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the daily life of an artist
ELAINE BONOW introduces a new column: "The Daily Life of an Artist" Meet Buddy Foley, Morphologist 
Buddy Foley (center) jams with Jerry Garcia backstage at the Sky River Rock Festival, August 30, 1968. If you've lived in Seattle anytime in the past forty years or so you've probably seen Buddy Foley around in coffee shops, bars, art openings or music events. You might have read about him from time to time in local publications or seen him on TV. You probably saw his studio in Interbay with "LIVE LADYBUGS FOR SALE" splashed across the front. Curiosity might have even propelled you inside to actually buy yourself some ladybugs and, if you did, you probably marveled at the eclectic array of fabulous objects arrayed before you. I sat down with Buddy at his friend Dave Midbon's apartment in the Market. Buddy lives across the hall. I've known Buddy since 1967; while we gabbed, Dave videotaped the hour-long interview. BF: I always say that whenever I want to get in touch with my feminine side that I can always decide to bitch slap myself back to bellbottoms. I remember the first time I ever saw bellbottoms someone came walking down the Ave., in these big old white bellbottoms, big gold belt buckle, stripy shirt and long hair. EB: You lived on the Ave? BF: 4337 ?? U Way and I lived in the old College Inn. I lived there for six years. I had a shop there. I had the only apartment on the ground floor. Jeannie the blind singing girl's apartment and I was amazed that she had art on the walls. I turned it into Foley's Underground Cultural Kaleidoscope, which spells FUCK." (gales of laughter follow.) That was what it said on my truck but the F was really big so it was like, so from a distance it just said: Foleys Underground Cultural Kaleidoscope. EB: So what did you do there? BF: I sold cigarette rolling papers, incense, just little small stuff, or and other... er... it was a head shop. EB: So you were the first head shop on the Ave. I thought the first was Arabesque or Esoterica. BF: Oh, I was way before those punks. (We pause.) BF: I had the smallest email name on the planet a@aa.net and that was in 1994. I've been to every computer show since punch cards. EB: What do you mean? BF: Every computer show: The University of Washington, ones they had in the Coliseum, the nano conferences, the scanning electron microscopy shows. Every science show I've gone to and I video taped all the high technology shows for 20 years straight and every First Thursday gallery walk for 25 years in a row. EB: I know you used to have your camera with you... BF: I have thousands of hours of bands. I have the whole punk era from '79 on. I was the video department of Magnolia Hi-Fi from 1979. I started the department, why, so I could get this portable video equipment. I wore it like a purse, the first portable VHS machine. I took it everywhere. I went to Safeway. Ok here's my idea. You videotape to demonstrate products. Then I went to Windermere Realty and said, hey look you can videotape houses... so when people come over they can look at the tapes first... then you can have a TV program about houses you have for sale. And then this one is the hardest one. I went to Nordstrom and said, you know when the Estee Lauder makeup team comes to Nordstrom you can tape that and you can have a TV showing this demonstration to all the women who couldn't make it down... and the guy says "Thanks for wasting our time. You want to have TV's in our stores with this thing you're going to playback. I don't think so. Thank you, Out! Out! Out!" EB: You still play the piano. BF: I have never stopped. I put myself through school playing the piano, and I played in recording studios. I played in bands in back of other famous people. I played in Japan. I played in London. I played in Hawaii for two years on Maui. I played every possible venue in Seattle. I've been a recording studio musician at Kaye-Smith Studios. I spent 30,000 hours of my life to try to be a great boogie woogie, rock n' roll chops guy, then all of a sudden that's not popular anymore. EB: You are quite the Renaissance man. BF: I invented Braille T-shirts for blind people. Every blind person on the planet has one. 1977. My famous shirts were: Keep In Touch, I Hear Music, I'm Totally Out Of Sight, Ronnie Milsap, Stevie Wonder, Ray Charles. Also, my newsletter Dyslexia is Complexia, the first learning disabilities newsletter. And I had all these studios over the years. The E=MC2, was down in the basement 5,000 square feet. Today it's Art/Not Terminal. I had my own TV show, Puget Sound Music News. I videotaped all the bands, every venue, TV shows, they still don't have the format they just have, who's coming to town, who's here now, and after the show you interview them, and then BOOM, that's a TV show... and then (he talks about his show) the top 10 records of the week, the top 10 music videos this week and then what's new in music equipment, who's in the recording studio. I did all of that. That was the format...  EB: So, you're an ideas man.
BF: I'm a musician first. I went to Cornish. I'm a Cornish alumnus. And I did my University of Washington thingy.
EB: But your ideas are out there. You're good. You have some new ideas?
BF: Oh yeah, Sons of Benches. Put the benches back. All the bums are gone. You cleaned it up, good job. Go to the corner of First and Pike at 5 in the morning, there's no one there! But all the benches are gone. We're going to bring back the benches. They can have advertising on then like half-off WaMu stock. WAMU WOO HOO BOO HOO.
EB: You lived on 15th for what...?
BF: Twenty years. Before that I had E=MC2 Studios, I was there for eight years, 777 Lenora and at that studio rehearsing were Iggy Pop, Boy George, the Ramones, Buddy Miles, that I have videotaped archives. There's Buddy Miles (he does an imitation of Buddy Miles drumming to "Hey Joe".)
EB: What would you like to do with all those?
BF: I think I've got 2,300 hours of video. Every First Thursday art walk, every computer show, experimental aircraft flying in at Arlington, the Center for Wooden Boats, specialty shows at the Conservatory and at the Arboretum at Graham Visitors Center where they have the rhododendron show and later on they have the dahlia show, the fuchsia show. Every year I go to the Puyallup Fair where they have big pumpkins; 1,100 pounds this year. I have videotape collections of collections of things.
EB: Like what?
BF: Lunch boxes, squirt guns, yoyos. It's like ephemeral ephemera.
EB: So you need a museum.
BF: The Muse Museum. The Alkaistein Museum of Creativity.
EB: Have you ever had a show?
BF: I had a show every day my studio (on 15th Avenue West) was open. Anybody could come by anytime and walk around and look at it. Twenty years, for free. Just walk in. The door was open every day.
Oh, and I also archived 5,800 8x10 glass plates, negatives, the entire Sawyer's View-Master company collection of original plates that became the 5.800 postcards they made from 1840-1904. I archived it. I gave each one a new name. I looked at it and saw what was on it. I put it on a new 5.8 ph slip sleeve, stuck it back in the box times 5,800, for the Gruber family, whose father invented the View-Master and owned that company.
EB: I looked you up on the web and you had lots of press when you were going to move and all these things you collected and it says, yes he has a collection of lunch boxes that he won't sell a single one because...
BF: I've never sold any of my collection and I never hocked anything in my life, ever. Write that down. I never hocked anything. Never went into a pawn shop ever, except to repair a neon sign.
Oh, plus I did neon. But at one point in time I did the big show at The Bon. Everyone knew it was the biggest neon project in the city ever; they called me the Neon King, the Big Enchilada of Neon World. I'm bigger around the world. I'm huge in Japan. They like my style.
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