Letter from Hollis Frampton to Sally Dixon
(8/17/1973)
Eaton, New York 13334 August 17, 1973
Dear Sally,
Well, I'm glad you got to Stonehenge. It ain't like the pictures...even my [or especially] pictures. You'll be amused to know that those buildings one sees off in the distance, looking like some kind of neo-Georgian or what-have-you, are in fact a biological warfare factory that manufactures something seemly and sweet...like anthrax spores. Did you go anywhere else in the West Country? it really is a magic place. I'll go back some time.
But not this year. London couldn't get up the scratch, offered a maximum of 100 quid, and I can't afford the difference. Lotsa new work, haven't the dough to print it. More coming on, all sorts, lyrics, animation, a black-comedy selfportrait, and many more one-minute things. High hopes to press ahead in the Fall.
Pressing ahead will even, I wd/ hope, include making use of the computer in Pittsburgh. That still needs to be defined, rationalized. Computer image-manipulation at Buffalo looks hopeful, but itza dream for a future I wd/ as soon not wait for, since my thinking on the specific project is growing urgent.
This has been a fairly good summer, if depressing in spots.
The garden has been simply fabulous. Do think seriously about black plastic mulch: I was dubious, but have now nothing but good reports. House renovation, while not the meteoric thing it has been at Brakhages', goes on. Someday, dear Sally, we'll have to hail you up here by the hair.
New life includes a couple more cats, for a total of five, or shd/ say 5+ because two ladies are pregnant...and a really lovely young dog we found waiting for us one morning in the dooryard, already deep into some decision of his own.
I'm enclosing my Fall schedule, for no apparent reason. If I can remember, in the midst of the hysteria, I'll keep your clearing house posted on my whereabouts...but I'm hoping, mostly, to stay home and work for some months. You'll notice that I'm "on" 4 days in Buffalo, and then "off" ten. If I can't work with that, then nothing will do. Pray, Sally, pray for Baffalo.
Meantime, a bit of professionalia. There is [at 4 Elton Street, Rochester, N.Y. 14607] something called the Visual Studies
Nathan Lyons, who comes with my fullest recommendation, They do still photography, film, and are deep, deep into graphics (incl. printshop stuff). Whether The Pitts Wkshp could usefully mutualate -with them, I dunno, but you might try.
Let me hear from you when you get [sigh] back to [huh?] America. Benedictions.
