In Search of Patrick

This week has been interesting, and I kept coming along to the same question
day after day--
Would I ever be able to discover the true identity
of a curious artist I recently encountered in some 70's magazines?

Mais OUI!

Oui Magazine August, 1975

Currently I am documenting Oui Magazine content
and have been so caught up in discovering the parallels
of that time to this one,
it's as though America is stuck in a time warp...
government has resolved nothing, Mexico is still having drug wars,
women are still posing nude...oh, blast it, never mind all that!
...no, I don't normally actually say blast it in general conversation,
but now I may have to.

My intent in posting today has nothing to do with politics,
or blasting,
but everything to do with art.
I am amazed at the quality of work often found in these magazines.
To my delight, I discover new talent within every monthly installment.
My online searches are building up
as I pore over all information I can find.
This, in process, stalls my listing times considerably,
due to the inherent curiosity I cannot rid myself of.

I read, and fill my eyes and multiple brain-tummies
(tumors, they must be tumors the way they eat!),
filling them with imagery, getting closer to the truth,
or running into dead-ends,
or finding other equally interesting artists to swoon over.

Every day in discovery is Thanksgiving.
Without conclusions, without closure, I am often left feeling
as though I am too stuffed with inconclusive data
to be allowed to have my just desserts.
Today is my day for sweet potato pie.

Recent attempts to catalogue brought me once again to the hunt.

One artist, especially, caught my eye,
and the scrawled signature left at least a cryptic clue.


Searches for Patrick yielded little,
and I continued from OUI 1975 on into OUI 1977
wending my way through stories, and illustrations
some easily found
or readily known
yet still no clue to patrick.
And here in 1977,  I find another clue.
An unsigned work in the October issue with a credit to Patrick Byrne.
Aha! I surmise......

scanned from 10/77 oui (click to enlarge)

this woeful face of a Tampa Bay Buccaneer
can only be the work of the same Patrick....

and do I ever remember that era of NFL football

The Bucs, Saints, Chiefs and Jets were pitiful, 

the Cowboys did not play on Thanksgiving this year, 

but won SuperBowl XII!  

....but back to
Patrick Byrne.

Imagine my joy at finding this image on John Patrick Byrne's site

stolen from johnbyrneart.com (click to enlarge)

Plus, finding this delightful conversation
from 2008 with Mr. Byrne by Jennie Renton.

I gotta say, this gentleman is one talented motherfucker!
Sure, I cringe to think that's the best way I can put it....
I can do better than that....
Patrick is the Bomb!
A true artist in every sense of the word....
artist, author, playwright,
That I had never heard of him is a testament to just how uncultured I truly am.

 In any event, the search for provenance,
the hunt for value, the love for the content,
keeps me in prolonged discovery mode.

 I really like that.

Paul Krassner scanned from 8/75 Oui (click to enlarge)

Is it just me, or does this image seem rather personal?
I was immediately caught up in every facial nuance,
each word and object curiously exhibited...
This is interesting art
of and by a couple of
devilishly clever men.

Fill Me Up, I'm Hungry

Words provide rich nourishment for my mind.
On nearly equal footing are Music and Art.
I say nearly, although both Art and Music
may be far superior to words by many accounts.
Today, for my own mind, words are where it's at.

Words can describe the painting or
define the melancholy of a certain melody
within the lyrics (when provided).
Harmonics bring forth words unspoken
yet distinctly heard ...
within those layers of sound
emerges a distinct vocabulary.
Words bring clarity or ambiguity
dependent on the skill of the writer.

Word paintings are three-fold in that musically they are lyrics
meant to match the tone of the tunes they accompany.
(see tone or text painting)
In writing, they are a fusing of words to represent the visual narrative.
In art they are literally paintings of words...
or they are paintings created with words.

stolen from the www ( I forgot to mark the page)

Words are succulent.
Placed within sentences words fairly drip
with imprecision, nuance, thought, and meaning.
All ajumble, or all alone, words serve.
They are our own personal Maitre D's
ready and willing to attend to the literate among us.

There is a saying that a picture paints a thousand words...
and I say each word mimics another word,
another thought,
another entity,
another eternity within those paintings and songs of life.

If I could cook a book and eat it
I would surely do so.

image stolen from xelgend.blogspot.com

No need for garlic or peppers,
gravies, onions, icings or aspics...
it's all the tastiest of words
within the book
(if well-written)
which will serve to sustain me.

From the earliest light juvenile snacks
of "run, Spot, run."
and "Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You?"
to the bloated gluttony of "The Stand" (revised)
or "The Fountainhead"
Each word  has made their mark
within the 17 or thereabouts stomachs of my mind.....

.....often resulting in puffy cushions for what amounts to collections within
and often about lowly tripe.

This will never deter me
from seeking the final chapter,
the eloquent fait accompli...
indeed, the last word
of my reader's quest for fulfillment.

I fear I suffer from a little-known and seldom-documented malady
dissociative reader disorder.
I cannot help but separate myself from the words
only to rejoin and embrace them.
Nor can I distinguish between the frail and feeble
always lurking amongst the hale and hearty.
These words can steer me straight to panic
or lull me into a sense of cocoon-like comfort
(or is that really me just trying to hide from reality?)
I'll never really know...
I am my own worst contradiction;
yet without this knowledge of self
and the desire to extricate a life from it
piece by piece, word by word
I would have little left to live for.

Thank you, dear words...for your sustenance.