Denver artist, musician, photographer, and filmmaker John Ware is a member of Reckless Red.
In 1967 I moved back to Claremont. I guess I was planning on being a full time artist, but looking back I reckon I didn’t know what that meant. It’s hard to get out of grad school and hang up a shingle like an accountant. Hell, making art is hard. With a new wife and sketchy plans I managed to get a Craftsman house through the faculty housing office at Pomona College. They assumed I was on staff. I didn’t correct them. It was on Mills Avenue across from the wash in a mixed neighborhood of aging houses and cheap apartments common to college towns across the nation.
One spring morning my friend, Chris Darrow, stopped by to visit with an odd character in tow — Frizz Fuller. We sized each other up, drank some cheap wine, and Frizz discovered my piano, a Kranich and Bach 1895 upright grand. Frizz discovered my piano for the better part of a day. He made my wife kinda nervous, but I think everything made her a little nervous in the first couple of years of being paired with me. I thought Frizz just eccentric, but I enjoyed his rather aggressive attack on my piano. I can promise he enjoyed it.
Life was inexpensive and uncomplicated. I loved that instrument and kept it in tune. I learned that Frizz loved it too. Admittedly, our front door was seldom locked, and the first time I heard that piano in the early morning I thought I was dreaming. Of course I recognized Frizz’s sound, but we were still in bed and weren’t expecting a musical intrusion. It was the first of many impromptu free-form visitations from Frizz over the next few years. Claremont was a town of curious people. It was a curious time. Frizz was always welcome in my home. He seldom spoke to either of us. He just walked in the front door, made a sharp left turn, pulled up the stool and started playing. When he was finished with whatever he was working on, he left as abruptly as he arrived. We grew to accept the Frizz concerts (occasionally late at night and never with warning) as a benefit of residence. That was a grand union: Frizz and my Kranich and Bach.
Bob “Frizz” Fuller 