I was a resident of the Fordham then Kingsbridge sections of the Bronx from September 1982 to March 1987. The last half of this bizarre and life-shaping sojourn was spent in a buzz of artistic and creative agitation, with this period peaking roughly between December 1984 (after seeing "Van Gogh at Arles" show at Met) and September 1986 (when work schedule at Empire State Building put me on the night shift, and female matters took up all my remaining time).
The Bronx during this time was in the initial throes of the Crack Epidemic. The drug had turned vast swathes of the borough into combat zones, even in traditionally and comparatively "safe" neighborhoods like Fordham and Kingsbridge. Often, while painting at night, I would hear gunfire from the direction of the crack houses on Bainbridge Avenue. Once or twice, it was automatic weapon fire.
Despite the danger and urban blight, my Bronx sojourn was an austere yet beautiful period of my life, even though much of it was spent living on Goya beans, Tabasco Sauce and tapwater. I was 23, 24 years old and fearless, free to do as I pleased with my life, with no responsibilities, no ties and no future. This page is a partial chronicle and record of a particular intersection of time and space in the life of a young man who once fancied himself a "real" artist, and loved every minute of it.
During the fall of 1986, I dated a girl who lived in a housing project deep in the South Bronx. I would ride the Webster Avenue bus to get to her apartment, and this street-level view of Governor Morris High School peeking from between a Civil War era factory and abandoned five-story walkups was one of my favorite scenes to view from the bus window. The Robert Moses era masonry in the foreground either protects or imprisons this scene. I've never quite been able to figure out which.
Tracy Towers seen looking west along Mosholu Parkway. 4 Train stop is visible. The foreground is spurious, if typical. The clapboard house on the right is my friend Rudy's home on Pond Place in Kingsbridge, near 198th Street.
Pond Place, with storm clouds threatening from the southwest.
A desolate South Bronx landscape viewed from an elevated subway (can't remember which line).
Memory/fantasy of a drop-dead gorgeous Hispanic girl I saw studiously engaged in a traditional Bronx pastime -- sitting by the window, staring out and waiting for something to happen.
From my mercifully shortlived "homeboy" phase, painted within weeks of the above "Windowsill Madonna."
Corner of Marion Avenue and 197th Street, January 1986, about 5PM.
Me, in front of Fordham University Chapel, around March 1985. Photo by Fordham buddy Rob Cleary.
Two things intrigued me to no end during my four-and-a-half years in the Bronx: 1) the melancholy echo of past glories in the borough's magnificent residential and institutional architecture; and 2) the bewitching beauty of Hispanic women. Embracing the beauty of both features of the Bronx landscape involved an intertwined, indistinguishable and viscerally experienced process of both big-head and little-head creative urges. Hey, that's what art is all about, right?