Art in San Francisco

Zen and the art of Caroling in SF includes oil painting, stained glass, and expression in various other mediums.

Escaping the concentration camp of NYC spawned a commission: the Faith Symbol, arriving with me in SF. I had read "The Serpent Power" and ancient, classic Indian texts, where I learned of chakras.

In San Francisco, 1967, the sun looked at me and I looked at the sun and began to see thicker. I named one painting for a song, "We all live for the sun". "Dead and Living Grass" is related to the "Grass/Path", started in NY and finished in SF. Mike's Room is a photo at 1090 Page, where the band, Big Brother and the Holding Company, got its start. From Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman sprang (see line 181) my name: Caroling.

I became deeply involved  with a stained glass designs in a competition to put art at the Hall of Justice. Waiting for the result of the Hall of Justice competition, I did more glass work.

• Gateless Gate sat in a sunny window in SF, until the Keith family removed it to Minneapolis, Minnesota. The theme is from Donovan's song, the Zen poem, "First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is." (See a larger graphic.)
• Tib and Lora Tusler framed their front door with my glass panels, too.
• In glass, I experimented, smashed everything, put it back together. Here's a hanging bottle piece from the collection of my sister, Mary Ellen White.
• Another scrap glass fabrication, is the Tweezle Wootz, which I left in my apartment, managed by the brother of "big brother" of the Holding Company. Tweezles appeared to me in Golden Gate Park, as members of a new species, created out of love. (Read Mutate too.) This was right around the corner from where Chris Pirsig was stabbed to death in 1979 on Haight St., a block from the Zen Center.

Wholeo Dome becoming

Peter Voulkos won the Hall of Justice competition. Not being able to build the design was a profound let-down. Instead of trying to please a patron, why not be free? I wanted to be completely surrounded in colored light. Reading Buckminster Fuller's autobiography inspired me to follow my vision. I did a dome design on a 14" plastic hemisphere (see larger image). Then came dome structures to be in.

I made a test panel to see how pieces of flat glass could be leaded together in the curve of a 14' diameter sphere. First I had to make a cardboard frame crate, and pour urethane foam convex and concave forms to serve as glazing tables. Here is the panel and its light projected on to the back of the convex foam shape. Click a small image for a medium size or large glass or foam form images. It took seven years, but Wholeo dome became a fine be-in. See the intro links, sections and web exhibit. Roots in this period also exhibit in the Hippie Museum, Wholeo branch. See also Ideas, environment, roots, and surround.

After San Francisco, in 1968, back to New York again, this time to Staten Island.

Return in 1972

Having left SF for Staten Island, N.Y. in 1968, I returned to the West Coast in 1972. On the way, I visited Zomeworks and Steve and Holly Baer in Albuquerque, New Mexico. They commissioned a window for the Zome (the Great Highway) in Corrales. I thought I would keep it simple and make some money, but no, the design elaborated as usual.

• Great Highway, stained glass skylight
• Steve Baer, preparing the opening for the skylight. That meant sawing through a 4" sandwich of foam insulation between aluminum skins.
• Zome interior, with oil drum solar panels.

After a brief stay in San Francisco and creating the geodesic dome frame in Berkeley, in May, 1973, I headed north in California, to the country. At first I lived in a tent and hitchhiked when I couldn't bicycle. The early days are covered here.