and stuff like that.
Really.
I do feel like the seeing people in the museum kind of activates a lot of the sculptures.
(13:37):
I mean, they're gorgeous on their own just to walk around in.
But then once you see people crawling through it, it's like a whole other level to that piece.
Yeah, that's another thing Bob said, because I was always trying to build mechanical sculptures, and they were just.
They're really hard to do because they keep needing weekly maintenance and calibrating and oiling.
And once I build something, I don't want to have anything to do with it.
(14:00):
And so all my machines are always breaking down.
And Bob said, well, he goes, because I learned from trying to make mechanical stuff other than the puking pig, which was gravity.
He said, machines are just very impossible.
He said, but this place is animated by the people in it.
In other words, it's a machine with people performing the function of the movement.
(14:24):
Mechanization.
Mechanization.
Like little ants in the machine.
So you went to college?
Yes.
Where'd you go to college?
I went to the University of Missouri.
Was that for art?
Was to avoid the draft?
Well, I was from listening to Bob Dylan.
I was sick of school by high school, but I had to go to college to keep out of the art, so.
(14:50):
And I studied art.
And it was later on, that's where I met Bob, you know, in Rudy's Faridi sculpture class.
Yeah.
Was that Ed fontbow?
Yeah.
And Rudy Turini was a really great teacher.
Yeah, better than any teacher I had at Rudy school.
I went to thoughtbound after I graduated from college, just to take some more sculpture classes and work from a model.
(15:11):
And that's what Bob was still there working on, his master's degree.
Yeah.
So he was, he was, you know, running into each other every day.
Clams.
So.
Do you mind talking a little bit about Joe's cafe, how that started?
Well, Joe's cafe, I really started it because I couldn't get music.
(15:34):
And I went to see art Dwyer was playing at this really nice kind of a restaurant on Union Boulevard.
It was in.
No, I forget the name.
It was right near Forest park.
And I went there with Ian Hawbrick, his girlfriend, and there were about six people in the audience.
(15:55):
It was there playing outside.
It was really nice summer night.
And he had these two wonderful guitar players.
And they were playing because there was nobody there.
They were mostly playing latin american jazz.
And I go, I thought you guys were blues playing, having fun.
Yeah.
And so I said, well, I'll tell you what.
I think I could have you guys play in my sign shop art studio, and I could probably get to 30, 40 people.
(16:23):
I said, why don't you try it next Thursday?
So they showed up the next Thursday, and I had about 40 or so people, and they played outside, and it was.
It was magical.
So then they played the next Thursday and next Thursday.
And then Art Dwyer said, he goes, you know what?
He said, you better get somebody else because this crowd is going to burn out every Thursday.
(16:46):
So then I started inviting Tom Hall, Charlie Pfeffer, other musicians that I knew and liked.
It just went on, just started from there.
And initially, I still had all my tools from my shop, and it was like, tools on the wall and cans of paint.
(17:06):
It was a totally half assed affair.
And then it just kept.
Because I really love music.
It just kept slowly building.
And Joe Willette, who helped me build those things, and Earth mystery may, he was going to be the cook.
(17:27):
Joe is an excellent chef.
And we were gonna have food.
And then Joe got cancer.
Yeah.
He lived right around the corner here.
And he died very quickly.
Yeah.
And otherwise.
Otherwise, Joe's cafe would have been a cafe.
I always say that Joe's cafe is the number one foodless cafe.
In America, it is.
(17:49):
You need postcards.
We don't have food.
You bring your own food, and then you can't complain about it.
I like that, actually.
So.
And this food's terrible.
You brought it.
It's not our problem.
The other thing that occurred to me recently, like I say, bob and I have this ongoing connection through dreams, and his spirit is still potent to me.
(18:14):
So cement land was, I think, going to be his crowning achievement.
I think that was going to really, you know, and I don't think he ever really intended to open it.
It was just going to be his experimental playground.
But it would be nice to have a conference in his honor.
(18:35):
Creativity and risk taking, Bob.
Defying creativity and risk taking in a way that no person in St.
Louis ever has.
Maybe no person.
And, well, through that conference to speak, like Frank Gehry, the architect, if you're familiar with him, he's a sculptor who's an architect.
(18:58):
Another great sculptor is James Terrell, who's building this giant astronomical sculpture in the desert of Arizona.
James Terrell is incredible sculptor who uses light.
I used to go to this artist retreat center in rural Indiana.
(19:22):
It was interesting.
It was an old nunnery.
The nuns all died off, and they turned it into a retreat place for artists.
And I used to go there, get away from my kids, going down to Monsieur Francis for a week just to get, you know, get some peace and quiet.
(19:45):
And they had this conference down there, and they invited Kurt Vonnegut as a speaker.
They invited Paolo Soleri, who was building this place in the desert of Arizona called Arcosanti.
It was a community of self sufficient.
I think it was under a dome that they were going to build this geodesic dome, and it was going to grow its own food.
(20:06):
And it was a self sustaining community in the middle of the desert.
And one other person, they invited them, and all of a sudden they realized, yeah, we'd love to come.
They go, holy shit, now we got to come up with.
And they needed $25,000 to put this conference up.
So they had no idea where they were going to get it.
(20:27):
So what are the women?
It was all run by women through this whole program, said, well, my husband is a plumber in Louisville, Kentucky, and they have a huge fund, and I'm going to see if they would put up 25,000 to put this conference on.
So the whole crazy conference on creativity, risk taking was funded by the plumbers of Louisville, was proven.
(20:49):
If something is meant to be, it'll find a way to.
Yeah, and I mentioned this idea about a conference in honor of Bob and Gail.
Cancer.
The people that knew Bob and Gail and all stuff might be dead.
We will.
Well, I will.
No, I might not.
But there's a chance.
You know what?
St.
Louis is really a city that is a sleeping giant point.
(21:11):
The creative people who were attached to Bob, and Bob was a magnetic, charismatic person.
He attracted people who got on board.
He was a leader.
And these people all said, yeah, let's do it.
They followed him blindly into this crazy project.
They're still here.
(21:32):
Like, Kurt's still here, Ricky's still here, Bobby's still here.
All these castly crew people, actually, a lot of them don't work there anymore.
Yes.
They don't work at city museum, dirty Dave Bloom, world on fire, and there's, like a dozen or more people who would, you know, come together in a spirit of creativity and what we call a collaboration and work on a project.
(22:02):
You know, there are a lot of people that really are going to have to come from the billionaire sector.
Like Paul.
Right.
Well, that's.
That's why you have to have some other kind of motivation to stay in it.
I've always taken pleasure in living.
(22:25):
I was felt like when I was a kid, I wanted to live like an abandoned house, like the boxcar show.
Yeah.
Remember that book?
Oh, yeah.
I wanted to live like the box.
And there was something completely beautiful, appealing to me in that kind of romantic, romanticized way of living.
(22:47):
As you can see from my humble abode here.
This is.
No, you know, so it's a nice place, but it's.
That's because artists decorate.
It's not a showy mansion, you know, but it's.
It's, uh.
I mean, I have more material goods than I ever thought I would ever in my life.
(23:07):
So, I mean, it's, you know, if you want Rolex watches, you probably don't want to be an artist.
Or lamborghinis.
If you want a Lamborghini Rolex watch, don't go to the arts.
(23:34):
What about some of the sculptures outside.
There, you know, that you put together.
Some of them, at least?
Yeah.
It's really kind of a hodgepodge.
I mean, that's another thing that I.
Part of my creative is I will use anything that's available.
In other words, I don't have to have made it necessarily, if it's a found object or if it's something that another artist made.
(23:55):
A 3d collage.
What, you're a 3d collage artist?
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I don't really, if I need to make it, and I can't.
If I want something and I can't find another way to get it, then I'll make it.
When did that change for you?
Have you always been that way?
I kind of think I was always a kid going through the trash, and if I found something that was neat, I'd put it on the wall.
(24:19):
In other words, like, to me, if something is interesting, there's actually a thing downstairs in the art gallery next door, which maybe I'll show you on the way out, which is it's just so beautiful, and it's like a surrealist found object sculpture.
So I actually majored in art.
(24:39):
I minored in art history.
So 20th century art and I guess the dadaist movement.
And, you know, all of those early movements, I mean, they just gave me a big boost.
Because everything is art if you look at it in the right way.
(25:06):
Not.
An artist or some of my favorite, like, a lot of books on.
Oh, and another one of my favorite artists is Jean Tangley, the swiss guy who made machines.
And some of his machines are, like three stories tall, and they actually move.
And one of his earliest ones, it's self destructed.
It was at the Museum of Modern Art, like, 39.
(25:27):
He made this machine that just went crazy and then set itself on fire and destroyed itself.
So it's.
The idea that art can be humorous is another thing that it doesn't go over extremely well.
It's considered low brow.
I think if you make art that has a kind of a humorous subtext, but that doesn't, you know, I mean, I like art that's humorous too.
(25:57):
I think the pop art had a sort of a humorous connotation.
So.
And I think the people, the public, for whatever reason, a million people a year prior to Covid were paying $17 to go to city museum.
I mean, that's a whole lot more than the art museum.
(26:17):
It's like, probably triple the art museum's attendance.
Well, I mean, the fact that we're competing in a lot of.
Since a lot of the institutions in St.
Louis are free, I think the people that.
People that come in, they see the free stuff, and we'll go to that too.
But then they'll also still go to the city museum, I think speaks a lot to how fantastic it is.
Yeah, well, my kids never tired of going there.
(26:41):
And my grandson Miles would go there.
If you gave him six choices, that would be number one with him.
The other thing is he goes because he likes to meet kids.
Usually he's an only child, so he doesn't have siblings, so he'll be out on a city museum within ten minutes.
He's playing with total strangers, which is.
(27:02):
That's great.
Yeah.
So naturally, I don't have anything bad to say about city museum.
You know, if somebody were to ask me, oh, you know, give us the low down dirt, to me, it was all the best thing that ever happened to me artistically was to be part of it.
And I'm very grateful and to both Gail and Bob, because Gail and I became really good friends from working together.
(27:28):
And my respect for Gail for putting up with all that administrative shit.
I mean, I would have put a bullet through my head if I had to do what she did.
And Bob got to do the fun stuff, and Gail did the drudgery of making all that stuff happen in the real world with paying bills and answering correspondence.
(27:52):
Were you the bill?
I did get paid.
You know, I want to get involved in something big and creative in St.
Louis in the next ten years of my life, because I'm itching to get involved in something, and I'm not going to be a participant in city museum.
It just isn't in the structure of the thing that they don't, you know, they don't really request me or see a spot for me.
(28:18):
But there's a lot of other empty spaces in St.
Louis that could be turned from a broken down north city wreck of a building or an empty lot or something like that that could be brought into something else.
Thanks for listening to this interview with Bill Chrisman.
(28:39):
And thanks for listening to the Cassley Chronicles.
I'm Max Cassley, joined by my wife Maria, and Chris Napoleon.
Is there anything that you learned today from Bill?
I think what I really loved about your interview with Bill is how much he dives into his influences.
(28:59):
I thought it was really, really interesting to learn about that influence of Castleight Square, Greenwich Village toys of the 1950s.
I think it's really cool that Bill was able to just really readily share all of his influences.
He doesn't pretend like he just made everything up just from out of nowhere.
(29:26):
He's really nice and open about what he's very much indebted to.
I thought that was really cool, that he was able to just talk so quickly and so easily about those really fascinating.
Any influences in his life.
I definitely think that having a sense of humor is not only imperative, but it.
(29:48):
It shows that Bill doesn't take himself too seriously.
Now, people who are close to Bill will be like, no, he takes himself very seriously.
Yeah.
So I held my favorite part of trivia for the end here, and that's this.
I was a partner in Blueberry Hill when it opened.
And that was fun because I got to, you know, basically demolish the old.
(30:10):
The pool hall and, you know, tear up the floors and tear the place apart and then rebuild it.
You know, I designed the logo and, you know, and my creative instincts were.
But then I had the ten bar, and once the place opened, I go, oh, this is horrible.
(30:31):
And I didn't last long after that.
It's like, it's fun to.
But running a business is not very enjoyable.
And dealing with the public, many of whom are drunk and morons, is just not in my skill set.
Well, it's also.
You kind of have to chuckle when you start.
(30:52):
You know, he sort of talks offhand about all the different places in St.
Louis where he's been influential.
I mean, blueberry Hill, I didn't had no idea, you know, recently, you know, also the Cherokee Indian, which, of course, really kind of is sort of humorous.
He just.
Which he.
Yeah, he completely disowned.
He's like, tear it down, I don't care.
(31:13):
Get rid of it.
It's fine with me.
I think it takes a really.
An artist with a really strong sense of self esteem to just say, I don't care, just get rid of it.
That's fine.
I really chuckled at that as well when I read that.
I think in the riverfront times or somewhere when people were.
(31:34):
The momentum was building to finally get rid of that sculpture, he was just like, do it, I don't care.
I don't even think he wanted it back.
I have no idea what happened to it.
It went someplace.
Yeah, obviously, whether it was a landfill or somebody's warehouse.
Yeah, somebody took it somewhere.
Right.
(31:54):
But, yeah, I think that sort of sense of, he's a serious artist, but he doesn't take himself too seriously, I think is maybe the way to describe him.
We can find Chris at st.
Louisbattina.com.
we are captured planet, and you can find a us on Patreon at captured planet.
(32:16):
And thank you for listening.
Seriously, thanks for listening.
This is my friend, David Wolk, aka cranky yellow and me.
We released this song.
(32:40):
Do you want to be another single soul would be the crime?
Everything you did on copycat, apex predator in the womb?
You're my twin I love you honestly.
You wanna fly me when we were one?
He'll ever be I fly?
Fly over you when I fly?
(33:01):
But kisses through when I fly?
Fly over you when I fly?
Go kiss this turtle?
(33:33):
Apex predator in the womb?
You're my twin?
I love you?
Honestly?
Mixing my good than you'll ever be?
(33:54):
Look at connect the dot song in the sky?
Constellation in the sky?
Connect the dots?
(34:15):
You've always been in all of that?
Everything you did?
I'm a copycat predator in the womb?
You're my twin?
I love you, honestly?
You want to flunk me?
We will belong to Ben?
You'll ever be?
When I fly?
(34:37):
Fly over you?
When I fly?
No kisses too it.
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