Words Victoria Sambunaris Photography Christian Anwander

Published in No 15

William Wegman may be best known for his legendary and often humorous photographs of his Weimaraner muses, but his work is more than images of dogs. The painter, video artist and photographer, and mind you — Hockey player — recently launched his most recent book, Writing by Artist. What you do or don’t know about Wegman is included in this charming collection of early photographs, drawings, texts of imagined restaurant reviews, musings on ancient footwear, and deliberate mistranslations. Wegman’s former assistant and neighbor, Victoria Sambunaris, walked across the field that joins their properties …

VICTORIA SAMBUNARIS Tell me a bit about Writing By Artist.

WILLIAM WEGMAN I worked with Andy Lampert, who's a really great artist and curator, and person — and very entertaining. Andy came over to my studio every Tuesday, for a year, and looked through boxes and boxes of written material and drawings. We decided we should do a book, but we weren’t sure what it was going to look like. We knew that it would have a lot of drawings in it and these writings that I made in ’70 – ‘71 on Princess Cruises stationery. In 1970 I had a studio in San Pedro, and I found this stash of Princess Cruises paper. So, I would type these little stories which I thought were really entertaining — and I loved typing. I had started doing videos in '69 and I never really wrote text for those, but the texts that I found I was typing were a lot like some of these video stories. In the new book there are lots of drawings, texts, vintage photos and altered found images.

VS I've known you for 30 years, since 1992. And I live across the field from you! 

WW We're probably a quarter of a mile from each other. 

VS How did that happen?

WW I guess it's the David Deutsch factor, right? 

VS I feel that I've learned a work ethic from both of you. Early on, when was I working for you, you were constantly in the studio. Working all the time. You have a dedicated practice that you… that you're obsessed with. Has anything changed since you’ve been up here?

WW I'm doing less photography now, and more painting, basically, since I've been here. Because I really require a lot of help to take photos.

VS Tell me about when you and David came up here to look at land.

WW David and I have been friends since 1970. We were both young LA artists and we were both in the 1971 show, “24 Young LA Artists.”  We immediately hit it off and we became best friends. We both liked classical music and we both liked fishing. 

VS Two very opposite sorts of things.

WW And we would get each other’s jokes. We brought certain things out in each other. And David was very kind to include me in different things. The first thing was… he thought that I should move to New York. After three years in LA, he found a sublet from another artist for me, near him on Greene Street. And when I got there, the artist said, "No, you can't live here." (laughing)

VS So you moved to NYC and had no place to live?

WW Yeah, really. Anyway, we were up here scouting properties. There was a snowstorm — and Fay took off following Charlie — my assistant Randy's dog. We found Fay 10 miles down the road, heading towards Albany. Charlie was found four days later going the opposite direction, towards New York City. 

VS So you lost all the dogs! (laughing) Did you grow up out in nature, like camping and the Boy Scouts — was that your childhood? 

WW I grew up in Western Massachusetts, near Springfield. There were beautiful red sandstone quarries there then and, when they would stop mining them, they would fill up with water and become great, mysterious swimming holes. And there were streams that I used to fish in, and lakes.

VS Do the postcards and the other source material you use in your paintings remind you of your childhood? 

WW Pretty much. I loved The Book of Knowledge. I used to copy pictures out of that. And I used to draw pictures of Indians, and my hockey equipment, and things like that. Growing up, everyone called me an artist, I was always "Billy the artist.” So, when it was time to go to college, my art teacher in senior year said, "You should go to MassArt." So, I did. I applied to one school, and got in. It was $200 a year. I remember all my teachers really well. There were great ones, and really dumb ones. And I found that you learn more from dumb ones. Because you realize you're smarter than them, and it empowers you. You need that sort of ego to be an artist. But the smart ones are inspiring too. I had one, Arthur Hoener, he was an architect and taught design. He was the only person ever to win the Million Dollar Massachusetts Lottery, twice. Luckiest person in the world. But died when he was only 54. 

VS No, no way. So, he never got to spend the money?

WW No. Then there was my design and color teacher. I remember her because she was very voluptuous, and she would get up on her desk and demonstrate OG rhythms with her body.

VS (laughing) That must have been a good education! So, were your parents all gung-ho that you were going to be an artist? 

WW Yes, they were great. In fact, my father was offered a better job in Providence, Rhode Island, but if we moved out of state I wouldn't have gotten the state tuition. So, we didn't move.

VS That's remarkable. 

WW After MassArt, I went to University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign for grad school. It was the ‘60s and the art world really started to change like crazy. At Illinois, I hooked up with the School of Engineering. I actually had a grant to work in cybernetics. The head of the department was a physicist, a brilliant scientist, and a magician. He loved art and he would come to the art studio. He saw what I was doing and offered me a fellowship to work with the engineering department. I worked with this guy named Ed Weston and he and I would build these things that would buzz and change colors… My graduate thesis was in interactive environment, but I had to stay back and make five paintings to get my MFA.

VS (laughter)

WW The School of Music was amazing then: John Cage, Merce Cunningham and Morton Feldman were there, and Lejaren Hiller, who wrote the first piece by a computer and for a computer, the Illiac Suite.

VS Did your love of music start at Illinois?

WW It started at MassArt. With both Harvard and MIT being in Boston, there were some great classical music stations. Instead of playing a little Beethoven, a little Hayden, they would play orgies of sonata form or everything by some obscure composer.

VS So it was an education. Is music a big part of your process in the studio?

WW I have it on all the time but don't use it at all in my work. I think that’s the reason I like music so much — and such a variety. I'm not invested. I'm not a composer. So, I don't have to be threatened by Boulez or Brahms. I remember having an argument with Philip Glass about Brahms. Because I love Brahms. He's said, "No, Brahms is just dead, you can't love Brahms." I talked to Philip three years ago about that. He said, "I was just teasing you." 

VS There's so much humor in your work. Was there a lot of humor in your family growing up?

WW Well, my sister and I both have a funny bone. What started my funny business is that I was extremely shy — believe it or not. I remember being in 11th grade, in the lunch cafeteria, I'd tell a story and say something, and no one would pay any attention. So, I remember embellishing, and making the stories more and more crazy. And that sort of links up with my early video performances. I would just keep going as if it to say, “Oh, okay, you're not listening?"

VS How did you get Man Ray, your first dog?

WW My first wife, Gayle, she always a wanted dog, a shorthaired dog. I didn't really want a dog because I was a busy artist. But I remember flipping a coin. Tails, we get a dog. Because, usually, one gets heads, right? It was tails five times in a row. And so, we saw an ad in the paper "Weimaraners $35."

VS It was clearly destiny that you were going to get a Weimaraner.

WW So I remember going to this place. There was one dog left. It was this very fat male. He was quite cute, only six weeks old. But we took him. Paid the $35. I found out a week later why it was so fat. He had swallowed a beach ball. I pulled on this blue thing coming out of his butt. What came out was almost the size of him. So anyway, he turned into a normal size after that.

VS (laughing)

WW Man Ray was just, always just kind of staring at you and waiting for you, and then he would emit this high frequency whine when I wasn't doing something with him. And to get our attention — we had these 10 lb boulders from Lake Superior that we had collected — he'd pick one up and hover it over a glass coffee table, and we'd go, "No, no!" He was just such a busy retriever. Such a busy dog. That's probably why I started working with him. Because he was really good. He loved working in the videos and the photos. He would stay for hours, in one spot, if I was looking at him. 

VS Do you remember the first video you did of Man Ray? 

WW I got Man Ray when I first moved to LA, in the fall of 1970, and we started working together right away. I had just bought a portable video camera and immediately put it to use. Milk Floor was the first video I made with Man Ray. I poured milk out of my mouth onto the floor and Man Ray followed behind, drinking it up. The video ended when Man Ray bumped into the camera.

VS Okay, so let’s talk about some of your obsessions — like hockey.

WW I played hockey when I was a kid. I was on teams and played on my high school team. MassArt didn’t have a team, so I almost didn’t go there. But then I forgot about hockey and didn’t think about it again until my son Atlas was old enough to play. I took him to Chelsea piers. He was a really great skater and he started to play. His coach said, “You used to play. Why don’t you play? There’s open hockey.”  So, I got some equipment together and went out and scored a goal!

VS (laughing)

WW And then I became bonkers for hockey. Now I’m on a team called “Old Timer Hockey.”  I play twice a week. You have to be over 60 to play. I’m the second oldest but I love it.

VS Is there anything else that you think I should ask you?

WW No, nothing.

VS Oh my gosh, I had complete performance anxiety doing this interview with you. (laughing)

WW I heard that. There's a piano over there…

William Wegman: Writing By Artist, is published by Primary Information.

To learn more, visit williamwegman.com.

Victoria Sambunaris structures her life around a photographic journey, traversing the American landscape for several months per year. Visit yanceyrichardson.com

Christian Anwander contributes to Esquire, 10, Glamour and Vogue. Visit christiananwander.com