Gene Tepper remembers Ray Rice

In 2005 Gene Tepper remembered his lifelong friend, Ray Rice, in a series of vignettes: Zoot Suit; Elkhart, Indiana; New York 1940; New Orleans 1941; New York 1945; Lucky Road.

 

Zoot Suit

Some of the details of our first meeting are a bit hazy, but not so, the crystal clear image of Ray rising as if from the lower depths, an apparition, appearing gradually. First the large brimmed pork pie hat, then the wide shouldered, flared checked jacket, and finally the pegged striped pants and the yellow shoes. There was also a long chain swinging from his belt, but I wasn’t immediately aware of that.
I had heard about “zoot suiters”, but that was my first personal encounter with one and I knew immediately I’d never forget that image. What I didn’t know, was that I was about to begin a friendship that would last a lifetime.

To explain: it was sixty-seven years ago, about noon on the first Monday of August 1937 and I was waiting to be relieved, of my responsibilities as Cloak Room attendant. I had the 8 to 12 shift in the cloakroom, which was on the landing between the second and third floors of The Art students League on 57th Street in New York City. Access was provided by a narrow iron stairway, originally intended as a secondary fire escape in the building, but at that time used as a main connector between floors.
As part of the work-scholarship program, my job paid for tuition for one of my classes. Classes were three and a half hours a day, five days a week so I was able to attend two classes (afternoon and evening) for the price of one.

I had been attending the Newark School of Fine and Applied Arts for a summer course, when I first heard about the Art Students League and had decided to move to New York, just three weeks earlier. It was my first day on the job, and I was waiting for some guy named Raymond Rice to relieve me so I could get lunch and go to class.

It was also Ray’s first day on the job and I was supposed to pass on to him, the instructions I had received earlier that morning, before turning the “watch” over to him. Ray had just moved to New York from Chicago where he’d been studying at the Art Institute. I don’t remember how long he continued wearing the zoot outfit. I don’t think it was very long.

I do know that it wasn’t long before Ray and I became close friends, spending a lot of time together, sharing experiences and meeting other students. Before that first year was over we had become part of a very active social group. Miriam was studying sculpture with William Zorach and sharing an apartment on the east side with another girl (I know it’s PC to say woman, but in those day’s it was more acceptable to say girl). I think it was around the end of the year or early in 1938 that Ray and Miriam met.

As I write this, I’m amazed at the number of names of friends from that period that I can remember. David Scott from Claremont CA, who was alternately studying at Harvard and the League, Leonard Flettrich from New Orleans, Sam Wagner from Colorado, Karl Bissinger from Cincinnati, Werner Koepf from Stuttgart, Ulf Hansell from Norway (he was killed in the early years of the war), Charlie Owens from West Virginia, and many others.

Ray introduced me to Harlem and jazz. Many fond memories of trips on the A train up to see Count Basie, Louis Armstrong, Fletcher or the Duke at the Savoy or the Apollo or a little dark bar in the village.

There were frequent communal meals spent together, many of them at Miriam’s apartment, we were living on very limited funds, so we’d each kick in fifty cents or so, a designated shopper would return with whatever looked good and was cheap. A lot of wine was consumed, which make the simplest meal seem a feast.

In retrospect, it seemed like one long happy party. In fact it was a very dynamic and anxious time; the depression was just ending and there was great concern about the war in Spain that just ended and the beginning of the war in Europe. Some of the foreign students were returning home to go into the army and many of us were already thinking about volunteering for service of one sort or another.

The Palette Club

J. Todd Robinson and his wife, Thelma rented two railroad flats on 58th Street near Columbus Circle. They occupied the upper one and rented out rooms to art students in the lower. (Called railroad flats, because the rooms were laid out like a train; one room directly following the next. Because there was no corridor you had to walk through other folks’ rooms to arrive at your own. There were outside windows only in the first and last rooms. I think the cost of room and board was about $18 or $20 a month, including breakfast five days and dinner three nights a week.

During the depression years, it was very common for aspiring artists (like, virtually everyone else) to try every imaginable kind of idea, business or scam to make ends meet, in order to have time to study or paint. Ray had a job as waiter and helper in the kitchen (of the Pallet Club) in exchange for his rent. Besides myself, the other residents of the “club” at that time were; Dave Foster, a young man from Iowa, (who was also a waiter); Grevis Melville, the 3rd, from Damriscotta, Maine, David Scott from Claremont, California.

To complicate matters a bit, in addition to J. Todd Robinson, there was a second man named J.T. Robinson who lived in the upper flat. He was an old friend, unrelated to the operators of the establishment. He was known as “Robby”, to distinguish him from “Todd”. He was pleasant enough, but the source of a certain amount of curiosity because it was never clear exactly what he did. The two of them were always trying to put together “deals” or new businesses, (many of which involved the renters as a potentially cheap labor force). Among other moneymaking projects, which they tried to involve us in, there was a kind of catering service; a nudist camp (where Ray and David worked one summer) and a business called “Limited Editions”, which sold reproductions of small sculpture in wood and stone.

They had agreements with about a dozen, well-known sculptors, who authorized a limited number of reproductions of selected pieces to be sold in the Limited Editions Gallery. I remember only some of the names of the artists: Jose de Creeft, Hugo Robus and Chaim Gross. The stone pieces were reproduced in cast stone, the wood pieces were done in the appropriate wood by a pantographing, pointing process.

My job was to sign the wood pieces and the wood bases for the stone pieces, with the artists signature. I had a template with the various signatures on it and a kind of Dreml tool with which to accomplish my task. I worked at that job for the six months that the business survived.

Ray and I lived at the Palette Club for a year or so. I’m not sure of the dates, but it was probably during 1938 or early 1939.

Elkhart, Indiana

In the late spring of 1938 Ray, Sam Wagner and I decided to take a sketching trip someplace outside of New York. We hitch-hiked out to Ray’s home in Elkhart, Indiana and spent a few days getting used to just being outside of New York. Ray’s mother, sister and brother in-law treated us royally, plenty of good country cooking, visiting old haunts of Ray’s including a memorable Sunday in a Lutheran Church.

The next day we set out early to hitchhike to Terra Haute, about 180 miles away. We arrived well after sunset and found our way to what appeared to be the center of town. It was brightly lit, a number of bars and dance halls and a pool parlor. We had eaten supper en-route and had decided to splurge on a hotel room on our last night before embarking on our painting trip. We asked the first policeman we saw if he would recommend a hotel, he looked us over and pointed to a flashing sign a couple of blocks ahead, said: “they treat you pretty good, at the Rex, that’s where I’d go”.

When we arrived at the Hotel Rex, we were surprised to find the door locked. After we had pounded on the door, for a couple of minutes, a window on the second floor opened, a large woman in a house coat stuck her head out the window, and yelled; “we’re all filled up boys, come back in about an hour”. We all agreed that it was a strange way to run a Hotel and decided to go down to the rivers edge and sleep on beach. The same cop we had questioned before was standing near by, we asked him where we could go, to camp out for the night, he told us that we could not sleep out anyplace in town, but if we wanted we could check ourselves into the jail for the night, but we would have to be out of town before noon the next day.

We did sleep in the Terra Haute jail that night. It was not a fun night, we were each locked into a single cell which had two steel-slatted bunk frames hanging from the brick wall, a broken toilet, a stack of old newspapers in one corner and some rusting coffee cans in the other corner. The papers served as both mattress and cover. At 6am we were awakened, given chicory coffee (in the rusted cans) a piece of moldy bread and reminded we’d better be out of town by noon.

By noon we were on our “john-boat”, about two miles down-stream. We bought the boat from an old fisherman we met on the wharf. He assured us as to it’s sea-worthiness, after a cursory examination we gave him $14.00. The boat, really a flat bottomed, wooden row boat about 14 feet long, with a single set of oars. Forward in the bow and under the aft seat there was a bit of storage space. This was ostensibly to be a painting trip and we had each brought watercolors, sketch pads and planned to paint every day. Our food supply was Spartan, very little more than staples; coffee, flour, salt, bacon, onions, tobacco and some honey. We each had a bed roll (a piece of canvas rolled up over a blanket, tied up with a length of clothesline) and a change of clothing.

In the interest of not dragging this tale out any more than I already have, I will just summarize the trip as follows. After rowing all day we found a good sand bank, pulled the boat up on the bank, made a little fire, made some soldier bread and coffee, and exhausted fell asleep. We were awakened at 3am by a deluge. Everything was soaked through and through. That pretty much ended the notion of referring to it “a painting trip”. After that it was simply our river trip.

There was a four or five-mile current on the river. We alternated rowing, one hour on, two hours resting and after ten days we reached our destination. We had gone from Terra Haute on the Wabash River, down stream into the White River, down into the great Ohio River past Paducah, Kentucky and finally to Cairo, Ill. and the Mississippi River.

I have no memory as to why Cairo was our destination, most likely we’d had enough rowing , we were very low on funds and decided enough was enough. After we sold the boat, pooled our money, we each had about $7.50. Sam Wagner, who during our journey had decided to change his name to “Morgan Wagner” left to go his home in Colorado. Ray rode a freight train and I hitchhiked to Chicago. We met as planned in Chicago, spent a few days visiting with friends and went back to New York. We did have other adventures (experiences?) on the trip, including one more night in the jail in Mt. Carmel, Illinois, because of a very heavy rainstorm that lasted a couple of days. For a city kid, it was a very special kind of experience. Ray was a natural leader and made the trip a most positive experience for Sam and me.

New York 1940

There was an increasing uneasiness bout the war in Europe. Germans had occupied Paris, London was being bombed and many of us felt it was only a matter of time before America would enter the war. Reports about the prison camps, the torture, and the wholesale killing of the Jews and other minorities were already being heard. It was a very unstable period; the selective service act, establishing the first draft was announced and as we were all eligible, it was difficult to make any kind of long-range plans. Some of our friends were already fighting,

Ted Gilian, another old friend told me that the mural he had been commissioned to do for the WPA, was finished and he was going out to Lee Summit, Missouri to supervise the installation. He invited Ray and I to go with him, to help with the installation. We talked it over and decided it would be good to get out of New York for a while.

Once again I was able to visit Elkhart. It was the first time Ted had been further west than Jersey City. We spent three very pleasant days relaxing and eating large quantities of good mid-west cooking, prepared by Wilma and Ray’s mother.

It took two more days to get to Lee Summit, which is just outside of Kansas City. We had answered a “wildcat ad’ and driven all night and all day to arrive in KC about midnight. “Wildcatting” was common during the depression years. Some guy with a big old car made a living just driving across country, filling his car up with passengers who shared expenses, plus a bit more for the driver. We had been crowded into an old Buick with three other passengers. Arriving late at night in KC, our driver had told us this wonderful inexpensive hotel he knew, and suggested we all stay there. It was past midnight when we walked in, and were a bit surprised to see a number of men and women sitting around drinking and smoking in the lobby. Our driver knew the proprietress and we were able to get rooms. Not having slept for over 36 hours, we practically passed out and didn’t wake until almost noon.

We had left New York feeling worldly and sophisticated, after all we were art students from the big city, blasé and a bit condescending about the rest of the country. We were aware of the fact that there were a lot of very attractive and friendly girls staying at the hotel but we thought they were college students. The notion that we had spent the night in a Kansas City whorehouse without even being aware of it was a bit of a blow to our self –image, at the very least, it was disconcerting. Kansa City was indeed a different cup of tea!

It took almost three days to complete the installation of Ted’s mural. Deciding that we were already so far west, we might as well continue on to California checked the papers for a wildcatter heading west.
Five days later September 11, 1940 we had our first sighting of the Pacific as we came over the last mountain pass. At that time the air was crystal clear and we could see lush, rich orange and lemon groves all the way to the sea. We spent the first few days sleeping in my cousin’s living room, and then rented an apartment on Irolo Street near the Ambassador Hotel. The following days were spent familiarizing ourselves with the area, looking for work and contacting the few people we knew in LA. We each had one friend or contact in the area. By the end of September, Ted had moved into the garage of a friend in Beverly Hills, I had a job as delivery boy for a drugstore and our old friend David Scott had helped Ray get a job at the Webb School in Pomona.

The 15th of October I enlisted in the Army and was shipped off to Fort Or. I don’t think Ray and I were together again until after the war.

New Orleans 1941

I arrived in New Orleans very early in the morning, Friday, the 12th of December 1941after hitchhiking from Los Angeles I can pinpoint the time because it was the Friday after Pearl Harbor and I arrived that morning after hitchhiking from Los Angeles. I had Miriam’s address on St. Peter Street in the French Quarter, and with the assistance of a policeman I found sitting at a bar, drinking at 7am.

I found my way to 732 St. Peter Street. Miriam told me Ray was coming in from camp that night and we would all go out to dinner. That was also the evening that Miriam introduced me to Addie. I enlisted in the Navy, shortly after arriving in New Orleans and was stationed there until the end of 1943. Ray was in the Army, stationed in Alexandria, Louisiana.and we were able together in New Orleans periodically on weekends off.

During the balance of the war, I only remember one time we were together; I was a Cadet at the US Maritime Academy, Kings Point, Long Island, N.Y. and one Sunday Ray and Miriam drove out to visit me. Ray had just been commissioned a Lieutenant in the army. They were driving a large elegant Buick convertible. It was a memorable visit, I wish I had pictures of that day.

New York 1945

With the war finally over, we settled in to really begin our adult lives. Ray and Miriam and Mira lived on East 12th Street in the old Rhinelander flats, a building unusual in Manhattan because it was set back from the street and also because it had wrought iron grill work, so that it looked a bit like New Orleans. There were also other friends from New Orleans who had moved to New York Ray and Miriam had a kiln in the back yard or basement of their apartment and were doing a lot of ceramic sculpture and pottery. Ray was studying at the New School on East 11th Street. Addie and I lived in Chelsea not too far away. We were together socially a lot during 1945, 46 and I think 1947. Most Sunday’s, weather permitting, we met in Washington Square.

I can’t remember the sequence of events from 1947 until 1950 or ‘51, when I think the family moved from Mexico to San Francisco when Mira was very sick. There were teaching stints at Putney, Valley Verde, the Indian School in Sante Fe and San Miguel Allende, Mexico after the family left New York in 1947 (or ’48). Addie, Jesse and I moved to San Francisco in 1948.

Lucky Road

Clear memories of the houseboat under the railroad trestle, rowing in an old skiff with Ray up the slough toward the bay. Many visits to the Lucky Road studio and house, with Ray working on one of his many mosaic projects, painting or sculpting.

Ray

Not easy to sum up sixty years worth of memories. Ray and I met as students at art school in New York in 1937. Ray was a little older and certainly worldlier than I, and in the early days of our friendship I saw him as both friend and mentor (although I doubt if Ray saw himself as mentor). Looking back, I’m conscious of the consistency of Ray’s view of the world, and his unerring strength of conviction about moral issues.

My views regarding Ray’s artistic abilities are not unbiased, early on; I felt that he had the potential to become one of the truly important artists of our time. I felt he was the most talented artist I have personally ever known. I believe the body of work he accomplished, his painting; sculpture and films demonstrate his talents. I do believe he felt frustrated and unfulfilled in not having achieved more success in the mainstream art world.

My view is that the art world has become corrupted by a marketing ideology, which treats art as just another product to be manipulated and controlled by business interests. I don’t think Ray could have, nor wanted, to play the kind of games required for success in that arena.

What Ray did was to produce a body of work of lasting personal value, enriching the environments and lives of a large number of people with a great range of tastes. He was one of the first artists to contribute to the Arts in Architecture movement.

There are many examples but a few immediately come to mind; the sculpture and mosaics for the Stanton house, the huge mosaic for the Fresno Air Port, mosaics for our house in Terra Linda and numerous other like projects. I think the portrait he did of Miriam many years ago is a wonderful painting, and in it’s own way as current as the later strip paintings. The films are truly amazing, both the end products and the incredibly personal process he developed to produce them.

He was a seriously thoughtful man, wonderfully articulate, with an unfaltering sense of right and wrong. He was a very special man, much missed.