I met and became friends with James Baldwin at age eighteen. I took the photograph of him, on which some of these variations are based, when he had begun his novel Go Tell it on the Mountain, which was at that time titled Crying Holy. We remained friends through his long exile in Europe, corresponding when he was in France and Corsica where he wrote Giovanni's Room.
After his death I began to work with his image. Then I went to a group of large watercolors. I dreamt that he told me to do them, and to always start them with an accident. In my dream he was Skyboss, as he had been before in a series of dreams that began in 1976.
After the large watercolors I went back to the small images I had made by cutting up a print of my photograph of him, and placing other images in the parts cut out. His face, with its large expressive eyes, continued to haunt me.
I then took snapshots of the large watercolors and made many copies of the picture taken of him just after he graduated from DeWitt Clinton high school in the Bronx where he contributed a bunch of writing to The Magpie.
One day later I dreamt again that he was Skyboss. In the dream he said, "Put your paintings in the middle of my forehead." The watercolors were large and the photographs were small so I explained that it would be impossible. "You'll figure out a way," he said, and smiled.
That's why I took the snapshots and placed them where they are.
The smaller pieces are called IMAGES OF JAMES BALDWIN and the accompanying large watercolors are called "I'LL FLY AWAY BLUES". It is the small snapshots I took of the large watercolors that were done for him, that appear on Jimmy's forehead in the smaller work.
Two of the pages of Jimmy's last letter to me (the first page was lost but a Xerox copy remains) are included in this exhibit which commemorates his visit to Berkeley in 1981.
Also included in this exhibit are a few of my many sarcastic variations of pharmaceutical advertisements. They are called "The Valium Variation Series", and a few of them are superimposed here on others of the "I'll Fly Away Blues" watercolors that were done for Jimmy. Also included in this exhibit are blowups of "Variations on the Gettysburg Address", a group of poems about racism in America. Some of them appeared previously in my book, Homeless in the 90s (Regent Press, Oakland). They can be found in the section titled ARRIVAL OF JAMES BALDWIN: MYSTERIOUS CIRCUMSTANCES.
My documentary film titled James Baldwin in Berkeley is available free to nonprofit social service organizations for screenings from: Art and Education Media Inc.