Friday, September 5, 2008

Ciprian "Joe" LoGiudice, of Los Angeles and Zihautanejo, Mexico Art Dealer, Political Activist, Environmentalist, Film Producer, and Executor of the Terry Southern Estate died at home in Los Angeles on September 3, 2008. A major benefactor of the Chicago Seven, he hosted a benefit for the anti-war activists at his Ontario Street Gallery in Chicago and later harbored the fugitive Abbie Hoffman in Zihautenajo where Joe designed and built the famous Casa Luna, the house without walls, in a compound that included Larry River's Studio as well as the garden where Julian Schnabel painted with the assistance of Ramon Pedrazo, Joe's gardener and the husband of his faithful housekeeper, Concha Pedrazo. Here at Casa Luna, from the early seventies on, Joe and his wife, Patsy, generously hosted friends and enemies alike with great enthusiasm and humor.Most recently, through his participation in "Save the Bay", Joe was instrumental in preventing cruise ships from anchoring in the Bay of Zihautanejo. He was also producing "Five Easy Steps to Metaphysical Fitness", a documentary about the philosopher/comic, Emily Levine. Christo's first wrapping of a building in the United States, the Chicago Museum of Art, was produced by LoGiudice. Other artists he represented, in both his Chicago and New York Galleries, included John Chamberlin, Larry Poons, Mark de Suvero, Leon Golub and Jules Olitski.Joe is survived by his wife of 25 years, Patsy Cummings, his sister Marie Schmidt, his nieces, Renee Dax, Patty Pierce and Jody Fhadid, and his nephew, Alan Schmidt.

27 comments:

Teri Eaton said...

I count myself as one of the lucky many to have known Joe. We rented the magical Casa Luna a number of times, first while dating (a VERY fabulous Millenium celebration was spent there!), then as marrieds, then with kid. The house oozes the personalities of Joe and Patsy. We used to sit around and fantasize about what kind of a guy would host Julian Schnabel and Keith Richards. Our good fortune led us to a friendship with Joe and Patsy and we found out: funny, charming, smart, passionate and kind. The world needs more men like Joe, not less. This is a sad day. Thank you, Joe, for all you have done for us, Zihuatanejo, this planet. You will be sorely missed! Look out for a nice dram of tequila coming your way tonight! Love, Teri, Darryl and Jake Eaton

Pam Barkentin-Blackburn said...

Dick Blackburn wrote:

Not only a topflight art dealer, comitted political activist and super gracious host, Joe LoGiudice was the hipster's hipster and a fabulous raconteur - a good thing because of all the great and wacky personalities in his life. Whether he was regaling you with description of Mexico City's most splendiferous 1950's bordello ("Everyone drank cascading champagne from the fountain and then hurled their glasses at the wall.") or explaining why his Chi town bad boy gang called themselves The Vesties ("We wore drape jackets with the sleeves cut off.") his anecdotes were always funny, pointed and often scabrous.

One incident that will be remebered by all who lived through it was the time in France when about six of us were staying at a beautiful old converted moulin in Mereville next door to the residence of a fading French disco star who had taken it into her coked-up brain to utilize our lodging as a setting for a future MTV shoot that would hopefully put her back on the charts. Of couurse, because the moulin was only being loaned to us we didn't have the authority to permit this and regretfully told her so.

The following day after returning from a game of tennis (we had fled to the courts to escape her former hits being played at top volume over her outdoor speakers), she, enraged, burst through the back door into the kitchen and began pelting the two guests there with raw eggs screaming "You zink I am azzhole!! Well, thees eez from zee azzhole!!" before scampering back to her maison.

This got Joe's Sicilian dander up and, grabbing the kitchen's garbage pail, he ran out and straightaway dumped it over the tall hedge into the diva's front yard. She immediately returned, screaming like a banshee, ran at Joe talons extended and clawed his bare chest. He might've coldcocked her then and there if it weren't for the quick thinking of my ex-wife Pam Barkentin-Blackburn who turned the hose on both combatants causing our neighbor again to flee fearing potential damage to her costly Pateke-Philippe watch. We had to drive Joe to the hospital and have his wounds dressed. All the time in the car, he kept shaking his head declaring "That bitch is STRONG!"

Pam Barkentin-Blackburn said...

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Pam Barkentin-Blackburn said...

Sent by Ursula Pruneda:

"Te quiero Patsy,y desde el fondo de mi corazón te abrazo y te abrazo y te abrazo más....Ursula."

Isabel Jane said...

My favorite memory of Joe was when Pablo, Mom, and I were in Zihua for a week or two, and there was a scorpion in the shower. I was really scared and Pablo was daring himself more than me to touch it. As a six-year old, i was a tattle tale. I ran up to Joe and told him about the scorpion. He told me not to worry and that he would be there in a second. I saw him go to him room and come back with a shoe. Uh oh, I thought to myself. I trotted back to Pablo who was cautiously observing the scorpion at a close angle. Joe came in and told us to stand back. I ran to get behind Pablo, but i still had a fairly good view of what was about to happen. I closed my eyes, and heard a few WHACKS. Then with a sigh, Joe said, there. he turned to us with a broad smile across his pleased face.

That is one of my only and my favorite memories of my godfather, and good friend, Joe LoGiudice. I am very sad and mourn his death. And I will always remember his warm bear hugs when we greeted him.
-Isabel Jane

Unknown said...

In the nineteen eighties, the customs area at the Zihuatanejo airport featured a red button that signaled random checks of luggage, a traffic light with an element of casino luck: “green light, go; red light, call Joe” as the saying went. After all, if you were visiting Casa Luna from New York, you’d tucked beneath layers of lovely summer cottons and Kamali bathing suits anywhere between five and eight pounds of frozen beef and lamb: ground beef, New York strips, and a hotel rack or two, aluminum foil-wrapped, and Zip-locked for extra freshness. How I loved presenting my bloody contraband to Joe. How he loved a fine USDA-approved steak, wood-grilled by Patsy. Here’s to that, good king.
--Jane Lancellotti

Dalma Heyn said...

It was in the late 1990s, and I was writing a travel piece on Casa Que Canta, a glorious hotel poised on a rocky cliff 150 feet above Zihuatanejo bay. One night my husband Richard and I were urged to go to a local restaurant called Coconut, and were happily whipping down Margaritas, when I looked up to see the owner, a lanky, fabulous-looking and very familiar woman.
"Patsy?" I said.
"Dalma!" she said. We had gone to high school together; had liked each other then and had many friends in common but hadn't seen each other in all those years.
She invited us to come back home with her after work. And there we met Joe.
We had heard of Joe, of course--what self-respecting left-leaning, art-loving, drug-appreciating radical on the planet had not? But here he was in the flesh, scruffy and smoking and talking and cooking up something wonderful for us for our second dinner, and it took us about ten seconds before we all launched into a unified diatribe about the absurdity of the Monica Lewinsky thing and of impeachment and whether all of us would ever move beyond the notion of sexual virtue as a politician's most vaunted attribute. Richard, who had been James Baldwin's editor, told Joe about having been given (given, that is, after much ado and only once Baldwin finally trusted and loved him) a "key" to the city of New York, which meant that when the revolution came, Richard could get out. Joe, of course, had story after story of the same kind. We were in heaven. Patsy and Joe showed us around; told us we could stay in the studio once it was vacated, a few weeks later. (I didn't know then that their house and that studio were famous.) We couldn't stay, but hoped, always, to get back.
Back home on the east coast, Patsy and I kept up; we talked a lot, when she visited, about love and marriage and the joy and pain and incalculable reward of being in long-term relationships with brilliant, wild, life-affirming, crazymaking, committed, fascinating people. Oh yes, and Sicilian. People like Patsy's Joe.
We send our love, Patsy
--Dalma Heyn

Pam Barkentin-Blackburn said...

From Viva Hoffmann:

Since Joe died I've been remembering, astonishingly, that most of the conversations or interactions I've had with him, in New York Zihautanejo or Los Angeles, were fights. The only place we didn't fight was around 1966, I think, in the Thousand Islands, paradoxically renamed by Jane Lancelotti, "The Thousand Arguments." There we took some hallucinogenic or other and spent the day in a boat with Johanna Lawrenson and, I remember most clearly, Joe's eyes and smile, looking at me the whole time.
A week before he died Joe made me so mad I was actually determined to never see him again; I even e mailed Alexandra not to come, from New York, it was a waste of money to see such a "nasty creature." She emailed back that she was already on the plane and was laughing that I
would take seriously something Joe said when he was on morphine and
dying and besides, she said, "we show our worst side to those we're closest to; it just proves how much he loves you." Joe and I had this particular argument because Patsy told him I'd called in a priest who was showing up the next day. Joe said I was "stupid," 'didn't "think,"
and was subjecting him to embarassment when he had to turn the priest away (Monseignor Murphy from St. Vincent's, down the street on Halloway) . I thought there was no question a Sicilian would ask for a priest before he died probably on the slim evidence that my Sicilian Paternal Grandmother did. Patsy said "I told Joe he shouldn't argue with the person who is writing his obituary."
I actually tried to strangle Joe with his own scarf in New York when Alex was under a year old. Michel and I and Alex had just moved into Joe's loft and I was mad because John Chamberlin, Larry Poons , Neil Williams, et.al were yakking away in the main room and since I was tired from constantly breastfeeding I yelled at them to get out and trashed half the loft, including the fishtank and some sculptures; probably a TV set or two, but miraculously leaving the huge terrarium he'd built, intact. Joe, a few inches from my face was shouting "but I love you, I love you", as I yanked and twisted away on his chiffon scarf. Michel, my husband at the time, was furious at me, because I'd told Stanley, at the Chelsea that we were leaving our apartment in that hotel, and now we had no place to go!!!!
The biggest fight we had in Zihau was when I was out half the night with Bob WIlliamson and had left Gaby, who was somewhere around three years old, with Joe, at Casa Luna. When I got back she was still up, chasing Joe around the bed, alternately trying to pull down his pants and bite his nose. He shouted that I was a bad mother for staying out so late but I think he was really furious at me for being with Bob, whom he never liked.
I probably should be remembering the times he was happy with me. Happy because Gaby flew in to spend a weekend with him in the hospital, two weeks before he died. Happy when Gaby, Alex and I had brought him the always obligatory lamb chops, lettuce, steaks and cheese from New York; especially the time he had to come to the customs and sucessfully talk them into turning over the booty, or the time he came out to Las Quatas with us, climbed into the surf, explained that he couldn't bodysurf because he'd injured his shoulder in a motorcycle accident, and reluctantly turned us over to the
omnipresent Williamson brothers for instruction. Before Joe died I told him that before I came to Las Quatas I was so afraid of the ocean that I got diarrhea whenever I went into the water and now because of him, the only thing I love as much as the ocean and bodysurfing, is skiing. He said "Oh. So now the most you can say about me that I cured a lot of people of diarrhea!"
Before Gaby started school we spent most winters at Casa Luna and Alexandra stayed until she had to go back for the Spring Semester. I'm remembering now going to Connecticut with Patsy and Joe and how wonderful Joe was to Patsy's father, who was close to the end. I'm remembering how he and Patsy arranged for Gaby's father, who up until then had actually denied paternity, to get together with her, and how
paternal he was, always, towards Gaby and Alex. "How's the baby?" he would ask, whenever I spoke to him., and how he thanked me, before he died for "giving your children to me."
I just remembered how Joe and Patsy went up to Santa Barbara, where I was having a painting exhibition around 2003, and Joe hung the entire show.
Two nights before Joe died he asked Alexandra, who was massaging his feet and who had also flown in from New York to see him, along
with her husband Nick, what I was doing.
"Writing your obituary", she said.
"Let me see it", he replied
I put the computer on his lap. He edited it with Alexandra
translating his hoarse whispers. He wanted to be sure I got it
right; that he produced Christo's wrapping of "the first buliding in the United States." Then he asked Alex to tell Patsy he wanted to see her tits. He gave them two thumbs up. "If you think these look good", Patsy said, " you should see Viva's whole body. She's in really good shape!" So I took off my clothes and paraded around the bed in a weight-lifters'pose. He gave me another two thumbs up.
The night he died, when I kissed him goodbye, before going back to the Egglestons' where I was sleeping, he moved his shoulders towards me. "He doesn't want you to leave", the nurse said. "No", I corrected her, "he's trying to see me to the door."

--Viva Hoffmann

Pam Barkentin-Blackburn said...

An Email from Viva to Patsy on September 6:

Dear Patsy, I could only hope that if I were in a situation like Joe's there would be someone like you to take care of me."In sickness and in health" was a vow you couldn't have observed any better. Joe must have been deliriously happy to see you at his side every moment until his last. You made his death a thing of beauty. You made him feel safe and loved and protected.. Because of you he experienced the most peaceful death possible. You were absolutely flawless (and I'm so glad he apologized for believing at one time that you wouldn't take care of him if he got sick; as I said more than once and I'll say it again - YOU SURE SHOWED HIM!!!!!!!!!!) I have never seen him so mellow and relaxed and loving as he was in his last few weeks. He had lost the terror he felt in the beginning, when he realized he was dying, or even when he thought it might be the case, before he knew. Watching him edit his own obituary was really a lesson in how to die and you made it possible. You took away all the anxiety he had about leaving you with unfinished business; you really thought about everthing; I remember how you said "I'm just telling him that everything is taken care of even if it isn't." I am so proud of you and proud to have you as a dear friend. I love you. VIva.

Pam Barkentin-Blackburn said...

I love that photo of Joe, too. He had a very boyish, playful side, sometinmes verging on elfin. I remember sometimes he would cross his eyes and look really goofy when he was laughing, telling a story...
Another thing I admired about Joe was his enormous range of practical knowledge, as in gardening, fixing things, inventing things, and creating beautiful things like Casa Luna.

Dick Blackburn said...

Second that last remark, Pam. The picture that always comes to me when I think of Joe is of him smiling at me expectantly, head thrust forward slightly cocked to one side, his large dark eyes sparkling with unstated mischief. It's as if her were some small spry creature of legend that had just emerged from his own secret woodland tunnel and was inviting you to explore with him wherever it led.

Pam Barkentin-Blackburn said...

Yes, ditto to that, Dick.
What a guy...I'll never forget that time in France when he threw the garbage over the fence. What you forgot to mention is that the aging diva broke Joe's rib in addition to clawing him.

Pam Barkentin-Blackburn said...

Francesca Palazuelos said...
Joe and patsy were btoh my godparents. Didnt see them much but they were always there. When younger, we would always be invited to casa luna, were most of my brothers and my best childhood memories were created. Always full of love, energy and joy they would open their house and make us live magical experiences near the beach.
We will never forget tht smell of coffee and the taste of housemade ginger ale that they would do for us.

I loved joe so much, he meant so much to me. A best friend for my dad a great godfather for all of us. So charming, so funny, such a good person, such a good example to follow in so many ways.

We will always remember him with great respect, admiration and with lots of love.

francesca

September 7, 2008 8:14 AM

Pam Barkentin-Blackburn said...

Emails from Viva to Alex:

August 29:
"dumb me; i was thinking of Evelyn Waugh, who famously converted to the Church in 1930 and wrote a passionate explanation of why - and graham greene, etc., when I phoned the priest for Joe, another writer who was a "lapsed catholic" - and, unbeknownst to me, placed him in the wrong category! Chalk it up to exhaustion. Maybe we could meet on Sunday on Westward Beach. or Saturday. love, mom

August 29:
"actually graham greene was also a convert, like evelyn waugh,not a
"lapsed catholic", like Joe. hope you're not too tired after probably being up all night. so sweet of you to have come. love, mom"

Pam Barkentin-Blackburn said...

More Viva/Alex emails:

August 28:
"i left you a message; lauren hutton might call you for a yoga lesson; she's in NY. also i'll pay for your plane if you can come out and see joe before he dies; i think you can get a discounted ticket for medical emergency; i didn't think of that for Gaby.; it would be great if you could bring Lui too. I'd say he has about a week and a half to go and he's completely lucid lauren said he sounds the best she's ever heard him. patsy said he hasn't sounded this good in five years; she thinks it's the morphine. Lauren said it's more than morphine and she only hopes she'll go out as well as he is love, mom."

August 28:
"I changed my mind; Joe has many friends around him now and no more time. There's no point for you to come; he'll probably be dead within a few days and I really need to save my money . Love you and Lui and Nick . love and kisses, mom."

August 29, Alex to Viva:
"Hi. I left u a message last night. We r on the plane. We arrive in la at 11 am. We left lui in city.patsy had extra car. We r staying in venice with temma. Leave monday at 11. We decided at last minute. Come meet us. Love u.xx"

August 29:
"don't say anything to him because I actually apologized for calling the priest and pretended everything was okay on the phone. said let's forget it etc. and talked about something else. however i really am not going to see him again and i don't want to see patsy either. I'm so sorry that I asked you to waste money and come here. I don't know what I was thinking.If you're going to be with patsy all weekend then I ll just stay out here. I'm really and truly deeply offended. He just lit into me in the worst way imaginable. I'm so sorry you wasted your hard earned money to come and see such an awful person. maybe you could just keep the car and come out here to palm springs for a couple of days after you see that nasty creature. love, mom."

August 29:
"just remembered the main indictment against me: I was subjecting him to the "embarassment" of turning the priest away at the door. Love, mom"

August 29:
"will you pick up my bottle of thyroid helper that i left at patsy and joe's and i'll get it from you?? thanks, love, mom"

August 29:
"Remember "if theres anything I can't stand it's earnestness" to quote you - i call it literal mindedness....anyway my latest word on the subject of Extreme Unction or The Last Rites is that it's the same as a Christmas tree, an easter egg, or a birthday cake. Tradition. love, mom."

August 29 Alex to Viva:
"I'm laughing. Don't b mad at joe, he is about to die and on moprphine and we show our worst to the people we are closest to so he must love u.you get to live and u mite feel guilty if u don't forgive his outburst like christ would. I can't call because patsy was right there when we arrived and she keeps saying how great u've been so she she def doesn't know ur mad. Yes! Let's meet at the beach. I will call u in a little bit. If u change ur mind come to patsys today or tomrw. But I call u soon. Love u. Xxx"

And after Joe died:

September 5, Viva to Alex:
"i can't stop thinking about Joe and how good you were to him. love, mom"

September 5, Alex to Viva:
"I can't stop thinking about Joe either. Love, Alex"

September 6:
"never mind, i called patsy and told her i have to finish this painting for the bert green website; she didn't even know what i was talking about. she was crying a little; ii invited her out here after ximena leaves; kept talking to her and then she said they had to go and get some eggs benedict......love, mom."

Anonymous said...

One of the things I admired about Joe was his modesty about Casa Luna. I mean, the guy designed and built this place! My wife and I spent our honeymoon there and we were joined by my cousin Ellen and her husband David Lake who himself is quite the architect. For two days, David walked around Casa Luna in a daze taking in the place. He said he wished he were given the opportunity to build houses like it. Patsy relayed David’s remarks to Joe, which pleased him – as well it should.

One evening, my wife Kelly and I lay in the hammocks, watching an amazing display of thunder and lightening. With each flash of lightening, we would get a momentary glimpse of their unbelievable garden thrashing with the storm. I wondered how many nights Patsy and Joe must have occupied those hammocks and taken in the light show. They must have had quite a life down there.

I’d always been in awe of the bravery as well as the total insanity it must have taken to make a move to Z and set up house. I wish I had the courage to make such a life change.

I fondly remember the wonderful dinners we had at Casa Luna, always with an interesting mixture of guests. One evening, a rather robust guest, while sitting at the head of the table, munching on his appetizer, was bitten by a scorpion. He began to panic, and thought he should go to the hospital, but Joe calmly assured the guest that he could look forward to being sick as a dog for about an hour and then he’d be fine. About fifteen minutes later, the man seemed to be fading and really looked worried as he had turned completely pale and was slumped in his chair looking like Stephen Hawking, but Joe just winked and mouthed the words, “one hour”. Sure enough, forty-five minutes later, the poor devil began to recover and the color found its way back into his face and the profuse sweating subsided, and he was, in fact, fine. It was my first and thus far, only scorpion-bite-at-a-dinner-party experience.

To say that Joe was a big plantain around Z is an understatement. I remember hearing a story of how some renters, who had driven down to Z from the states, had become so enamored with Patsy and Joe’s Golden Retriever, Cooper, that they decided to kidnap him and take him back to the States. Once Joe realized his dog had been stolen, he made a phone call and roadblocks went up everywhere. It was just a matter of hours before Cooper was rescued and chauffeured back to Casa Luna by the Federales. No one’s really sure what happened to the turistas. They could be cutting sugar cane for all we know.

There are more stories about Joe, too many to tell here, but one thing’s for sure, he’ll be sorely missed.

Stephen Graziano

Pam Barkentin-Blackburn said...

An email from Anita Cowan, a friend and historian who did a scholarly paper on the history of Zihuatanejo:

Patsy,

I am thinking of you and others close to Joe at this sad time. As one of the old-timers, I first met Joe when I wandered into Coconuts during a quiet afternoon in late 1980. There was Joe, sitting alone at a table near the bar, going over bills. I did not know him, but we exchanged greetings. I mentioned my interest in the community and we fell into easy conversation. Joe began to talk about Mexican labor laws and the issues around employee rights. It remains in my mind today, as the best explanation of such that I have ever heard. Even as he shared his frustrations with these matters, he seemed kind, tolerant, full of intellectual curiosity, and above all, intrigued by Mexico. A few days later, I returned to Coconuts...again in the afternoon. I had been out interviewing your neighbor Hector Aguilar and afterward, he wanted a drink and he wanted the drink in Coconuts. Hector liked what Joe had done to the old warehouse. Soon after I met you with your friendly manner and easy smile.

You all made a beautiful restaurant in Zih for all to enjoy. Your home was also beautiful and it was so much fun to visit there a few times, and to find it popping up in magazines and that early coffee-table book....especially since we had the same rug on the floor from a night a rug-seller brought in to Coconuts an amazing array of Berber rugs. You bought one for Casa Luna and I bought its twin for my house in Texas. As condominiums pile up around and behind and alongside La Ropa, it has always somehow anchored me to come around the corner on what used to be known as the "avenida de los cuches" and see the old hueso fence covered in a green vine with blue blossoms and know that Casa Luna still remained within...

How wonderful that Joe found you for his soul mate...and you have seen him through all these years right down to the last sorrowful days. No one could have done more. In reading the message board, I saw you were trying to be optimistic even in the darkest times. You are a strong woman and a very creative one. When the time is right, I hope you'll write the book because you all were witness to amazing years. In the meantime, know that there are friends and acquaintances out there whom you may see only once in a blue moon, but who care about you and who share with you and Joe a long-standing tie to the Zihua community. I know Joe's spirit went one more time over the bay and out through a bleeding Zihuatanejo sunset as it soared upward.

Sincerely,

Anita Cowan

Anonymous said...

Hi Patsy! How are you? We are thinking of you. Perhaps you left LA early, we missed you for dinner last week. We will call you when we're in Z at the end of October. Love, Teri

Anonymous said...

When I first met Joe I found his passion, his intensity, his tilting at so many windmills absolutely terrifying, but over the years and after so many drives up to Zihua from Aca, lugging kids of various ages and stages, I began to discover and appreciate the humor and intelligence. All this with the soothing background music of Patsy's hospitality. I hadn't actually realized how this feisty little man had become so much a part of the fabric of the life of my family, and how many vivid memories will be treasured by all of us. He will be in all of our hearts always.

llewellyn said...

One Holiday season staying in the bunalows with my then wife, Jean,
it got to be New Years Eve. The Mexico city 'playboy' in the condos next door started playing "Don't Cry For Me Argentina" in a loud and continous loup. Eventually he passed out but the music kept playing into the morning. Joe was not pleased. He waited 'til the housekeeper arrived next door and turned off the music. He then backed his truck up to the property line, hooked up a huge speaker and blasted all day, while we went to the beach, the worst thing he could think of of having to listen to: Richard Nixon's inaugural address!

Anonymous said...

Darling beautiful Patsy...
Thinking of you tonight and found this.
Love and blessings to you and everyone who has ever loved the 2 of you!
The broken baccarat, the jugs of margaritas, the patience of Job - what can I say?
your old friend -
Gari-Ellen

Anonymous said...

En Zihua nos acordamos de ti Joe, hoy a un año de tu partida...te extrañamos

Gaby
Zip Creations

Paul Phillips said...

Joe, your missed

Joe and I met later in life, our politics were 180 degrees apart, he was the liberal, hated the Vietnam War, liked Democrats. I on the other hand, am conservative, fought the war, like republicans. None of that mattered. We joined forces in 1999 to save a way of life in Zihuatanejo, or change it -- save the Sailfish was our goal and he was a major player.

I listened to his anti war stories, he listened to my combat stories, we drink wine and ate well.

It has been over a year and I still can't go into Coconut's, why I don't know.

Anonymous said...

Dear Pam,

I'm sorry for using this possiblity of making a comment. I didn't find a possiblity here to contact you directly by Email.
This really interesting blog is a good possiblity to understand Joe, the beautiful way, he was.
And it is the only webpage where I saw the possiblity to get in contact with people, who know him really well and perhaps someone, who worked in his gallery in the 1960s.

I'm a PhD student at Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany. The topic of my thesis is Richard Artschwager. The Lo Guidice Gallery showed whorks by him, too. In the late 60s, there was a fire in their storage, where some works burned. I'm highly interested in more information about those works. May you help me finding a person, who knows more?

Additionally I'd like to write you that in the 1950s Richard Artschwager was a cabinet maker, who had studied art at Amedee Ozenfant in New York. After his show burned he collected new force to restart his idea of becomming an artist.

I'm very thankful for any support of my research. Please contact me by Email: storchfr@hu-berlin.de

Yours Sincerely,
Franziska

Anonymous said...

I was sad to discover through this blog about Joe's passing. I spent many lively days and nights in Zihua getting stoned, drunk, chasing scorpions (and getting chase by them), swimming naked at the then undiscovered beaches, talking to the old guys who sold off their land to the government for peanuts to have a few wild weekends, with Joe and Patsy and my then girlfriend Eleanor. Joe was always a gracious host and up for a threesome or foursome or whatever the case might have been. I hope if Patsy is reading this I can thank her for all the great memories. I now live in New York and walk by the loft on Vestry often and am flooded with memories of stumbling through New York in the Seventies with them at Max's, John Chamberlin's loft and other places clouded by the haze, and trying to help Joe create a revolution in television, his obsession, with the newly introduced cheap hand held video rigs.

Unknown said...

We have such a long history, don't we, Pats? I was barely in my twenties when I met you and Joe, and here we are, old ladies. My best memory of you and Joe (and there are many), was on your big bed in Z, while Joe played with the remote and proudly showed me your awesome satellite TV system. Stoned out, chill. That was the mood that day and for most of the days I remember spending with you two. He was part big brother, part pal, part mentor. I count you my memories of Joe when I list the ways in which my life has been enriched by the people I've been lucky to know.

John said...

For some reason I thought of Joe Lo this morning. Fond memories of Joe, Mickey Ruskin, John Chamberlin. All gone ...

John Merrill