I was looking forward to sharing the evening with my friend and renaissance artist Dick Boak tonight. Dick admits to being stage-shy, and, in the past, had wanted to share the evening with Craig Thatcher. Tonight, we had the chance to concentrate on his artistry and the rather breath-taking scope of his talents.
Dick prepared a Powerpoint projection that featured a short film done on him and his work, and perspective of his early high-school drawings, his pointillistic pen and ink drawings, his work working, his archive work at Martin, his artist relations with the who’s who of guitar and some of his more recent graphic work. Along the way, he played some of his original songs on autoharp.
I had to find spaces to slow him down and chat about his early days at Godfrey’s, some of his work on the Godfreys Martin and other moments that could give some interesting reflections on his art. We did have some good chat about ‘fame’, about being surrounded by other very gifted talents and the artistic process as well. We had a chance to talk about music in the studio as an act of creation as well. We had some deep moments talking about doing art for ourselves first, without an audience response in mind.
We had several good friends in the audience, and it was special to have them there. My friend Bill George responded to Dick’s post on Facebook: “I loved being with you two, Dave, Dick. You are clearly a genius, Dick (and you too, Dave), but more powerful for me is your your humility, your profound work ethic, courage, energy, and your dedication to service, joy, love. Just wanted to say that out loud here. Thank you for putting yourself out there. It was so great spending a little time with you.” I couldn’t have said it better myself.
Again, a very sparse audience for these spectacularly dense evenings. As Popeye once said, ” I can’t stands it!”