0.30 Forrest prince, b. 1935

Found things

I had a drug habit. I was in fear of my life. I couldn’t get a job. And they were tearing down old houses for that freeway and I started going through them and getting doors. I’d refinish the doors and these were leaded glass doors—I’d taken some to antique dealers and just picking stuff up that nobody else wanted. I started putting mirrors behind the leaded glass and framing it and selling it. Then there was this fan—and through the grace of God I envisioned a piece out of it and put it together and worked on it for the longest time. I was actually walking to The Family Hand carrying it and hoping I could sell it to somebody and the police stopped me—narcotics officers—and asked me what I was doing and where I was going. I told them I was going to The Family Hand and they said they’d give me a ride. I said no thank you. The last thing I [wanted to] do was to turn up in a place like that with the police.

The Family Hand was where they had home-cooked meals and bands—local bands and great blues people would come in and play—but it was the first time I’d been around a bunch of people that wasn’t just hardened criminals. Although they were doing drugs, they had a lot of love in their [hearts] and were trying to do the right thing.

So I took my piece over there, but the police picked me up anyway, and told me to get in the car. They asked me what I had. I was in the backseat holding it, and I said, “It’s called A Tree Again.” [The cop] says, “Well, it looks like a cross to me.” He was Mexican. And I said, “It’s just your Catholic upbringing that makes you think that.” But when I examined it later, sure enough, the Force had had me make something that was a series of crosses, even though I called it A Tree Again it actually was a tree again…the cross they hung Jesus on. But the way the Force works I didn’t even know what I was doing. I just followed where I was led.

A decided artist

I was trying to sell the piece and a friend took me up to his accountant’s office. My friend asked me how much I [wanted] for it, and I said $250. He said, “You’ll never get it.” Here I am trying to sell a cross to a Jew—shows how ignorant I was. Anyway, I went up to [the accountant’s]office, showed him the piece and he jumped right on it. So I decided well, I must be an artist. Later I made a piece out of the ends of old wagon wheels, and it was shaped like a globe. It was up on an old machine base that I had picked up somewhere. And the title of it was Whatever Happened to the Friggin’ World. I took it to an antique dealer on Westheimer one day and he sold it to the David Gallery, so I really knew that I must be an artist—so then I just got after it after that.

I made another piece—it took me about six months—of an old, large piece of wood I’d carved. It was called Geronimo—an American who fought for his country—and I took it to David Gallery. Actually I took it to the Art League of Houston and tried to have an invitational show there, but they wouldn’t let me in. It ended up at the David Gallery and finally a cousin bought it. And I made a piece for George Fuermann out of old typesetting trays I’d found on a rundown farm somewhere and called it Houston Old and New. He donated it to the University of Houston and after that it was just one piece after another.