Investments
Letitia Goes to Town
A Young Texas sculptress takes the New York art and theater world by storm.
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Letitia did not, however, sit serenely in Austin, then propel herself to New York. What made the trip to New York possible was the appearance of her ceramics in the Cleveland Museum of Art. There she won a prize for ceramics and was immediately sought out by the most important museum directors in the country. In her home town of Fort Worth, long-time supporter Henry Hopkins included her work in his collection. So did the director of the Guggenheim, so did the Catherine Reswick collector of the Cleveland Museum. Yet her own professors and colleagues at the University of Texas Department of Art ignored her. Here she was, included in the collections of the best museums in the country, and the university thought she was crazy. Delay followed delay when Letitia tried getting her instructors to fire those ceramics in their kilns. Finally, she plugged her own kiln into their wall socket and fired her own pieces. So much for the art department. While their mouths were collectively agape, Letitia took the advice of the director of the Cleveland Museum: "Just get out of that place. And take your kiln." She did.
When Letitia decided to go to New York she contacted her patroness from the Cleveland Museum. The patroness was pleased to find out how well Letitia connected with the connections. It's just not easy, connected or unconnected, to show your work at the Trustee Room of the Museum of Modern Art to the most prestigious people in dance, art, art patronage, art dealing, and museum direction. Riding the elevator to the room Letitia passed her competition: Brancusi's "Bird in Flight," Rousseau's "Sleeping Gypsy," Picasso's "Guernica," Nevelson's "Collages," Pollack's "Action Paintings," along with the more contemporary work of Rauchenberg, Dine, Oldenberg, and Vassarelli. And that's only the inside. In the Sculpture Garden is the wide-hipped Henry Moore woman, Rodin's "Balzac" and the corner that used to house Buckminster Fuller's geodesic dome a good 15 years before The Whole Earth Catalogue discovered it.
The trustees in the room are not quite used to seeing urges, movements, and intuitions made concrete in the form of metaphors and ceramic sculpture. None of them knew quite what to expect from her, but that's what's so exhilarating about the Trustee Room. On the periphery of Letitia's actions the hushed jingle of moneyed voices communed within the sacristy of modern art. "She looks like a cross between a cowgirl and a beautician." And "Well, she's already in the private collections of the Carter, Cleveland, and Guggenheim." And "God, I'd give her $14,000 just to know how she gets those glazes." The New York unspeakable in search of the Texas uneatable. If only they knew how simple and inexpensive were the secrets of her art. Better to let them wonder.
And Letitia let them wonder. And Letitia got their support. Money, which is not only the mother's milk of politics, but also of art and theater, came to her. Big names were now suddenly accessible. She's modest about her accomplishment. "Anyone who wanted could've done the same thing. Somehow, the people who backed out couldn't maintain the output. Man, that's the system, if it's gonna work it doesn't have an infirmary." So that's how Letitia built her kingdom. Very simple, but few people do it.
An audience in the Trustee Room would be sufficient for most, but not for Letitia. She also managed a showing at La Mama, which is not easy either. La Mama, a private subscription theater, launched a number of important avante-garde playwrights such as Paul Foster, Sam Shepard, Jean Claude van Itallie, Rochelle Owens, and Lanford Wilson. Ellen Stewart, the fabled Mama of La Mama, manages to keep her theater going by sheer energy. In the past she sewed and designed dresses by day and mothered and encouraged playwrights by night. She hasn't changed, but her fame and legendary support are harder to reach these days. Ellen Stewart's theater is booked solidly into 1975.
Yet that didn't phaze Letitia. A member of the crew for the current hit Pippin IV who happened to be living in Hell's Kitchen had Ellen Stewart's unlisted number. To the head of La Mama, Letitia must have sounded like John Connally, Black Mountain College, Picasso, and Jarry all rolled into one. Ellen asked her to come over immediately. They met, talked, and hit it off immediately. Ellen personally took care of Letitia, promised her a space, and gave her money, not for 1975, but for June, 1973. She also advised Letitia to return to Austin to polish her play and finish her masks. She did.
It was only upon arrival in Austin that Letitia found out just who Ellen Stewart and La Mama were. She didn't know that she was getting special treatment from Ellen. "I thought it was like getting a space to show your work in Armadillo World Headquarters." Now she knows, because everyone keeps telling her. But she just keeps on working so that she can return to New York, present her premiere at La Mama, then let the International Arts Council, the Guggenheim, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Wadsworth Atheneum have their crack at her play.
Letitia succeeded where so many before her have failed. She ran the obvious risk of slipping off to the ragged edges of the many disciplines and sources from which she drew. And she overcame the foul dust that preys on the talents of young artists seeking recognition in New York.
Just as she welds verbal, visual, and physical imagery in her play she also fuses her talent to a relentless ability to work. She, however, assumes that anyone could have done the same thing. "It's easy. In a sense, the second you start to assume control of your own life you've got it. Just imagine what it was probably like for her Majesty, the First Queen, whoever she was. All she did was assume control of her own life and act like she had it together. Then everybody came around with their disorder so she put everything back together again. Then there was a kingdom, knights, serfs, and what all." That's her secret.
Now that you know it find the time
to watch her create her own kingdom out of the artistic disorder around her. Just like Her Majesty,
the First Queen.
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