Dennis Hollingsworth

TimeLine

Just who is Dennis Hollingsworth, asked Trevor of K'aleb?l Blog?

I figured it's about time for a bio. So I thought I would draw it out.

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To Elementary School 1. First memory: Darkness, I was upset, exercised. Vertical bars of light, a figure opens a doorway, comes closer and a big hand rubs my belly.

2. Grandmother's Ticonderoga pencils.

3. Winner, drawing contest. A clown with one shoe larger than the other. Yet I felt jaded. I sat on the TV celebrity clown's lap and ate cake for that.

4. Colors of coral forever. Underwater was a natural.

5. Huge Coca Cola skyline neon sign at dusk on arrival to Manila, soon to Papang's house. Adobo and pancit. One day, a lechón for the whole family, uncles and aunts and cousins everywhere.

6. Papa teaches my brother Michael and I the meaning of life.

7. Wore a bow tie one time.

8. Papang looked like a laughing Bhudda. And he would task you, get in your face. Philippine history after dinner until bed and holes in his Ban-Lon.

9. Scootch into the back of the new Impala station wagon -New Mexico to Panama-, blazing Aztec history and singing "Cielito Lindo" with Momma and Mike on narrow sheer mountainside winding roads in Nicaragua.

10. Playing in jungle trails, playing under mango trees with fruit rotting on the ground, archaic fotos of Egypt in dusty textbooks, "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress", Drawing class at the YMCA, spilling off the bike down steep hills, shark nets at Kobe Beach, huge groupers at the market in Panama City, camping at Gatún / bee stinging inside my sock, lobsters from the surf for a dollar, a pet toucan for a couple of weeks, block parties.

To High School 1. I thought Vegas was going to look like the Ponderosa. Imagine my surprise shortly after we crossed the Hoover Dam.

2. Pop music and figure drawing books, fused.

3. Papa returns from a firefighting contract at Quan Tri, furtive stories of pot smoking GI's at the sentry on point, crashed Cobra helicopters and sleeping with a pistol under the pillow.

4. Building a house in the Florida panhandle and one day Papa says we're immigrating to Australia, so we bum rides on Air Force flights through Europe to get there... that's when I saw "Saturn, Devouring His Children".

5. So one day, Papa comes home shortly before noon and says: "We're taking the 3pm Embassy flight, pack your bags!" Food on the stovetop, the uncles dispose of the apartment. Twelve hours later, we were sitting on our suitcases on a Honolulu tarmack, plotting our next move.

6. Nevada desert, forever.

Thru the Navy Days 1. "Make a hole!"

2. We said "Aye!" and meant it.

3. The sea to the horizon, the horizon all around you. As far and farther than you can see, the sea. To be a tiny speck in the vast Pacific, a universe of water where the closest land is directly below the ship.

4. Dark rooms and colored lights and urgent numbers and nautical miles and grease pencil and squawk boxes barking orders and funny stories.

5. Liberty and beer and pockets full of money and girls and "Me So Horny!" and bars and museums and taxis and buses and snorkeling and Coppertone and civillian clothes that never seemed to fit well.

6. I saw "The Last Detail" a month before I enlisted and discovered later that it was a faithful and nuanced representation of life in the Navy.

To Architecture School 1. Sliding parallel bars, pencil + paper, pillow erasers, making models.

2. Middle of Old California: San Luis Obispo, Morro Bay, Pismo Beach, Big Sur, Santa Barbara, before the wine country.

3. All nighters in Arch studio, bronze casting, life drawing, art history in cozy slide projected auditoriums.

4. Life in the Arc, next best thing to a commune.

5. Stephanie Hurley, then and forever.

Through Early Los Angeles 1. Cross town by car in 40 minutes, the freeway was a ballet. NWA on the radio.

2. The best Mexican food in the world.

3. Echo Park!

4. "Los Angeles, give me some of you! Los Angeles come to me the way I came to you, my feet over your streets, you pretty town I loved you so much, you sad flower in the sand, you pretty town!" ― John Fante

5. Tower Records, El Coyote Restaurant, Griffith Observatory, LACMA & MoCA & Getty, you could see all the art openings in town in one night.

6. Finally got my Arch license, rang the bell, time to look for an art school.

Through Art School
1. Roland painted in secret, Michael's wry smile, skylit studios, new faces and friends for life.

2. Lots of baggage to shed, lots of pressure not to shed it.

3. The Wall fell and few understood what that would mean.

4. Crash course in contemporary art theory, so delicious.

5. There was only time for an inkling.

6. In an obscure corner of campus, a library for Frances Bacon.

1990's 1. Years of searching for my voice in painting, invoking Darwin: "Survival of the Fittest" paired with "Proliferation of the Fattest".

2. Life on a hillside in Elysian Heights. Humming birds, raccoons and coyotes.

3. Studios started in a bedroom, then down the street, then I did a chin-up to a window in a derelict ballroom... the best studio I've ever had.

4. Hop Louie, late nights in front of Sinky and Sean, watching a scene before it became one.

5. The AHA! moment. Lasting a lifetime.

6. Dealing with dealers.

The Turn of the Century 1. Surge.

2. Can Marcelino, pan y vino.

3. Planes here and there. People everywhere.

4. Little did I realize, arcs jumping all around me. Something seen clearer in retrospect.

Looking Back, All Drawn Out.

'nuff said?

Maybe this more:
This is not who I am, but where I was... unless we are... where we were.

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Posted by Dennis at March 16, 2005 2:20 AM