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Poets and Artists
Lynda Koolish
Pat Parker, 1972 Gelatin silver print LYNDA KOOLISH PHOTOGRAPHS COLLECTION Eros—creativity, love, and the energy of life itself—speaks to us through artists and poets. We may discover the voices, insights, and experiences of LGBT individuals through their contributions to the arts—luminous connecting threads that run through history and world culture. The ability to move through different worlds, transgressing and transforming boundaries, identities, and awareness, is a skill cultivated by gays and lesbians as well as by artists and poets. Poets have iconic stature in lesbian history and culture—beginning with the ancient Greek poet Sappho. A new poetics emerged in the confluence of 1970s feminist activism and the gay liberation movement. A vibrant network of Bay Area women poets included Judy Grahn, Elsa Gidlow, and Susan Griffin. Poetry readings were community events, electrifying rapt audiences at women’s centers, bars, bookstores, and coffeehouses. Among the treasures of the Hormel archives are three original, handwritten poems by Pat Parker, donated by photographer Lynda Koolish. In considering the history of San Francisco, compelling evidence of its bohemian, gay cultural roots emerges. A special focus on poets and artists active in the Bay Area begins with the figures of a mid-twentieth-century literary movement known as the Berkeley Renaissance or the San Francisco Renaissance. Foremost among these brilliant innovators were the poets Jack Spicer, Robin Blaser, and Robert Duncan, and the artist Jess. Rare materials related to these artists and their contemporaries are housed in the library’s Book Arts & Special Collections Center. The Hormel Center also contains the personal papers of one of San Francisco’s pioneering gay literary figures, Daniel Curzon. His novel From Violent Men (1983) is a gay revenge fantasy about Dan White, the convicted murderer of Supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone. 
Photographer unknown
Photograph from Sylvester’s wedding Golden Gate Park San Francisco, CA, 1972 Pictured: Billy Orchid, Pristine Condition, Sweet Pam, Scrumbly KREEMAH RITZ PAPERS In the Hormel Center mural, Into the Light, there exist many names—spanning centuries, cultures, and creative disciplines—from Rumi to Audre Lorde. One name few people may recognize is We’Wha (1849-1896). A Zuni weaver, potter, spiritual leader, and cultural ambassador, his life exemplifies an alternative gender role recognized in many Native societies. Perceived as entwining both maleness and femaleness in one body, “Two Spirit” people were thought to be a bridge between the sexes, between the temporal and spiritual worlds. Through their special insights, creative gifts, and power, “Two Spirit” people significantly contributed to communal life as shamans, healers, singers, storytellers, and artists. The poems and songs of Chrystos and Joy Harjo articulate emotions resulting from social injustices committed against Native Americans. With individual, political, and erotic voices, LGBT Native Americans have articulated their challenges in word and song—their strength and conviction confront us with the limitations of our culture, and their words resonate from generation to generation. Poetry Books
Robert Duncan
Faust Foutu Stinson Beach, Ca.: Enkidu Surrogate, 1960 Illustrations by the author, limited edition of 750 copies of which 50 copies are numbered and signed including a special color drawing by the author. PHELAN CALIFORNIA AUTHORS COLLECTION, BOOK ARTS & SPECIAL COLLECTIONS Further exploration of the work of many of the poets represented in the Hormel Center’s collections leads to the Book Arts and Special Collections Center, where rare, fine and small press books and little magazines are found. In 1957, the openly gay poet Jack Spicer’s “Poetry as Magic Workshop” was sponsored by the Poetry Center at San Francisco State College. The successful workshop evolved into a weekly gathering of poets, artists, university professors, and students. After a reading one night, Spicer suggested to Joe Dunn that he start a small press to publish the work of the emerging San Francisco poets. Dunn took a four-week course in printing and founded The White Rabbit Press. The first book he published was After Lorca by Jack Spicer, with a cover design by Jess Collins, known as Jess. From 1957–1968, The White Rabbit Press published sixtythree books and ten broadsides. It was the primary publisher of the work of Spicer, Robin Blaser, and Robert Duncan—the three central figures of the literary movement first known as the Berkeley Renaissance, and later as the San Francisco Renaissance. The Cat and the Blackbird, by Robert Duncan with drawings by Jess, was published in 1967. (Duncan and Jess had met in 1951, and were a couple until Duncan’s death in 1988.) 
Jack Spicer
After Lorca San Francisco: White Rabbit Press, 1957 Typed on an Olivetti Lexikon 80 by Robert Duncan and multilithed by Joe Dunn, with a cover design by Jess. GRABHORN COLLECTION ON THE HISTORY OF PRINTING, BOOK ARTS & SPECIAL COLLECTIONS In 1952, Duncan, Jess, and the artist Harry Jacobus founded King Ubu Gallery, one of San Francisco’s first alternative spaces for artists and poets. Two years later, it closed and reopened as the Six Gallery. Here, in 1955, as part of a group reading, Allen Ginsberg read in public for the first time—premiering “Howl” in an incendiary performance. The Book Arts and Special Collections Center possesses Ginsberg’s work Wichita Vortex Sutra, published in 1966, by San Francisco’s Coyote Press. The Cockettes
Fayette Hauser
Kreemah, 1970 Gelatin silver print KREEMAH RITZ PAPERS The Cockettes (1969-1972) blazed like a dazzling, slightly frayed comet through the psychedelic landscape of San Francisco, creating a spectacular, subversive theater of gender pandemonium. A young New York stage actor named George Harris came to San Francisco in 1968, renamed himself Hibiscus, and in the context of communal living, drugs and revolutionary ideals, became a visionary dedicated to free art and theater, founding the Cockettes. Hibiscus took to the streets in fabulous, ceremonial hippie drag, attracting and influencing an eclectic group of gay men and straight women. Their daily life of dressing up, playacting, and sexual exploration led to the routines of a wildly transgressive theater troupe. Sylvester, one of the early members of the Cockettes, went on to have a stellar career as a chart-topping singer and performer. Transformed by thrift-store finery and elaborate makeup, the Cockettes performed inspired midnight shows at the Palace Theater in San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood. Early productions such as Tinsel Tarts in a Hot Coma, and Gone with the Showboat to Oklahoma, were characterized by an anarchic, absurdist sensibility, non-narrative singing and dancing, and fantastically tawdry glamour. In Pearls Over Shanghai the Cockettes created their first all-original script, music, and lyrics. Their growing audience, decked out for the occasion, fueled the ecstatic energy. New shows were presented every few weeks and were important events for the hip and culturally adventurous. 
Concert tickets
1974 and 1979 KREEMAH RITZ PAPERS As word about the Cockettes’ shows spread to the East Coast, the group was undergoing internal difficulties—Hibiscus and several others dedicated to free theater, left to form the Angels of Light, and the remaining Cockettes went to New York for a highly anticipated three-week run. Celebrities and socialites turned out in droves, but the joyously amateurish spirit of the Cockettes was lost on sophisticated New Yorkers. Returning to San Francisco, the Cockettes’ unique alchemy continued long enough to produce several of their most successful shows and a lasting legacy. The Hormel Center is fortunate to have a collection of rare Cockettes materials, donated by Kreemah Ritz, an original member of the group. Included in the collection are photographs from the production of the Cockettes’ 1971 film Trisha [Tricia] Nixon’s Wedding (other films include Elevator Girls in Bondage and Luminous Procuress), The Cockettes Paper Doll Book, publicity posters, and performance stills, including Kreemah Ritz as Miss Liberty. Kiki Gallery
Unknown
Joan Jett-Blakk and Babette, c.1993 Hosts of talkshow/performance series produced by Rick Jacobsen c.1993 Gelatin silver print KIKI GALLERY COLLECTION A small gallery located in San Francisco’s Mission District, the Kiki Gallery was a provocative, intelligent presence in the Bay Area art community from 1993 to 1995. Kiki’s founder and director, Rick Jacobsen, shaped a lively program of exhibitions, readings, and performances by emerging artists. The confluence of innovative art, gay culture, and performance that was distinctive to Kiki had its antecedents in the mid-1950s projects of King Ubu Gallery and Six Gallery. In these pioneering artist-run spaces, Jack Spicer, Robert Duncan, Jess, Wally Hedrick, Jay De Feo, Allen Ginsberg, and others presented and supported one another’s work. The same creative energies effloresced in the theatre of the Cockettes, in the conceptual art and performance movement of the 1970s, and in the rich history of alternative art spaces in the Bay Area. These energies had a brilliant, though brief, flowering at Kiki. The gallery became highly regarded for its director’s imagination and fearlessness in presenting challenging new work. 
Wayne Smith
Sick Joke, 1993 catalogue cover KIKI GALLERY COLLECTION In its existence of only twenty-two months, Kiki was known for many memorable shows and events, beginning with the exhibitions Caca @ Kiki and ending with Piece: Nine Artists Consider Yoko Ono. The archives includes: exhibition catalogues (Sick Joke, Fresh Produce), publicity materials (Late Night with Joan Jett Blakk), performance stills (David E. Johnston’s Gone Dollywood), original art (Keith Mayerson’s Pinocchio the Big Fag), and snapshots of Rick Jacobsen with Jerome Caja’s work installed for the exhibition Toilet Water, seen in the background. |
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