0.39 Dick wray, b. 1933  (Page 2/3)

I said something about wanting to go to Tamarind, which was Ford Foundation-sponsored—and [Sweeney] was also on the board. The Tamarind Lithography Workshop [was]trying to introduce lithography back to the artists in this country and get it away from the artisans. They wanted to reintroduce the artist in collaboration with the printer and so it was set up for the artist to be invited to Los Angeles…and so I was. Then about two years later in the mid- or early 60s, the Museum of Modern Art had a show of the Tamarind people…and I was in that. So I went to the Modern and Sweeney introduced me to Merrill, Rosenberg and all those dudes. He was real supportive.

Local reflections

Houston had a lot of galleries. I didn’t participate. Nobody really liked my work. I did work when I was in Europe and I was very much influenced by the Europeans. I was one of those fortunate people that happened to be living in Paris at the time when Europe had [Antoni] Tàpies and [Jean]Dubuffet and the Cobra Group with Karel Appel and [Pierre] Alechinsky. From Spain you had Tàpies; Alberto Burri was coming from Italy and Germany had Alfred Otto Wolfgang Schulze, commonly known as WOLS. There is a painting in the Menil Museum of WOLS. Very influential. That was very influential to a young artist from Houston. After I came back from Europe in ’59, there was a community of artists [that]would go to openings, and the New Arts Gallery was a kind of heavyweight gallery in town exclusively because of Jermayne MacAgy. MacAgy had a terribly strong influence equal to Jim Sweeney in the formation of what was the Houston art scene. She never really cared for my work except the piece that the Albright Knox Museum has of that Southwestern Painting show, and she became a fan of mine at that point. But prior to that, she had her favorites.

There were a lot of galleries just opening. Meredith Long had one of his first galleries—maybe his first gallery—up on Westheimer in the Highland Village. I did have some good mentors in Howard Barnstone and Burdette Keeland and people out at the University. I think studying architecture was probably better than studying art. It certainly was in terms of the teaching quality because the art department at the University of Houston was just atrocious. “Atrocious” is the word. I wandered over to the art department and was so unimpressed I couldn’t believe it. Then I went to Europe and at that point I realized how backwards we were.

Then I came back and there was an active group of people. For example, Richard Stout and Jack Boynton and myself and a couple of other people. We went to other galleries, but mainly because they had free drinks and we were broke. I mean it was social—it was the thing to do because there wasn’t anything else to do. And before I got married it was a way to show our plumage, as it were.

Drugs changed the whole art world and everything else. It had a strong effect on the culture of particularly the art district. Very, very strong. It’s now got back on its feet. But for a long time, well, it was a lot of marijuana-induced stuff. But the art world needed that at some point. The San Francisco Art Museum didn’t really have instructors—just “We’re all free and you can do whatever you want.” What we called “let it all hang out.”