004 - joan mitchell

Have you ever worked an overnight shift? I got a text about a potential job: “My friend’s looking for someone to work nights on a reality show shooting in Venice. Any interest?”

A year ago, I drew my line. No more reality shows. But also, I was curious. I’ve been in airports when they’re completely dead, walking around, seeing the few people working, wondering, “What is it like to work through the night?” I needed to know.

I responded to the text: “Sounds terrible. I’m in.”

I reported to work at 9 p.m. along with a producer and one security guard. We took our lunch break at 3 a.m. The waitress at The Kettle, a 24-hour diner in Manhattan Beach, said it best, “The hardest part of working through the night is the witching hour. Between 3 and 4 a.m.” She was right. That’s when things got weird, and even weirder in Venice. But at first light each morning, the same feeling hit: I made it. Soon I’d be seeing surfers carrying their logs to the fictional sandbar 50 yards south of the pier or wiser people in their cars en route to do other things away from the close-outs. Daytime. Normal life.

One morning, towards the end of my gig, partially delirious and completely caffeinated, I was moving production vans around when I saw a girl. She caught my eye and stayed on my mind even when out of sight. Dressed in all white with black boots and a sleeve of tattoos, she wasn’t from around here. Thirty minutes later, now driving the biggest vehicle I had keys for, I saw her again. She was so pretty, she scared me.

“You think you’re confident? Go and say something to her,” I thought, trying to motivate myself, followed by: “It’s only weird if you make it weird.” My younger brother Billy’s advice.

A parking space opened up. It was a sign, no, a miracle. I had no excuse now. I parallel parked the 15-passenger van on Pacific Ave. and ran through the alley, so our paths would cross in front of Nick’s Liquor Store. Time to face my fear.

This was our dance:

Hey, excuse me, where are you from? Were the first words to shoot out of my mouth in a puzzled tone.

Switzerland, she replied with a confused smile.

I knew it. Not from this city. Not even from this country!

Oh, cool. I’ve been there.
Oh really? Where?
Zurich and the surrounding mountains.
Oh, okay. I’m from the other side. The French side.
Ah, I didn’t know there was a French side.

Uh oh. Americans and our geography. I’m going to offend her.
But I was wrong, she was kind: Yep, there is.

Succinct, unlike me.

Okay, very cool. What are you doing in LA?
I’m just visiting for the weekend. I’m studying English in San Francisco.

That’s awesome. LA is a big city. So spread out. If it helps, I can email you an LA city guide I share with people visiting for the first time.

You want to email me? She looked unsure.
Yeah, I have the guide made. I can forward it to you.

I typed her email into my phone, took a screenshot just in case and clicked send on my lengthy guide.

She thought she’d never see me again. I thought about a trip to San Francisco.

This girl was special. This girl was sauvage.

I introduce to you: Joan Mitchell

After a few emails, Léa sent me her number and said texting was better. Two months of talking later, I was driving north to San Francisco. I crossed the Oakland Bay Bridge listening to John Frusciante’s Brown Bunny tracks. Taken to another place by the music, I missed my exit. The reroute took me by SFMOMA and I saw advertisements for their current exhibit: Joan Mitchell. I didn’t know museums had headliners. I was intrigued. I’d be back with Léa.

Excited, I walked into the exhibit feeling like I was going to see LeBron James play basketball. The only difference was I didn’t know a single thing about Joan Mitchell and I’d hear no whistle. It didn’t take long before I was hooked. I read she was born in Chicago and grew up near Lake Michigan. I was born in Milwaukee and grew up near the same lake. At the entrance, I saw this picture of Joan with her classmates and smiled. You can’t buy cool. Look at her. What an artist.

Mitchell (far right). Featured in *Chicago Herald and Examiner*, 1935

As I moved through the exhibit, I saw color. Wow, did I see color! All around the museum’s white walls hung large canvases showcasing detailed explosions of color. From a distance, the combinations of color completely satisfied me. I accepted and consumed the energy in the room. Like the first sip of hot coffee on a frigid cold morning. I needed it. I was grateful. And then from a close distance, her application of these colors wrecked me. I couldn’t process the layers or the order. My head hurt. How did she do this? Where did she start?

Yes, I heard the voice, “My child could do that,” but respectfully, the voice is wrong. None of this was an accident. This was an artist completely in control and clear in her pursuit, but not free from demons of doubt, admitting: “Sometimes I don’t know exactly what I want [with a painting]. I check it out, recheck it for days or weeks. Sometimes there is more to do on it. Sometimes I am afraid of ruining what I have. Sometimes I am lazy, I don’t finish it or I don’t push it far enough. Sometimes I think it’s a painting.”

The first solo art show I attended, made up of over 80 Joan Mitchell pieces, blew me away. For the first time, I enjoyed reading the descriptions on the walls. I examined the contents inside the glass cases. I looked at the developed photos and read the scribbled letters. I took it all in. I was fascinated by Joan and grateful to learn about her in the presence of her work.

Before she moved to France where she lived on a large piece of land with her off-leash German Shepherds, she entered and excelled in a male-dominated art scene in New York City in the 1950s. She drank and smoked and had affairs and painted with the best of them, saying: “Perhaps if I hadn’t had the fight, I would’ve quit, I don’t know. I doubt it, though.” Morris Barazani, an abstract artist from Chicago said, “I met her once, she scared the hell out of me. She’s about 6 inches taller than me and more masculine than I ever could be. She just looked down at me as if I was nothing.”

I watched the Portrait of an Abstract Painter documentary clip to the end and then stayed to watch it again, captivated by her presence and sarcasm: “There’s a lot of things women can’t be…Sauvage [for example]…Women can’t be sauvage.” Famously, Joan referred to herself as a Lady Painter, who pushed onward behind her two personas, Big Joan, the protector, and Little Joan, the creator. Big Joan faced the public. Little Joan stayed at home.

I asked Léa how she liked the exhibit: “It was nice. Her French is very good for an American.” High praise from the French-Swiss girl I’ve been in a relationship with the past two years since seeing her in Venice, the morning after an overnight shift. — Phillip Dillon

Here are a few other quotes of Joan’s that made me think or smile:

“I’m happy when I’m painting. I like it.”

“All the musicians who create from the gut as well as their intellect can change things. People will never understand what we are doing if they can't feel. All art is abstract. All music is abstract. But it's all real. When you improvise, I can see the seeds of a symphony you could write. When I first heard Charlie Parker in Chicago, I could see he was a symphony. We were all trying to bring that spirit, that spontaneous energy, into our work.”

“Sentimentality is self-pity, your own swamp. Weeping in your own beer is not a feeling. It lacks dignity and hasn’t an outside reference.”

“I've tried to take from everybody...I can't close my eyes or limit my experiences...Because I live now, I am more interested in art now. It's different as any art is different from period to period. But it's no better or worse.“

“Pop Art, Op Art, Flop Art and Slop Art. I fall into the last two categories.”