Life on the Run October 2006

by Barbara Sparhawk
Images by R. Byrne

Barbara isn’t content to live life within boundaries created by comfortable routine. Through her passions in general and her art in particular Barbara is ardently grabbing hold of life.

I was born in New York City and raised in no place in particular. My father was a chemical engineer and apparently people in that profession just move around a lot advancing their careers. He would come into the house and announce, “We’re moving!” All of us would start to bawl, but then we’d just begin packing again.

When we moved to La Jolla, mom’s travels with dad were over. We moved there from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In those days Pittsburgh smog was so awful that streetlights would switch on during the day. La Jolla, by contrast, seemed like heaven. After her first trip through our neighborhood mom said in amazement, “The children don’t wear shoes.” After a few months dad announced that we were moving to Massachusetts and Mom put her foot down. He left without her and never came back.

In spite of the pain caused by my nomadic ways I nevertheless developed a sense of wanderlust myself. I returned to New York when I was 32 years old and calculated that I was moving into my 40th residence since birth. And that was about 20 residences ago.

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman
From the moment I could hold a pencil I was always drawing and began attending the first of a long string of art and craft schools when I was only three years old. By the age of 15 I was enrolled in the La Jolla Museum School art classes where I took my first lessons in life drawing.

I majored in art and theater in school. In one production at Idyllwild I played the role of Helen of Troy. I also became an apprentice at the Laguna Playhouse, where Marlo Thomas made her debut as Gigi. My first commission was to create a portrait of Harvey the rabbit as part of the set to go over the mantelpiece in the playhouse.

I graduated from school when I was 17 and for one summer attended an Ethical Culture school on Riverside Drive in New York. The school billed itself as “the encampment for citizenship” and brought children from all over the world to live together.

I studied painting at Goddard College, which is a liberal arts college in Plainfield, Vermont and worked that summer for John & Faith Hubley, who were fantastic animators. John created Mr. Magoo. I started doing inking and learning animation from a Disney animator named Shamus Culhane.

I spent the next two years back at Goddard doing serious painting. I made my own stretchers and painted on a roll of surplus rubberized army canvas. It was a huge roll and I painted on it steadily for a year.

I moved back to New York and began attending classes at the Art Student League and the funky New School, and again began working on animated films for the Hubleys’ animated movies. I was living in downtown Brooklyn in an apartment above the offices of the Black Panthers. My hippy days were over. I was making money and having fun wearing French underwear from Saks with little blue ribbons running through everything.

The Artist at Work
I got a commission to paint a life-size portrait of William F. Buckley, Jr. This was one of the most important experiences of my life. I had been a fan of his writing and sent him a letter telling him that I wanted to do his portrait, “We’re both searching for the truth in different fields,” I wrote. I’m doing it in my art.” Francis Bronson, his secretary, wrote back. “W.F.B. would like to know three things: How long will it take? Could he bring his dog and read during the sessions? And how much will it cost if he likes it?” Upon getting my response he agreed to come for three sittings.

I didn’t have a studio at the time but was painting in the living room of my little flat. I borrowed a big loft studio in Greenwich Village from a friend. I would prepare for each sitting by carrying some of my paintings and props on the subway to place in the studio in order to give Buckley the impression that the studio was mine. I didn’t charge much and doing that portrait took a lot of time. I could probably have made more per hour mowing lawns.

I eventually did some portraits of people like James M. Fox, who was Head of FBI, as well as some other people in the Bureau. I had the only one-person exhibit ever produced at Quantico, the FBI Academy.

I became the only woman in the world to have sufficient guts, stupidity, and muscles to paint billboards while hanging from a scaffold hundreds of feet in the air. I was captivated by the prospect of painting eyes with 4-inch brushes. It took over a year of intense effort to get the job. I was told that there were no women in the business. They wouldn’t let me join the union. Everyplace I went, it seems, the hiring manager would look at my portfolio and then ask, “What are you doing for lunch?”

I finally got a job because of a guy in Long Island who wouldn’t hire me but wanted to date me. There was a heavy scaffold inside the building on a large wall. “If I can get that scaffold from the floor to the top, will you hire me?” I asked. He said, “Yes!” and I did it.

That first job was a billboard showing the cover of a Rolling Stones album. My partner and I created this on 20 4’ by 8’ sheets of Masonite, spreading paint on them from huge pots of pigments and using benzene and linseed oil poured out of 5-gallon cans. We would wash ourselves down with the benzene after the end of each shift.

The top of that scaffold was no place for a faint heart. Birds were actually flying below us. The wind would be blowing both the paint and my hair. I kept a tight grip on the paper with our guide. The wind would blow the scaffold one way, blow the sign the other, so we would have to coordinate with the two motions as we applied the paint. I was hanging on, not wanting to die. But the sun was shining and I loved every minute of it! We would put on safety harnesses when inspectors came by, but left them off at other times because they hampered our movements.

I started my own sign-painting and portrait business. Because of my experience in painting large surfaces I got a job painting the amusement rides at Coney Island. I loved the electric atmosphere in that place!

Producer, Hack, and Sculptor
I never could do the same thing for too long so began working for the media. I produced a radio show for Barry Farber, who ran for mayor of New York, and later helped with his campaign. I did press for Geraldine Ferraro. I wrote news for CBS, ABC, and Fox. I wrote as a stringer for the NY Post. In that job I was a scab crossing picket lines as workers hurled things at my head.

I began sculpting. I had been moved by eight killings of police officers that occurred in New York over a brief period of time. It was horrific so I decided to sculpt a memorial. It was to be called “The Angel and the Officer.” I spent four years on the project only to have it fail when nearly finished because it was politically incorrect to portray a fallen officer who wasn’t male, female, caucasian, Hispanic, Asian, and black all at the same time. It is impossible to do representational work any more because of all the people out there who demand that any work of art depict someone who looks just like them.

I lost my house in the fiasco so moved myself, cats, dogs, books, and paintings into the wilderness of Weather Mountain in Virginia. I started Weather Mountain Posterworks and created a traveling exhibit of paintings and posters that I had done.

From there I moved into a log cabin located on a 60-acre farm in Harper’s Ferry where I endured three of the worst winters in Virginia history. After that third winter, which was in 1997, I spent three months talking a farmer out of his 1974 Suburban. He finally sold it to me, together with a tune-up and a spare tire, and I headed for sunny California. I began living in the woods in Big Sur and working at a foundry in Marina where I learned to do bronze casting and patina and eventually had a bronze on display in Carmel’s Winfield Gallery.

I spent a couple weeks as a Photographer’s Assistant for Survival Africa. They really needed my help since we were moving 11 cases of equipment from site to site. We were on a different plane every 16 hours. I spent a year in Yosemite writing a novel called Noise and a collection of short stories called Gandy Dancer and Other Short Stories. I lived in gold miner shacks. It was rough and I grew tired of Yosemite’s raw immensity and began to long for the velvet suede hills of Carmel Valley.

Now I live in a 420-square foot tree house with about 200 square feet of usable space because the rest is taken up by my innumerable paintings and 3,000 books that I have hauled with me everyplace I’ve lived for the past decade or so.

For the past eight months I’ve been the Producer for Barbra Alexander’s Money Dots radio show. I’ve been surprised and thrilled to have a job I really love while working with someone I greatly admire.

I’ve lived a richly imperfect life. Lots of good stuff; lots of bad stuff…. Everything made me a deeper person and more prepared for the next thing when it came along.

I’ve lived in my little tree house for a year now. That’s a long time for me to live in a single place. My compulsion to put any current address in my rearview mirror seems to be diminishing. My little house is the first place that has felt like home to me in my whole life. I love the color that surrounds me these days.

The foliage, blooming plants and flowers, climate, and friends all serve as velvet handcuffs to bind my spirit to my beautiful Carmel Valley. Plus, danger no longer appeals to me. I’ve spent enough time in the Brooklyn war zone and in a lot of other dangerous places. I’m tired of being anxious.

Even if I stay in my house, however, I’m still not going to take life easy. There are too many lessons to be learned, too many challenges to face to even think about settling down yet. In fact, I’m just getting started!°