...and I am an ethereal girl

City Museum is too much.

City Museum is overkill, overstimulation; it makes war on your senses. It's also one of the greatest places in St. Louis or any city anywhere. But it's too much.

The nature of its chaos defies attempts at written description. I could tell you the old International Shoe Company building on Washington is comprised of man-made caves, a beatnik coffeehouse, and a circus, and all of these are part of City Museum. But the large incongruities may be beyond the mind's ability to grasp. Let me tell you instead about a tiny event that takes place as I walk up to Lloyd Kleine Harvey's Peace Project exhibit on the third floor. I discover, just outside Beatnik Bob's Coffeehouse, a six foot tall fiberglass rooster. I have walked this corridor many times and it has never been there before. There is no information posted explaining its presence. Robleigh the train conductor (and yes, there is also a train on the third floor of City Museum) catches me examining the six foot tall fiberglass rooster.

"Oh, good!" he exclaims, his expression one of pure relief. "You see it too!"

That's the sort of place City Museum is. And you must understand that before I tell you about Lloyd Kleine Harvey, his studio space tucked away up on the third floor--Art From Recycled Materials, and the exhibit that that was housed there--the Peace Project. You must try to hear the screams and delighted shrieks of children tumbling through man-made caves and down two-story slides outside Harvey's studio to appreciate walking into it--to the sight of a miniature Zen garden with quietly bubbling fountain, to the sound of meditative music chiming in the background, to a cocoon of stillness and calm. It is an oasis, a truly necessary place.

Look around it with me on this page, because the full Peace Project isn't at the Museum anymore. Walk in with me under a newspaper-coated version of the Gateway Arch, notice the dateline "September 11, 2001" on the pages of ads, the comics, see the news headlines...On to the fountain. Beside it stands the Dalai Lama, a sculpture of him, anyway. He leans forward slightly, bowing, the expression on his face radiant. St. Louisan Patrick Richey sculpted him from nothing but recycled materials. No matter--the real Dalai Lama would probably say he's sculpted out of recycled materials too. Throughout this long room, on tall dark panels like Japanese folding screens, are selected words and images from a book called "Architects of Peace." The real Dalai Lama's thoughts on peace are here alongside testimonies from Elie Wiesel, Alice Walker, Carlos Santana, Pope John Paul II. The panels punctuate the room; walk just a few more steps and encounter another. Likewise every surface of the room is draped in cloth--large circular quilts on the floor, woven ribbons, "Peace Flags" painted with rainbows, doves, stars and stripes.

The Peace Project began with these flags. An artist named Janet Riehl chanced upon Harvey and his Art From Recycled Materials projects on a trip to City Museum. She started talking with him about the workshops he has done at schools, at prisons, here at his studio. They talked too about communicating peace, not just the absence of war, but peace in its own viable and vibrant existence. This was after the Oklahoma City bombing and Columbine. Riehl drew up a proposal called "the 2001 Peace Flag Odyssey," which came into existence at Art From Recycled Materials. 260 little squares of cloth were collected with images that sprang to the minds of children and adults when they heard the word "peace." (It's not all doves and rainbows. One young artist submitted a flag picturing small round vegetables falling from their can onto the globe--"peas on earth.")

The project evolved past works in fabric into works in many media. Harvey collected submissions from around the country and from around the city to display in his space, including a peace sign Florida artist Marcia Glaziere fashioned out of guns from a police buyback program. In the midst of this collecting came the attack on the World Trade Center. The artwork turned from the general to the specific. A poem by LE Stephey is displayed on a long open scroll. You see the long twin columns of the poem's shape long before you see the words ("...in images/forever played...on our only/on our lasting/on our permanent/mental surface..."). The back of the room houses what Harvey calls his "shrine" to the World Trade Center--the iconographic columns again, this time rendered in discarded computer boxes, somber and industrial, hung with Jasper Johns-style flags.

I think I am here today to talk to Harvey about this exhibit, but somehow we only manage to talk around it. We talk all the way round it, however, and that makes its own kind of sense.

He is, in fact, an extraordinary person to talk to, almost heartbreakingly open and honest, with a deep laugh that resonates at times when you don't expect laughter. I am presenting our conversation almost verbatim to preserve the flavor of his way of speaking.

AP: What brought you to this part of your life?

LKH: I love that question because it helps me to reflect on my past. When I was a youth growing up in St. Louis, I remember there was--they called them hillbilly songs, now we call it country and western--there was a song and it said (singing), "someday I'm gonna write the story of my life." That line stayed with me. I began to realize that we all have stories and then I began to realize that healing can come about through the telling and the sharing of our stories as well as in the hearing of others' [stories], and that all has to do with our connectedness.

I was born in Missouri, I was born into a--I jokingly say we coined the word "dysfunctional"--highly dysfunctional family. My mother had seven sons, two died in infancy, and the more I think about it, I can imagine what a devastation that must have been for a mother to lose two sons. They both died before they were a year old. So I grew up hearing my mother say I was the replacement. I was the replacement child. I also grew up hearing "I had given all the baby clothes away, I had given everything away, I had intentions of having any more children, that was it, and then lo and behold, he comes along!" and "he almost killed me!"

That's what I grew up hearing: I almost killed my mother. I was a breach baby. That was quite a trauma. Many children are traumatized at the hands of their parents and little do the parents know it.

I guess my next trauma came when I was in elementary school, when I started kindergarten, I remember my second older brother had created a toothpick holder out of clay and it was in the china closet. It was painted--I still visualize it--these beautiful dots in primary colors. Yellow. Red. Blue. Green. And I used to look at it. You know, little kids, how they see things? How they admire them? When I got into kindergarten, we were creating with clay, and when we finished, the teacher came around and took all the clay from us and made it into one big ball.

AP: Along with the traumas, what do you count as victories?

LKH: I think the mere fact that I survived for seventy years, I think the mere fact that I have over the years placed an emphasis not upon self but service to others, looking out through my pain, my discomfort, my frustration, my anxiety, all of the stuff that I had managed to accumulate. I guess the real blow came when I began to drink alcohol. As you know, many of us who drink it excessively [drink] with the hope it's going to free us up, it's going to make us dance better, whatever, and we continue and we continue until our bodies become addicted. And then when our bodies become addicted, somebody else has to tell us. We don't know because it's just (drunk talk) "Well thass jusht the way I am! I've alwaysh been like that! Get-the-hell-outta-here! Lea'me 'lone!" But that was an awakening.

AP: When someone told you?

LKH: Yes. "Guess I gotta do something about it." 'Course I was angry, but then when I did begin to do something about it, then I began to realize...That's when I began this focus upon spirituality of my life and the spirituality of the universe as opposed to the religions of the world. I have no objections to any of the religions of the world, I still take a great deal from my early Christian upbringing.

I became a Seventh Day Adventist because my friends were Seventh Day Adventists and there was lots of love and lots of laughter. It was like I was a child with two different personalities. With their family I was full of laughter and jokes--a comedian. With my family I was sad and depressed and lonely. Never felt a sense of home. I think people who do get more involved in service, many such persons, it comes about because of their own struggles within their own personal lives. I can identify with many of these young children, I can identify with the people who are dying from AIDS or the women who are homeless. I can take their suffering upon myself as well, I can embrace that and I think that's been my salvation. That has been my salvation, my service to others. I started when I was a teenager here in St. Louis, and it was a very scary thing. I was with CORE--the Congress of Racial Equality--and we were doing sit-ins at places like Woolworths and Velvet Freeze so that African-Americans could go to these lunch counters and eat. That was not a comfortable position to be in, but I, even at that early age, accepted the fact that whatever my task is before me, I'd do it. Whether I'm comfortable with it or not, whether I like it or not. I use that slogan with the kids and with the adults--Just do it! I think it's a Nike slogan? Just do it! It's powerful--you can have all the ands and the buts, but...just do it. Very simple. Just do it. "Wow!" It's like an awakening. I guess my life has been a series of awakenings.

AP: Taking on other people's suffering does not weigh down on you, it doesn't make you feel like the weight of the world is on your shoulders?

LKH: I felt that when my world revolved around myself and my pain, I felt the weight of the world, I was depressed, I was lonely, I was hungry, I was tired. There is that possibility of [people] such as myself becoming overwhelmed, but I think I keep a spiritual balance. Very often if I leave here sometimes at 2 o'clock and get home by 3:30, or 4, I'll cut all the phones off. That's the end of the day. Periodically I'll spend two or three days at Our Lady of the Snows [a local retreat center]. I'm much more health conscious, much more aware of my health, I realize that that's a priority, mental health as well as physical health, psychological health and spiritual health. It's not an easy task for a person such as myself--highly sensitive, an ex-New Yorker, coming down here, to (slurs the name of the state) "Mizzureh" (laughs). It's been a tremendous challenge.

I had a therapist one time, he said, "Mr. Harvey, I don't even know why you're here seeing me, how do you do it?" I said "GRACE!" (belly laugh) He said "What?" I said "GRACE." He said "Mr. Harvey, grace means--" I said "Ah, maybe I've redefined it."

What is grace? I think it is something that is given to one...What's your definition of grace?

AP: I like the way it was put in a song once: "Grace makes beauty out of ugly things."

LKH: And I think you can apply it here because my life was ugly, my life was dark, my life was threatened, my life was depressing, my life was suicidal, and that's not at all very pleasant to experience or to see.

AP: When was this?

LKH: Oh, in my twenties and thirties.

AP: Coming out of alcoholism was one awakening for you, there were others?

LKH: Yes.

AP: What brought you into art?

LKH: I've been an artist all my life but that too was a struggle, accepting that creative force. When I lived in NY I was painting and doing collages, and I was in this one particular gallery and ArtNews did a review and they referred to my work as "A wildly dancing man losing himself in his own exuberance." And I don't quite know how to accept that today. It could be positive, it could be just the reverse. Losing himself in his own exuberance? How would you interpret that?

AP: It may be positive, the idea of surrendering oneself to a greater force.

LKH: That's a continual struggle for me. People whose life experience have been different than mine--I know it to be a fact--it's much easier for them. But I've accepted the burden, I've accepted the cross of who I am and the struggle that goes along with it. Also the joy that goes along with it, the ecstasy that goes along with it. But there's a continual [need] to awaken. I was working with this healer, and she made a comment which really rung a bell and she used this phrase: "Fear of ascension" (sharp report of a laugh) You know? [Isn't] that powerful? Since I've been in St. Louis, cancer invaded my body, sleep apnea, high blood pressure, and my inner voice is saying something to me, "it looks like you're trying to get off your path, it looks like you want to interrupt your growth here with all of this stuff." I have a history of abandoning projects and things and so these obstacles...I believe health is the normal state, illness is not the normal state and when all of these things began to afflict me, it began to make me aware that there's the mind, body and spirit connection. Lots of this was invading my body because of my mind. You follow what I'm saying here? I've only had one session with this healer, but when she mentioned this about the fear of ascension--I've said it in different ways, but so often we have to have someone to hit the bell just in the right place, and then you hear it.

So I'm working with that now, I'm doing some notes and I'm getting in touch and writing down some of the stuff, some of the physical stuff that--and it's all like blockage stuff--sinusitis, sleep apnea, high blood pressure, the eyes, the vision. I see it as all being connected. You follow here? I'm a strong advocate of homeopathy and herbal medicine, you know, with homeopathy you treat the whole being, not just the high blood pressure, or the sleep apnea, you treat the whole being. So I'm aware of the fact that there's a Higher Self, and when she mentioned this about the fear of ascension--that's a frightening thing. If you've been down here and you find yourself ascending--but an interesting thing, sometimes I even feel as though I'm--especially when I'm speaking as I am now--as though I'm out of myself and it's someone else, it's another voice that's speaking. One of the things that I do say, "It is not I but the Spirit that worketh through me"--what's also happening, I'm going through this metamorphosis. I'm getting this new voice as well. I feel as though there are parts of me with all of this newness. I do have to tread carefully among other human beings because of the vulnerable state that I'm in.

Someone said [something] to me (laughs) one day not long ago, it was so absurd and you have no idea how that penetrated me, it just went right through me and it was hanging there. It was hanging there, it was hanging there. And then I shared it with a friend who I knew could identify with it, who probably had that experience every five minutes, and she said, "Yes, Lloyd, it's just like it goes to that unworthy part of self, it goes right there." But then she said "But I carried it very gently." And then it struck me that when I left that day I was carrying it very gently and I got home, I cut the phones off and I was very gentle. I didn't realize that until she articulated it for me, and then it began to dissipate. It began to dissipate. And now, if I were to tell you what it was it was so insignificant, in fact it was absurd. But it is those things, when you begin to open your heart and you begin to open your mind, you are so vulnerable to almost any and everything.

AP: You say the state of health is normal and illness is abnormal--do you think the same thing of peace?

LKH: I think peace is the normal state, although there are those of us who have not, for whatever reason, experienced it--because of our history, because of our upbringing, because of our society. One of the things I began to realize is that some things happen and come about--responses and reactions--just because of who I am, this eternal question: "who am I?" It's a marvelous question, it's godly, universal: "Who am I?" I have no idea whatsoever. That's a frightening question for many of us.

Peace has always been a foundation. We've become so contaminated by our parents, our homelife for some of us, our communities, our immediate environment. You hear the negativity from people, from children, from older adults, from younger adults who choose to wear blinders.

I had this marvellous book by a world class photojournalist, there were some pictures that I wanted to use, when I initially started I was showing them to Jean and Gail [of City Museum's staff]. Jean looked at one and said "Oh! I can't look at it!" and Gail said "I'm glad you're using those photographs along with the others." As it turned out I wasn't able to get permission to use those photographs. One was a little girl in Sudan and she was crouched on the ground, and about 9 or 10 feet from her was a buzzard, waiting for her to die. That photographer was from South Africa, so what I had done I had to write to the photographer or to his agent, and a month later they sent a fax, they also called, and they said they had received my request, unfortunately--his name doesn't come to mind--he had committed suicide. It was shortly after he had gotten the Pulitzer Prize for that particular photograph. So that even added fire to my wanting to do what I was doing, it was like saying thank you. Not thanking because he lost his life--he took his life--and I didn't question as to, even in my head, why he took his life, that's insignificant, but it just made--I felt--it made what I'm doing more valid.

I went to a funeral yesterday, and I hadn't been to a funeral--I usually try to go to just a wake, and then you can shake a hand and smile and zoom out--but this was a childhood friend's mother, and I just said, oh, I think it'd be good for you...And I thought as I was sitting there, well, actually--I was always one to question how deep this would go: "How close really was she to her mother?"--I didn't do any of that. I just--when she called to tell me. she just said, "Lloyd, I'm the only one now." I heard that. And it touched me, it touched a part of me that I had not allowed to be touched before. I see we as humans as having many parts, there's a loving part, there's a compassionate part, there's the understanding part, there's an ornery part, there's a lustful part--and you begin to name these parts. All these parts that make the whole. For me it's working on being able to see all of these parts which lead us to wholeness. You may have known someone over your lifespan, a marvellous person, that all the sudden that ornery part manifests itself--"God! I never saw that!" That used to devastate me as a child. That was a good experience for me to go and to be there and not analyze, to just hear what someone said and not question.

Then I wondered...It did occur to me that the childhood friend that I went with, her son was killed five years ago and I meant to make mention of that before we left but I didn't, and when we were sitting there she said "every time I come to a funeral it's like I'm revisiting my son's." We began to talk about that a little bit. She spoke of still grieving the loss of her son. Then I thought of my mother who had lost two babies, and how this affects our lives, how some of this changes us forever.

My mother certainly suffered from depression. Her salvation was her sense of humor; one of my saving graces is this sense of humor, and the other is being able to look through the pain, being able to look through the sorrow, being able to look through the frustration, being able to look through it all. Especially having that history of giving up, it's an enlightening challenge. I remember when I was in the Army, they had a slogan, "Be sure you're right, then go ahead." But as Thomas Merton says, he says "Lord, I may think, sometimes I may think I'm doing your will, and I don't know if I'm doing your will or not..." That questioning--"Am I?"--That's good. That's good! When I first came back to St Louis I said "Wow! Am I glad I don't have it made!" I saw so many people who knew it all, who were leading things and were doing things and dressed well and had great cars and homes and they had made it, on top of the rock, and it was a consolation to me to know that I still had many questions, I still had no car, didn't choose to have one, still had no home but didn't choose to buy one, that I was still digging in dumpsters. (laughs) And it was okay. That was okay.

AP: What response do you feel is appropriate to aggression?

LKH: One has to recognize aggression as being aggression...I think it's possibly a matter of becoming conditioned to learn how to be still. I've had a history of being right on the edge (mimes being pushed off cliff). I had an incident here, one of many incidents here. What happened, I was allowing this to build and to build and to build and then as opposed to immediately stepping in and saying "just a moment, just a moment please," I lashed out. Then at the end of it I thought, "Wow. Got a lesson here. Thanks. How can I deal with this? What am I to learn from it?" Then they got someone higher up involved in it, the person said you've been rude to my staff, you have to apologize, there was a part of me that said "You're going to tell me to apologize?" There was this part [saying], "you haven't heard the whole story,"--that was not important. The whole story was not important. "Well, don't you want to hear my side of it?" That's all past history. So I wrote for three days and finally wrote this long memo to this person. The one thing that I do recall that was in that, though I may spend time in meditation and in practicing silence very often I yet do not know when to speak, how to speak, what to speak, and when to be silent. Black Elk said wherever you are, you're standing in the middle of a sacred circle, and whoever enters into that circle is there to teach you. And I realized that that was my teacher. It wasn't a matter of who was right and who was wrong, and I said I offer my apologizes not necessarily so much for what was said but for the manner in which it was said. Someone said "Well, what did they say?" I wasn't expecting them to say anything. because they probably didn't know how to respond. People don't know how--we don't very often know how to respond to apologies, to kindnesses.

AP: Is it discouraging to see how little progress is made toward peace in a culture's life? Is it discouraging to experience so many inner conflicts and interpersonal conflicts?

LKH: I'm perpetually concerned about my inner growth so and I see many opportunities and many challenges to learn lessons. And being here [at City Museum] four years has certainly been a tremendous challenge for me. I've never worked in such an environment as this. I worked as a designer and an artist and I always worked by myself or either I worked freelance and when I did work at places I would say hello and that was it. I didn't happen to have all that social interaction so I've had to learn and put into practice some skills--even now I mostly just do this (waves).

I don't think of it necessarily as discouraging, because I recognize my humanness and I'm learning to accept the humanness and that's where the challenge lies: in having to work through lots of things. Then you realize in some of our interactions the only thing that will change is this individual here (points to himself). You realize that that's a reality, and that's the way it is. But sometimes a change within ourself has a tremendous effect on others. We may not know it today and we may not know it tomorrow, and it's not important, but it's a matter of growing up too. You begin to see things through different eyes, you begin to move away from "poor me." You begin to recognize that many of the wounds that you've been licking for years--if you stop, they'll begin to heal. You have to recognize when healing is taking place. I like to think that I'm in that perpetual state. That's why quietness and silence is so important. I was talking to a neighbor one day and it just came out, I said "I'm not of this world." And she said "I'm not either, Lloyd."

I was just talking to someone and I said "I'm very tired of this struggle of humanness." But I see myself as being on a journey. I've been forced on it. No matter what your journey might be you'll find some kindred souls along the way to feed you. You'll always find that; it's inevitable. And I've learned to live with a sense of expectancy. Any given moment someone could walk through the door, the phone could ring, any given moment, and that's a marvellous way to live. And no matter what you may be feeling, you could be sad or whatever--we have these human emotions...

Lori, she's at the front desk, this is how she speaks to me: (highpitched, sounding fake-happy) "Hi Lloyd!" When I first heard that, I thought, "What's that? What's that all about? Where are you coming from?" Then I began to realize that's who she was and one day I said to her "I admire you tremendously," and I said a little more and she shedded a tear and she hugged me and she said "I needed to hear that." We never know where a person's coming from, we never know, but there was this sincerity in who she was, who she is...There's more of a balance there, and those who get to know people like myself, they love and embrace many parts of that person.

Others, they are not able to see beyond that, they don't recognize, and I began to live with that. and that's interesting.

I used to use this expression, excuse it, but in jest, "I don't give a shit." I had a friend who lived in Mexico, another American, he was an artist, he was a painter, he was a musician--you begin to name it. And he'd just come to the point where all he was doing was eating and smoking cigarettes. And that was his key word about everything. "I don't give a shit." Just didn't give a shit about anything. But I was giving a shit about everything. And everybody! At every moment--everything! So to help me pull through that I would use his expression, occasionally, not publicly. I was seeing a very good therapist and he said "Mr Harvey! Every moment does not have to be THE moment! Every experience doesn't have to be THE experience!" Another time looked at me and he said, "Mr Harvey!"--I love to hear my name, especially from children, I don't know why, I love to hear children say that--he said, "Mr Harvey, it must be very difficult being you." (laughs)

I said "Bingo!" But it was reaffirming.

The Peace Project will be traveling to other museums, including the Museum of Peace and Solidarity in the Republic of Uzbekistan. The next exhibit in Lloyd Kleine Harvey's Art from Recycled Materials space in City Museum is Windows on the Soul of the City. For more information on this and other projects call (314) 231-2489 (CITY).