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Illustration by Art Spiegelman, long a visitor to and friend of Quarry Hill...

ART SPIEGELMAN IN VULTURE MAGAZINE (2008)

Prior to his somewhat less disapproving take on that "Vermont Commune" in METAMAUS (2011), Art, who seems to be embarrassed at times by his younger and to me, cheerier self, gave this interview to an online magazine with an apt title.

Though it was a while ago and I see in MetaMaus a slightly less unfriendly and unbending attitude towards Irving, me, and QH, I'd like to answer what he has to say here.
<You spent some time on a Vermont commune around then. Were you doing much drawing there?
What was I doing? A lot of fornication and a lot of drugs. I was drawing, but unlike certain cartoon peers, I couldn't control what meager talents I have while I was stoned. So there were occasional walks outside the decaying farmhouse, and occasional scribblings on pieces of paper and making very ornate, speedlike drawings, but it wasn't the work I'd really want to pass on to posterity.<

1. Art was not doing a lot of drugs, unless he wasn't telling me, the person he was closest to at that time, At a certain point he decided drugs just made him paranoid and interfered with his work, and gave up even smoking pot-- as far as I know,
As for "fornication," as Art knows this will hurt my feelings, for a good deal of this, he had with me-- and it was not just fornication but true and profound love... I have letters attesting to his love for me.
As for the other women on the place, some of them seemed to find Art rather amusing, others were fond of him, but all knew I loved and worshipped him, and I think that if they made love with him it was often because they knew how much I wanted him to be with us all.
2. The "decaying" farmhouse was over 200 years old and we had no money with which to fix it. Nonetheless, to my mind, it was a building of beauty and history and patterns of beauty, It was my home.
3.HIs work at the time was juvenilia, but it was good juvenilia. I loved some of it. Some contains my name, secretly hidden in the "speed" -like squiggles.

Our relationship was not a casual one. He and I also lived together in Binghamton, NY., Brooklyn, NY., New York, NY, and had plans to go to California together-- indeed, one day, perhaps, to have a child, or children, together. I am at work on a memoir in which I hope to tell some of these stories in more detail,
But though he says things that are far nastier about us than would seem to be called for considering all the years that have gone by (and our friendship, and that of Françoise Mouly and ourselves), until the 1990s, I want to say that I am still very proud of Art's success and genius-- which I saw in him when he was, I believe, 18 and I, 16 (1966) and more so in 1968 when we became lovers (we were already "Water Brothers."
That is the truth. He and Irving, too, had a competitive but respectful relationship, with many interests in common, such as beautiful young women--and as Art has admitted (MetaMaus pp 24-25), we were never short on those.
I would like to be friendly with Art and his family again, and still, ever the optimist--"the most gullible person I've ever met," Art called me at the age of 16 when I kept a vow to my own detriment-- I hope one day we will meet again.

http://www.vulture.com/2008/10/art_spiegelman_on_breakdowns_r.html

Picture of Art Spiegelman in MetaMaus

I noticed that there is a picture of Art, ca. 1968, sitting on a statue in Central Park. I took this picture, and have one similar to it of one of the statues holding a cup full of Coca-Cola; I also am in one of these pictures, not on a statue, but with my brown hair very long, wearing a white blouse with little white ruffles along the front. So, if, in the next edition of MM, they'd like to give appropriate credit, I am the photographer of this picture… unless he has a whole series of them taken by various friends at the same time. Art and I met in December of 1966 at the home of his close friend Jon Sheldon. I was going with his friend Seth Segall at the time. Art and I played a game of Knock-Hockey with a marshmallow, the agreement being that whomever lost would eat the marshmallow. Of course, I lost. I immediately, with a smile of warm "I-don't-mind" ed ness, popped the grubby confection into my mouth. Art seemed both revulsed and delighted, which would come to be an emblem for many of our future relations with one another. "Honey!"He said in immense delight. "You're the most gullible person I've ever met!" It was like a movie made a few years later, with Gene Wilder, I think by Mel Brooks, in which someone, seeing Wilder's innocent expression, says "And then God created… prey!" He said that if he had lost, he never would have eaten the marshmallow. "You wouldn't?" I said in amazement. Among us,in our family, an agreement was an AGREEMENT. If you were stupid enough to agree to eat a marshmallow that had been kicked all over the floor and stepped on, well, then, you had to eat the damn thing! He (as I recall) chucked me under the chin and gave me a quick kiss on the lips. (I wondered whether Seth would mind, but he didn't seem to. No one minded what Art did-- even then-- and anyway, he had another girl with him, a blonde shiksa type, I think. It was as though he was trying to teach me to protect myself on one level, and on another, lurking in the waters of a possible relationship sometime in the future and getting ready for love with the most gullible person in the world… And yet, I was happy that I'd played, and lost, and eaten the marshmallow. (The thing that bothered me about it the most wasn't how dirty it was, it was that it was not vegetarian. Marshmallows are made with gelatin-- even so far, for me, did honor go.) I was happy that I'd just met one of the young men who stood out from a crowd of people who all stood out in a crowd, the group of students at the State University of Binghamton (Harpur College) in 1968-- I think they were supposed to be the graduating class of 1971 or something,but some of them would leave much sooner and some of them would stay on far longer. I somehow knew I had just met a real genius, no matter how odd and unkindly peculiar his desire for diversion. I had met someone who was the opposite number to myself in the universe, a person who was in this world because I was in it, just as I was in it because he was.

MetaMaus and the advice Irving gave Vladek Spiegelman...

I have decided to delete this post for the time being. I saved the text and perhaps will re-post it at some point in the future.
I have no desire to invade anyone's privacy, nor to reveal things that properly belong to another. I do want to and plan to publish some of my book about my life soon, but there seems no reason to have this (however innocuous) information published, even in my blog, at this time.

Art Spiegelman's METAMAUS, on Page 25, mentions me as his hippie girlfriend, the daughter of "Irving Fiske, the Mr. Natural of the commune I was involved with.." Quarry Hill was never exactly a commune and it was not the only one we were involved with! But I will leave it at that for now.

And so my friends...

I hear that my former boyfriend, Art Spiegelman (Pulitzer Prize winner and author of MAUS, a Survivor's Tale) has a new book out, METAMAUS. Apparently it's a "revisitation" of Maus published 25 years ago... it seems like longer than that, but I suppose that must be right. I haven't seen the book, but if you're a MAUS or Spiegelman fan, do check it out. He is a man of brilliance though there is a lot lost between us sadly now.

Congrats to Art Spiegelman

http://www.comicsbeat.com/2011/01/30/art-spiegelman-wins-grand-prix-at-angouleme/

We congratulate Art on this well-deserved bow to his ability and hard work.
 It seems funny to me, and must to him, that he will be Grand Marshal of the Angouleme festival next year.  I can't even begin to imagine what that will be like, and will surely take up time that could be used on comix, but Art, I'm glad for you-- we all are. With Love. Ladybelle

Photo: Art and Ladybelle at Quarry Hill in 1976, having recently re-discovered one another.