Nanette L. Laitman Documentation Project For Craft and Decorative Arts in America

Interview with Ron Nagle
Conducted by Bill Berkson
At the Bill Berkson's home in San Francisco, California
June 8 and 9, 2003

Preface

The following oral history transcript is the result of a tape-recorded interview with Ron Nagle on June 8 and 9, 2003. The interview took place in San Francisco, California, and was conducted by Bill Berkson for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. This interview is part of the Nanette L. Laitman Documentation Project for Craft and Decorative Arts in America.

Ron Nagle and Bill Berkson have reviewed the transcript and have made corrections and emendations. The reader should bear in mind that he or she is reading a transcript of spoken, rather than written, prose.

Interview

BILL BERKSON: This is Bill Berkson interviewing Ron Nagle at my home, Bill Berkson’s home, 25 Grand View Avenue in San Francisco, California, on Tuesday, June 8, 2003, for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. This is disk number 1.

Okay, when were you born?

MR. NAGLE: Nineteen-thirty-nine.

MR. BERKSON: What date?

MR. NAGLE: Two-twenty-one-thirty-nine: February 21st.

[Audio break.]

MR. BERKSON: All right. You were born February 21, 1939. You grew up in – you were born in San Francisco.

MR. NAGLE: Born in San Francisco –

MR. BERKSON: You were raised in San Francisco?

MR. NAGLE: Mm-hmm, raised in San Francisco.

MR. BERKSON: In what neighborhood?

MR. NAGLE: Well, between Glen Park and the Excelsior, which is basically in the Outer Mission.

MR. BERKSON: Is that Badger Street?

MR. NAGLE: Badger Street. My father still lives there.

MR. BERKSON: Is it near where you live today, near –

MR. NAGLE: It’s five minutes from where I live. Yeah, I live in Bernal Heights. My dad is – you know, which makes it convenient for – you know, because he’s 91, so –

MR. BERKSON: So you can go visit him?

MR. NAGLE: Yeah, take care of things.

MR. BERKSON: So how was it growing up in that neighborhood in the ‘40s and ‘50s? It’s still a predominately Latino neighborhood.

MR. NAGLE: Not in that neighborhood, it isn’t.

MR. BERKSON: It isn’t?

MR. NAGLE: Well, I mean, it may be slightly more now, and it was – it’s pretty white bread. I mean it was probably as close to suburbia as was available in the ‘40s and ‘50s. My father had a business at 22nd and Mission, and actually his partner was Latino – a radio and appliance business.

MR. BERKSON: Was it sales and service?

MR. NAGLE: Sales, service. Exactly. Sales, service, whatever.

MR. BERKSON: Did he work on the first TVs?

MR. NAGLE: Yeah, yeah, so I had one of the first TVs in San Francisco – so I’m pretty influenced by that, particularly Milton Berle and –

MR. BERKSON: Uh-huh. And – but then, what about the neighborhood culture at that time?

MR. NAGLE: Pretty white. [Laughs.]

MR. BERKSON: It was then?

MR. NAGLE: Oh, yeah, definitely.

MR. BERKSON: When did the Latino influence begin –

MR. NAGLE: Well, I think it’s always been there, but not in that neighborhood, because it was further – kind of further – it was this little enclave, or whatever you call it, you know, between Glen Park and the Excelsior, and I think there’s always been some degree of, you know, the Latino. But – and I certainly was aware of it, because my sensibilities were, I don’t know, affected by things like the zoot suit and stuff, and flat tops. I mean, there was, sort of, this funny kind of spillover on the periphery, which I – my father is a pretty right-wing guy, and very threatened by anything other than pretty white-bread stuff – because I grew up listening to black music, which he didn’t go for that at all.

And so a lot of the things that I think were influenced by the Latino culture, like pegged pants – I got kicked out of junior high for pegging my pants, you know? So I mean – and, in fact, he pulled strings, as he put it, so I wouldn’t have to go to James Denman or Balboa, which were what he called, “not having to associate with undesirables.” This was his euphemism for nonwhites basically. [Laughs.]

MR. BERKSON: What was the name of the first school that you went to?

MR. NAGLE: James Denman Junior High and Balboa High School. I didn’t go to those. Every kid in my neighborhood went to those schools. He pulled strings so I could go – which in retrospect was probably good; I got a better education. I went to Aptos and to Lincoln.

MR. BERKSON: Uh-huh.

MR. NAGLE: But it was very – disconcerting at the time, because I couldn’t go to school with my friends in the neighborhood. So he got some guy to come up with a phony address that I said I lived in St. Francis Wood, which was probably one of the more upscale neighborhoods, and still is –

MR. BERKSON: Still is.

MR. NAGLE: – in the city, and wangled. And I’m sure he had my best interests at heart, it wouldn’t be very PC today. [Laughs.] So anyway. So I did not go to school, and you know – I mean, both of those of schools were totally white. I think there was one black kid in – when I went to Lincoln and he was like the mascot.

MR. BERKSON: Uh-huh. Where did – was it the neighborhood or elsewhere that you picked up your involvement in the car culture?

MR. NAGLE: It was from my friends in junior high and high school. There was a guy named Steve Archer, who had a – who was – plugged into – there was a car club off of Ocean Avenue, which is near where I went to junior high, and they were called The Wheelers, and they customized cars. On top of that, I mean, even when I was real young I would – my dad would take me to the Oakland Roadster Show, and I would always pick up Hot Rod magazine and Custom Car magazine and stuff like that. So I was always fascinated by that when I was a kid. And then I ran into this guy who actually started his own body shop eventually and painted cars and stuff.

MR. BERKSON: Who was that?

MR. NAGLE: This guy, Steve Archer.

MR. BERKSON: Oh, Archer? I see.

MR. NAGLE: Yeah, who actually died, I don’t know, a few years ago, probably from breathing too much lacquer fumes.

MR. BERKSON: Did he teach you things like multilayering with lacquer?

MR. NAGLE: Umm, yeah, I mean, I was aware of that. I knew that’s how it was done. I’d seen him do it. And, you know, materials that I still use today, like Bondo and body putty and primer and all that stuff – I mean, all of those things I definitely picked up at an early age from him and other people that were customizing cars. And eventually I got a ‘48 Ford Coupe and we painted my car in his basement.

MR. BERKSON: In Steve Archer’s basement?

MR. NAGLE: Yeah.

MR. BERKSON: Yeah.

MR. NAGLE: Yeah, it was like British racing green, stripped all – you know, the stuff off it. So I did have – yeah.

MR. BERKSON: Did your father have any particular interest in this, or –

MR. NAGLE: Yeah, he – yeah, he was very interested in that; I mean, more the mechanical part of it, but, you know, a lot of my background in terms of making stuff really did come from my father’s showing me – making model airplanes and stuff like that, building – building models and – he taught me – he said, “You always have to sand with the grain.” [Laughs.] That’s an important lesson. But I mean – and my sense of craftsmanship and everything, it really does, sort of, start with him. I mean, he was fairly fanatic, you know? And, he wanted me to learn how to use tools, and he’d get real pissed off if I handled the hammer improperly, he said I was hammering like a girl and stuff like that.

MR. BERKSON: Did he have any particular interest in art, at all, as such?

MR. NAGLE: Um, not –

MR. BERKSON: Any kind of art?

MR. NAGLE: Well, you know, one time I was going through his closet and I saw these little watercolors of these lanterns that he did when he was going to school, and I actually thought they were pretty cool, but basically not. You know, in fact, I think they were quite embarrassed when I decided that I was going to be an artist, at least in the beginning.

MR. BERKSON: Both your parents were?

MR. NAGLE: Oh, yeah. My mother said, “What are you doing that for? You have no talent,” you know, “stop,” you know, like – I mean, they were – this was – you know, they’re pretty negative people really. This was just their way of trying to help me, I guess.

MR. BERKSON: Because your mother a had sort of artistic –

MR. NAGLE: Oh, yeah, they both did. I think they were both really creative people, and my mother had a ceramic club in the basement. She sewed. My father could build anything and was an extremely great craftsman and still is. I mean, he built my whole living room that I still have today from scratch. The furniture and everything. Yeah, they do, and they wouldn’t think of it as art. I mean, I got in – my first set of inklings about wanting to be involved in art were like hanging around North Beach in the ‘50s when everybody was making jewelry.

MR. BERKSON: This is when you were still in high school?

MR. NAGLE: Yeah. Yeah, I started off as a jeweler, you know.

MR. BERKSON: Right, so – I mean, did that come in from North Beach and, sort of, the Beat scene –

MR. NAGLE: Yeah. Yeah, we used to go down to the Bagel Shop [Coexistence Bagel Shop] –

MR. BERKSON: – and the Beatniks?

MR. NAGLE: Yeah, Bagel Shop. And there was a guy named S. Paul Gee across the street, who was a jeweler, and there was another guy named Bob Winston. And around that time I also realized that there were magazines that kind of started – you know, featuring some of this stuff, like Craft Horizons and –

MR. BERKSON: Oh, so you saw those then?

MR. NAGLE: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I was looking at them in high school. And – I’m not sure if I actually saw the magazines in high – but I think so. Yeah, I’m pretty sure I did, and maybe early college. Anyway –

MR. BERKSON: So you were making model airplanes, you were making jewelry –

MR. NAGLE: Yeah.

MR. BERKSON: – and some other kind of metalwork.

MR. NAGLE: Yeah, metalwork. Well, just, you know, making jewelry, you know, and hand-forging, as they say, or casting it. I mean, I actually built my own little centrifuge, because at the time when you were making jewelry, you sort of had to get everything from places that sold dental stuff, so things like casting crowns for teeth and stuff. And coincidentally, my friend Steve Archer actually worked for a dental lab in Stones Town, so I learned, again, on the periphery, stuff about making jewelry through this sort of backdoor way.

MR. BERKSON: Not officially, not through school.

MR. NAGLE: No, not through school. No, I just picked it up on my own, and by the time I was in, you know – started going to college, I’d already been showing my jewelry and exhibiting it.

MR. BERKSON: Where?

MR. NAGLE: Oh, like, you know, state fair, and then there was a jewelry show at Legion of Honor at one point, and I was in that. I was pretty young doing that, and –

MR. BERKSON: Were you selling then?

MR. NAGLE: I might have sold a few things.

MR. BERKSON: Mm-hmm.

MR. NAGLE: Yeah, and I was making wedding rings for people, stuff like that. I mean, so that’s how I started off. And then when I went to San Francisco State, I then took jewelry with this guy named John Ihle, who was a printmaker. He just died.

MR. BERKSON: How do you spell “Ihle”?

MR. NAGLE: I-h-l-e. And he was, kind of, the first guy in college to take me under his wing, and he taught at State. And then there were other people out there that I became close to.

MR. BERKSON: What about Rick Gomez?

MR. NAGLE: Yeah, Rick Gomez was a guy –

MR. BERKSON: You knew him in high school, didn’t you?

MR. NAGLE: Yeah, well, actually I knew him not in high school as much. I knew his girlfriend from high school at the time, and what actually happened was, he came to see me when I was first going to San Francisco State. He looked me up or something, as I remember and said, you know, “I saw your jewelry; I like it,” blah, blah, blah. He was in high school at the time. He was like a high school prodigy and could throw and –

MR. BERKSON: He was making ceramics.

MR. NAGLE: He was making ceramics in high school, and this was when they, you know, had good art programs in high school, and I think he was going to either Westmoor High. And he said – and I was trying to learn how to throw and learn about ceramics, and I wasn’t –

MR. BERKSON: Already?

MR. NAGLE: Already, yeah.

MR. BERKSON: What were you doing?

MR. NAGLE: Well, yeah, I was starting, but I wasn’t doing very well. And then a guy that was teaching ceramics there, a guy named John Magnani, he died, and I was kind of like floating around –

MR. BERKSON: Spell his name.

MR. NAGLE: Gee, I don’t know. Like Anna Magnani. I don’t know –

MR. BERKSON: Oh, Magnani –

MR. NAGLE: And then he died, and it was – so anyway, Gomez said, “Hey, listen, I’ll make a deal with you, you know; you show me how to – everything you know about jewelry, and I’ll show you everything I know about ceramics.” And so – and he was already doing, you know, really pretty astounding things for a – you know, he was, like, 17 or 18, and he lived in Daly City. And so he and I were really good friends for a while. So we did – I did that. I mean, I showed him all my jewelry stuff and everything I knew, and he taught me how to throw and – I sort of picked a little bit up, but I just couldn’t get it, and then he just finally kind of –

MR. BERKSON: Back a little bit, though. What drew you to ceramics before that?

MR. NAGLE: Oh, well, you know, I mean, I always tell people – and this is basically true – that my mother, you know, had a ceramics club in the basement, and I didn’t know any of those things that she was doing would have a big influence on me. And I still use the techniques today, but things that were peculiar to the hobbyist, like slip-casting and china painting and low-fire –

MR. BERKSON: Yeah.

MR. NAGLE: – ceramics and bright colors and all this stuff. I mean, these are things – and decals. All of that stuff was stuff that she was doing in the early ‘50s with a bunch of women in the basement, and at the time of abstract expressionism and then the new clay movement, which was starting. It was – that would have been considered very uncool, you know, to use any of that stuff.

So, I mean, I was interested, and – but not that much, you know? I just sort of gravitated towards it. And it was actually Gomez who told me about Voulkos and the whole L.A. – you know, what was going on in L.A. He had – I don’t know where he had picked up the info, but it was one of those – information was pretty scarce. I mean, it certainly wasn’t in the mainstream art magazines, and it wasn’t in even Craft Horizons, which was, you know, heresy at the time, you know, even though it certainly was celebrated later, but –

MR. BERKSON: Is this what they called the studio pottery movement?

MR. NAGLE: Yeah, yeah. So there were people like Marguerite Wildenhain and – oh, god, you know, Harvey Littleton. There’s a whole lot of people that – when we, Pete [Peter Voulkos] started doing this, I mean, they said, you know, this is horrible; what has he done to the field, you know? And he had already done everything they could do in spades, and bigger and better.

MR. BERKSON: Okay, wait a minute. Which side of the line of the studio pottery line was he on?

MR. NAGLE: Well, he started on the right side. [Laughs.] I mean, he was doing – Pete had – was in Montana, and, I mean, everybody pretty much knows the story – and started making traditional – I always do like this, which is this, sort of, amphora – you know, with the small neck, kind of, you know, classic stoneware pottery. And as the story goes – and who knows whether it’s true or not – I mean, he saw in a magazine, you know, a piece that he says, “I could make that.” And it said three inches, except he thought it said three feet.

MR. BERKSON: Uh-huh.

MR. NAGLE: So he says, “I can do that,” and he made these things bigger than anybody, and better, and better crafted and more well-thrown, and, you know, entered shows and so forth. And he was “the guy” in that realm.

MR. BERKSON: So the studio pottery at that moment was the more conservative –

MR. NAGLE: Well, it was, like – you know, that was the mainstream movement.

MR. BERKSON: That was the mainstream –

MR. NAGLE: That was what was going on. I mean –

MR. BERKSON: Okay.

MR. NAGLE: – I don’t know if it was conservative. I mean, but –

MR. BERKSON: Compared to him.

MR. NAGLE: Yeah, compared – well, compared to him – I mean, he hadn’t broken out yet, you know. That was just starting to happen, you know. I mean, a lot of people just thought this was – you know, that he’d betrayed everybody, at least the people that I was talking to, because I was working at – by that time, working at a little place out at the Cliff House, which was a gift shop, I think for the American Craftsmen Council or something. And we used to sit there – and by this time I was in something called the Metal Arts Guild. I had been, sort of, accepted as a jeweler at that point.

MR. BERKSON: And this was when you were at San Francisco State?

MR. NAGLE: Yeah, yeah, I think the early days of State, and by that time I think I was married or almost married, and pretty young, and – to my first wife. And anyway – and they told me, you know, like, oh, my god, what is Pete doing, you know?

MR. BERKSON: Mm-hmm.

MR. NAGLE: Eventually everybody tried to get on the bandwagon, but most of them couldn’t pull it off because their roots were too deep in the other thing.

MR. BERKSON: Okay, so you went to San Francisco State –

MR. NAGLE: Yeah.

MR. BERKSON: – starting about – again, in about 1958?

MR. NAGLE: Yeah, ‘57, I don’t know. How old –

MR. BERKSON: Yeah, yeah.

MR. NAGLE: Yeah, around in there.

MR. BERKSON: And you were an English major.

MR. NAGLE: Yeah, I was. Yup, I was.

MR. BERKSON: Although you graduated with a BFA.

MR. NAGLE: Yeah, in art. I changed my major.

MR. BERKSON: So you changed.

MR. NAGLE: Yeah, I changed my major –

MR. BERKSON: You went in as an English major because –

MR. NAGLE: Because I liked it in – you know, in high school I was interested in –

MR. BERKSON: Were you writing?

MR. NAGLE: I was not writing so much, although I did write a little bit, you know?

MR. BERKSON: Had you started writing songs?

MR. NAGLE: I wrote a couple of really dumb kind of, you know, doo-wop songs in the ‘50s when we – for a little band we put together when I – when we graduated. And I was always very interested in that. And – but I hadn’t done it as such, but there were things that, the thing that always impressed me – and I say this in other interviews – you know, Spoon River Anthology [Edgar Lee Masters. New York: Macmillan Company, 1916]. Do you –

MR. BERKSON: Mm-hmm.

MR. NAGLE: Just because it was so succinct, and it was all said in a few short little things, and to me that also was a parallel to what great songs are, is to try to get as much as you can in as short an amount of words as possible. So I – I think in high school at the time – I was actually reading a lot of stuff that, you know, kids don’t even read till college now -- but, Shakespeare and all kinds of other things that – I’m sure some schools do. So I was interested, but – and so I thought, well, I didn’t know what I wanted to do, you know? But there was a guy in high school my last year when I – maybe that’s, I think, when I first started getting interested in ceramics, my last year of high school, where I would take a slab of clay and drape it over a basketball and make a free-form, as they called it, you know, one of the – kidney-shaped with a hole in the middle or something.

MR. BERKSON: Who was that?

MR. NAGLE: A guy – his name was Scott Amour. And he said –

MR. BERKSON: Like “love”?

MR. NAGLE: Yeah, like “love.”

MR. BERKSON: Scott with two Ts?

MR. NAGLE: I guess so, yeah. I mean, I don’t know how I remember all of this all these years, but I mean – and he – but he was the guy that said, hey, listen, you know, you like this art stuff. He said, why don’t you go out to San Francisco State? And there’s a guy named Seymour Locks out there.

MR. BERKSON: So it was Scott Amour that led you to Locks?

MR. NAGLE: Yeah, basically.

MR. BERKSON: Uh-huh.

MR. NAGLE: He said, when you go out there, you should take a course from Seymour. By that time there were people –

MR. BERKSON: He was a sculptor.

MR. NAGLE: Yeah, yeah, Seymour was a sculptor, but you know, my interests have always been much more far-reaching than just ceramics, I mean, and so – you know, and then when I started taking art history, I mean, I just was a complete sucker for all of it, you know, even –

So anyway, I remember at the time there was a pizza place -- and this was during the height of the Beatnik thing – you know, a pizza place on Ocean Avenue called Biaggio’s, and there was a guy named Roland Hall, who painted these huge abstract expressionist paintings. He also worked there. And I just thought this was the coolest stuff in the world, you know. And then – actually Sam Tchakalian was a student there at the time and Roy De Forest and – well, those are the two people that actually continued to work. I don’t know what happened to Roland Hall, probably became a junkie or something, I don’t know. [Laughs.] Anyway, but I just remember – you know, remember him because he did these huge, like, you know, 10-foot canvases, and, you know, they were hanging in this pizza place on Ocean Avenue. I thought, wow, man, this is really cool.

And this again, you know, was when I was still in high school. So that’s where I, you know – I mean, I think, you know, the die was cast; I mean, eventually I was going to become an art major, but –

MR. BERKSON: Did you go to places like the Six and so forth when you were –

MR. NAGLE: You know, I didn’t know about that at the time.

MR. BERKSON: You didn’t?

MR. NAGLE: I mean, you know, there was a certain – this whole – the thing that’s really interesting about that is, you know, like the Art Institute, or the California School of Fine Arts, as it was called at the time, was almost like another country. It was, like, very, very mysterious, and you know, we used to go to Halloween parties there and – you know, like in high school, and thought this was the coolest thing in the world, but it was like another world on the other side of the city, you know? And so a lot of what was going on, you know, I knew about in retrospect.

MR. BERKSON: But you – but while you were at State, you went to a very important lecture at the California School of Fine Arts, by Takemoto.

MR. NAGLE: Yeah, well, that was actually – what happened there was –

MR. BERKSON: Henry Takemoto.

MR. NAGLE: Yeah. What happened was, once I found out about Voulkos from Gomez, you know, I wanted to work with him, and he was still in L.A. So by this time I started seeing work that was done by some of his – you know, for a lack of better words – disciples, Henry being one of them. Henry was doing these big hand-built, loose, kind of egg-shaped vessels, and stuff, with a kind of – I don’t know. He was from Hawaii so they kind of have this sort of – [inaudible]. But they were really cool. And Henry was the closest thing to Pete I could get to. So he was teaching a summer school course.

MR. BERKSON: At the Art Institute?

MR. NAGLE: Yeah, at the Art Institute. And so I said, okay, I’m going to that, you know. If I couldn’t be with the master, I could be with one of the disciples.

So at that point Henry showed slides of the various people who were working in L.A., and that pretty much – that was it; that was my epiphany. That was when I said, okay, that’s what I’m going to do and that’s what I want to be; I want to be part of that. And eventually I did meet Pete. I think he came to State. I mean, I may have it backwards, that he came to State first, but I don’t think so. I think I saw these things that, you know – the people that I was most impressed by besides Pete himself, at least in the slides, were Kenny Price and Michael Frimkess, just because they were, I don’t know, a little more quirky – and Kenny for a variety of reasons, particularly the color options. I mean, at that point, even though it was just beginning to start, I mean, most ceramic was stoneware and it was brown and white and blue. That was it. So Kenny really made a major move by, introducing low-fire and introducing the palette, which, you know, most people would associate with a hobbyist sensibility. And anyway, so that was – yeah, that was basically my light bulb. You know, okay, count me in. And that was also a point where Henry had said, you know, “If you want to be great, you must hang with great ones.” I mean, he’s got this in pidgin English. “You want to be great, hang with great ones.” [Laughs.] It was, like, out of a bad cowboy-and-Indian movie.

MR. BERKSON: But then very soon after that – do you remember what year that –

MR. NAGLE: Gawd, man, you know, I don’t know, about ‘59.

MR. BERKSON: When you met him?

MR. NAGLE: Maybe. I mean, I may have it completely wrong, you know? But I basically took a lot of that stuff and took it back to State, and along with a lot of other things that I’d started seeing. I mean, a complete maniac for every art magazine that came out, so I was – particularly painting, you know? And I was a huge [Antoni] Tapies fan. [Giorgio] Morandi – you know, Morandi – the full significance of Morandi for me kind of came later, but I mean, you know, any kind of new magazine that would come, I was, like, waiting there for the mailman. This was in the library or something. You know, it was, like – I was so nuts about it for many, many years. And so anyhow, as I said, you know, I put everything I kind of knew together and started doing screwy stuff at State, doing big, huge walls, kind of, you know, John Mason, style. I mean, I was up – you know, I was copping everybody’s bag at that point.

MR. BERKSON: And then very soon after you left State you became –

MR. NAGLE: Well, what happened was there was a guy by this time after Magnani had died and they had a substitute guy for a while. Then a guy named “Bud” McKee – Charles McKee – was teaching at San Francisco State, and he was there for many, many years. And he kind of took me under his wing, although I wasn’t really, you know, that much influenced by what he was doing. I learned a lot of stuff from him, but I was pretty much on my own, you know – on my own deal after having seen what I considered the real thing, you know? I mean, McKee had gone to Mills, actually. He was a classmate of [Robert] Arneson’s and worked with Prieto at the time. And he eventually – you know, he actually begged me to stay. He said, “No, you could get a master’s degree here working with me.” But I – you know, I had my eyes set on working with Pete. And I think he was quite disturbed by that, I mean, but he was good to me in terms of he gave me a little space to work.

MR. BERKSON: McKee was disturbed by that?

MR. NAGLE: Yeah. I mean, yeah, he was disturbed by the fact that I was leaving, but he also gave me a little place to work. But it was also very weird. It was like, “Okay, you can work back here, but don’t let too many people know what you’re doing.” I mean it was really sort of off-limits, and I remember this guy McKenna came in, who was the dean of fine arts. Actually they named the theater after him. One time when I was reclining on a table smoking a Pall Mall, which was the artist’s cigarette, in my Bill de Kooning Oshkosh overalls, which I still wear to this day – a different pair, a different size. [Laughs.] But anyway, you know, talking to a female student, and this guy McKenna comes in and told the guy who was before McKee, a guy named Louie Ferrario – and he said, what is this guy doing? He’s behaving in a manner unbecoming a lab assistant. And then he saw what I was making, and he was absolutely appalled. I was making these covered jars which were influenced by people like Frimkess and Tapies, and, you know, it was sort of my – and they absolutely hated what I was doing. So, you know, being rebellious by nature from day one, I just took this as a sign that, okay, I’m on the right track. You know, fuck these guys; I’m outta here – which is what happened.

But I applied for graduate school. I had no idea what you’re supposed to do – I mean proper slides, any of that – and I applied to Berkeley and I didn’t get in, and I was absolutely heartbroken. So I went over and talked to Pete. By that time I had met Pete. He had come out to State and given a lecture, and I hung out with him, and that’s, you know, as the story goes, which is – you know, he was smoking a cigar, and he took a cigar out to light it and I wanted to impress him, and I took my matches out to light the cigar and the whole pack went up in my hands in this big, kind of, blast of flame. And he just looked at me without missing a beat, and he said, “That’ll teach you to believe.” And it did. [Laughs.] And from that point on I was in. So I went out to Berkeley. By this time he’d been fired from L.A., from the – what was then called the Art – County Art Institute, later – now known as the Otis. And the whole idea, – I mean, of the lore, the mystique, of just the people that were his followers which – you know, people like Billy Al Bengston and Kenny Price and the whole L.A. art scene. You know. And these guys climbed in windows after dark to work all around the clock and not being part of the actual enrolled student body. I mean, this all was just great – fascinating to me, a big draw, you know?

MR. BERKSON: You went to Los Angeles a lot –

MR. NAGLE: Oh, yeah, yeah. We made pilgrimages a lot.

MR. BERKSON: Yeah.

MR. NAGLE: Well, so we’ll get to that, but, yeah, we did go a lot, because my roots were not up here at all. I couldn’t relate to Bay Area art at all. I mean, there are people I like and respect, I mean like Joan [Brown] and Manuel [Neri] and – but I just – you know, I was much more interested in the L.A. aesthetic, and particularly the Ferus Gallery.

So anyway I talked to Pete and I said, “Gawd, how come I didn’t get in?” You know? And he says, “I don’t know.” And he could have been – you know, he may have known. He may not have known. I don’t know. But he says, “You don’t want to go to school anyway, do you?” And I said, “No, I just want to work with you.” And he said okay. And he said, “Do you want a job?” I said yeah. And he said, “Okay, you can be the assistant, and you can mix clay and do whatever, you know, around here, and I’ll give you a little room to work and give you a little studio.” And that was it. And that was in the old, you know, what was formerly a women’s housing building, which is now where the – you know, the museum is. It was, like, under that site. You know, that’s where it was. There was a little hot dog stand called Oscar’s there. And he – you know, he built kilns, and we all worked in the basement of that room, and then he had – I think up on the third or fourth floor he had his painting studio, and that was headquarters. That was the first UC shop, you know? And so that was really the roots or the – you know, the ground floor of the Bay Area part of this whole, you know, thing. And that’s where I met Jim Melchert, who was his first graduate student at Berkeley. I mean, there were other people who came on later, like Stephen De Staebler – maybe around the same time, but as I remember, Jim was, like, the first guy I met whose work I really liked a lot because he had his own really kind of, you know, personal, sort of brute-dumb kind of thing that not too many people could pull off. And so, anyway – I was part of that whole –

MR. BERKSON: Let’s take a moment here.

MR. NAGLE: Yeah.

[Audio break.]

MR. BERKSON: You want to tell about the visits to the L.A. scene?

MR. NAGLE: Sure. Once – let’s see. Well, somewhere between my going to Berkeley and being at State there was a guy who was a friend of mine named Ed Bereal – B-e-r-e-a-l. Ed now – still teaches at – in Washington.

MR. BERKSON: B-e-r?

MR. NAGLE: Yeah, B-e-r-e-a-l.

MR. BERKSON: Oh, I see.

MR. NAGLE: And Ed was a bit of an anomaly. He was very tight with everybody in the L.A. art scene – you know, from Joe Goode to Kenny Price and, you know, Ed Ruscha and Bob Irwin. He studied with Bob Irwin. And so he was – he was a black guy, which was pretty much of a rarity at the time for somebody that was, you know, working in the ‘50s in, you know, mainstream L.A. art. And he did a lot of really neat constructions, I guess you’d call them, not a lot of them, but he was very plugged in, was, you know – and knew all the collectors like Monty Factor and, you know, people like that. And he also knew all the people at the Ferus Gallery.

MR. BERKSON: He was in L.A.?

MR. NAGLE: He was in L.A. at the time, but moved up here. And he was our, sort of, conduit or connection to the L.A. scene, and he became a, you know, real good friend of mine up here, and I’m trying to remember exactly how I met him. It may have been through John Coplans, but I’m not positive, because by that time John Coplans was the editor of Artforum, and he had been responsible for putting together the "Abstract Expressionist Ceramics Show" and so forth. So my time may be a little bit off.

MR. BERKSON: That’s a little later.

MR. NAGLE: A little bit later, yeah. But anyway, somehow I met Ed, and I’m trying to remember now how, but so we became fast friends, and both our interests were in a particular kind of art, basically L.A. art, and music, you know, blues and stuff like that. And so, through him, we – myself and then, you know, later on Melchert sometimes and – you know, we’d go down to L.A. and see what was going on, and at that point I was starting to get, you know, all the posters from the shows that were happening at the Ferus Gallery. And those were really, you know, my roots in terms of a certain kind of aesthetic, both, you know, in terms of small-scale work and, you know, this little, very intimate gallery where they were showing people like, you know, Larry Bell, who was, like, 21 at the time, Kenny Price, Bengston. It was the first place I saw Cornell boxes. It’s the first place I saw Morandi drawings. So I was really, you know –

MR. BERKSON: They showed Morandi at Ferus?

MR. NAGLE: Yeah, yeah, they had a Morandi drawing show. I mean, Walter Hopps and, you know – and then Irving Blum; I mean, they really had a pretty astute eye even, you know, then. I mean – so we used to go down a lot for those shows, drive down in my ‘51 Chevrolet panel truck – sedan delivery – and just pile in the back and just head down there. Anyway –

MR. BERKSON: Is that – did – and you met Ken Price down there?

MR. NAGLE: Eventually I met Kenny down there, yeah. Yeah, and I’m sure Ed first introduced me to Kenny.

MR. BERKSON: Were you immediately impressed with his work?

MR. NAGLE: Well, I was immediately impressed the minute I saw one of his slides that Henry showed. I mean, that was the guy that was just – you know, it was beautiful, poetic, you know, goofy stuff that I – there wasn’t anything like it. I mean, there wasn’t anything like it in mainstream art, and there wasn’t anything like it in ceramics. It was like, whoa, man, you know, this is something else. You know? I mean, you could just – certain things you can just tell, you know, it’s a cut above.

MR. BERKSON: They refer to the cup forms that he made as exploded cup forms. What’s exploded?

MR. NAGLE: I have no idea. [Laughs.] I don’t know what that means.

MR. BERKSON: It’s not your terminology?

MR. NAGLE: No, uh-uh. I mean, I later got on the cup bandwagon too. I mean, he and I at this point are both known for making cups, though I’m not making any right now. But –

MR. BERKSON: And you made cups together, too.

MR. NAGLE: Yeah, we did. That was much later.

MR. BERKSON: Much, much later, yeah.

MR. NAGLE: It was much later, you know, in the ‘80s or ‘90s.

MR. BERKSON: Right.

MR. NAGLE: He’s a good friend of mine, you know. But he’s the guy – and in terms of ceramic people, I mean, he’s the guy that brought, you know, the biggest influence on me – just in terms of a standard, you know, if nothing else. I mean, certainly there were many things, just visual things that I got from him. There’s no question about that, but you could – I mean, if you were going to aspire to be really good, you know, this guy had it.

MR. BERKSON: I want to talk about that, the various things that combined to, sort of, set your own standards. And Voulkos was part of that.

MR. NAGLE: Sure.

MR. BERKSON: Price was part of that.

MR. NAGLE: Yup.

MR. BERKSON: Voulkos – was it Voulkos who introduced you to Momoyama [1573-1603] –

MR. NAGLE: Yeah.

MR. BERKSON: – traditional Japanese –

MR. NAGLE: Yeah, yeah.

MR. BERKSON: – 16th-, 17th-century –

MR. NAGLE: Yes, right, right.

MR. BERKSON: – Japanese ceramics, so that’s –

MR. NAGLE: Certainly that came into play. I mean, you know, we –

MR. BERKSON: Was it Voulkos that –

MR. NAGLE: Yeah, I mean, I had not seen that much stuff – again, I think probably he had showed slides and, you know, a few things, but he used to get all these Japanese pottery books from Japan, and I used to see them in his studio. And that’s where I actually – just, you know, thumbing through those and going, oh, man, this is something else. You know? This is like another level. And, I mean, there were people that were trying to, you know, teach the Western world about how great it was, except they were always the wrong people, like Bernard Leach or [Shoji] Hamada. I mean, that stuff was crap, you know? I mean, of course, this is heresy to some people for me saying saying that, but it is. I mean, I’m glad that they were opening up people’s eyes to that new aesthetic, but – for the Western world, but – anyway, I mean, I just looked at everything. And so everything I ever saw, all the great classics of Japanese pottery, were always in these books, you know? And just seeing those – the profile of those pieces and, you know, the fact that a certain “A” side was shot and this is the one that they wanted the world to know had a very big influence on how I thought about my own work, which basically reads, is meant to be read flat, you know?

MR. BERKSON: Mm-hmm. And that leads to another big area. I mean, in a way, your sculpture is as much influenced by two-dimensional painting –

MR. NAGLE: Probably more so –

MR. BERKSON: – as anything else. I mean –

MR. NAGLE: Yeah, probably more so. I mean, occasionally people will try to legitimize me or think that they’re being complimentary by saying, “You know, it’s almost sculpture.” You know? And it’s like – I mean, I’m insulted. I mean, I think they think they’re being nice, you know? Well, it’s just a fucking pot, you know? But it’s much more influenced by painting.

MR. BERKSON: And you put in your time – some time -- making paintings, too.

MR. NAGLE: Well, when I was going to school I did, and I still think of these things, you know, without sounding pretentious, but I think of them as more – as much paintings as I do pots or objects or whatever. I mean, the way that I want them to read is head-on, flat, and, you know, on a formal level, or definitely considered from a painting point of view, you know?

MR. BERKSON: I read somewhere that, for instance, seeing Morandi – it may have been first seeing him at the Ferus Gallery – inspired your first cups.

MR. NAGLE: I don’t know if that’s necessarily true. I mean, what did – well, it’s – you know, I can’t say it’s not true. I mean, the cup thing per se is – Kenny was the first guy that really made these beautiful, poetic cups. In terms of profile, you know, and stuff like that, I mean, you’re right that Morandi had a lot to do with it, because the way he rendered objects in this very unassuming, loose way and the way that they were basically flat representations of a three-dimensional object and yet were just still this vehicle for, you know, a serene, kind of peaceful, meditative feeling, just doing these dumb little objects, I mean it was like magic. Now, how the hell – how do you that? And so for me, I just wanted to be able to make pots or objects or cups that had that same kind of movement that felt like they were drawn. So I think you’re right in that sense, yes. I think I probably first saw him in slides, and then I actually went down and – and then books, and then I actually went down and saw him at the Ferus. A lot of ceramic people are very much influenced by Morandi, I think, because of the way he rendered or represented dumb kind of objects.

MR. BERKSON: How about other painters? I mean, there’s a list of four or five other painters, like Ryder?

MR. NAGLE: Yeah.

MR. BERKSON: I’m interested in what you saw in his –

MR. NAGLE: Well, Ryder, all the people that I like – and, again, you know, I’m not saying that maybe the influence is that overt, but all the people were in small scale, for one thing. So you’ve kind of got this – although I remember when I was a kid, one of the biggest charges of, you know, Easter was having those Easter eggs where you’d peep in the little hole and see this little scene on the inside of this little, you know, egg-shaped world. You know? And I kind of thought about that in terms of the smaller work, and Albert Ryder was certainly one of them, particularly – [END TAPE 1 SIDE A.] – the real simple ones with just, again, a rock and, you know, a sea plane and a sky plane and that rock. I don’t remember what the name of that is.

MR. BERKSON: Moonlit Cove [c.1911]?

MR. NAGLE: Yeah, that’s the one.

MR. BERKSON: Yeah.

MR. NAGLE: Yeah, Moonlit Cove.

MR. BERKSON: Yeah, and a cloud –

MR. NAGLE: Yeah, that’s it.

MR. BERKSON: – above the sea.

MR. NAGLE: You know, you see this sort of weird edge around the cloud, you know? It’s like, “Man, that’s the heaviest.” And the simplicity, you know, and the power of that little thing. And certainly Vermeer. I mean, you know, again –

MR. BERKSON: And [Joseph] Cornell.

MR. NAGLE: And Cornell. But – Cornell, the same thing, but he’s dealing basically with a flat space you, sort of, look into. I mean – and I don’t know, who else?

MR. BERKSON: [Joseph] Albers?

MR. NAGLE: Albers definitely. Again, you know, the color relationship.

MR. BERKSON: Is more color.

MR. NAGLE: You know, more for color, but –

MR. BERKSON: And [Mark] Rothko is –

MR. NAGLE: Yeah, that too. You know, I’m interested in that, you know.

MR. BERKSON: You know he’s quite big.

MR. NAGLE: Yeah, I mean definitely. Yeah, definitely. I mean, there’s other people more recently. You know? Obviously [Philip] Guston, you know, because of the similar issues and just a certain kind of simplicity, the way things are – really basically just, kind of, capture the essence of something in this very, kind of, direct way. You know, I was interested in Cy Twombly even then in the ‘50s; Tapies, which is not small-scale work, but, you know, his golden period for me was, like, around 1958. And one of the things that attracted me about him was that, I mean, it looked like clay, you know, and it – but they had this sort of constructed, unassuming quality about them, like you might trip over that in the street or something, you know, like – it would, like, you know, some asphalt you might – except there was a certain kind of poetic order to it that, you know, wasn’t just by happenstance, but almost. I mean, he really was able to snag that beautifully.

MR. BERKSON: Mm-hmm.

MR. NAGLE: And so him definitely.

MR. BERKSON: And [Edward] Hopper?

MR. NAGLE: Hopper, yeah – later Hopper.

MR. BERKSON: Hopper within the small scale?

MR. NAGLE: Yeah.

MR. BERKSON: Was else about him?

MR. NAGLE: Mood, I guess.

MR. BERKSON: Uh-huh.

MR. NAGLE: I think, you know, for me the most important thing about any work is if the vibe, you know, the feel, and the kind of presence and quality that something has that you can’t quite feel anywhere else, and that’s – you know?

MR. BERKSON: Okay, around the early ‘60s, I guess it was after working with Voulkos and after familiarizing yourself with the L.A. scene and other things, Morandi and other things, around that time, you’re doing cups, you’re doing your own innovations, including introducing china paints –

MR. NAGLE: Right.

MR. BERKSON: – and multilayering –

MR. NAGLE: Right.

MR. BERKSON: – together, and airbrush –

MR. NAGLE: Right.

MR. BERKSON: – to, you know, sort of what you would call a “serious” ceramic.

MR. NAGLE: Right. [Laughs.] A “serious” ceramic. Yeah, I mean – yeah, yeah, that –

MR. BERKSON: Serious/hilarious ceramics.

MR. NAGLE: Yeah, I mean, little by little that crept its way in, definitely. I don’t – you know, first of all, with the airbrush thing, you know, it was a hybrid of influences, certainly Billy Al Bengston, who came to my last show in L.A., and I was so pleased to see him. And I said, “You know, I got half this shit from you, man.” And he was, like, “Oh, come on.” You know? Like, “Aw, man.” He was very complimentary.

MR. BERKSON: You mean you hadn’t met him before?

MR. NAGLE: Oh, I’ve met many times over the years, but you know, he was very – you know, he really liked the show a lot. And I said, “You know all this stuff,” because he did this, you know, like, straight line and then he’d have a fade-off going from that. I mean, he did that around those sergeant’s stripes and those Dracula paintings and stuff, and he was using the airbrush, again, something that in the realm of environment of abstract expressionism was probably a pretty bold move, because it was, again, something that a commercial artist might use or whatever. So it was funny when I told him that. I said, “You know, this whole device of, you know, having a line and then fading out from it, you know” – and he said, “Oh, listen, I copped that from [Richard] Diebenkorn.” [Laughs.] So, I mean, who knows who started –

MR. BERKSON: – get something from somebody else.

MR. NAGLE: Sure, you know. Well, anyhow – so his paintings – and I thought he was also a brilliant a colorist. I mean, he took Albers, and then added a pop element to it, and the combination of those two things really is appealing to me. And so anyhow, that in conjunction with stuff that – I’d seen my mother using china paints. I thought, “I’m going to learn how to spray this stuff on and fire it.” And so I started working on a formula, which took a little while to figure out what to do, but mixing some china paint and oil and then trying to find the proper thinner, which actually turned out to be acetone, and where I could get it to hit and dry immediately and then fire it. But if you use the wrong solvent, it goes into the kiln and then just runs right off, melts off the piece. So it took a while to figure that out, you know?

MR. BERKSON: So when was this development?

MR. NAGLE: Hmmm, I guess the early ‘60s.

MR. BERKSON: The early ‘60s.

MR. NAGLE: Yeah. And then I really started, kind of, getting it down to a fine degree, if you could call it that, maybe around, you know, my first – sort of what I call my first comeback show in 1975, where I sort of got it together at that point and really started doing many more multiple layers and had the formula down. But it kind of evolved.

MR. BERKSON: Over 15 years –

MR. NAGLE: Yeah, yeah. I mean, I first started doing it, like I say, early on, but really I’d say probably ‘70, ‘73, ‘-4, ‘-5 is when I really started getting into it.

MR. BERKSON: Even though you didn’t – and we’ll get to the business about showing –

MR. NAGLE: Yeah.

MR. BERKSON: – later on, but people saw these things in the early ‘60s.

MR. NAGLE: Yeah, like in magazines.

MR. BERKSON: In magazines.

MR. NAGLE: Yeah –

MR. BERKSON: But also, you know, other artists.

MR. NAGLE: Well, yeah, there was, like, a show, which really doesn’t get as much credit as it deserves, which is sort of a precursor to the “Abstract Expressionist Show,” which was at the Art Institute, and I think that –

MR. BERKSON: “Six Artists.”

MR. NAGLE: Yeah, “Six Artists.” And by that time I think I was teaching there. Melchert got me a job –

MR. BERKSON: Right.

MR. NAGLE: – and I started teaching at the Art Institute.

MR. BERKSON: Well, that was ‘63. That’s pretty early.

MR. NAGLE: Yeah, you know, and that show, you know, I think was pretty important at the time. I mean, a lot of –

MR. BERKSON: Who put that show together?

MR. NAGLE: You know, I can’t remember whether Jim had something to do with it. I even remember the announcement for it, which I wish I had now, which was a giant cone pack with this cone falling over. I’m not sure. I can’t remember. I mean at that time – most of us were just, I would say, almost drunk all the time. I mean, so like, things like details like who the curator was or who was – and I was highly irresponsible. [Laughs.] I mean, to say the very least.

MR. BERKSON: I want to, sort of, save that until we talk about shows generally –

MR. NAGLE: Oh, sure.

MR. BERKSON: – but I’m interested in when you’re making your early work, like you say, even until as late as ‘75, although you had a gallery show –

MR. NAGLE: Yeah.

MR. BERKSON: – in the late ‘60s. What was –

MR. NAGLE: That was at the Dilexi Gallery [1968].

MR. BERKSON: What and who was your audience, in a way –

MR. NAGLE: I don’t know.

MR. BERKSON: Well, I mean among other artists?

MR. NAGLE: Well, I think some other artists probably, you know?

MR. BERKSON: Was it mostly people like Melchert and Price and Voulkos –

MR. NAGLE: Yeah.

MR. BERKSON: What was – since you made small work, what was Voulkos’s attitude?

MR. NAGLE: I mean, he was always encouraging.

MR. BERKSON: He was okay with it?

MR. NAGLE: Yeah, sure, you know? I mean, because, you know, he knew that I was influenced by Kenny, and he – you know, he saw what I was doing, and he was always very encouraging. He’d get involved –

MR. BERKSON: He didn’t insist that other people saw him –

MR. NAGLE: Oh, gawd, never.

MR. BERKSON: – as a monumental –

MR. NAGLE: Everybody did, but I didn’t want to do that. You know?

MR. BERKSON: Yes.

MR. NAGLE: I mean, I was certainly influenced a lot by Price and, I think, Frimkess, you know, at the time, but only Pete could do Pete. Anybody else that would try to emulate that – it was just – it was horrible. You know, there were people that could learn from his sensibility or a variety of other things about him – the way that he worked and did things – but to try to emulate that was ridiculous. I mean, there’s only one guy that could do that.

But you’re right. The first show I had was in ‘68 or ‘69, which was at the Dilexi Gallery, and that was – so people were aware of what I was doing, you know, even early on. And a guy named Jim Newman, who is a friend of mine, and still – and who still collects my work, you know, he started the show. And the Dilexi was originally on Union Street and that’s where I first saw Manuel’s work. It just blew my mind. And this is sort of pre-figurative stuff, where he was just doing these sort of boxy shapes out of plaster and chicken wire, and this idea of permanence, it was really fascinating to me, like, wow, you didn’t care if it – you know, I mean – and it’s just the feel and the kind of sensitivity and the way that they were done.

MR. BERKSON: That’s 1968.

MR. NAGLE: Well – this is – yeah, my show, yeah.

MR. BERKSON: At the Dilexi.

MR. NAGLE: My show, yeah.

MR. BERKSON: So before that you’d seen –

MR. NAGLE: But I’d seen a lot of stuff – when I’d gone down to visit. And so he presented an alternative – I mean, Jim did – at the Dilexi that was on Union Street, an alternative to, kind of, mainstream – you know, what was considered Bay Area art. I mean, he wasn’t showing figurative work that much. He was showing other kinds of stuff – more object-oriented, smaller scale. I mean, it was as close to the Ferus as you could get up here. It was a different sensibility.

MR. BERKSON: He had shown Jay [DeFeo] –

MR. NAGLE: Jay – yeah, and there was actually a big Dilexi show at the Oakland Museum several years ago that Jay and I were in.

MR. BERKSON: Also for you that’s – and I don’t know about for the other – I guess the other people, the people in L.A., could show in galleries like the Ferus –

MR. NAGLE: Yes.

MR. BERKSON: And so you were showing and they were showing not in –

MR. NAGLE: Right, right.

MR. BERKSON: – craft-oriented galleries. You show very rarely in galleries that are specifically oriented –

MR. NAGLE: Well, I do now. I mean –

MR. BERKSON: Garth [Clark]–

MR. NAGLE: Yeah, Garth, who is –

MR. BERKSON: Is it Revolution [Revolution Art Gallery, Detroit, MI]?

MR. NAGLE: Yeah, I don’t – I haven’t shown there in quite a while. They actually – you know, they mix it up also.

MR. BERKSON: What about the place in, is it Michigan?

MR. NAGLE: Yeah, that’s Revolution.

MR. BERKSON: That’s Revolution?

MR. NAGLE: No, they show other stuff. They show –

MR. BERKSON: Okay, so most of your showing is in straight art galleries, right?

MR. NAGLE: Yeah.

MR. BERKSON: Yeah.

MR. NAGLE: In the case of being with Garth, which is very definitely – you know, that was for business reasons, which made sense to both of us. And my career has never done better, because there’s a core audience there and –

MR. BERKSON: Also it is like an intellectual caliber.

MR. NAGLE: Yeah, there’s a higher level, and he’s doing a lot of interesting shows. Now, we can get to that later, but – I mean, about other artists that ordinarily they don’t work in clay, that work in – I mean, he’s raised the bar considerably. But anyway, by and large, yes, I’ve always shown at non – you know – media-specific galleries.

MR. BERKSON: So what was the reception of the Dilexi show, for instance?

MR. NAGLE: I did good. I got a great review, you know, from Tom Albright. Jim had an – you know, an amazing budget for promotion. So, I don’t know if you remember this, but you know I had that guy Chuckie who was on my Bad Rice record, that kind of punky-looking guy, which was a fabrication that was basically done graphically.

MR. BERKSON: How do you spell “Chuckie”?

MR. NAGLE: C-h-u-c-k-i-e. Booth – B-o-o-t-h. That was the character, which was basically me kind of in ‘50s punk drag, and that picture of Chuckie was on every bus in the city with a phone number, and that’s all it had, was his picture and a phone number. And Jim says, “However you want to promote your show, let’s just do it.” So conceptually, I mean, people would call it, you know, something else now, you know? Performance, conceptual art, whatever. I mean, basically a phone number – and this is pre-answering machine, so you had to go down to Pac Bell and rent this huge box, and then they had the phone number, and that box was in my basement with a recording of this song called “631 Clay,” which was the new address of the Dilexi Gallery, Jim’s new location, and basically, you know, playing this song, and the message sort of being don’t go down there. And, of course, everybody went, you know? [Laughs.] So, it was well received in that sense, you know? And it was my first time. I’d gone through long periods of not doing any work, you know, because I was doing, you know, my band, The Mystery Trend. And – but I’d always spend a lot of time thinking about, well, when I get back to it, this is what I’ll do. So I started making these box pieces and so forth. And so I was – you know, I mean, I was already doing the china painting even then, you know? So anyhow, that’s – yeah, that was my first, sort of, credible show, I guess.

MR. BERKSON: Well, the six artists – it was referred to often as –

MR. NAGLE: Yeah.

MR. BERKSON: – “Six Artists in Clay.”

MR. NAGLE: Right, right.

MR. BERKSON: But I see it listed as “Works in Clay by Six Artists [San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, CA].”

MR. NAGLE: Yeah. Yeah.

MR. BERKSON: What’s the difference?

MR. NAGLE: I don’t know. [Laughs.] But you’re right, I think they were referring to both things.

MR. BERKSON: I mean, I think in each instance it’s sort of back to that issue that keeps – that’s going to come up again much more thoroughly later on. You know, there seems to be sort of an insistence there of, like, somewhere the words clay and artists are –

MR. NAGLE: Yeah, they’re supposed to legitimize each other –

MR. BERKSON: They’re legitimizing each other, and they’re conflicting with each other –

MR. NAGLE: Yes.

MR. BERKSON: Sort of like, “Aha, you didn’t think –”

MR. NAGLE: Oh.

MR. BERKSON: “—these two words could exist in the same title.”

MR. NAGLE: Oh, listen, Bill, every single show that is supposed to give legitimacy to this bastard movement we have here is – always they’ll put – if it’s not something really lame like “Feats of Clay,” and I don’t know how many fuckin’ times that’s been used -- if it’s not that, it’s usually – like the last big show was at the Metropolitan, “Clay into Art [November 24, 1998 – May 30, 1999, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City].” Okay? “The Art of Clay.” They always sort of put it together, like, you know – they never say, “Oil Paint Into Art.” They never say, “Wood into Art.” We’re just, you know, as Arneson says, the back of the art bus, you know? And it’s still perceived that way. And I don’t even – you know, we could spend every disk you’ve got there arguing about, you know, art versus craft and all the rest of that crap, which I think is – everybody would like to think it was a dead issue, and I think it is for me, but it’s still not. You know, there’s always a sort of legitimacy. We wouldn’t have this conversation in Japan, you know?

MR. BERKSON: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

MR. NAGLE: So –

MR. BERKSON: Then the next show, even before the Dilexi show, before your first gallery show, was the show you mentioned that John Coplans curated –

MR. NAGLE: Right, right.

MR. BERKSON: – called “Abstract Expressionist Ceramics [University of California at Irvine/San Francisco Museum, 1966]” –

MR. NAGLE: Correct.

MR. BERKSON: – which was probably another form of legitimizing –

MR. NAGLE: Yeah, it is.

MR. BERKSON: I mean, he could have called it “Action Ceramics.”

MR. NAGLE: But, you know, the thing is there’s a lot of work – you know, any time you’ve got a label – I mean, we could say the same thing about abstract expressionism. I mean, that included everybody – I mean, in painting – you know, from [Jackson] Pollock to Rothko. You couldn’t think of two more diverse. You know? And the same thing with the ceramic thing. I mean, there were people – the only true abstract expressionist was Pete, you know? I mean, and John Mason at the time. You know? I mean, there were other people that were doing things, but most of the stuff was really pretty, you know, plotted out, if you will. I mean done in a different way. If it means that it sort of deviated from what you would traditionally think of as ceramics, well, yeah, that, but I think anybody who was working was thinking about – you know, the pot was just a vehicle for something else, you know? I mean, when you look at a Morandi painting, it’s not about a vase; it’s about a feeling, you know? And I think we, sort of, look at it in the same way, you know?

MR. BERKSON: I’m interested in how this plays out as well in the context of teaching.

MR. NAGLE: Yeah.

MR. BERKSON: Because – well, for instance, “Six Artists in Clay” happened at the Art Institute –

MR. NAGLE: Correct.

MR. BERKSON: – at the same time that you were teaching at the Art Institute with Jim Melchert.

MR. NAGLE: Right.

MR. BERKSON: And what’s always said about that is that you and Jim transformed the clay pit, which is still called the clay pit, from stoneware to low-fire.

MR. NAGLE: [Laughs.] Yeah –

MR. BERKSON: That in itself was a big, bold move.

MR. NAGLE: Yeah, it was.

MR. BERKSON: That, you know –

MR. NAGLE: Yeah, it was. Well, yeah, it did it in two ways. I mean, it did it through the kind of material. I mean, up to that point it had been stoneware, and there was a guy named Ernie Kim teaching there who was really one of the, you know, foremost – and I knew Ernie at the time – foremost practitioners of the studio potter thing and was part of the whole, kind of, Prieto – in fact, he already had his own version of it, but you know, again, the classic, sort of bean-shaped, tall or round vase, with a small neck. And so it was all stoneware. And that’s kind of what was going on there at the time. I mean, there were people who were trying to do new things, and again, were trying to do things like – you know, not in that way, but basically that was what was going on. And when Jim got the job there – I mean, Ernie eventually left, and then Jim hired me.

Now, prior to my working there, I had spent, you know, all summer, maybe even a whole year, doing low-fire glaze tests, because, again, I was enamored with the color possibilities, you know, that Kenny had, you know, started. And Jim started doing a lot of stuff in low-fire too. And, you know, the thing that low-fire has is basically it’s more like painting. I mean, it’s more direct. It’s more predictable. You’re not dependent on all the ooga booga that goes on with the atmosphere, the kiln, and all the rest of it. There’s a different kind of – [laughs] – ooga booga. I mean, it’s not always that dependable, but basically it opened up a whole different way of thinking.

And once we started working there, I mean, other people – a few people got on board, like Manuel [Neri], with these really neat, kind of, loop sculptures that were done in low-fire, and I made all those glazes for them. And I think Manuel [Neri] was in that show, as a matter of fact, “Work in Clay,” if I’m not mistaken. And I remember – I think I told you this. You know, Al Light came up to him and said,“What are you doing in that show, Manuel? You’re an artist.” You know, it’s like, oh, yeah. I mean, I was eventually fired from there, but that’s a whole other story I’ll tell you – well, I’m sure I’ve already told you. Well, Fred Martin sent down a henchman, but I’ll tell you about that later maybe.

MR. BERKSON: Well, I’m interested in – not just then but even continuing –

MR. NAGLE: Yeah.

MR. BERKSON: – you know, if you’re there, it seems like maybe I know the answer already – that you’re not teaching the craft of claywork for the technical information –

MR. NAGLE: Yeah.

MR. BERKSON: – that’s available and probably insisted upon, because you’re not going to come up with an object –

MR. NAGLE: Right.

MR. BERKSON: – unless you do it through a process that works.

MR. NAGLE: Right.

MR. BERKSON: Now, you know how to work that equipment.

MR. NAGLE: Well, yeah, right, I mean, you’ve got to know the basic stuff.

MR. BERKSON: You have to do the kiln and all that –

MR. NAGLE: Yeah, sure.

MR. BERKSON: – and all that stuff. But I guess the – it’s a double-ended thing. Does teaching give you ideas? And are you teaching a, sort of, idea-based art –

MR. NAGLE: Yes.

MR. BERKSON: – an emotionally based art to the students –

MR. NAGLE: Yeah, absolutely, yeah.

MR. BERKSON: – through the technique at the surface of that?

MR. NAGLE: Right, I mean, any time – even to this day I’m still teaching after 42 years. I mean, basically they’re all – all the assignments are idea-based, but in conjunction with “here’s how you do the stuff.”

MR. BERKSON: The material side of it.

MR. NAGLE: But it’s never – it’s never isolated, and I would say 90 percent of the slides even today that I show are not ceramic slides. They deal with ideas. They don’t, you know – all that being said, I mean, I might do, you know, two slide carousels of the greatest Japanese pottery, plus a world survey of everything from African mud huts to, you know, hornet’s nests, in terms of, you know, when a vessel can be made out of mud. I mean – so, it’s – but it’s just kind of taking a bigger scope of things to just show you that we’re dealing with ideas or feelings or whatever you want to call it, you know, that it’s definitely idea-based. And at that time, part of that, you know, was also to incorporate other materials which were not ceramics. I mean, one of the reasons I was allegedly given for being fired at the time was that, you know, Roger Jacobson came down and said, “Hey, I understand you’re using fiberglass and rubber and things like that.” You know, this is pre-Eva Hesse. And so I said, “Yeah, I am. You know, I’m showing people how to make other stuff besides, you know?” “Well, you just teach the old ladies how to make tea cups and leave the art to us, and if you don’t –”

MR. BERKSON: What department was Roger Jacobson from?

MR. NAGLE: Well, he was teaching sculpture. But Fred sent him down. I mean, Fred was, you know, a honcho at the time, and Fred didn’t like me very much. And then as I always said, you know, if they fired me for drunkenness or arrogance, that’s fine. But nobody ever said that. You know? They just said, you know, like, “You can just leave the art to us.” I’m sure Al Light weighed in on it, you know, too. And they just – you know? And by that time, I mean, I had my band, you know? I’d bring in – you know, we had a pre-release of Sergeant Pepper, and I brought in a huge, you know, amplifier and cranked it up to 20 and played, you know, before the album even came out. I mean, you know, I was doing what I do now, except now, you know, it’s like, cool, but it wasn’t then. And it took years to get back to the Art Institute. They would never hire me.

MR. BERKSON: You went back there in 1976 for a couple of years.

MR. NAGLE: Right.

MR. BERKSON: Yeah.

MR. NAGLE: But prior to that one of my first students was Richard. You know, Richard Shaw was my student there.

MR. BERKSON: Right.

MR. NAGLE: And that’s – and a lot of the stuff that Jim and I were doing there – the low-fire stuff, the decals, the china paints – Richard, you know, saw a lot of that, and you know, certainly not as involved as what he, you know, eventually really expanded on, but all of that stuff. You know, there were other people who were making stuff that was nonclay stuff in the kiln room, because that’s the only place you could do it. And, again, it was sort of secret, you know? I mean – [whispers] – “Yeah, we can use resin, and cast stuff.” You know? Because this again was from L.A. I mean, you know, guys were doing all kinds – you know, there wasn’t any of this media hierarchy, you know, in L.A. But there sure was over there, man. I mean, clay was not a cool thing. We were definitely isolated. It took a long time until Richard became famous. They still treated him like shit – for years – until he was the most famous guy there.

MR. BERKSON: How does it – and after you taught at the Art Institute, or even during the time you taught at the Art Institute, you were teaching at Berkeley –

MR. NAGLE: I thought – yes – well, yeah, I had a chance to teach there.

MR. BERKSON: As well?

MR. NAGLE: As well. But the thing is then Roger Jacobson came down and said, “Okay, you know, do what we say or leave.” I said, “Fuck you, I’m out of here.” Because I already, you know, had –

MR. BERKSON: So you went to Berkeley?

MR. NAGLE: Yeah, I went to Berkeley and started teaching there, and of course I could do anything I wanted there. I mean, you know, Pete was in charge.

MR. BERKSON: Of course, Voulkos was still there.

MR. NAGLE: Oh, sure, yeah. I mean, yeah, he was the guy that gave me the job. He said, do you want to teach there? Jim stayed on for a while at the Institute. And –

MR. BERKSON: And then you – and then after 1973 – in 1973 you went to CCAC [California College of Arts and Crafts, Oakland, CA].

MR. NAGLE: Well, that was just a very, very short time, a very short time.

MR. BERKSON: Two years.

MR. NAGLE: Well, it was just a summer thing –

MR. BERKSON: Oh, yeah.

MR. NAGLE: – you know, I think. That was fairly short-lived.

MR. BERKSON: And then –

MR. NAGLE: ‘73 – I mean, ‘72-’73 was probably one of the worst periods of my life. I mean, because by that time I had left Berkeley; I had taught there for, you know, quite a long time. You know, for whatever reasons, I mean, they, you know – they basically – I think Pete went over to the art department, and they phased out my position and so forth. And it was real – and so I had no idea what I was going to be doing, and fortunately a friend of mine, Jack Nitzsche, you know, asked me if I wanted to work on this movie called The Exorcist, and things started going uphill from there.

MR. BERKSON: All right, here’s the big question.

MR. NAGLE: Yeah.

MR. BERKSON: How do you spell Nitzsche?

MR. NAGLE: N-i-t-z-s-c-h-e.

Anyway, yeah, Jack just died a couple of years ago. He was my – what Voulkos was to me in ceramics, Jack was to me in music. He produced my first record and taught me about the music business and actually got me this – hooked me up with a lot of great opportunities. Unfortunately, he became a heroin addict, but – anyway, that’s another story.

MR. BERKSON: What was going on in that time, though, that it was so depressing?

MR. NAGLE: Lack of money.

MR. BERKSON: Ahh.

MR. NAGLE: No job.

MR. BERKSON: Oh, okay.

MR. NAGLE: I couldn’t figure out – I had a house. I had a mortgage payment.

MR. BERKSON: – jobless.

MR. NAGLE: Nothing. I mean, this was –

MR. BERKSON: No sense of worth.

MR. NAGLE: Nothing. Oh, yeah, and I was – and, you know, plenty of drinks, plenty of – you know. But I mean, I had met my current wife, who – we’ve been together almost 35 – well, yeah, 35 years. I met her, you know, in ‘68 at Berkeley, and she was working at Rolling Stone, you know, at the time and was the production manager. And I got a job there as a carpenter, and I absolutely hated it. I mean, I was an elitist. I thought this was beneath me. [Laughs.] And I’d already done – you know, my record, you know, had come and gone in 1968. I’d been in bands and all this stuff, and I said, “Fuck, man, what am I doing?” You know? And so finally I, you know – I worked in L.A., going back and forth for a year, working on The Exorcist. I learned a lot about recording and had enough money. I was making 500 bucks a week, which was like astounding, you know, going from nothing to that, all expenses paid. And I saved my money and built my first recording studio with that money in my basement of my house over on Bocana Street.

MR. BERKSON: How do you spell Bocana?

MR. NAGLE: B-o-c-a-n-a. It’s in Bernal Heights on the other side of the hill from where I live now, just off of Cortland up the hill. And that’s where I actually did my Dilexi show, at that house. And – 156 Bocana. And then that’s where I built my first recording studio with the money I’d gotten from The Exorcist. So things started to improve, and then eventually in ‘75 I had what I call my first comeback show at Rena’s, or at the Quay Gallery, which was Rena and Ruth at the time.

MR. BERKSON: Rena Bransten and Ruth Braunstein.

MR. NAGLE: Rena Bransten and Ruth Braunstein. Everybody always gets it mixed up, but – and that’s when they were on Sutter. And they were actually one of the first, if not the first – I mean, even prior to Garth – to legitimize ceramics in a mainstream art setting. I mean, it was called originally Quay Ceramics, and there were basically showing –

MR. BERKSON: Ahh!

MR. NAGLE: – you know, Bay Area ceramics, and that, you know –

MR. BERKSON: They were showing you and Richard Shaw?

MR. NAGLE: And Voulkos.

MR. BERKSON: And Voulkos?

MR. NAGLE: Yeah, and Ruth – you know, and then when Rena and Ruth split up, you know, like, Ruth kept Pete, and Richard and I went with Rena. But there were people like Bob Brady. There were a lot of – I mean, they had constant ceramics shows there, and then when – so it was like a downtown, on Sutter, and it gave, you know – it really did give the movement, if you will, a shot in the arm. And it was called the Ceramic Gallery, but it was, you know, the upper echelon, if you will.

MR. BERKSON: Hmm.

MR. NAGLE: So that was, you know, ‘75. And by that time I was doing a lot of songwriting and started to produce and so forth.

[Audio break.]

MR. BERKSON: Okay, this is Bill Berkson interviewing Ron Nagle at 25 Grand View Avenue in San Francisco, California, on July 8, 2003, for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. Disk number 2 on this date.

So since we were edging in this direction, the question I wanted to ask you was about the relation of music to so-called studio work, because music is studio work –

MR. NAGLE: Yeah.

MR. BERKSON: – but to the art studio work. I know you’ve made some remarks about that just in terms of the forms of songwriting, but I was thinking about how your early feeling for music kind of continued to interact with –

MR. NAGLE: Well, yeah –

MR. BERKSON: – with your sculpture.

MR. NAGLE: Sure. Yeah, well, maybe it took me a little while to realize that there was a connection, but I, you know, didn’t think of it maybe in conscious terms, if you will. I think the main thing that I started to understand about things was, in terms of music, is that there was an emotional content there that – right from the time that I – even when I was like, you know – gawd, as far back as when I was, you know, five or six, listening – I was standing there, like, listening to a Kate Smith record and then eventually, you know, “Shrimp Boats” by Jo Stafford, and then eventually doo-wop came in, and that closed the deal right there, you know? Early blues, and rhythm and blues, and doo-wop, and the stuff of the ‘50s. I mean, I was just transported into a whole other realm. I used to just be put to – literally put to sleep by it every night. Just put the – the music on. There was a couple of DJs – one guy’s name was Rockin’ Lucky, and Jumpin’ George Oxford. And, oh, there were – there were a bunch of them, but those were the two early ones I remember, and I – and it was when gospel music was sort of making a transition. You could hear gospel, and then more and more you started to hear doo-wop in the ‘50s. And my father was absolutely appalled. And he had a room upstairs, and he used to bang on the floor.

MR. BERKSON: “Turn that stuff down!”

MR. NAGLE: No, “Turn those niggers off!” [Laughs.] Since he had a radio and appliance business, he had one of the early intercoms. So I had this sort of hammer tone, which is this paint job, this sort of deco-style, you know, box, where he could communicate with me down below and listen in to what I was doing, but I couldn’t do the same with him. And headquarters was on his nightstand, and on my nightstand was this thing. So he could listen in to what I was listening to. [Laughs.] Like all the great stuff. And he would just – and I would have – I mean, I was in another world, and so I realized that the power – I mean, you know, various – even prior to this I was playing classical music and all the stuff that I really liked, whether it was Debussy or whatever. I always said I used to really play a really good “Claire de Lune.”

MR. BERKSON: Yeah.

MR. NAGLE: – on piano. And I could, like – always responded to the emotional value.

MR. BERKSON: How did that come about? I mean, playing the piano –

MR. NAGLE: Well, I always did. My parents gave me piano lessons. And I used to have to –

MR. BERKSON: They had a piano in the house?

MR. NAGLE: Oh, yeah, a couple.

MR. BERKSON: Did they play?

MR. NAGLE: No.

MR. BERKSON: Your mother didn’t play?

MR. NAGLE: Uh-uh. But – well, even when I was kid, I mean, the first music that I really got hooked on was boogie woogie, and I could – I really could play boogie woogie really – really well at that time and listened to people like Meade Lux Lewis and, you know, Albert Ammons and Mary Lou Williams and – all these great boogie woogie piano players, and then I went and saw Jack Fina with Freddie Martin and His Men, who had a big hit with “Bumble Boogie.” And there was a sort of transition between Rimski Korsakov, you know “Flight of the Bumblebee” and changing into a boogie thing, and I could do it. I could play that stuff really quite well. But again, it was –

MR. BERKSON: There’s one name that’s unfamiliar to me in there –

MR. NAGLE: Jack Fina?

MR. BERKSON: Fina. F-i-n-a?

MR. NAGLE: Yeah, he was, like – he was the piano player for Freddy Martin –

MR. BERKSON: For Freddy Martin?

MR. NAGLE: – and His Men. And also I cannot – just absolutely not forget prior to doo-wop probably the most – the major epiphany I had was hearing Johnny Ray sing “Cry” and the “Little White Cloud That Cried,” and he was, like, ahead of his time on so many levels. I mean, he was, you know – represented androgyny, even though people didn’t call it that. And he sat down at the piano and played, and he actually cried when he was performing. And I thought, “Man, this is heavy shit,” you know? And I – so I went down and saw him when I was 11. He was at the Orpheum Theater, and just that was it, man. I thought, “Wow!” So, you know, the first thing I learned about music is that it could affect you emotionally and take you to a whole other place that you can’t get anywhere else, and not too much art did that. So there was a standard there for being moved by something outside yourself. And, again, you know – and then get into this whole high-low thing. I mean, all of this music that’s really not. And what’s the fucking difference, man? You just think you’re going – now if it’s at some downtown gallery or a museum that somehow there’s more value there? I never could understand that.

MR. BERKSON: It seems like that was something that, you know, was a problem or a question for everybody, anybody, up to exactly our generation.

MR. NAGLE: Yeah.

MR. BERKSON: I mean, you and I were born in the same year.

MR. NAGLE: Yeah.

MR. BERKSON: And it seems that – the way that we grew up with pop culture was just like – I mean, unless you were what they now call a nerd –

MR. NAGLE: Yeah.

MR. BERKSON: – you know, I mean somebody who was somehow, you know, denied watching TV, listening to the radio –

MR. NAGLE: Yeah.

MR. BERKSON: – you know, going to the movies, whether, I don’t know, because your parents had some kind of religion, or because they had – they wanted to protect you –

MR. NAGLE: Yeah.

MR. BERKSON: – from that stuff and wanted you to do your homework all the time.

MR. NAGLE: Yeah.

MR. BERKSON: But otherwise you were just going to be immersed in it –

MR. NAGLE: Yeah.

MR. BERKSON: – constantly. And, you know, there was going to be that culture, and anything else that comes along – whether Morandi and –

MR. NAGLE: Right, right. Yeah, and I –

MR. BERKSON: – or Rembrandt or Momoyama –

MR. NAGLE: Yeah, right.

MR. BERKSON: – who’s going to be –

MR. NAGLE: On the other side, yeah.

MR. BERKSON: And they have got to be seamlessly included.

MR. NAGLE: Right, yeah.

MR. BERKSON: You know, you can’t play the high-low business.

MR. NAGLE: Yeah, well, I can’t, you know? And I mean, I teach people accordingly –

MR. BERKSON: You’ve just have to take it all together.

MR. NAGLE: Right. I mean, that’s the kind of stuff that I talk about in my graduate seminar, and fortunately I think those barriers are, kind of, somewhat broken down now, and of course people like Dave Hickey and so forth have helped to eradicate those barriers a little more by presenting it in a more articulate way than perhaps I could. But I mean, I never saw the difference. And I never thought of them as mutually exclusive at all. Either you dig it, or you feel it or you don’t. I mean, it’s that simple. This isn’t rocket science, you know? But anyway – so eventually, I started, when I was in my first band and we started writing songs and so forth – I started over the years to realize that the process wasn’t that much different and the people that were the true great songwriters or record producers were – more creative and inventive than most of the artists I knew, in terms of their intuitive thinking, in terms of a good idea is a good idea. I mean, I’ll put [Jerry] Lieber and [Mike] Stoller up there with, [Willem] de Kooning or anybody. It’s just – it’s a different – it’s just a different way of doing things, you know? It’s not – one’s not any better than the other, you know? And I love de Kooning, but I mean, you know what I’m saying. I just – I just think, creative thinking and coming up with an idea, developing it and running with it and that kind of involvement, that was being done in the recording studios all the time.

MR. BERKSON: Your first band was Musical Trend.

MR. NAGLE: Mystery Trend.

MR. BERKSON: Mystery Trend.

MR. NAGLE: Right. Which was a mistake, because it was –

MR. BERKSON: Mystery Trend.

MR. NAGLE: – it was supposed – we got it from, you know, “Like a Rolling Stone” – the Dylan song, and it was actually “Mystery Tramp” –

MR. BERKSON: Yeah.

MR. NAGLE: – but I – we heard it wrong. Anyhow, so we started writing songs, and I just realized over the years that the process is pretty much the same. You know, that’s the way I make stuff.

MR. BERKSON: Well, you commented on the – I don’t know – it was the 32-bar song.

MR. NAGLE: Yeah.

MR. BERKSON: Well, anyway, you know, you’re supposed to –

MR. NAGLE: Prescribed format.

MR. BERKSON: Standard forms for music – pop song format –

MR. NAGLE: Right, verse, chorus, you know, whatever. Verse, chorus.

MR. BERKSON: being comparable to the cup as a –

MR. NAGLE: Yeah, it’s a prescribed format that you work within, and I think one of the things that we’ve talked about before was, again, the people that I seem to like, whether it would be Morandi, who took a very simple format, which he basically developed and just kept honing it down until it got more and more and more to the essence – the stuff that he did before he died was – that was the best shit. I mean, he just said, “Oh, this is the essence” then. The same thing with, you know, songwriting. I mean, how much can you say in as few words as possible, having a traditional format? I mean, Albers, the same thing. Basically the same format and putting together a relationship. That always appealed to me for some reason. I mean, there’s other artists who I admire, say a guy like Bruce Nauman, who I think is great, who does all kinds of different stuff. I mean, my way of doing different stuff is, you know, going between a song and a cup and a this and a that or whatever. I was always interested in –

MR. BERKSON: So what eventually happened after that experience in the ‘70s, where music took over for a while –

MR. NAGLE: Yeah.

MR. BERKSON: – because it was a way of, for one thing, making a living –

MR. NAGLE: Mm-hmm.

MR. BERKSON: – is that you kind of made room for both of them in tandem.

MR. NAGLE: Yeah, yeah, I did.

MR. BERKSON: You keep doing – you keep doing the music, just like you keep doing the –

MR. NAGLE: Yeah, except I’m not doing too much music now –

MR. BERKSON: Uh-huh.

MR. NAGLE: – although I just – I think the last time I was in the studio was around Christmastime. My ex-music partner has got a big – you know, got a nice studio in Mill Valley, and so we recorded stuff that I think was probably the stuff that I liked the best of what I had written, which was done in the early ‘70s – ‘73, ‘74. It was kind of a, you know, good – you know, well, ‘74 on, ‘75, is when a lot of people were recording my stuff, and then there’s just a whole other bunch, really personal kind of songs that I really still respond to, and we’re, kind of, redoing those. And he said, oh, we’re going to do a song a year. [Laughs.] I don’t know if I’ll live that long, but anyway, I’m still doing it. You know? If somebody said, “Hey, write me a song about blah, blah, blah,” I’d be – you know, I’d be thrilled to sit down and do it. But, you know, between having a kid who’s now going to be going to college and teaching – and then my show schedule is just brutal. I mean, I’ve been doing three shows a year for the last, I don’t know, gawd, eight years or something now, and so I don’t have as much time. But – [END TAPE 1 SIDE B.] – sometimes I’ll do it at school. You know, I’ve got a little sound room there, and sometimes for my graduate seminar we’ll collectively write a song. I mean, I still love it. I still keep up with what’s going on; I still buy music all the time and the advantage of having younger assistants is they keep me, sort of turn me on to what’s happening, although I sometimes know more than they do.

MR. BERKSON: Yeah, or your daughter does or –

MR. NAGLE: Yeah, yeah. But I’m still – I’m still a huge fan. I wish I could spend more time doing it. And I will. I’ll go over once in a while. I know a couple of guys that have studios, and do it for kicks. Anyway.

MR. BERKSON: Well, let’s talk about – since I think we have enough time, let’s talk about the assistants, because they wanted me to ask about the working process.

MR. NAGLE: Sure.

MR. BERKSON: And it’s funny; I always thought that you worked totally alone.

MR. NAGLE: In essence I do, but over the years there’s stuff – I do have – I do have assistants for basic stuff. It took me a long time to get to where I could do that, and I would say in general I do work pretty much alone. But there’s a lot of mechanical, if you will, or technical stuff that I – you know, that can save me time. Also I’ve had assistants that take care of the rest of my life – I mean, whether it’s doing my taxes or, you know, dropping off the laundry so I can just concentrate on my work. And each one of them has been great, and each one has brought their own sort of specialty to the table.

MR. BERKSON: Do these tend to be students?

MR. NAGLE: Yeah, they’re usually former students.

MR. BERKSON: Mills students or –

MR. NAGLE: Yeah, former graduates.

MR. BERKSON: Former students.

MR. NAGLE: You know, or graduate students. And I –

MR. BERKSON: Do they come under the heading of apprentices or –

MR. NAGLE: Some would glean something from it besides getting paid. So I don’t know if it’s – but not really. I mean, I pay them, you know, relatively well, I think, and depending on their talents, I mean, I’ll put them in charge of certain things, you know. I’ve sort of become more – it depends on the nature of the work. I mean, the work I’m doing now is, like, all cast, and there’s a lot of models to be made and so forth, and it’s just, the beginning and the end are fun but the middle is not, you know. I’d say, “Okay, do this, do that, whatever.” I mean, now I’m working with doing things like – these bigger things I’m calling “snuff bottles,” and the molds are so heavy I need two people to help me – I mean, it takes two people to move them.

So, it depends. If I’m sitting down just doing what I’ll call, like, hands-on kind of stuff, where I’m doing just more of a meditative, direct way of working on the clay, then it’s not – I don’t always have people around. I should also say, if I’m in that frame of mind or whatever, I have the ability to kind of shut out whatever is going on around me, and somebody could be around, but I must also say that the people that I hire, they have to – you know, they have to be easy to be around and be very accommodating and give me the right kind of space. And fortunately, I’ve had people that could do that, because if there’s somebody that’s got some boundary issues or whatever, you know, “Out!” You know, I mean, it’s not going to work.

MR. BERKSON: Do you have music playing in the studio?

MR. NAGLE: Always, constantly. Constantly.

MR. BERKSON: Your own choice? Not radio but CDs?

MR. NAGLE: I sometimes listen to the radio and sometimes I just really get into stations that I’m not crazy about, only by virtue of the fact that I can’t get certain stations. But usually it’s CDs, and there’s certain favorites I have that I’ll put on that I just, you know – that I know, okay, if I’m going to be doing something, I want to relax and not be distracted; I’m not going to have metal thrash or punk rock, you know? I mean, it’s like – you know, one of my favorite pieces of music to relax to is the theme from Chinatown, the soundtrack from Chinatown. I don’t know why. It could be Clifford Brown With Strings. It could be – I don’t know, you name it. It could be classical, you know? I mean, a pretty wide variety of stuff.

MR. BERKSON: Okay, so the work is – when I last asked you about this, the work was starting with drawings on tracing paper.

MR. NAGLE: Yeah.

MR. BERKSON: Is that still pretty much your starting point?

MR. NAGLE: Yeah. Usually they’re not on tracing – they’ll go – they’ll go from – yeah, they’ll go to tracing paper to tighten them up a little bit, but they could be on –

MR. BERKSON: Very small.

MR. NAGLE: Very small drawings. And –

MR. BERKSON: One or two inches high?

MR. NAGLE: Yeah, like, you know, two or three – you know, like a notepad you’d get at a motel or something. I mean, you know, that type of thing. And I’ll draw – I always feel – and this comes from, you know, the Morandi/Guston mentality that the essence of the piece is basically in that first few moments when you’re just drawing it, when you’re not thinking about it, or, you know, you’re feeling it or something, but there’s a sort of – I always draw when something else is going on. I don’t sit down and grit my teeth and say, “Okay, now we’re going to draw.” I use either music or television, or I could be talking or something, you know? I mean, faculty meetings are great for that because I just sort of zone out. And so, yeah, I mean – you know. And then I’ll go back and tighten them up with tracing paper and go and crop the best ones. And then, the best little investment I’ve made as far as a tool goes is, I got this little Xerox machine with – that blows them up, and so I can just take those small drawings and hit 400 percent, and then I’ll look at them and say, okay, how does that look as an object in terms of scale? Too big? Too small? And from that point on, then I will actually mechanically translate those to three-dimensional models. That’s for this particular –

MR. BERKSON: Taking clay.

MR. NAGLE: Well, I’ll take clay, and from there – it’s incredibly labor-intensive. So I’ll actually make – again, going back to making things like model airplanes, I’ll actually make a riblike structure using the profile of the pieces that I’ve blown up from the drawings, put clay around them, trowel to the edge of those skeletal ribs or –

MR. BERKSON: Like an armature.

MR. NAGLE: Like an armature, right. But I’ll trowel to that. From there I take a silicon mold, dig out the clay in the armature. From there I’ll pour in polyurethane two-part plastic and pull that out. And that’ll give me a solid form. Then I go into my body-and-fender routine.

MR. BERKSON: That’s your prototype.

MR. NAGLE: That’s my prototype. Then I’ll use Bondo and trick it out: sand it, fill it, eventually prime it with gray auto-body primer. I mean, I spend more time at the place called City Paints [1088 Howard Street], which is where I get all my art supplies –

MR. BERKSON: Bay City Paints?

MR. NAGLE: No, not Bay City. Well, I used to buy my paints there, too. No, it’s called City Paints, and it’s an auto-body supply place on Howard Street. And then, of course, Douglas & Sturges [730 Bryant Street], which has been around – and I buy all – you know, anyway, that’s –

MR. BERKSON: Douglas & Sturges?

MR. NAGLE: Yeah, and they’ve been around for the last – gawd, ever since I started almost. When I was doing those elicit materials at the Art Institute, that’s where we got them. Anyway – and once that model is tricked out, then a plaster mold is made, and I have an assistant make those for me. And then I cast them, in this case, you know, either low-fire or porcelain. I’ve been doing a lot of them in porcelain, my current stuff, which I’ll show you.

So it’s a real long process, but the essence of the piece comes from that first drawing, where I’m not really thinking too much, and then I’ll – you know, something will just pop into my head and say, okay, try that; you know, let’s do that. I mean, the last drawings I did, which I’ll probably do some – I’ve already started doing pieces from – well, I was – just got back from England, and I was on the train, you know? So you’re watching – I got what I’ll call peripheral cognition or something, you know; something else is going on but not enough to distract you. I used to do a lot of songwriting in the car, not – it’s kind of dangerous because I usually had a joint in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other one. [Laughs.] And then I’d have the band track on the – on my, you know, cassette machine with just the music, and then I would have a little mini-recorder and I would just bark stuff into it as I was driving down the coast, and you know, like, whatever would pop into my head, or a melody or something. So I – you know, I think that works a lot better.

MR. BERKSON: The studio is very, very – for one thing, it’s compact.

MR. NAGLE: Yes, it is. I always – every time something goes wrong, the first thing that comes to my mind is, that wouldn’t happen if I had a bigger studio.

MR. BERKSON: Yeah.

MR. NAGLE: So –

MR. BERKSON: But everything – it’s very neat. Everything is sort of laid out –

MR. NAGLE: Sometimes, yeah. I mean, I have a little place I call the perch, you know, where I sit there and that’s my –

MR. BERKSON: Yeah.

MR. NAGLE: – that’s my main place of work.

MR. BERKSON: That’s one reason why I couldn’t imagine anybody else in here, like assistants.

MR. NAGLE: Yeah, I know, it’s pretty tight, but it’s got to be the right person, you know? I’ve got a good guy now; I’ve got a couple of good people, but the guy that actually comes, he actually – he works at the UC museum doing installation, and he’s just – he just had a show – two of my assistants just had shows downtown. His name is Seth Koen, and he’s got the right sensibility. He gets it, you know? But, yeah, again a former Mills student.

MR. BERKSON: So then there’s the model parts box?

MR. NAGLE: Oh – [laughs] – the model parts box, very observant. Well, I sometimes cannibalize parts and stuff. But the models – most of the stuff I’m doing now, they wouldn’t go in the model parts box. [Laughs.] That’s for – that was for –

MR. BERKSON: I didn’t remember what the model parts box is, but I wrote it down –

MR. NAGLE: Oh, well –

MR. BERKSON: Wasn’t it some toenail, glued on plastic?

MR. NAGLE: Oh, yeah.

MR. BERKSON: All these things come from the model parts box.

MR. NAGLE: Well, no, I mean, I have to make them first, you know. Actually I just threw away – I threw away probably 90 percent of what was in those boxes. I saved a few things. But I did have a show of my models, and when I did the “Bay Area Now” show [“Bay Area Now 2,” November 20, 1999 – February 13, 2000, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, CA], I was drawing the models.

MR. BERKSON: Yeah.

MR. NAGLE: I actually liked that show. It just sort of boiled it down to the essence.

MR. BERKSON: The models are the same thing as the prototypes.

MR. NAGLE: Yeah, right, right, right. And they – for certain pieces, like the “thin fins,” they’re actually constructed of a variety of parts, hence the parts box. But the stuff I’m doing now, these – I’m calling them snuff bottles, which are sort of figurative actually. And that’s my newest deal; that’s for my next show in October with Garth. And I’ll probably show those here also in January, a similar group of things.

MR. BERKSON: When does it open in October?

MR. NAGLE: Like the 7th or something.

MR. BERKSON: I’ll be in town. I’ll get to see it.

MR. NAGLE: So, anyway, there are these bigger things, and I call them snuff bottles, because they have those little caps at the top that are kind of like the traditional Chinese snuff bottle, and they’re sort of simple. But they’re figurative-looking. Some of them are actually kind of, you know, erotic or they look like body parts, and – well, you’ll see.

MR. BERKSON: The process is now very different from what it used to be?

MR. NAGLE: Well, it’s just more –

MR. BERKSON: From where you began –

MR. NAGLE: It’s evolved and gotten more refined and more fanatical – that part of the process. And I’ll go from that, and then I’ll just hit the wall and say, I’m so sick of doing this; I just want to get a little hunk of clay and pinch it out, and I do that, too. And I probably, hopefully, maybe have some of those – I’m not sure for New York, but I think for my show here.

I just did a thing at Kent State about a month ago, and just sat down with some red clay and had a group of students around and just shot the shit with them while I was pinching these things out. And I had done those before, and I’ll probably go back and do those again. That kind of renewed my interest. So I’ll go back and forth between these two things. I sort of think of a hands-on thing; they're almost like three-dimensional drawings in the sense that they come from the same place, they’re just direct, and they kind of go where they want to go, and it sort of has the qualities of what attracts most people to clay in the first place, which is its malleability and directness, which this other process I’m talking about has none of. I mean, it has it in the beginnings with the drawings, but –

So, you know, I’ve got – kind of got two different ways of working; sometimes a combination of the two, but usually, you know, you have these involved models with the casting and the whole deal, or just sitting down and making what I call my hands-on stuff, you know, sort of glorified pinch pots. I mean, the pinch pot was the first – the first thing you would do when you took 101 ceramics, you know? You get a ball of clay and you just pinch, you know? And I remember out at State they had art education out there, and so they were trying to introduce people that were going to teach art – they weren’t artists but they would teach art to grammar school kids or something, and everybody would get a ball of clay, and they’d say, “Okay, now, close your eyes and feel it,” you know? [Laughs.] “You’re peeking! I saw you.” “I didn’t.” “Close them.” You know, and that was the pinch pot. And that’s – that’s the first thing you would learn. I mean, I don’t teach that anymore, but, you know. But that’s kind of, like, still there’s a big draw there for me just pinching out a piece of terra-cotta or something. So that’s sort of – it was a response, or my rebellion against all this incredible, fanatical process that I use to make, you know, the other –

MR. BERKSON: A lot of the process has always come from some kind of response or – even, sort of, an interpretation of the material you were working with.

MR. NAGLE: Yeah.

MR. BERKSON: So that when – I mean, when did you start? In the early ‘90s you started using porcelain.

MR. NAGLE: Yeah.

MR. BERKSON: And what’s the porcelain difference?

MR. NAGLE: It has a different quality about it. It’s very unforgiving in terms of how it responds. It’s either it’s wet or it’s dry. It’s the weirdest stuff in the world, but it has a quality about it and a density in terms of the material that’s very appealing to me. But one of the other things I’ve been doing a lot lately in the last several years is adding tons of color to the porcelain itself, so that the color is actually in the clay body. So I may take a gallon of slip and add a pound of stain to it, which is, like, you think this couldn’t be done and still be clay and cast, but it seems to be working. I’ve also been using doll porcelain a lot, which, you know, has these various, quote, flesh colored, and making stuff out of that, casting it. You could never work with it kind of in a direct way, but you can cast it and – depending on which porcelain I’m using it – you know, some of it’s, you know, like pretty – you know, slumps and starts to distort in the firing. Other stuff doesn’t.

But the quality that it has is – it’s not the same quality as putting a coat of glaze on top. So I’ll cast these things and then put a clear glaze on it, and it’s just – the color is right there in the clay. It just has a different feel. And it’s really quite intense and quite unified. And a lot of it does have a kind of car-like look, if you will. I mean, it’s just a different quality. I don’t know, it just appeals to me.

MR. BERKSON: It has the sheen of the lacquer.

MR. NAGLE: Yeah, kind of. You know, I mean, it’s like the color is just coming in the body, you know? I don’t know quite how else how to put it. And then there’s the clear on the top. But it does have a very – just a different quality than low-fire or layering of china paints. It’s a different deal.

So, yeah, I’ve been using that a lot lately; that’s what I’m doing now. It’s not without its problems technically. There’s always something that’s going to bite you in the ass when you least expect it. [Laughs.] It’s, I don’t know why I do this. But anyhow, I guess because nobody else is, you know? I mean, it’s fun to do that, come up with something that – anyway.

MR. BERKSON: Have any of your students ever – or assistants – ever turned you on to a technique or material that you hadn’t –

MR. NAGLE: Yeah, I’m sure they have. You know, I say that one of the fun parts of teaching is you can always tell people to do stuff that you don’t either have time or not – or the inclination to do yourself. Yeah, go ahead and do that, you know.

MR. BERKSON: And see how it works out.

MR. NAGLE: Yeah, see if it works out. And, you know, usually it does. I mean, I’m not doing it to be perverse or anything, I mean, to send them on a wild goose chase, so to speak. But –

MR. BERKSON: Do you pretty much find that – I mean, since you’ve been teaching – you’ve been teaching rather long, actually.

MR. NAGLE: Yeah, for 42 years.

MR. BERKSON: Except for the – that dry spell.

MR. NAGLE: Except for that dry spell, when Richard couldn’t get me a job at the Art Institute and Fred Martin wouldn’t let me in.

MR. BERKSON: But, you know, it seems like it’s become part of the process.

MR. NAGLE: Yeah, it is, you know. I mean – yeah – everything that I do in my studio I show my students, and it’s not to produce clones; it’s to help facilitate what they’re doing. And a lot of the methods that I use in my model making – I mean, I would say 95 percent of the people that come to Mills as ceramic students graduate doing something else. I mean, they’ll do it plastic or rubber or you name it. I mean, I share that with them, because I don’t really have any secrets. I mean, it’s what you do with it. And at the same time I can’t say that anybody’s doing what I’m doing, I mean, because I’m not interested in that and nor are they. Whatever I know how to do, I’ll say, okay, here’s what I think – here’s how I think you can do this and make it be most effective in terms of your own idea. So, I mean, in that sense – but I’m sure there’s stuff that students have turned me on to that I didn’t know about, or in the process of teaching have come across that I probably wouldn’t have if I was just working in a vacuum. So –

MR. BERKSON: What about the aspect of what you once called unpredictability, which is maybe something built into certain materials or just something that you insist on as – or do you, as part of your process – you don’t know where something’s going to – you know, like where a series is going to go –

MR. NAGLE: Yeah.

MR. BERKSON: – or the next idea is going to come from.

MR. NAGLE: Yeah. What about that?

MR. BERKSON: Well, I wrote that down “unpredictability” next to the question that was on the format –

MR. NAGLE: Oh, okay.

MR. BERKSON: – which is “Is there an element of play in your process?”

MR. NAGLE: Oh, sure.

MR. BERKSON: Or finished work of art –

MR. NAGLE: Yeah, like I say, the fun part –

MR. BERKSON: With Ron Nagle, it goes without saying.

MR. NAGLE: Yeah, well, no. I mean, so – you know, there’s the beginning, which is always unpredictable. I don’t know where these things are going to pop into my head. I would say, you know, a lot of times I’ll just redefine what I’ve done, you know, 30 years ago. I mean, whether it’s the box pieces I did in ‘69 and now I’m – I said I could make this better and I know how to get to the essence of that better, or whether it’s – you name it. I mean, these snuff bottles I’m doing now came probably from these little – I did these little kind of Morandiesque jars in the ‘60s, and, you know – like ‘63, ‘64, and those eventually evolved into the last thing in the world I thought, which is, you know, these, sort of, figurative bottles, which kind of grew out of heart shapes, which I’ve always been drawn to. I mean, now I’m wearing – so I was married on Valentine’s Day.

But anyway, they have this kind of heart-shaped thing, but they also look like busts or asses or the top part of a figure. Now they kind of look like – you know, like, almost like a dress at the bottom. I’ll show you. I mean, I never – nobody could ever predict that they would evolve, but that’s the fun of doing something, is to watch these things. So there is that unpredictability. I would never have thought that they were going to go in that direction. And so, to be surprised by that and watch the work evolve in ways that I never expected is half the reason for doing it, you know. Even though the process is very labor-intensive and so forth, how the ideas themselves evolve is, like, really the fun part of doing it, you know.

MR. BERKSON: In terms of those ideas then, also, thinking of the different people that you’ve mentioned who are, you know, reference points or inspirations or influences that range is pretty international, but one of the things that the Smithsonian wanted me to ask about was whether you felt that you were part of an international tradition or one that’s particularly American.

MR. NAGLE: I would say it’s probably American, even though my influences are international in terms of Japanese ceramics.

MR. BERKSON: Yeah, but there’s sort of something American about that, too.

MR. NAGLE: Yeah, I mean, I would even – you know, some people say, okay, well, you know, you’re a California artist. I know I am, I think, you know.

MR. BERKSON: I think the gist is probably whether you feel particularly tied to an American craft tradition.

MR. NAGLE: No, I don’t. I certainly don’t that, at all. In fact, I would sort of rebel against it in a sense because I’m in this, sort of, sphere of ceramics and I have a, sort of, a support base there and people have been nice to me in that area, I mean, you know, I – you know, I’m not going to diss it, you know, but I don’t really relate to it as such – occasionally, you know, rebel against it or make my feelings known about how limited I think it is.

MR. BERKSON: It’s a whole area that we’ll get into –

MR. NAGLE: Yeah, sure.

MR. BERKSON: – for sure next time –

MR. NAGLE: Yeah.

MR. BERKSON: – because there are a number of questions that they want to ask about that, you know, which also comes into the business of where – not so much that movement or craft versus art but how it works to the advantage of the pieces.

MR. NAGLE: Yeah. Well, my main goal is to keep working. I mean, I – if somebody, whether it’s a craft audience or a craft gallery or whatever, whatever it takes, if I sell the work – and I’m not saying I’ll do anything to sell stuff, but, I mean, if I can sell a work and it enables me to keep working, that’s my most important goal. In terms of international, in fact, you know, I would like to show my work internationally.

MR. BERKSON: Has that happened?

MR. NAGLE: It’s starting to happen, yeah. I’m in collections – a couple of collections in Japan, and I, you know, was in a big show in Holland. The Stedelijk’s [Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam] have got about five pieces that it bought many, many years ago.

MR. BERKSON: Did you go for that show?

MR. NAGLE: No, I didn’t. Garth had this big Ceramic Millennium thing [“Precious” Garth Clark Gallery, Ceramic Millennium, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 1999]; I was all over the place, and I was really honored to be there. I went to Italy then to see the Morandi museum. I thought that –

MR. BERKSON: Oh, I wondered if you ever did that, in Bologna.

MR. NAGLE: Yeah, oh, yeah. Man, it’s heaven. Yeah, I went there in – I was – you know, went there twice, you know? I mean, it was like Mecca for me. And –

MR. BERKSON: But never when he was still around?

MR. NAGLE: No, no. This was just a couple of years ago. And so Garth – they had this big Ceramic Millennium thing in Holland, in Amsterdam, and there was a woman there – they’re building a big ceramic museum and I’m supposed to do a big show some time, I don’t know when, in the next couple of years, which will travel around Europe, hopefully.

MR. BERKSON: Organized by Garth Clark?

MR. NAGLE: Well, Garth will put it together, but there’s a woman named Yvonne Joris, who’s part of this thing called the Kruithuis [Kruithuis ‘s-Hertogenbosh, Netherlands] or something like that.

MR. BERKSON: J-O-R-I-S?

MR. NAGLE: I think. I can get the – you know. And they have about 15 pieces of mine. They’re big fans. I mean, so there is some international –

MR. BERKSON: Have you ever been to Japan?

MR. NAGLE: No. I’d love to go. I’d like to apply, you know, for a Guggenheim to go to Japan sometime.

MR. BERKSON: You were just in France.

MR. NAGLE: I was just in France. I do have a – I have a piece in a collection in France.

MR. BERKSON: What was the trip to France about?

MR. NAGLE: My wife said, do you want to go Paris? I said, yeah, okay – I mean, sure. And so they just put it together. I hate traveling. I cannot tell you how much I hate it. Once I’m there, maybe after three days, I start to acclimate.

MR. BERKSON: You never did anything like the residency Richard did at the Sêvres.

MR. NAGLE: No, no. If they asked me, I might. You know, I loved Paris. I mean, everybody was just wonderful. All that, sort of, anti-American and “the French are rude” and shit, I never saw any of it. Everybody was so helpful. I mean, there were certainly language problems, but not that much. And then we went to London and we did a whole thing there, my wife and I, and I saw more art, man, in the last month than I’ve seen in my whole lifetim