memory: Gaard Moses

July 16th, 2010 § 0

I first visited Aspen as a college freshman art student on Christmas break in 1965.  I naturally found my way to Tom and Betty’s newly built, three story home, art studio, silkscreen foundry, and gallery, located next to what is now Little Annie’s Eating House.  It would be one of my fondest and enduring memories of “early” aspen”

I couldn’t afford any of Tom’s $10.00 & up posters and serigraphs-a fact that my shaggy, anarchist, but carfefully engendured appearance made obvious to anyone but me.  The Benton’s, however, took me in, took the time and effort to talk to me of fine arts and finance and cabbages and kings.

As a burgeoning “back east” activist and future commerical artist I felt enriched by that encounter with Tom and Betty.  It was, perhaps, the first crafts-kinship of my own artistic career-all this quickened by the realization that, yes, it was possible to make a living as an artist in a ski town.

Three venues I persued with zeal myself over the next 40 years!

Benton at work

March 2nd, 2010 § 0

“The Japanese master Hokusai said, ‘until I’m sixty, I will be a beginner and nothing I do will have any meaning.  From sixty to seventy, you can look at what I’m doing; from seventy to ninety, I’ll finally be getting it together; and from ninety on, every dot, every line will be perfection.”  -Tom Benton

Screen printing is  a stencil method of printmaking in which a design is imposed on a screen of silk or other fine mesh, with blank areas coated with an impermeable substance, and ink is forced through the mesh with a squeegee onto the printing surface.  Each color is applied to the print individually to create the final image.  It is also known as silk screening or serigraphy.

Benton was prodigiously productive, a man considered by peers and collaborators alike as equal parts dreamer and doer. Tom was known for creating everything he needed, from his art supplies to his furniture to his home and art studio—and often his tools and accessories were as captivating as his works on display. Said friend Jay Cowan, “he could have gotten rich designing buildings, furniture, accessories, almost anything, but he wanted to produce art and he did.”

Joe Edwards for mayor of Aspen, 1969

February 23rd, 2010 § 1

Joe Edwards campaign for mayor of Aspen in 1969 was chronicled by Hunter S. Thompson in his first article for the Rolling Stone, titled Freak Power in the Rockies, “The Battle of Aspen”

Tom Benton was deeply devoted to the political movement and designed his first campaign posters for Edwards’ campaign.  Although Edwards lost by 6 votes, the campaign was notable for its attempt to garner nearly all of its support from ‘freaks’, ‘heads’, and ‘dropouts’ from the surrounding areas – Freak Power, as it was dubbed.

Below is an excerpt from Thompson’s article in the Rolling Stone.   Thompson mentions Benton when referring to Edwards’ supporters at local polling stations on election day.

“What were they doing out here at dawn, in the midst of this menacing mob?  What indeed?  Bugsy (The incumbent mayor) scurried inside to meet Guido, but instead ran into Tom Benton, the hairy artist and known radical…Benton was grinning like a crocodile and waving a small black microphone, saying:  ”Welcome, Buggsy.  You’re late, The voters are waiting outside…Yes, did you see them out there?  Were they friendly?  And if you wonder what I’m doing here, I’m Joe Edwards’ poll watcher…and the reason I have this little black machine here is that I want to tape every word you say when you start committing felonies by harassing our voters…” – Rolling Stone, October 1, 1970.

Benton later created another poster for Edwards’ successful campaign for Pitkin County Commissioner in 1972.   During his career, Benton designed over 50 campaign posters for candidates including Bill Noonan, Ned Vare, Gary Hart, George McGovern, Willie Brown, and Pitkin County Sheriff Bob Braudis.

Peace Posters and Protests

February 21st, 2010 § 1

Now symbolizing peace, the emblem was devised by Bertrand Russel and is a combination of two semaphores (signals with flags),  N and D, meaning Nuclear Disarmament.  When turned upside down the symbol is the ancient symbol for man.

Tom Benton, a devoted peace activist, organized a memorable anti-war protest and peace march to the home of U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara in Old Snowmass.  Because of his objections to the Vietnam War, Benton refused to let McNamara leave his driveway during the protest

“He considered it a moral dilemma that (McNamara) couldn’t escape,” recalled former Aspen Mayor Bill Stirling.

Tom Benton with Robert McNamara

Benton also organized a protest in 1969 against a nuclear detonation in Rulison, Colorado. Benton marched to Rulison with supporters and distributed posters with bright radioactive symbols along with the words,  ”No Contamination Without Representation” and “Stop the Military Industrial Complex”.

“Throughout his career Tom remained steadfastly loyal to rock solid values and committed to sending his political message through his art.  He’s always been a very courageous spokesman both through his art and his politics for issues related to peace and the environment.”  -Pitkin County Sheriff Bob Braudis

Aspen Wallposters

February 11th, 2010 § 0

The Aspen Wallposters:

The wallposter is a bi-weekly publication of the Aspen Wallposter Corporation, Box 1561, Aspen, Colorado.   Subscription rates will be announced in issue No. 2.  A very limited amount of advertising will be accepted as of issue No. 3  The Wallposter is not a newspaper – at least not for now.   But the sneaky demise of the Illusrated News leaves Aspen with only one editorial voice (in print & on the air) and politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum.   We intend to fill that vacuum.   We also intend to make some people wish that wolves had stolen them from their cradles.   The only criteria for art and editorial content will be quality- Any nazi greedhead with the money to hire a good ghostwriter is welcome to submit his screeds for publication.   Dull, and/or illiterate bullshit will be rejected out of hand.   Our space is limited and we have no rewrite staff to cope with gibberish or garbled swill.   We’ll make every effort, however, to publish any relevant, coherent and even outrageous counterpoint to our own clearly biased opinions. So – in the now-famous words of Spiro T. Agnew – “Let the Hundred Flowers Bloom”

-The Editors (Tom Benton and Hunter Thompson)

March, 1970

The following article appeared in the Aspen Times on March 5, 1970.   Page C-1

Scurilous Sheet hits the streets.

A new way to open your eyes, fill your mind or line your waste basket was introduced to Aspen this week with publication of the first issue of The Aspen Wall Poster.

Designed as a bi-monthly output of graphics and opinion printed in a poster format, the new publication is the result of efforts by Tom Benton and Hunter S. Thompson to fill the editorial void created by the recent close of the Aspen Illustrated News.

The opening article by Thompson had been accepted by the News for publication before the abrupt end game of the paper.   Looking for a forum that would be free of the financial and editorial limitations of a newspaper, Thompson created the Wall Poster with Benton.

Denying the idea that they are looking for a personal soapbox, Benton and Thompson said in a statement on intent in the first issue they will accept any “relevant, coherent, and even outrageous counterpoint to our clearly biased opinions.

“The only criteria for art and editorial content will be quality.   Any Nazi greedhead with the money to hire a good ghostwriter is welcome to submit his screeds for publication.”

When asked by an Aspen Times reporter in an exclusive newspaper interview (easy when you’re the only paper in town), who would be their principle targets in the promised bi-monthly “heavy shot on local things,”  Thompson and Benton replied, “the greedheads, the land-rapers and the Nazis.”

A quick perusal of their first number gives some indication exactly who they consider in those categories.

Much like Consumer Reports which promise to “call spades spades, names, names, and let the chips fall where they may,”  the Wall Poster will hopefully provide a forum in which consumer of the much abused “quality of life” in Aspen can report.

The Graphics on the first issue are a re-working of the Joe Edwards campaign poster and it is backed by a bit of prickly invective about city and county cracker barrel politics.   But then it is the only way you can get a Benton poster for a dollar and if mounted with epoxy your children will never read the back.

Speaking of the format, Benton said that next time they would switch the invective and people would put the poster up against the wall.   Thompson said that personally he would like to see the graphics get into the erotic.   Nothing but dirty old logic, that, considering the way veritable mounds of Playboy are sold in Aspen.

The Wall Poster will also accept ads, but they must be interesting and will naturally be subject to editorial comment.   Thompson remarked that advertisers could buy equal time in the issues that blasted them.

Thompson, swaggering around the clandestine press room of the sheet in jack boots, Same Browne belt and campaign metal denied rumors that he coveted the Pitkin County Sheriff’s job, “although he said he was growing a beard to better represent Aspen at law enforcement conferences.

He noted that pressure for a draft is strong among his east coast financial backers and a posse will be formed soon.   Cowboy boots, side burns, and Basalt residency will not be mandatory, but useful.

The only member of the shadow organization that seems to surround the new sheet with a title is Circulation Manager Gene Johnston.

If warranted, he will make deliveries with a fierce dog in one hand, a large gun in the other and the posters flashing between.

Thompson said that “just because some of the writing may be a little heavy, it doesn’t mean it’s not serious.”

Remarking that the momentum for local reform had dropped since the election, the editors said that it was a mistake to only get excited two weeks out of the year.

Valley exploiters count on just such apathy and it would be a shame to let them have the whole game the rest of the year.

Although they claim to be entirely free of outside group influence, Benton noted that if you burn a candle under the poster, the word “revolution” appears.   Thompson said that if you urinated on it, secret messages would come out in the margins, but he didn’t recommend doing it when you were holding the candle under.

memory : Ian Cion

January 28th, 2010 § 1

There is promise in beauty and poetry and nature, and there is fight in man.  We are blessed with love and art, and obligated to defend them, not by the destruction of our enemy, alone, but by the cultivation of our wholeness.

If we are going to talk about Benton, it should be by way of the Shinto and the night sky, and in the name of the Aspen Liberation Party.  There are artists who are able to transform our common birthright of suffering into wonderment by a simultaneous strength of will and a complete surrendering.  If you have an inclination towards such a vocation, there is no guarantee about anything working out for the better, or for any certain success or comfort at all.  But the one thing that I can see that is even more inspiring than the tenacity required to embrace this destiny is the strange miracle of finding others who have gotten themselves into the same stubborn mode of operation, the artist’s life, and with them feeling, across generations, across the ages, a sense of communion, of kinship, of buoyancy through a shared commitment to a beautifully quixotic battle.

I was born in Aspen in ’74. This means mostly that Tom Benton’s art and posters were as essential as parkas in the houses of the people I knew.  I still find myself thinking on occasion “Eagle feathers bound in wax won’t take us to the sun, the dream’s the thing, our holy wings, our journey’s just begun” (Joe Henry).  “Between the idea and the reality falls the shadow” (T.S. Eliot).  “I saw a white bird once/on a wild coast/and fell in love/with this dream that obsesses me.” (Akiko). Because these were poems that Benton’s art helped to stick in my heart.  He helped make poetry matter to me, and art matter to me.  Later, as we became friends, he helped me believe that it mattered that I cared about these things, and tended to them.

The two most prevalent strains of Benton’s gift: a sublime nocturne meditation in which darkness is searched deeply until the first hints of light are revealed, and a commitment to harmony with the deeper mysteries of nature, both reveal themselves in his work, not by pigmentation or form alone, but by deed and act within the larger community.

If you ever visited Benton in his studio at night, you realized you were visiting the studio of an artist working in a forest in the heart of a Galaxy.  Buckminster Fuller called our ride Spaceship Earth.  Having lost the darkness of High Alpine Night to the light-polluted cities you might forget where we are, but in the wilderness that surrounded Benton’s studio, you’d remember.   At the door to the Garden of Agony, the blackness was opalescent.  Benton painted this sky again and again, but he painted it as it was the very soul within him, as if by examining our own darkness long enough, we can see the whole universe suddenly illuminating within us, a great expanse.   This is both a death and an awakening.  Winters are cold and long and painting can keep you awake for days at a time, and the question becomes what else holds us together on the edge of any abyss, what shapes all bodies into orbs, but gravity?  Are we shackled or enwombed, who can say?

And the bird is a witness when there’s no one else to see.