I published the following blog post in August, 2009, around the time of the 40th Anniversary of the Woodstock Music and Art Fair. Ten years later, on the 50th Anniversary, I still need to prove I was there.
Yes, there was actually an art show!
Would you believe I won second prize in the art show at the Woodstock Music and Art Fair in August, 1969? Would you believe that was the event’s official name, and that there was actually an art show? There was, and I was in it, but I have only my memories to prove it – along with an uncollected ticket I collaged into a painting I did after the event. This month, with all the hype surrounding the 40th anniversary of the festival, I’ve vowed to track down some film or photographic documentation of the art show that included my paintings. Several of them are stored in my basement garage, and I’d like to find them a home more worthy of their fabled history.
In June of 1969, I was living alone in a loft on Broome Street, in the lower Manhattan district that had only recently become known as SoHo, when I learned of the upcoming festival that would come to be called Woodstock. There was an article in the Village Voice, saying a number of terrific bands were already signed up. The organizers were planning an art show as well, and were accepting entries. I’d been painting up a storm for several years, ever since earning my MFA at Columbia University, and the event sounded like a great opportunity to exhibit my huge, vividly colored paintings with their images of rock stars and social protest. I registered immediately, then teamed up with an artist I’d exhibited with in an East Village gallery who had a van big enough to hold my work.
By the time we got to Woodstock . . .
Flash forward to Friday, August 15. With help from his wife, we jammed the van full of our paintings and got an early morning start. Within a few miles of the festival site in Bethel, traffic slowed to a crawl, but it was still moving. Despite my avant garde life style, I still had a cautious streak, and I’d had the foresight to book a nearby motel room using my parents’ American Express card. We dropped off my clothes, then continued at a snail’s pace to the site. Since we were exhibitors, they waved our van through, then assigned us our spaces atop a gently rolling hill that was an easy walk from the stage. Each artist’s area was partitioned off by white canvas that billowed in the breeze.
By late afternoon I had my paintings up and wired to the metal framework to keep them from sailing away on a sudden gust of wind. There were few prospective customers, so as Richie Havens took the stage for the first set of the festival, I wandered downhill with my blanket and staked out a spot a couple of hundred feet from the stage. The crowd was building steadily, but navigating between the tarps and blankets was still easy, so after Swami Satchidananda’s invocation, I went back to check on my paintings.
My toughest teacher flies in to pass judgment
Judging of the art show was in progress, and to my amazement, I found myself suddenly face to face with Stephen Greene, my drawing instructor from the Columbia MFA program. As a teacher, he’d been my nemesis – he didn’t like my work, and gave me only B’s. Like the rest of the faculty, he was an abstract painter, but the others were more benign. Since I was stubbornly figurative, and my graduate exhibit consisted primarily of life-size paintings of the Beatles, they didn’t know what to do with me. To this day I’m convinced they awarded me the MFA simply to get rid of me. The only artistic advice I remember from that year was Robert Motherwell’s: “It helps to have a drink before you go into the studio.”
Now here was Stephen Greene, standing atop the hill in front of my paintings. They’d flown him and the other judges in by helicopter, he said. Nattily attired in a shirt, tie, and camel’s hair blazer that was far too warm for the day, he looked as if he belonged on Madison Avenue, not this rolling farmland with its thousands of hippies. “What the fuck am I doing here?” he said with a shake of his head.
(to be continued)
Karen Walker says
OH, Julie. Unfair..you had me so hooked, I was right there with you. I was in NY when Woodstock happened. I’d just gotten married at 20 years old. You’re so lucky you were part of such an iconic event.
Karen
Jane Kennedy Sutton says
You write and paint – no fair! I think the painting is incredible and has a lot going on in it. Is that a guy in a bathtub? Can’t wait for part 2 of the story!
Helen Ginger says
If that instructor stuck around, he probably was in way over his head at Woodstock. It’s actually quite exciting to hear someone who was actually there talk about it!
Helen
Straight From Hel
julielomoe says
Thanks to Karen, Jane and Helen for your comments. I’d add more, but I’m off for a day with my two granddaughters – in Woodstock! (The real Woodstock, not White Lake where the festival was.)
I’ll post Part II of my Woodstock memories tomorrow.
K. A. Laity says
Wonderful!! This was a fun read — tweeting now!
julielomoe says
Thanks, Kate. Does this mean you’re tweeting about me?
theoldsilly says
OK I’m definitely gonna have to follow THIS line of blogging. I had no idea you were a fellow Flower Child, my dear! 🙂
I actually missed Woodstock, I was touring Canada with my rock band at the time. I was at the march on Washington, the Vietnam Moratorium, that was pretty incredible, about a million Hippies all in one place.
And no, I never knew that Woodstock was an Art festival – far out, man. (wink)
Love the painting, btw.
The Old Silly
julielomoe says
Thanks, Marvin! What kind of rock band did you have?
Glad you liked my painting. And to Jane – yes, that’s a guy in a bathtub at the right – a bathtub with massage jets, which I believe were rather new back in the day.
I’ll write Part II soon, but right now I’ve got to get myself back to the garden – not in the sense of Joni Mitchell’s song, but in the sense of my real garden, one of the perks I enjoy living upstate rather than in my old SoHo loft.
Patricia Stoltey says
This is a great story — I missed all that “fun.” I was already married and a mother of two by then, so that whole era passed by without me having a clue to what was going on.
julielomoe says
Hi Patricia – Yes, you missed a lot of “fun.” Several folks have commented here that they were already married and settled down by 1969.
Full disclosure time (or partial, rather – there’s a lot that’s unfit to print): I married my first husband in 1964, and we separated amicably, without children, in 1967. We were living in Manhattan, I’d just come out of years of Ivy League academia, and when “the sixties” hit New York City along with the Beatles, the Fillmore East, the birth control pill, etc., I was ready to party!
That scene was long gone by 1973, when I met my “forever” husband. We’ve now been married 34 years. The sixties were incredible, but I couldn’t live through them again!
Bob Sharkey says
Hi Julie, this is interesting. I’m looking forward to the rest of the story. I hope you will write about the music. So far, no one that I know that was there can recall any specifics about the music. Just vague recollections about music in the air. And some of them claimed they weren’t even stoned so that wasn’t an excuse. I remember from other concerts of the era that sound systems were crap back then. Of course, the Woodstock film soundtrack was great. Bob.
julielomoe says
Hi Bob,
I’m glad you checked in here. Just found your message in my spam folder. As you’ve seen if you read the rest of my Woodstock posts, I did write more about the music, or more accurately, the performances. But it’s hard to remember the music in detail.