Happenings!
And why I'm writing a book.
Happy Friday friends,
There’s so much I want to share with you all today.
Fall Author Event series is being planned (speakers announced soon!)
New Online Book Club with special guest authors right here in Substack
Eating a sun-kissed peach right off the tree is bliss (I was in the Hudson Valley last week and it was prime peach season. Wow)
More details on all the above at the end…but first, why I’m writing a book.
Happy reading!
Last weekend I traveled out of province and drove seven hours to upstate New York for a whirlwind 36-hour treasure hunt. A research trip that was months, if not years, in the making, for a book I am currently deep in the trenches of writing. Last year I decided it was time to pick up the thread of a project I had long pushed aside and give it my full attention. Knowing I needed structure, and let’s be honest, someone to tell me to get my ass in the chair and write the goddamn thing, I went back to school. It has since proven to be a very good decision. I’m currently in my second, and final, year of a MFA in Creative Nonfiction, and my project is no longer just in my head, but has progressed into written pages that have slowly become chapters that hopefully one day soon, just might resemble an actual book.
Writing this book has been an adventure, one that took me to the Hudson Valley recently, digging through the personal archives of my subject, American artist Al Hansen, who died in 1995 at the age of 67. I excitedly, yet carefully, rummaged through letters and postcards, thumbed old photographs and slides, all in an effort to try to piece together fragments of an extraordinary life, hoping to make sense of it all. Luckily I had Al’s daughter to assist me in the decoding of information.
Sitting side by side with her as she went through one family photo album after another, pointing out the sepia-toned faces, I could see she struggled to keep up with the memories trickling to the surface, unfolding faster than she could articulate. It was as if Al was in the room with us. It was a surreal experience, quite magical really. With each page, a new story unfolded. I learned of myths and mysteries, secrets and scandals, but what I truly unearthed was the beating heart of my subject. In those hours I spent reading his old bar tabs from the ‘60s, typed letters to friends and foes, and handwritten journals a clearer picture of the man, and artist, emerged.
He slowly came to life for me, in a way that all my research before had failed to reveal. Al, I was told, always carried a small notepad in the right pocket of his pants, his cigarettes in his left, and his matches in his shirt pocket, along with a pen. He was never without his numerous white plastic shopping bags, filled to bursting with trash he collected throughout the day. He liked to “ease into the afternoon” with a beer, never whiskey. He’d chew with his mouth open, and his socks were always dirty. He would walk through restaurants and bars, emptying ashtrays into his suit pockets, the cigarette butts to be used later in his signature collages. He spoke in idioms. Several times a day, you’d hear him say: “The secret of the whole thing is…” Some found him challenging. Most found him charming. But he was always Al, and he was never not making art.
I often get asked why I’m writing a book on an artist that no one has ever heard of, and the short answer is simple: to tell his story. To hear the long answer, keep reading. You’ll learn how I came to know of Al Hansen, how I met his daughter, and why it’s important for me to share his story.
Fall Author Event series is being planned (speakers announced soon!)
in-person events in Creemore, ON
New Online Book Club with special guest authors right here in Substack
Are you interested in joining our new Online Book Club?
Email us to register: info@curiosityhousebooks.com
To hear the long answer, keep reading.
You’ll learn how I came to know of Al Hansen, how I met his daughter, and why it’s important for me to share his story.
About twenty-five years ago, as a young reporter on assignment in Toronto, I went to the Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery to cover an art show entitled Beck and Al Hansen: Playing with Matches. It was a ground-breaking exhibition pairing the art of the famous Grammy award-winning musician with that of his unknown avant-garde artist grandfather - finding connections between Beck’s music videos, poetry and collages with those of Al’s videos, performances and collages. An early influence on Beck, Al taught his grandson his first rhyme at 5 years old - “Pull down your pants and do the hot dog dance” - a line that is referenced on Beck’s best-selling album Odelay.
So, who was Al Hansen? Born in Queens, New York, Al Hansen was a prominent fixture of the downtown Manhattan art scene of the late ‘50s and ‘60s. He was one of the first to create “Happenings’, four-dimensional improv performance pieces, even writing the seminal book on the art form, A Primer of Happenings & Time/Space Art, now considered to be a classic. As a leading avant-gardist, he was an early member of the influential art movement Fluxus. He was a student of renowned music composer John Cage, friend to Yoko Ono, John Lennon and Andy Warhol, and at The Factory the day Warhol was shot. Rumour has it Hansen even helped name The Velvet Underground. Al was a nomad, constant wanderer, an original. Al Hansen was always, and foremost, his authentic self. He was anti-establishment, believing art must be free and accessible to all. For Al, the lines between art and life were blurred. Art was his life, and life was art.
Al Hansen had died just a few years prior to the exhibit, and it was Beck’s way to pay homage to his grandfather, and his influence on him as an artist and musician. Beck’s name and status drew thousands to the art show as it traveled city to city worldwide, and did what it set out to do: to shine a light on an important and influential artist that many, like myself, had never heard of. How had I not heard about Al Hansen? I was not a visual artist myself, nor had I been an art student, so my knowledge of artists and art movements was rudimentary, but even then I knew enough to know many of his contemporaries such as Andy Warhol and Yoko Ono, but not once did I come across the name Al Hansen.
At the exhibit I met Hansen’s daughter, Beck’s mother, Bibbe Hansen, and a window into Hansen’s life appeared. The portrait of a true visionary, an original who forged his own path, took shape. I was hooked. It was at that moment I became passionate about telling his story, to help shine a light on an almost forgotten hero, and to make the name Al Hansen be known.
Hansen’s tenacity as an artist, his authenticity, his commitment to live the life he wanted, without compromise, spoke to me. His life and artistic integrity is an example to us all on how to live, how to create, how to seek beauty, and in his words, how to “turn shit into gold”. He believed in art, the magic of it; for Hansen, making art was the thing. The only thing. Always on, and part of the scene, Hansen influenced those around him. Hansen knew everyone, and everyone loved Hansen. A charmer, born storyteller, Hansen knew how to be in this world. He lived hard, played even harder, and unfortunately, died too soon. He was 67.
In Europe, Al Hansen was respected and revered, back home in America, he was an outcast, an unknown. To this day not many people have heard the name Al Hansen. He is in danger of being forgotten, written out of the pages of art history, but he deserves to be recognized, to be credited, to be remembered. Dismissed and overlooked by the art world, Hansen forged his own path, and defied his critics. Hansen teaches us how to live a meaningful, artistic life. He inspires us and gives us hope, while restoring the belief that art can, and will, change us, and the world we inhabit. As Hansen liked to say, ‘Art Always Wins’.
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