SIGI – THE PROPHET

(from left to right Sigi and me – on a break 1983?)

Gallery House*

One day, not so long after moving to San Francisco in 1981, I wandered into a cafe and sat down at a couch next to a middle aged man exactly twice my age. I was carrying carpenter’s tools with me in a bag, which he noticed, so with little ado we began to talk. Within a short time we had a workshop together and I began to really learn my craft, because he was above all a fine craftsman, schooled in the traditional German way which did not exist in America. I knew next to nothing really but I learned it from scratch from him and took to it like a fish to water.

However, Sigi Krauss was and is far more than that because of his former life in the middle of the art scene during the swinging 60s in London. He had a couple very avant-garde galleries that showed cutting edge, political and provocative art for several years until each in turn was shut down, mainly because of the political content he was showing. One was the Sigi Krauss Gallery and the other, right, was Gallery House, closed by the West German Government.

He was also married to a very talented artist who was the daughter of a famous artist, Jean Tinguely, and friends with many other artists – some also very famous – such as Sigmar Polke, Jeog Immendorf and Katerina Siverding. So in between discussions of politics and craft, I heard story after story of the rarified world of Art: the commerce, rebellions, the crazy stuff and people he was involved with, and along the way the zeitgeist of what it was to be an artist. He was also a high end framer of art sometimes doing so for the largest museums – think Rembrandt – and very obviously to me, an artist himself though he would never say so himself. Very often our commercial work was halted while we made stretcher frames for one painter or another gratis.

We were never successful in money terms as cabinetmakers. This was probably an impossibility given who we were. Both of us were idealistic and obsessed with quality, while I had a complete lack of any experience in business, of which I was the nominal head at 23 years of age.

I was feeling the pressure of slipping deadlines, lack of funds to buy materials and of other work commitments we had made but could not fulfill due to the pace of work done well, mostly at that point by him. But, despite all this, Sigi and I continued taking his dog Sara for walks through the Mission District or to the ocean, stopped work to drink tea or make frames for an artist, and talked. I so felt the pressure that I began pressing him to allow us to make some dubious shortcut in the way we were working. He suddenly got angry and frustrated which was rare. I can still see his reaction as if it were yesterday. He didn’t shout or berate me. He just stopped what he was doing, held out his hands, almost shaking, palms up and stared into them and said, “These hands won’t do bad work.” The argument was over, and for me in a way settled for the rest of my life.

Sigi3 – The Prophet 1989

Sigi has to be one of the most interesting people I’ve ever met in my life – skilled, sophisticated and a natural story teller – and he had a big influence on me. I of course did make a few portraits of him when I began taking photos with the wineglass lenses. I think I did four shots of him in all while he was sitting in a café drinking tea. One especially pleased me as it reminded me of my conception of what an Old Testament prophet would look like, which seemed to ring true in so many ways to me.

Below it is another I’ve made into a kind of diptych. The left was a print that had a severe developing flaw that I loved, so while writing this I’ve flipped and combined it with the “normal” one. Perhaps one day I will find time to print the two together like this.

SigiRorBlot 1989/2018

* Visit the website for Gallery House photo here.