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| The Beats: On the road again |
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| By Dale Bryant |
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Jasmine Stockett remembers her father,
William Arthur Stockett, as difficult, odd
and undeniably brilliant. As a child, she saw
him infrequently, but says she can still see
him walking up Columbus Street in San
Francisco "with a black felt cowboy hat the
size of a file cabinet perched precariously
on his head, a carry-on-size piece of luggage
in one hand and an open book in the other."
Jasmine's father, known to his friends as
"the Colonel," was a well-known Bay Area book
dealer and collector. The friends who hung
out with the Colonel included the likes of
Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Neal Cassady
and Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
The Colonel was a Beat.
And like most Beats, fatherhood was not
nearly as important to him as was the pursuit
of literature and art with like-minded free
spirits. He was part of the now-famous
movement that took shape in the 1950s around
San Francisco's North Beach.
But in the last years of his life - a life
that had degenerated into alcoholism, madness
and living on the streets - the one person who
was there, the one person to whom he could
utter his most important wish, was his
daughter.
That wish was that Jasmine save his beloved
collection of books. She promised she would,
and she did. And with the collection came an
assortment of treasures from her father's
days as a Beat.
Beginning Aug. 21 and continuing through Oct.
25, the Colonel's collection of Beat
Generation letters, posters, signed books,
original art and ephemera will be on exhibit
at the Art Museum of Los Gatos in an exhibit
called "Brand New Beats Roadshow." The
highlight is a collection of photographs of
the Beats taken by the Colonel and San
Francisco photographer John Bryan that have
never been viewed by the public.
Although she was the daughter of a Beat,
Jasmine Stockett knew little about the
uninhibited free spirits who challenged
authority with their writings and their
lifestyle in the 1950s and into the '60s. Nor
did she know about their madcap journeys
across the country. But some five years
ago - three years before her father died - she
began a journey of her own to discover the
father she never really knew and the meaning
of the Beat movement. The journey helped her
reconcile with her father before he died.
"My father was deconstructing himself, so I
began reconstructing him," Jasmine says as
she sits in a room in the Los Gatos museum,
Beat memorabilia lining one wall, waiting for
the exhibition to be installed.
Her journey included talking to the children
of other Beats. "All of them say it was
difficult," she says.
*Photograph by Bill Kalogeros
Jasmine Stockett
Jasmine, who lives in Santa Cruz and works in
Los Gatos, has a special bond with John
Cassady, who grew up in what is now known as
Monte Sereno. His parents are Neal and
Carolyn Cassady.
In 1963, two years after Jasmine was born,
her father and Neal Cassady - the model for
Dean Moriarty in Jack Kerouac's On the
Road - were roommates in Palo Alto. "My
dad idolized Neal; they loved each other's
minds. They used to stay up all night talking
and smoking pot," she says.
The photographs that will be displayed for
the first time in the Art Museum of Los Gatos
came close to never being discovered. "There
were some negatives stuck in with a bunch of
bills," Jasmine recalls. "It's a miracle I
found them."
Among the photos are some taken by the
Colonel of Neal Cassady making love to a
longtime girlfriend. These, according to Jade
Bradbury, who is guest curator for the show,
will be shown in our 'First Amendment Zone,'
a view-by-choice area."
"I wouldn't have felt comfortable exhibiting
the erotica if it hadn't been so tender and
so beautiful," Jasmine says. "It was clear he
was with a woman he loved."
One surprise Jasmine found on her journey to
discover her father and the Beats was a
Lawrence Ferlinghetti grown weary of the
Beats. Ferlinghetti, a San Francisco icon and
the owner of City Lights bookstore, told her
he wasn't really into the Beat scene. "He
told me he was their publisher, not one of
the hearty party set." Ferlinghetti published
Allen Ginsberg's controversial poem "Howl."
One of Ferlinghetti's paintings will be in
the exhibit.
Jasmine wanted to show the collection in Los
Gatos in part because of the Neal Cassady
connection, but also because she wanted to
avoid the "elitism" she found when she
approached galleries in Los Angeles and San
Francisco. She originally contacted the
museum to get some information about getting
a photograph mounted. But she mentioned her
Beat collection as well.
Exhibit curator Bradbury recalls asking
Jasmine to bring some of the materials to
make a presentation to the art committee.
Bradbury says of the committee's reaction:
"Frankly, we were blown away."
The "Brand New Beats Roadshow" will be the
first exhibit in the recently renovated art
museum. For Jasmine Stockett, daughter of a
Beat who grew up barely knowing her father
and knowing even less about the movement that
so captivated him, the show is "a tribute to
my father and to the Beats."
The "Brand New Beats Roadshow" exhibit
shows Aug. 21-Oct. 25 at the Art Museum
of Los Gatos, 4 Tait Ave., at the corner of
Tait Avenue and Main Street, Los Gatos. The
museum is open Wednesday-Sunday,
noon-4 p.m. A reception will be held
Sept. 15, 4-7 p.m. A limited edition of
100 commemorative exhibition posters will be
available for sale at the reception. For more
information, call 408.354.2646.
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