THE ORIGINS OF PINK GRAVY AND THE MONOS"LABIC UNIVERSE
by Thomascyne Buckley

The story begins with a water color class I took taught by a teacher named David something who is probably still at the UofI Art School, teaching water color but when he first came on, he was young, untenured and spunky. So beings that it was the late 70's and U of I had some sort of NY connection that brought us news of jazz and performance art and punk and stuff.... David challenged his water color to do stuff that didnt have anything to do with water color. Instead the first project was to build something out of what he called 'wattle and daub'. Then i remember making some sort of high chair out of rolled up newspaper that I recall attempting to sit. Then next, I came to class with a paper bag over my head (with the eyes cut of course, have always worn the big thick glasses) for some sort of critique which he just loved. So next told us our project had to be over ten feet tall and i don't know for sure, but I think he said it had to be musical. So was born the first Boinger tree which I wore attached at the waist and kind up over me ten feet tall with about 8 boingers hanging off the limbs. It was all made of that thick aluminum wire that I made the boingers out of. I had to have a friend walk me to class because I got caught up in the trees.
During this time, I was making friends with Brenda and David Tholfsen. As I remember it, my dear friend Matt Crow, electronic musician extraordinaire and otherwise off the wall art buddy called me up one day and said something to the effect of … “ I’ve met a girl I fallen in love with and you are going to fall in love with her too. “ It turned out she was going to U of I Art School, the same as me, and whether by coincidence or on purpose, we ended up in the same class. I think it was, in a way, some kind of general required art class that included field trips and dabbling in a little of this and that as projects. And it turned out, there was this big gangly kid from New York City in our class and he had a bonafide ghetto box from which he blasted all manner of fabulous reggae and dub.

It was a field trip to the Effigy Mounds, sacred native american burial grounds located in the northeast corner of Iowa along the Mississippi River. The whole class loaded up onto a good old yellow school bus early in the morning and left Iowa City, headed for Harper’s Ferry. Brenda and I sat together and I think Dave Tholfsen sat in front of us or just a few seats up with the ghetto box. Brenda and I started singing a capella blues and gospel stuff and eventually I think it developed into a friendly competition with DT’s ghettobox. I remember the mounds being really amazing and that by the time we got box somehow, Brenda and I had really connected with David.

I made the eggs originally for Halloween and there are wonderful photos I'll dig up for you showing the first ones which were colored as in "easter" and then later with some gal pal models who modeled the egg skeletons, also made out of wire. Those were some of my favorite photography times (I minored in photography and have since made my living in some form of that industry.). The very first time I saw an egg in action, it was my very short girl friend who wore one of the first three that I made and she put in on, let me take a few photos and then hopped on a bicycle to ride off to the halloween party we were all going to. I'm pretty sure watching the first egg-thing ride off on her bicycle, I laughed so hard that I peed my pants.

On the flip side, I was friends with the coop hippies and they liked to jam out. One special friend was Paul Bergman and he is the one who loaned me an acoustic guitar and taught me a couple of chords, didn’t take right away but I kept hammering away at Bob Dylan songs I’d copied from the library. Paul had a damaged piano on his porch that he needed to get rid of of which I’d made mental note. Through Matt Crow, I’d been exposed to the music of John Cage and other pioneers and had learned the term “prepared piano”.

Back in class, Brenda showed a special talent for sewing. Everyone seemed to have a musical side. Living in Iowa City, we had tons of influences at the University of Iowa, land of the writers’ workshop, the home of a very fine Dadaist Art collection at the Art School’s on campus Museum which itself kicked ass at the time and we had an art school that gave frequent amazing major concerts and recitals that were free to students at Hanscher Auditorium. It is also the home of a ginormous medical campus involving a huge hospital and education system that I ended up working for in a number of capacities, starting with serving trays to patients and ending up working as a photography technician for a professor who was studying cells from eggs through a process call Freeze Fracture. He and his team injected the eggs with something and then took thin slices from the cells which they photographed using electron microscopy and I then printed the images using a special ‘point light source’.

Rewinding into my deep deep past, I was a huge fan of Catwoman (in particular Julie Newmar) and when I was in third grade or so, I made all my neighbor buddies wear cat ears and tails that I had sewn for all us and we took over the doghouse which was not used by the dog anyway unless we were in and formed the cat-club. That was definitely not all I made them do as I was the director even then. Zoom zoom zoom, back to the late 70’s at University of Iowa, it was little wonder to me that I was about to form a very big cat-club.

I was asked to, allowed to or otherwise invited to do a musical art performance on the lawn of the Art School campus as a sort of class grand finale in the very late spring. It was meant to feature the Boingers but as I am really quite shy in reality, I didn’t want any one to see me. So I thought I would create more Eggs as diversion who would recite a greek-like chorus (sun! moon! stars! planets!) and Brenda created a full body fat, bald italian-guy costume for me, so I would be completely disguised. No one could possibly recognize me.

I got Paul involved with the beater piano for preparing and it was moved to the lawn for the performance. I wrote some mildly lengthy musical saga which involved initially I think, just the eggs and Bolo, though I am not 100% sure because that video tape was lost to me. Might still be in the possession of the David (last name?) who did our video back then. I know I had David already signed on as one of the eggs and probably had already recruited David Duer. I imagine my friend Vicki Engonopolous was the only female egg because I had a six foot height requirement and she was 5’ 10” or 5’ 11”. Not sure who else played the remaining eggs....

The performance was lovely on a beautiful warm spring evening. My mom and family was there with my dog, in the audience. When Bolo, the bald, fat italian man, commenced singing one particularly operatic segment, my disguise was completely blown when I was knocked over by my dog who bounded out of the audience the moment I started singing.

A Fantastic Collection of Combs

by David Duer

It is March 4^th, so Auggie the Aussie and I march forth. Winter is wasting away. As the snow melts, discarded or abandoned objects appear, reminding me of a time some thirty years ago when I shared a flat on Fairchild Street with an art student named Thomascyne Buckley. We were all about Duchamp and Rimbaud and Zappa and Devo and The Talking Heads. One of Thomascyne’s friends, Walter Sunday, was a crazy artist who, I imagined, lived in Hickory Hill Park and survived on various hallucinogenic drugs. He carried around a bag filled with his prized possession: combs that he’d found in the streets. I became enamored of these combs as symbols of not only spring and hope but also the concrete humdrum world. I began to collect them too and wrote about it:

Once, Walter, obsessed with the debris of combs,

casually left a pile of them on our kitchen table.

Black and anonymous, as common as money, they

remained there, an arrangement that lasted through the winter.

Their purpose squandered, never again would they

orchestrate the wave of hair through their fine teeth.

Then the sun returned and the snow melted, disclosing

this residue of combs scattered throughout the city.

Combs on the sidewalk, steaming with ownership,

still holding the private tangled strands of lives.

Combs made of hard rubber, DuPont nylon, all the plastic

brands—Pro, Goody, the ubiquitous black Ace, the Unbreakable.

I went beyond necessity, down back alleys, taking

different routes each day to make new discoveries.

My comb collection became a competition, a rite of passage. The line between passion and obsession began to blur. The combs I found on the streets seemed both mundane and mysterious.

Combs loomed up at me, as large as whales,

black humpbacks with the strain of their teeth gone.

Some combs were fresh and glistening with human oils;

others were mangled and crushed relics of modern archeology.

An orange comb was embedded in ice—I got down on my knees

to chip it out but broke the precious handle in haste.

One day, Walter and I nearly collided as we each

stooped to grab a particularly beautiful bright red comb.

In a bible store, I shoplifted dozens of combs embossed

With the self-righteous ejaculation Jesus Loves Me.

Waiting on a park bench for people to drop their combs,

I would rush like a derelict to rescue them from rejection.

Meanwhile, Thomascyne was busy bringing together like-minded artists and musicians and performers and poets. Hanging from the trees in the backyard at Fairchild Street were these five-foot-tall aluminum wire sculptures called Boingers that made a lovely shimmering sound when strummed with a stick. Thomascyne constructed six wire-frame egg costumes, and the Eggthings were born. Brenda was fabricating out of whole cloth Madge and Howard, the first Monos’labs and the accomplices and cohorts of the Eggthings. The combs began to signify for me the ephemeralness of objects, of love, of life.

Brenda gave me a beat-up green Unbreakable one day,

and the maze of her blonde curls began to disturb my dreams.

I found a light blue comb in tune, and when I looked up,

the sky swarmed all around me, singing Hallelujah.

Long tapered groomer combs bent to the curve of the ass,

slipped from hip pockets during the act of surveillance.

Combs struggling to communicate a disease—

dandruff, eczema, heartbreak of psoriasis, loss of hair.

Fat-toothed combs of many styles and colors, escaped

from the claustrophobic influence of women’s purses.

An Afro pick with a clenched-fist handle that had

slaved to glorify the power of nappy hairdo dynamics.

Combs that ordered marine crewcuts to attention;

combs that kept disco blow-dried ’dos perfect in the hustle.

We even found hairbrushes swimming in rain-filled

gutters, heavy with deposits of twigs and silt.

The Monos’labs formed a band called Pink Gravy and, for a time, dipped their toes into the mainstream of rock and roll. I wonder where Walter is now. What about the Monos’labs? What has become of the dreams and fantasies of our youth? More interestingly, is there a lesson to be learned from these events by my high school students today?

One night, Walter threw away his fantastic collection

of combs in a splash of madness on a streetcorner.

My friends worry that some day I’ll stop to pick up a comb

on the avenue and be struck by the hugeness of life.

I reassure them: I am going about the business of

salvaging meaning and purpose from the smallest matter.

Take the comb: with a little wax paper, it has another life,

becoming an instrument of music … ready, begin …