XPost: alt.arts.poetry.comments, rec.arts.poems, alt.graphics.illustrator
Bill Evans wrote:
<snip>
Is that a rhetorical question?
If the award is in poetry, my work has already won the highest award in this area, the 1998 Perky Award - Favorite Poet - Will Dockery:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10153254976704363&l=6432d80e3a
Seems about 100 years ago, but I won the 1998 Perky Award for "Favorite
Local Poet" in Columbus, Georgia. These were citywide awards for the best-of everything, music, art, eateries, venues, actors, and of course, poets.
1998 Perky Award - Favorite Poet - Will Dockery:
http://picyou.com/deET1k
It was a great era for poetry in this area, and for all the arts,
actually... here's an interesting archived piece I found on an adventure I
had with my friend, the abstract painter Dan Barfield:
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt.graphics.illustrator/Dmbz-uanA-g/KxHspRI7WnIJ
Danny Barfield's art almost got me arrested a few years ago, a nosy peeping
tom thought I had "dead bodies" stashed in the backroom,
----
Columbus Ledger-Enquirer (GA)
July 13, 1997
Section: LOCAL
Edition: FIRST
Page: B1
HOW GROSS THY ART
Tim Chitwood
Apparently it was all just a big misunderstanding.
The misunderstanding led to a 911 call about a decomposing body in an old
house M***** S*****'s husband R****** owns at 2113 **th St. in Columbus.
That led to the discovery that it wasn't a body after all, but artwork made
of barbed wire and blowtorched Barbie dolls. But it sure looked like a body
to police. And it looked like a body to paramedics. And it definitely looked like a body to Danny W****.
Danny is a real estate agent who with M***** went to look at the house July
2. He wanted to buy it and fix it up. It needs fixing up. The roof leaks in places and some of the floor's rotting. The S**** now live on F**** Drive
and use the **th Street house for storage. M*****'s son Will Dockery lets friends -- artists, poets and madmen, Will says -- store their work there.
Among those artists is Dan Barfield, who has a concept piece called
"Vietnam,'' part of which the veteran made of melted Barbie dolls. ("He
hates Barbies,'' says his wife Judy.) It now lies on the floor among other stuff stored in the dark, northwest bedroom of the ##th Street house. To someone who didn't know what it was, it might look like a rib cage and
sternum atop decayed matter.
That's what it looked like to Danny W**** when he walked into that musty
room, first staring up at the rafters. Then he looked down. Then he froze.
Then he ran.
He wasn't sure what he saw. Maybe a body. Maybe it was sealed with wax,
which trapped the odor. Maybe this was a bizarre ritual. Maybe he didn't
want to know.
M***** followed Danny as he dashed outside, where he tried to make a call on his cell phone. She told him not to. According to her, she told him he'd
just seen some artwork. According to Danny, she never said that; she just
said they didn't need the police coming there.
This did not sound reassuring. Danny had to make that call. Now don't call
the police, M***** said again. She says she also told Danny her son Will had
a bad temper, and he wouldn't like Danny calling the police.
She says Danny replied that the police wouldn't do anything to her; she
wasn't involved. That's true, she said (she wasn't involved in storing the art), but the police needn't be bothered.
M***** claims Danny then offered her $13,000 for the house, then said it
needed so much work the most he could give her was $10,000.
Danny maintains all M***** did was tell him no one should call the police.
The next day, someone called the police.
About 10:30 a.m., police and paramedics rushed to the house, unboarded a
door to get in and examined what they, too, thought was a decaying body,
oddly odorless. Then they poked it and figured out it wasn't. It was such a weird story, the Ledger-Enquirer ran it on the front page July 4.
That's how M****** learned police had broken into the house. She was
perturbed. She blamed Danny.
Danny won't say he called police, but admits he told someone what he thought
he saw. Stan Swiney of the 911 center says the call reportedly came from a Billy Hanson. (No Billy Hanson listed in the Columbus telephone directory
was involved; I called.)
The 911 report said someone saw the alleged corpse through a window. That's difficult: The room's dark; the window's dirty; the art's hard to see.
The artist, Dan Barfield, says it's funny Danny W**** would be frightened, because the real estate agent stopped by a few months ago when Dan was
moving art into the house, and this piece was out on the lawn at the time.
The artist claims the agent told him a decayed body was found in the house once.
Danny says that's outrageous: He has never met Dan Barfield. "I would
remember that,'' he says.
Danny says he just wanted to buy the house to help clean up the
neighborhood, where he owns other property. ``As far as I'm concerned now,
they couldn't give it to me,'' he says.
Perhaps it will remain the house of scary art, where once people thought
they saw a dead body.
But didn't.
----
Dan Barfield took off to live in Texas a year or so and I we don't hang out
so much as we did in the olden times... hope the old cuss is doing okay out there.
--
Bill Evans / Box 1224 / Mariposa, CA 95338 / (209)742-4720
Mail-To: wje@acm.org -- PGP encrypted mail preferred. -- pgpkey.mariposabill.com for public key. Key #: 8D8B521B
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Check out "Twilight Girl" by Will Dockery & Henry Conley
https://www.reverbnation.com/willdockery/song/17680972-twilight-girl-w-dockery--h-conley
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More from my Drafts files....
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