Speaker 1: I love having an apartment upstairs and running the art
Speaker 1: gallery downstairs, so I can toodle up and down all day,
Speaker 1: and I new to public in the art gallery. It's
Speaker 1: putin planet. Putin so because you know, with the naked
Speaker 1: riding the horse, but he is a horse.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Amusing Jews, where we celebrate Jewish contributors and
Speaker 2: contributions to American popular culture. I'm Jonathan Friedman and I'm
Speaker 2: Joey Angelfield producer engineer Mike Tomren is working somewhere behind
Speaker 2: the scenes. Amusing Jews is a project of Adad Jabourine
Speaker 2: Congregation for Humanistic Judaism, the Jewish Museum of the American
Speaker 2: West in Atheist United Studios. Hey, Joey, what would cosmic
Speaker 2: mythology and primordial folklore look like as an underground comic.
Speaker 2: Our guest today has answered that question.
Speaker 3: Honored to talk with Barbara Willie Mendez, a fine artist,
Speaker 3: an underground comics pioneer whose new anthology, Queen of Cosmo's
Speaker 3: Comics Trilogy is published by Fanographics.
Speaker 2: Willie. Welcome to Amusing Jews.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you so much. I'm delighted to be here,
Speaker 1: in particular because people have been dwelling on the weighty
Speaker 1: parts of my book, like the mid rush in the Kabbala,
Speaker 1: of which it is not about that, And on the surface,
Speaker 1: it's a very funny story. So I'm hoping that we
Speaker 1: can inject some humor and amusement into this interview.
Speaker 3: Your art work is unique and instantly recognizable. How did
Speaker 3: you get started in the arts?
Speaker 1: Well, totally as a little kid. When I was five
Speaker 1: years old, I was in Montclair Museum Children's Art School,
Speaker 1: and then we moved to Brooklyn Brooklyn Museum Children's Art School.
Speaker 1: By the time I was an adolescent, I was growing
Speaker 1: the nude at the Art Students League and learning composition
Speaker 1: and all the adult things in high School of Music
Speaker 1: and Art, School of Visual Arts, Hunter College, buying art program.
Speaker 1: And then I tuned in, turned on, and dropped out.
Speaker 1: But there's an ear story of my style that goes
Speaker 1: like this. I'm sixteen years old, I guess still music
Speaker 1: and art. And of course Art Forum was the bible.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you ever grew up and got an
Speaker 1: art forum, that would be it. And so I'm reading
Speaker 1: art Forum and they had this article about the Tate
Speaker 1: Gallery in London is exhibiting toilet paper on the walls.
Speaker 1: That's the art. And I said to myself, these people
Speaker 1: are like, I am not following this. This is not
Speaker 1: something that I have to aspire to. I'm not going
Speaker 1: to try to be like the white male Western world
Speaker 1: without putting it into those worlds words perhaps, but I'm
Speaker 1: going to do what I like. I Barbermanda, sixteen years
Speaker 1: old girl. I liked Jean Cocteau. I liked French movies,
Speaker 1: and I liked color, and I like plants, and I
Speaker 1: had some interesting dreams throw it all on the canvas
Speaker 1: and make it beautiful. And I began that. I just
Speaker 1: tacked a canvas on the wall and began throwing it
Speaker 1: all on the wall, make it beautiful and using color patterns.
Speaker 1: And this is how I developed my style. And I'm
Speaker 1: seventy eight years old now and it's quite recognizable and
Speaker 1: I've gotten good at it over those long years.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you mentioned Cocteau and maybe some film work. Were
Speaker 2: there fine artists that influenced you as well?
Speaker 1: Oh gosh, Walt Disney, I would say, was the biggest
Speaker 1: artistic influence on me. And I'm not even going to talk.
Speaker 1: I'm not giving them my time of my interview to
Speaker 1: go through the list of famous male artists in my lifetime.
Speaker 1: Forget about it, let's talk about me. There were no
Speaker 1: women role models, and the male role models had one
Speaker 1: big problem. They're males. I am not, so they've been
Speaker 1: talked about until anybody's blue in the face.
Speaker 2: Is that maybe why you were looking at plants and
Speaker 2: other maybe natural inspirations, because they weren't gendered in that way?
Speaker 1: Those stale male, white male gaze of Western art from
Speaker 1: the beginning is not the only way to see the world.
Speaker 1: Excuse me, but there are other things besides elements that
Speaker 1: arouse males. That's not the only subject of art. Excuse me,
Speaker 1: But I found others not being a male myself also,
Speaker 1: and that didn't preclude extalling women. I extoll women for
Speaker 1: their beauty, for their power, for their glory. But the
Speaker 1: titulating the males, I leave that to the ninety nine
Speaker 1: percent of the art in the world.
Speaker 2: You were part of the underground comics movement of the
Speaker 2: nineteen seventies. How did you get involved with that?
Speaker 1: I got in through Kim Ditsch from he was a
Speaker 1: friend of my first husband, Rick Kunstler, and Trina Robbins
Speaker 1: was Kim Ditsche's girlfriend, and in the beginning, that's how
Speaker 1: it was. And I got into a lot of boys
Speaker 1: comic books before Trina gained her power in nineteen seventy.
Speaker 1: I also have a very rare page from Gothic Blimp
Speaker 1: Works which Kim got me into this underground comic of
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties. So that was the earliest how I
Speaker 1: got into it. And then I showed you some of
Speaker 1: the boy books, and then along came Trina. This was
Speaker 1: really big. Ron Turner gave her a thousand bucks to
Speaker 1: make an all woman comic book and get on the
Speaker 1: woman's liberation trail, and this is the cover of it.
Speaker 1: It ain't me, Babe, and so I did the back over.
Speaker 1: Trina and I sharing a house with our guys with
Speaker 1: Kim Diisch and Rick, So we actually shared a house
Speaker 1: on Edgar Place in San Francisco right before this, and
Speaker 1: we were both having babies. We were both pregnant, so
Speaker 1: Trina had her baby first, Hasey and I had my
Speaker 1: baby later. But this is really the iconic picture of
Speaker 1: us in that era. So I did the back cover
Speaker 1: of this book and the first story Alma, which became
Speaker 1: later when I gave birth to my daughter and she
Speaker 1: was a girl. I named her Alma after this page.
Speaker 1: So we followed that up with the second all woman
Speaker 1: comic in the world, All Girl Thrills, and again I
Speaker 1: did the back cover and I did a piece of
Speaker 1: art for the first story, which is so iconic. It's
Speaker 1: in the history of illustration on the same page with
Speaker 1: Robert Crumb and its realm of Karma comics.
Speaker 2: What was your opinion of Robert Crumb in some of
Speaker 2: his artwork in those days, given your your response to
Speaker 2: male artists.
Speaker 1: On the one hand, Robert Crumb is a genius, and
Speaker 1: he's the funniest guy, and he's the most genius artist
Speaker 1: of just drawing our times, our life and our times
Speaker 1: and capturing different types and of all his drawing is amazing,
Speaker 1: So that's the truth of it. But what did he do?
Speaker 1: Of course I had horrid with abhorred with every fiber
Speaker 1: of my body. But my really favorite one was s
Speaker 1: Clay Wilson, who makes Robert Crumb look like a pussycat
Speaker 1: with his subject matter. I mean, he just had the
Speaker 1: s Clay Wilson had the worst subject matter ever, but
Speaker 1: his art was not only fantastic, it was also beautiful
Speaker 1: in its ugly subject matter, no matter despite it in
Speaker 1: a way that Crumb is not like gorgeous beautiful, it's
Speaker 1: just fantastically genius.
Speaker 3: Like enjoying the show, click like and subscribe. What led
Speaker 3: you to incorporate Jewish law and iconography in your work?
Speaker 1: Well, that's the famous story of how it all happened.
Speaker 1: It was eleven eleven ninety two. Picture this, I'm unfair
Speaker 1: Fox Boulevard, a Jewish Los Angeles that you may have
Speaker 1: heard of. And then I'm painting a mural of a
Speaker 1: Treifa restaurant called Tropical Garden, and a guy stops me,
Speaker 1: and he says, excuse me for stopping you. I want
Speaker 1: you to paint my synagogue. And I said, I'm Jewish,
Speaker 1: I'll do it. So I go on. It's a Sephardic synagogue,
Speaker 1: which I have Sephardic roots on half of it. I
Speaker 1: just knew that, And I painted the Garden of Eden
Speaker 1: and Noah's Ark in the courtyard of the Pinto Torah Center. Meantime,
Speaker 1: Gabriel's friend Nathan courted me and I got a boyfriend
Speaker 1: who later became my second husband. Meantime, there was a
Speaker 1: movement in America, I don't know, around the world called
Speaker 1: the Boochuva movement to take Jewish people, adults such as
Speaker 1: myself who know they're Jewish but know absolutely nothing about
Speaker 1: Judaism and teach them absolutely everything. So the Yeshiva of
Speaker 1: Los Angeles, known as Ula, they had a community adult
Speaker 1: program or four nights a week. I would go and
Speaker 1: learn from the biggest rabbis, and the most inspiring rabbi
Speaker 1: taught me Hebrew, doctor Jujudaberdugo. I learned Hebrew from the
Speaker 1: most inspiring teacher who would say, class, this is a
Speaker 1: class like no other because Hebrew is the language of God.
Speaker 1: And he totally inspired us. And he'd said, class, this
Speaker 1: is very beautiful. So these are the things that brought
Speaker 1: me to Judaism. So how did I express it? Immediately
Speaker 1: I put it into my art. So it began with
Speaker 1: these biblical murals. This is the Berat sheet mural. So
Speaker 1: it starts with the days of creation and then the
Speaker 1: outer border. I decided to make all the stories, which
Speaker 1: we'll see more in some of the other ones. When
Speaker 1: I sold it it's in Florida. I created the Shimote mural,
Speaker 1: so this is the boxes are bigger and it's everything
Speaker 1: that happens in the Book of Exodus. And they're divided
Speaker 1: into boxes, which are the weekly tour aportions, because in
Speaker 1: Queen of Cosmo's comics, for the first two chapters of
Speaker 1: each volume, I parody the Bible the weekly tour aportions.
Speaker 1: So this is my third biblical mural vy eu crem mural,
Speaker 1: and it's every single verse in the Book of Leviticus.
Speaker 1: Now there are eight hundred and fifty nine verses in
Speaker 1: the Book of Leviticus, and each one is a tiny picture. Well,
Speaker 1: it was around twenty sixteen that I received a phone
Speaker 1: call from doctor Robert Lovejoy, a professor at American University,
Speaker 1: who was editing the Underground Comics section of the History
Speaker 1: of Illustration, and he invited me to be in it.
Speaker 1: A which page you want first page of Roma Karma comics,
Speaker 1: which I always knew since I was twenty one years old,
Speaker 1: and made it that it was a good page. So
Speaker 1: then it validated me. I went, bast as, WHOA, my
Speaker 1: comics were really good. You know, I'm going to read
Speaker 1: the history book. So then I got the idea A
Speaker 1: long about this time, I had been Orthodox Jewish already
Speaker 1: for thirty years, I left the second husband, but I
Speaker 1: continued in it, and I did those three biblical murals.
Speaker 1: I'm orthodox, I'm so from you couldn't believe it. Thirty
Speaker 1: long years, and I finally really got tired of the
Speaker 1: patriarchy on the ground in Judaism, particularly Orthodox Judaism. However,
Speaker 1: they have all the mystic stuff, they have all the
Speaker 1: godly stuff. They have the priests the bless you every day,
Speaker 1: and no, that's not the blessing. I just made that
Speaker 1: up as a victory symbol. But they have a lot
Speaker 1: of holiness and Orthodoxy which is absolutely missing, possibly in
Speaker 1: other areas. But it's so patriarchal, and the men are
Speaker 1: so arrogant. Oh, I couldn't take it anymore. That's when
Speaker 1: I made a painting which led directly to my comics series,
Speaker 1: Queen of Cosmos Comics, and this is volume one, and
Speaker 1: I really planned it as a one off. I didn't
Speaker 1: plan it as a series, but it was a no
Speaker 1: brainer to put the Judaism in there, since I'm already
Speaker 1: drenched in It starts with creation and let us create
Speaker 1: a world. The second one starts with there's a Hebrew
Speaker 1: is lech Lecha, but the English translation is get up
Speaker 1: and go, and again it is they're all humorous, they're funny,
Speaker 1: get up and go, chows wine women in songs, so
Speaker 1: you can punch that in. And then volume three begins,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to bring out the actual original artwork
Speaker 1: because of course the book isn't published. Ye, it'll be
Speaker 1: out in trilogy. And this is the first page of
Speaker 1: volume three. And here's a joke because I want it
Speaker 1: to be funny. It's the fifth weekly Tora portion after
Speaker 1: creation in the Torah, the Bible, and the Hebrew name
Speaker 1: of this Torah portion is Hia Sarah. Hia Sarah means
Speaker 1: the life of Sarah, Hia himla hiam. Right, everybody knows
Speaker 1: that Hi means life in Hebrew. We know from saying
Speaker 1: the hiam to life to life him so Hi means life,
Speaker 1: and the Hebrew meaning of Hia Sarah is the life
Speaker 1: of Sarah. It goes on to say, what was one
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty seven years? So I make a joke.
Speaker 1: I call it Hia Sarah. So she's saying hi because
Speaker 1: I made the female character of Sarah Sora that she's
Speaker 1: on Hia Sora. And then there's a bunch of other jokes.
Speaker 1: So with all my Bible parodies, the more you know
Speaker 1: about the Bible, and certainly the weekly Tora portions, then
Speaker 1: you'll get a lot of the jokes. So I think
Speaker 1: that answers how I wove Judaism into my comics and
Speaker 1: my paintings, and how it was just a natural progression
Speaker 1: since that's my life. Because one last thing I've shown
Speaker 1: all Bible imagery, but going into the Orthodox community inspired
Speaker 1: me visually with the people and the rituals and even
Speaker 1: the holy meals, because I'm talking three times every shop
Speaker 1: as we have holy meals, communal meals and everything, and
Speaker 1: it was just so aesthetic, so beautiful, and everything in
Speaker 1: the Sephardic world is beautiful, the torres draped in scarfs
Speaker 1: and silver and gold, and I was very aesthithically taken
Speaker 1: with the on the ground, the same world that I
Speaker 1: had to leave behind because I found it too patriarchal.
Speaker 1: But I missed some great beauty and joy, and I
Speaker 1: will mention the singing, particularly the Sephardic singing, So I
Speaker 1: missed that, Dearly.
Speaker 2: What can you tell us about your central character, Queen
Speaker 2: of Cosmos.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm happy to tell you about the Queen of Cosmos,
Speaker 1: because people come into my gallo read I round all
Speaker 1: the time, and I've said this a million times. It's
Speaker 1: like this, the one God, the God of the Bible,
Speaker 1: he has no body. Like the poem that you may
Speaker 1: bring up says, it's a body, this being, it has
Speaker 1: no body, it has no gender. It is neither a
Speaker 1: male nor female. It is a giant, non body, non
Speaker 1: bodied being. It's God. So we can't think about such
Speaker 1: a blady concept, so we use metaphor. A metaphor is
Speaker 1: a word that means something else, but it reminds us
Speaker 1: of that's something else, so it can kind of stand
Speaker 1: in for that something else. So therefore people have said God,
Speaker 1: our father, our father, who are in heaven a vinubashamayam.
Speaker 1: So it's a metaphor for God. And besides, in all
Speaker 1: up into the world. And I'm going to read your
Speaker 1: poem later that I wrote today. Men have ruled the world,
Speaker 1: and so it was natural to think that God would
Speaker 1: be a man and God would be our father. However,
Speaker 1: if you happen to be female, it's no sacrilege whatsoever
Speaker 1: in my opinion, to use a female metaphor for God,
Speaker 1: particularly since it's clear in the Bible that we are
Speaker 1: in God's image, and therefore I just made it up.
Speaker 1: And you know, you've heard of King of the Universe,
Speaker 1: Queen of Cosmos. It's just a total parody, but it's
Speaker 1: using a female metaphor for the one God, and she
Speaker 1: mixes in. But she's a woman, so she's different from
Speaker 1: the male God. The male God has male attributes. The
Speaker 1: God is jealous, God is violent, God is this and that.
Speaker 1: And also all the women that God picks in the
Speaker 1: Bible are beautiful. Leah is the only exception, and the
Speaker 1: only time wise women are called for is in the
Speaker 1: end of Tishebov when we're mourning the destruction. The woman
Speaker 1: God is different, and I find her funny, and she
Speaker 1: makes mistakes, and she's always arguing with the angels who
Speaker 1: surround God is surrounded by angels and they're kippetzing her
Speaker 1: and she's arguing with them. So it's not that my
Speaker 1: book is about argument is that the queen isn't so
Speaker 1: self assured and arrogant as the male God is. For example,
Speaker 1: the male God preates the world and then he says
Speaker 1: and it's good. He doesn't even ask kitty, but he
Speaker 1: just goes and it's good, whereas my female god says
Speaker 1: is it good? Because that's what I would say to
Speaker 1: you if I show you a new picture, I'd say,
Speaker 1: is it good? Do you like it? Yeah?
Speaker 2: George Carlin had a great shtick about how the God
Speaker 2: of the Bible is obviously male because of all the
Speaker 2: ways that he expresses himself and all the wars and
Speaker 2: the you know, retribution and all that stuff.
Speaker 1: Yes, it's a valid concept that we both have in common.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's out there.
Speaker 3: I saw it and enjoy it as a loving send up.
Speaker 3: Do you kind of see yourself in the Queen of Cosmos? Also?
Speaker 1: You know only and that she's the only character that
Speaker 1: looks like me in a very very very idealized way.
Speaker 1: But with the tangle hair. I mean, that's what we do.
Speaker 1: We idolize, we idealize. I would call it an idealized vision.
Speaker 1: But I never thought about me being it. I just
Speaker 1: had to make it look like me, because what else
Speaker 1: are you gonna make it look like?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I was gonna say strive for or aspire to,
Speaker 3: But then I find maybe that's my maleness coming in.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I just made it because it's to me. It's if
Speaker 1: you look at women's art, which not enough people do
Speaker 1: in bulk, and especially on the Internet, women's art, especially
Speaker 1: on TikTok, women's art all around the world. Women make
Speaker 1: symmetrical things, women think themselves. We start our vision from
Speaker 1: the inside, from inside of us, and it's like a mandala,
Speaker 1: and it radiates out and the first thing it encounters
Speaker 1: is our physical appearance and how we look. But we
Speaker 1: see so much art is based on how we are
Speaker 1: and how we look and how we feel.
Speaker 3: Queen of Cosmo's Comics trilogy, not only we tell stories
Speaker 3: from the Torah with a psychedelic feminist twist, but also
Speaker 3: vignettes from your own life's journey. Have these comics played
Speaker 3: a role in your self discovery?
Speaker 1: I really grappled with that question in advance because I
Speaker 1: don't know the answer. They're just all woven together, and
Speaker 1: me and my life and my art are woven together.
Speaker 1: I think one answer I grabbed was from my day books.
Speaker 1: But I don't have to show you. It's just it.
Speaker 1: In the beginning of my visual journals, I show what
Speaker 1: I did that day, what I did that day, back
Speaker 1: to front, like Hebrew. It's my ideas and also the
Speaker 1: studies for my biblical murals and my other art, just
Speaker 1: my wild ideas what I feel like, which is most
Speaker 1: of my pre judaic art, was very wildly about how
Speaker 1: I felt. So to me, the two were just woven together.
Speaker 1: And in the comic, of course, as you know, I
Speaker 1: wove them together. So the Queen of Cosmos has to appear.
Speaker 1: My daughter, Kirby, my living daughter, is one of my
Speaker 1: role models and idols, and she said to me while
Speaker 1: I was making it, momm you got to keep the
Speaker 1: Queen of Cosmos in there, you know, because that's your
Speaker 1: main character. So I wove the Queen of Cosmos through
Speaker 1: all the stories about my life. But I really felt
Speaker 1: like that, like how did we go under the bridge
Speaker 1: of the Brooklyn Bridge to meet this lady and smoke
Speaker 1: a joint? And she was the one who knew the
Speaker 1: healer and ps. My daughter didn't die in one year,
Speaker 1: she died in thirty three years, so oo, but a
Speaker 1: lady God would have set that little meeting up. I'm
Speaker 1: just saying to me, that's a divine thing, and divine
Speaker 1: things like that happened to me. I'm very mystical I
Speaker 1: lived my life in a mystic fashion, and mystical, amazing
Speaker 1: things happen to me all the time. That was one
Speaker 1: of them.
Speaker 2: You have a page in the book that reads, I
Speaker 2: believe in feminine cosmic consciousness. Women can regain power in
Speaker 2: spiritual and worldly realms. Women are hardwired to be compassionate
Speaker 2: and seek solutions. Men shake the world into a frightening
Speaker 2: horror escape instead of the bountiful earth we were given.
Speaker 2: Are you hopeful about a woman led future?
Speaker 1: I absolutely am. And the poem that you just read,
Speaker 1: which happens to be a tic tac rap that I did,
Speaker 1: it's a pin to the top of my TikTok page.
Speaker 1: Barbara Willie Mendez, uhm, sums it up. I mean, I
Speaker 1: think you answered the question before you asked it. I
Speaker 1: absolutely believe not only that women will rise, but that
Speaker 1: women will save the world by rising because of the
Speaker 1: contents of that poem. But here we are today, April ninth,
Speaker 1: I wrote a poem today to add to this answer
Speaker 1: to this question. Okay, short, I see women rising, but
Speaker 1: men still ruling with drooling gaze and unsafe ways. Just
Speaker 1: look around that gaze is found. Those ways resound opponents
Speaker 1: downed by men's rule. We bow to a fool. I
Speaker 1: see women rising, but men still ruling.
Speaker 2: Why the part of what you're getting at two maybe
Speaker 2: is that the whole sort of persona of maleness can
Speaker 2: also change right to accommodate the rising women.
Speaker 1: I forgot to add that part. I mean, I'm a
Speaker 1: straight person. I love men, and I love what makes
Speaker 1: them manly and testosterone. That's beautiful. That's what I want.
Speaker 1: And the man, however, and those new men are all around.
Speaker 1: It's just that they don't rule the world yet. But
Speaker 1: those men are all around, and people like me, those
Speaker 1: are the only men that they know, because the other
Speaker 1: men don't remain known by me. But there's absolutely wonderful
Speaker 1: dudes around, and they are cumminating because what are you,
Speaker 1: simon Lagrae, You want you don't want to be overlord,
Speaker 1: So then you accommodate the new way to look of things.
Speaker 1: But when my day, I'm old, I'm seventy eight. When
Speaker 1: I was in my twenties and thirties, men with some
Speaker 1: a new women's libbers. You wanted this, you wanted that,
Speaker 1: you know, like get back in the kitchen. So it's
Speaker 1: very new. These new males that they're visible, and of
Speaker 1: course in TV shows and everything, welcome, thank you, because
Speaker 1: in the Queen of Cosmo's comics it says the males
Speaker 1: will come in handy, they'll help everybody with their strength,
Speaker 1: and that's how it should be. Like you guys are
Speaker 1: physically the general stronger, So come and help me move
Speaker 1: this chair, and help come and help take care of
Speaker 1: the house, and give a hand with the kids even,
Speaker 1: you know, like lend a hand with this wonderful strength.
Speaker 1: But the whole way that they're hardwired to use it
Speaker 1: for calm, forget about it. I don't like that because
Speaker 1: we have babies and they're so difficult to nurture. From
Speaker 1: their tenius point till like two years old. They could
Speaker 1: be dead a hundred times if you didn't save their
Speaker 1: lives with your brilliant adult wisdom. They're so fragile, So
Speaker 1: to bring anybody up like that just to slaughter them
Speaker 1: is just beyond my ability to understand that impulse.
Speaker 3: You have a very colorful art gallery on South Robertson
Speaker 3: Boulevard in Los Angeles. Could you tell us about that.
Speaker 1: My landlord owns two buildings and one is on the corner.
Speaker 1: I never dreamed in my wildest dreams of the storefront.
Speaker 1: I had a place a block to the north for
Speaker 1: ten years and the building was sold. And I was
Speaker 1: already friends with my landlord Aubrey and his wife Melba,
Speaker 1: because we put on a yearly festival on my block
Speaker 1: for twenty years and I knew them from that. So
Speaker 1: when I had to move, I rented the apartment next
Speaker 1: door to the gallery upstairs, which is still my large
Speaker 1: apartment and beautiful apartment, because I thought it would be
Speaker 1: my gallery, my studio, and my home. And then a
Speaker 1: miracle stepped in. It was Deete Kirkwood with a job
Speaker 1: on the toke the play called Tok in Berkeley, and
Speaker 1: she needed posters, so I made four beautiful paintings for her,
Speaker 1: and she paid me enough to get into that art gallery.
Speaker 1: The guy had just mysteriously left after thirteen years and
Speaker 1: it was empty. That's how I got the Barbermendous gallery.
Speaker 1: And then I couldn't pay that rent. I ended up
Speaker 1: bowing Aubrey eight ten, twelve, fourteen, eighteen thousand dollars and
Speaker 1: I just got the hell out of there. It was
Speaker 1: just going up and up, and I was crying and
Speaker 1: painting it's in the book. The story is in the book.
Speaker 1: And Carolyn came along and she bought tons of my
Speaker 1: big paintings and got me current and I stayed and
Speaker 1: that's how I got into it. Then we closed the
Speaker 1: gallery for a while, but it didn't get rented, and
Speaker 1: then we put on an arch exhibit for the festival
Speaker 1: that year, and we go. We don't know exactly how
Speaker 1: we got the idea, but we got the idea to
Speaker 1: open a gallery together, me and the landlords so that
Speaker 1: they get the rental. It's a rental gallery and people
Speaker 1: rent the two front rooms and they pay good money
Speaker 1: and they pay it to Aubrey and Melba, so they
Speaker 1: get some income for their property. And I get to
Speaker 1: maintain a gallery in the back room year round and
Speaker 1: I make my living that way. People come in because
Speaker 1: they're attracted by the mural outside. My favorite people in
Speaker 1: the world are the ones that stop their car and
Speaker 1: pull over and come check out the mural. And if
Speaker 1: they find me, it's wonderful.
Speaker 2: Don't you have your name on the street there as well?
Speaker 1: Oh ah, don't you'd never ask. But it's also called
Speaker 1: Barbara Mendous Square. The corner on which the gallery and
Speaker 1: the mural are it's Barbara Mendous Memorial Square, which is
Speaker 1: nice because it's like being at your own funeral. But
Speaker 1: it says I have the copy of it in the house,
Speaker 1: also dedicated to a creator whose artistic integrity magnifies the
Speaker 1: excellence of the South Robertson community.
Speaker 2: I just think it's hilarious that it's called the Memorial
Speaker 2: Square because obviously you're not memorialized, you're not eligible for
Speaker 2: memorialization yet, but.
Speaker 1: I will be inevitably, and then I tell the young people.
Speaker 1: See then you'll say that you knew me. But I'm
Speaker 1: also a Los Angeles cultural treasure, so that one I'm
Speaker 1: proud of. But nobody knows this stuff, but it's true.
Speaker 1: You want to hear how I got to be memorial Yeah?
Speaker 2: Please.
Speaker 1: It was an enemy that got me that sign, not
Speaker 1: a friend. It wasn't everybody loved me and they got
Speaker 1: together to extall me. It wasn't like that at all.
Speaker 1: It was the day of the festival picture this, and
Speaker 1: it was the year that we had the art Gallery exhibition,
Speaker 1: but it hadn't been a gallery before that. So this
Speaker 1: is giant pink mammogram bus. It's like a greyhound bus
Speaker 1: only painted completely pink, and it's odd, you know. So
Speaker 1: it's like on and I wake up at six in
Speaker 1: the morning, there it is. I throw on jeans and
Speaker 1: run outside, move the bus from the front of the gallery.
Speaker 1: And Terry, my arch enemy, comes down the block on
Speaker 1: the golf cart. Because the whole street is closed off
Speaker 1: to traffic. They're just building boots and everything. And I
Speaker 1: stood in front of that golf cart like tianum and
Speaker 1: square like this, like if you're going to go forward,
Speaker 1: you're gonna run me over. You have to stop. So
Speaker 1: he stopped and I said move the bus, and he
Speaker 1: said no. So I said, well, Terry, I intend to
Speaker 1: oppose you politically, and I intend when the officials arrived today,
Speaker 1: I'm going to tell them what you did. And he says, well,
Speaker 1: if you'd have said please, i'd moved the bus. So
Speaker 1: he moved the bus, and the officials did come, and
Speaker 1: I remembered I lifted my eyes and I saw the
Speaker 1: official's name, and I told the story, and they says,
Speaker 1: on Monday, we're going to deal with this. So sure enough.
Speaker 1: Liz Carlin was a wonderful woman who was the deputy
Speaker 1: to her bless in the head of the city council,
Speaker 1: and she asked me if the mural was legal, and
Speaker 1: I said it wasn't, so she just forwarded me from
Speaker 1: Cultural Affairs the application for a legal mural, and it
Speaker 1: was easy because it's a vintage mural who'd been there
Speaker 1: a few years already. And it became legal. And then
Speaker 1: I got a call from Terry, my arch enemy. Evidently
Speaker 1: they had told him merely to apologize to me, but
Speaker 1: he didn't want to do that, so he called me
Speaker 1: up and he said, do you want it to be
Speaker 1: Barbara Menda square. I said yes, and that did make
Speaker 1: me not oppose him so heavily. For a year, I
Speaker 1: was waiting for my square. And then when they put
Speaker 1: the sign on, it was jackhammers. It was a little
Speaker 1: sign before the one way high up and I'm like,
Speaker 1: I love those jackhammers because I knew they were putting
Speaker 1: up my sign. But it's covered with a veil, as
Speaker 1: you know, and they're going to unveil a sign like that.
Speaker 1: It had a film of yellow on it, so then
Speaker 1: they had a few minor dignitaries at the unveiling at
Speaker 1: the festival and they peeled back the yellow film and
Speaker 1: there it is Barbarmendous Memorial Square. But there's one more
Speaker 1: funny story. There's a an avant garde dancer named Rachel Rosenthal,
Speaker 1: and she has a studio one buck to the south
Speaker 1: of me. Maybe you've heard of her. She was quite famous,
Speaker 1: but unfortunately she's passed away since then. But she has
Speaker 1: a sign across the street from her place that says
Speaker 1: Rachel Rosenthal, Los Angeles Living Cultural Treasure. But she's passed away,
Speaker 1: so my sign says Byremendous Memorial Square. But I'm still alive,
Speaker 1: So who would you rather be? It's okay. Everything that
Speaker 1: happens to me, It's like, it's okay because I'm just
Speaker 1: like living this life.
Speaker 2: That all sounds like a like a Seinfeld episode or something.
Speaker 1: You know, a lot of my life is like that.
Speaker 1: Thanks for letting me share some of these funny stories.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, Willie for joining us.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for having me. It was fun
Speaker 1: to meet.
Speaker 2: You all and to our audience. Now back to your
Speaker 2: regularly scheduled lives.
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