Lorraine was my Foundation Year Humanities teacher at School of Visual Arts in 1980. The following year, in the Fall semester of 1981, I took her Surrealist Literature class. Event since I was a teaanager I'd prayed such a thing existed. SVA made such things possible. We immediately hit it off. In my first year at SVA I often sat to her immediate right and exchanged small talk with her. She took a natural interest in what I was reading - Jim Carroll, Ted Berrigan, Rimbaud, Baudelaire and any other strange art related books I'd pick up real cheap at a shoebox of a book store on 23rd Street between Madison and Park Avenue South (Lorraine's class was held in a small room at 222 Park Ave. South, not far from Max's Kansas City - where she once waitressed). Once, when the entire class had failed to do the reading assignment, including me, Lorraine scolded us all. I apologized and Lorraine said, in not so many words, "Forget it! I don't worry about you." Lorraine, like Bernadette Mayer, treated me like a real artist - before I ever did.
(Lorraine reminded me of an Egyptian hieroglyphic come to life. Her hair was cut that particular style reminiscent of the women you see depicted on frescoes, on tombs.)
Surrealist Literature was a dream come true. Lorraine apologized for having to use an awful, wooden Anthology of Surrealist poetry edited by Academic poet Mark Strand. It did suck. She also had photocopied an entire book on Dada & Surrealist Art for us all. To this day I don't know we didn't use Artist Robert Motherwell's definitive text on the subject -The Dada Poets and Painters. The summer before taking the class I had already begun preparing by reading Tristan Tzara & Andre Breton. I became fascinated by Dada. It was about anarchy, chaos and combining disparate elements to rearrange consciousness by any means necessary. And provoking action. Performances were chaotic, violent affairs that went on simultaneously incorporating different disciplines, costumes, action, music, poetry, sound and all the five senses. Its participants were acting out in relation to the insanity WWI - it was a reaction to war's horrors and the established norms and values of the day. Dada sought to amplify the absurdity of life (Frank Zappa understood Dada). We all had to select a class project from a list of possibilities Loraine supplied and mine was Cabaret Voltaire, a Dada event. I created an environment, with a classmate and the poet Phil Good, that included strobe lights, music, poetry read from sheets crumpled & tossed forcibly at class mates...there was the shredding of fabric, guttural screams, confetti, water guns, spit, projectiles, nonsense words, oblique sounds, drums and chanting. It built to an almost painful, airless intensity then abruptly ended on a dime. When it was over Lorraine said "Boy! Am I stoned!, Bill, you get an A for the semester!" My performance occurred the day Anwar Sadat was assassinated - October 6, 1981 - which only added to the intensity. At semester's end, for a final project, I submitted a surreal photo I'd done for my Multiple Imagery class with Abe Rezny (see above), along with some amphetamine driven prose. Lorraine stole the (better copy of) the photo, leaving me a note in her mail box that said she loved it too much and that I'd never get it back. No one had wanted anything I'd ever done that badly before! Not until then and certainly not at all after.
Lorraine and I would run into each other around SVA, sometimes outside SVA. Once, when I was driving down East Houston Street, I saw her helping her elderly mother into a cab. I beeped and yelled to her. "I have a show on East 2nd Street!" she yelled back with a smile & wave, shocked and awed at our chance meeting.
About, maybe not even, ten years ago I emailed Lorraine out of the blue - I'd been writing about her in my journal. She got back to me right away and told me my photo was now in her archive at Wesleyan University after spending a small an eternity on her desk. She encouraged me to keep up with my journal writing - a daily practice I have had for many years.
Lorraine lived a full, varied life, like many of the people I admire so much. She worked for the Government in DC, for the Post Office, as a waitress at Max's and as a rock n' roll journalist getting close to Johnny Winter. She came to art late in life and was passionate. Her art was deeply personal - built on a rich dream life & fearless introspection. It was so personal that it became cutting edge political. I loved it for that, there was nothing affected about it, it was genuine - hardly any Performance Art is. Lorraine was pretty much apolitical in class (at least when I studied with her). She made it to age 90 - how great! She made a huge impression on me at SVA and as an artist. I can definitely say she was my favorite teacher there as well as an influence on my art. I salute her on her passing. Read the obits, Google her.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/15/arts/lorraine-ogrady-dead.html
https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/lorraine-ogrady-artist-dead-1234727149/
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