Trump Is Missing 2025 Mixed on Paper

 

Trump is Missing 2025. Mixed on paper

 

Home. Summer 2025 mixed on board

 

Robert "bobby" Buecker 1935-2024

Sad to learn today that Bobby has passed. I knew him on several fronts, as an art dealer, friend of everyone, and the maker of incredible Harpsichords that were remarkable. I met him when he came to my studio to look at my work and picked out a collage for one of his intimate shows that he was known for, and he was known for many things. He even made an exquisite frame for it. He was also a close friend of my best friend Tom Wirth who died during the awful summer of 1987 and bobby was right there with us taking care of Tom in his small east village apartment. Bobby knew everyone it seems and he gave a big thanksgiving dinner for some friends (probably close to 100 people were there) one year.

David Hill 1947-2025

a note on the passing of an old friend that I just found perusing the internet looking for photos for a facebook friend of the famous bookstore cinemabilia where I worked and where I met Dave. He was fun and liked movies and beer and hitting the bars after work. There were some nights we had for sure. He also would have Oscar parties at his apartment in park slope before it became park slope, and we even started a mail order film book business. He didn't last long but i continued. He moved back to Detroit and I of course lost touch with him. Sad.

Jerry Adler 1929-2025

 

Joseph Caroff designer of many great film posters 1921-2025

 

New piece. summer 2025. Mixed on board

 

Tree of Life grantee page.

 Tree of Life which just gave me a grant has posted my work on the page of grantees for 2025. Check it out. There is a lot of pictures and info. there.

https://www.treeoflifeartists.org/tree-of-life-grantees/2025-grantees/ira-joel-haber

Terence Stamp 1938-2025 fuck shit piss.

 

Sheila Jordan 1928-2025

 

Nana Mary

During the very hot summer of 1953, my mother was worried about the treatment I was getting from my father and my sister. I was 6 years old and they were abusive and mean to me. My mother was worried about me and she did all that she could do to protect me from them, and finally she took drastic action. She decided on a hot summer morning during that summer of 1953 to send me to Connecticut to Nana Mary’s. Now Nana Mary was not my nana. When I was really young even younger than my precious 6 years that I was during that hot summer of 1953, I could not pronounce Nana’s name which was Anna Mary. It came out as Nana Mary and that’s what I called her.

She was beautiful. Italian with dark hair like my mom’s and with a sad smile that was sexy to all the men who were attracted to her and came to adore her. I adored her and my mother also adored her best friend. Nana had 3 sons Tony the oldest, Richard the middle boy and Joey who was her youngest and was severely mentally retarded as it was known back in those days.

So on a hot Saturday of 93 degrees we took the subway from Brooklyn to The Grand Central Station. There was no air conditioning on the subways back then, so everyone tried to sit under or close to the old slow moving fans that hung from the low ceilings of the cars, and we barely moved much. I had never been to Grand Central Station and I was in awe of it, what 6 year old wouldn’t be. The size of it was overwhelming to me and all those people rushing about made me dizzy and excited. I held my mother’s hand and didn’t stop looking up and around me ,and ah the coolness of the space. I wanted to move there, but instead we got on a sleek early 50’s train and were gone from the city. My mother left my father a note “Gone for a while.” And that was it, and that was that.

We took a train to Moodus Connecticut where Nana Mary lived on a small farm with her 3 sons and no husband. Nana had been married three times and had her sons with each husband before they either died or left. I vaguely remember the third husband, a strapping red headed Irish man who was a fireman and worked out of our local firehouse that was not far from our small apartment. I can still smell the oil and grease of the firehouse, and now I always stick my head in any firehouse that I might pass on my walks in the city, where I’m hit with the coolness and smells of the place, and the memories of my childhood.

I had my little suitcase that was packed with my summer clothes along with a big pad and a big box of Crayola Crayons but no swim suit even though there was a small lake near the farm. My mother made a point of telling Nana that I was not to go swimming. I didn’t know how to swim and I would never learn. She didn't even want me to go near the lake but of course I did.

My mother had a fear of water because an uncle had drowned in the ocean when she was young, and this caused her to be loud, vocal and fearful about my water activities which didn’t exist. In her later years my mom would confide to me that this uncle who drowned also molested her when she was a young girl. I wanted to cry. We weren't allow to take showers either. Another water activity that I would not do until I moved out of my parents house when I was 18 and finally took showers which I had to get used to as I had only taken baths. The reason we weren't allowed to take showers was because my mom's mother had died while she was taking a shower and the water suddenly turned so hot that she scalded herself to death as my sister who was a young child looked on in horror.

I had never been to the country before, never left Brooklyn of my youth before this trip, so this was all an adventure for me. I was a shy kid, isolated within my family of father, mother, sister and brother and dependent on my uncle, my mother's brother who also lived with us in that small apartment on 12th avenue in Brooklyn.

I took to Tony, Nana's oldest boy who was tall, to me anyway and handsome to everyone who saw him. I was afraid of Richard the middle boy who was not friendly to me, and poked fun of me whenever he got the chance. Poor Joey was a problem, as I said using the term of the time severely physically and mentally retarded. He couldn't speak well and moved in short bursts yelling and screaming most of the time. He would also take dumps on the living room floor and the house had a smell of shit, that was faint but always there. He scared me of course so I kept as far away from him as I could.

I mostly spent time alone there in the country, drawing and looking isn't that what 6 year old children do. I wanted to go into the lake but of course I couldn't not as long as my mom stood watch over me until she would return back to the hot loud city of our lives.

Tony had a girlfriend and I forget her name but remember her being pretty and she would cling to Tony all over the place. Both of them worked in a diner not far from Nana Mary's. Tony worked in the hot kitchen making all sorts of things just like my father and mother did back in our cramped luncheonette back in Brooklyn.

His girlfriend was the waitress and she would hustle and bustle back and forth from the customers to the big open window that looked into the kitchen yelling our her orders to Tony and the other young cook who was nowhere near as handsome as Tony so I had no interest in him.

I would go there in the morning with Tony for breakfasts of pancakes and one hot morning Tony and his girlfriend got into an argument over something and soon it got physical with them throwing things at each other including handfuls of chocolate pudding that soon covered the walls and their hair and clothes. Finally the owner had enough and threw them the hell out telling them to go home and don't come back until they cooled down.

I was little and scared but I thought it was so funny, there they were Tony missing a sandal and his girlfriend missing a sneaker and covered in chocolate pudding walking back on the road to Nana Mary's the smell of chocolate mixing with those smells of nature and the woods. Sometimes when I walk down the tree lined streets of my neighborhood in the hot summer heat I get a whiff of that hot summer of 1953.

Suddenly my mom went back to Brooklyn, and I had one more day left before I had to also go back to our hot stifling apartment and the loud fights between my parents. “Come on kid we're going swimming” That was Tony speaking and I looked at him with puzzlement as he knew I was forbidden to go swimming, let alone go anywhere near the lake. “I can't Tony, my mom forbid me to even go near the lake and besides I don't have a bathing suit.” “So what” he said, “You got underwear on, that's good enough.” A few minutes later I stood there shy in my little white jockey shorts and got a good look at Tony all trim, muscled and beautiful in his brief swimming trunks. He bent down, and I climbed on his shoulders nervous and excited as he took me down to the lake for the first swim of my life.

pictures grand central, me at the lake, Nana Mary on the left and my Mom in their heyday.

Eddie Palmieri 1936-2025

 

Jane Morgan 1924-2025

 

Summer 2025 mixed on board

 

Robert Wilson 1941-2025