Gibe

After Earth Day one and co-founding Earth Day two (U-Thant signed the proclomation declaring Earth Day an international holiday) we created and built the loft, housing Laboratories for Metaphoric Environments (LME) on Manhattan’s east sixty eight street just across form Avadon’s (the world famous fashion photographer) studios and in a building owned by Mr. Fernandez who ran a high end commercial bakery (baking bread for hotels and restaurants such as Hotel Pierre, Waldorf Astoria, Essex House, Plaza Hotel, etc.) on the ground floor. In Union Square I had met Adam Alexander who at the time was special assistant to Mayor Lindsay. Adam lived on the West Side and had several doctorates in mathematics. He somehow decided to collaborate with me to form LME and so from 1971 till 1973 (when we left New York for Jackson Tennessee) we had conversations which I documented with words and sketches.
What I later called word grams (after the DaDa movement) were my cognitive responses to reify these subjects through my fascination with geometry, graphics, and design, drafting, and isometrics extrapolations. Adam knew I was doing this, and, on occasion, after looking at my work sheet, would interrupt and say: “yes, that’s right” or ask “is that what you think”?
The previous year I did much the same thing with a graduate student from City College named Phil Winters where he would document our conversations into his thesis based on a system he called: “TAG” (trust, authority and guidance). When Adam was not at the lab, Henry Classon (a wall street, MBA graduate) and I would likewise converse so that he could write the prospectus for LME.
It was only when I was writing and managing trainees and consultants for ARAMCO in Saudi Arabia did mount all 63 word grams on cardboard and then with dry mount film glazes each to the cardboard. In 1981 I thought these would eventually be exhibited as relics of the times.
Sadly, Adam disappeared, as had Phil and so many others from this very creative time. In 1972, after packing Plexiglas sculptures, pen and ink sketches, paintings and our personal effects Christina joined me as I assumed directing the architecture department for an insurance company where I designed two Tennessee cities and one village in Belmopan. At that time a local gallery owner invited us to exhibit our art and even a gallery in Memphis exhibited and sold many of my Sheba pen and ink fantasy drawings, I dared not let anyone in Jackson see my word grams.
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