I had had an exceptionally good day drawing after a too long period of transition between studios, and g_d in her infinite wisdom chose this time for me to open a rare email from Gary’s sister: “Gary has diet.” I’m living in a foreign nation in new lodgings; it took a moment for me to register the full weight of this transcendental-typo. It was one of those sea changes that no matter how prepared one might be for the full impact, it remains unfathomable until much later. Gary had adopted me as a younger member of his family at a time when mine own was fighting against all odds for its survival while up to its ass in unidentified hostiles - like many of us in those days. Gary and his family helped me to graduate high school by allowing to couch surf in the apartment which he, and on occasion his younger sister, shared with their mother. This was an act of uncommon kindness during the aftermath of the 60’s cultural meltdown. Gary had already been to, and gone from the larger world having been a roommate with my oldest brother in the revolutionary heydays days of San Francisco - long before Google closed escrow on the last open hearts. Prior to this, Gary’s entrepreneurial spirit had ridden the crest of demand for handmade leather bags all the rage before the “vegans” excommunicated such bestiality from the quiet streets of 1960’s Hipster-Doofusville, turned Post-Modern Weimar Republic. Gary had the unique capacity for finding residence and then thriving in the “belly of the beast”, any beast. I attended my last semester of high school, working the swing shift in an aircraft antenna factory, while Gary spent his days painting fine art; I did not know at the time how much that experience was to influence my future.
The home where I grew up was creative, my mother - an art teacher, and myself having taken up sculpture while attending my last semester of high school in England. It was not unusual to see someone absorbed by painting; what was exceptional, was Gary’s ability to market his work to a broad spectrum of clientele, including the parlaying of paintings into flying lessons from an instructor in the apartment complex. Gary’s focus was well demonstrated in his zeal for chess; The apartment complex was on the takeoff runway for John Wayne Airport, so bantering which accompanied Gary’s very competitive character would cease while a jet would begin it’s ascent - there was a full minute lapse on either side of the aircraft’s passover when we could only stare at each other waiting for life to resume. Initially this interruption was very disconcerting, for one did not play chess with Gary unless on occasion, one was able to dethrone the master - otherwise you'd never hear the end of it. This intense competitive drive held true 40 years later while bow shooting paper plate targets; he with his handcrafted implement of destruction, and me with my store-bought. I was content just to have a fun with my old friend; damn if he didn’t nearly twist himself into a knot if he didn’t bullseye a goodly percentage of the time . .
How he managed to be so generous to me; while maintaining such a singular standard for himself was one of the characteristics which challenged and has informed my ethos, seeming to weave itself through our friendship and into vast regions of my personal beliefs. After high school, I was told by an instructor, “Cal Arts is fine, but if you really want to study art, you have to go to New York City", So I left for NYC. Sitting here now writing, I am certain I’d have never been able to muster the courage to make such a leap had I not been exposed to Gary’s creative self-confidence or his ability to shift from competition to mentoring the way others change channels on their TV. In between semesters in NYC, Gary again provided sanctuary and a couch; by this time in his artistic arc, he’d found a deep kinship with Hieronymus Bosch. I felt superior and cosmopolitan. I was unable to recognize the courage and independence his interest reflected. Like two petulant “legends in their own minds,” what had been collaboration and a shared respect for art devolved into an unhealthy struggle for primacy. During this interval, i executed a still life of a kitchen window with bottle and odd metal object, and he a more fantastical landscapes only conceivable within a rich and verdant intellectual interior; another lesson where Gary lead and I learned, or more accurately, am learning. He did not care what others thought in any of the circumstances of his life, and there is much about his life for which I have no real awareness. This lack of awareness holds true for many lost friends, but for Gary it is amplified by the vast spectrum of his capacity and interests.
Before our paths wildly diverged, I found him running a live-in carpentry concern out of a boat in a dry dock between the 3 Arches and former Robert E. Lee restaurant on PCH. Again from his keen sense of taste and inexorable industry he was handcrafting fine art tabletop mosaics from painstakingly recessing fine woods into a frame that would become veneered and I imagine, lovingly owned by many in the oh-so-tony recesses of what had once been the semi-eclectic, now wholly subsumed corporate quagmire of “Newport Beach - The OC.” By then, we were two evenly matched antagonists giving each other elbow room; I could only discern the faintest outline of the shaggy Sasquatch Gary was to become in his later years. It wasn’t exactly fear I felt, or even unwelcome, but a feeling of rich bursting bark from a huge tree in its early days; one knows there will be much shade from such a growth, but unclear which way to step. It was almost like being at the doorstep of an artistic Henry Ford just as he was switching on “the assembly line” except that it was more like a beautiful “Rube Goldberg Machine” about to be let loose into the rapidly fraying social fabric of the late twentieth century pre-neocon meltdown.
It was no real big surprise then, when after 30 years of silence, and with the aid of the kind offices of his loving sister Janis, I was able to waylay our hero in the wilds of Shaver Lake, CA taming the soon to be chagrined lions of patriotism and trumpist fascism defined by the presidency of Mr. M.T. Suit. Whether the hick lions in whose den Gary lived become tame won't be revealed by Gary’s death; I’ve played chess with him and know enough to read nothing from a temporary victory, or tempt fate with an easily acquired objective. Mr. Cox was a patient man. I believe in the bottom of my heart that many of Gary’s objectives will not bear fruit for years to come, but that the same fascist braggadocio trumpeted by hick haters who may, or may not have harried our hero in his last days, will fall like plankton into the yaw of Moby Dick to be swallowed up by a much greater purpose than is apparent in this temporal plane. Gary had the unique ability amongst humans to combine the very most dangerous inclinations of competition with noble objectives of openness and candor and the more useful, however fashionable, traits of feint and obfuscation into a rhythm of life. In the end the burden of disappointment and frustration may have been too much for one man to live with alone - my fault for not having provided greater support and cover fire to one so determined to live a life of dignity and humility while provoking growth and question within the greater body politic.
may you rest in peace friend - it was my privilege to know, and to love you like the brother you had been . .
Joseph T Stevens
