See Vermont
Patty Oldenburg
Poets Mimeo Cooperative
Burlington, VT
(c) 1979
Patty Mucha, who trained as an artist and poet, was married to Claes Oldenburg from 1960 to 1970, first met him after moving to New York City in 1957. When Oldenburg was painting portraits, Mucha became one of his nude models before becoming his first wife. An Oldenburg drawing of Mucha titled Pat Reading in Bed, Lenox, 1959 is in the collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art. She was a collaborator in Oldenburg's happenings by coming up with ideas together, making the costumes together, and was also a performer in the piece, along with collaborating on happenings, she also as well, sewed his famous floor hamburger, ice cream, and cake. Mucha was lead singer in the band The Druds. Pop artist Andy Warhol occasionally sang backup he also wrote the songs “The Alphabet Song, Movie Stars, Hollywood and Cocal-Cola”, .minimalist Walter De Maria played drums, painter Larry Poons guitar and composer LaMonte Young saxophone (briefly) along with neodadist lyrics provided by Jasper Johns and vocal contributions by “Happening Artist” Gloria Graves and Greek-American artist Lucas Samaras.
She appeared in art and films by Warhol. After, still in her mid-30s, became involved with the young poet and (pre Voidoids) musician Richard Hell.
The Druds was a short-lived 1963 avant-garde noise music band founded by Andy Warhol that featured prominent members of the New York proto- conceptual art and minimal art community. The band's noise rock sound has been compared to that of Henry Flynt and/or The Primitives, the band that featured the first collaboration of Lou Reed and John Cale, who would soon form The Velvet Underground.
That's a lot of preface for a collection of poetry by a relatively unknown poet but this particular copy is unique in ways the seller of it was seemingly unaware. (Yeah, I bought it online). This is a staple bound book. 64 pages. This was on of 100 copies to be signed by the poet, however, I noticed that the signature that I was told was in the book was actually crossed out by Ms. Mucha. I thought that odd until I read the snippets of her life in various places (apparently she did not rate to have a fully contained bio of her own) but she and Claus divorced in 1970 (because he was a cad, it seems) and this book came out nearly ten years later.
The publishers must have reasoned that she would be more easily recognized in print as Patty Oldenburg because that's the name they assigned her on the title of the book and throughout but she had been divorced from him for a decade so, likely in a moment of clarity, she signed and then crossed out THAT name and signed her own last name above.
The was her second collection of poetry. Her first, Poems Traveling, came out in 1973.
The Papers of Patty Mucha more detail.
she was born(Patricia Muschinski) was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on June 26, 1935. She attended Wisconsin State Teachers College in Milwaukee (now the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee), where she majored in art. Patty first saw Claes Oldenburg while she was at the Oxbow Summer School of Painting and later went to visit him in his Chicago studio. In 1957, she moved to New York to become an artist and met Oldenburg by accident after being there for two months.
Patty Mucha was not only Oldenburg's muse for his main performance ensemble but collaborator for all of his early sewn sculptures. Her contribution to the invention of soft sculpture was the result of the immediate demand for Oldenburg's first exhibition at the Green Gallery in 1962. She appeared in his Ray Gun Theater, which they produced in 1962, and collaborated in sewing costumes and constructing objects and sets for his Happenings and installations. She appeared in Oldenburg films made by Rudy Wurlitzer and Robert Breer as well as in films by Jean Dupuy, Rudy Burckhardt, Andy Warhol and Red Grooms. She also participated in the Happenings of Jim Dine, Robert Whitman, Dick Higgins, Alex Hay, Steve Paxton, Simone Forti, and Sally Gross.
Patty Mucha farms, writes and paints near St. Johnsbury, Vermont. Her essential role in the Pop Art and Happenings scenes is revealed in her as-yet-unpublished memoir, Clean Slate: My Life in the 1960's New York Art World, which in 2022, the title was changed to Threads. Portions of the book have appeared in Art in America as well as in the catalog "Seductive Subversion: Women Pop Artists, 1958–1968." Her poetry books include Poems Traveling, 1971-1973 (Panorama, 1973) and See Vermont: Poems, 1974-1978 (Poets Mimeo Cooperative, 1979).
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