The following is an excerpt from a letter I wrote to Lucy Lippard, sent before she wrote an essay on the Alphabet of Lili for “Meander, Since You Can’t See Much While Marching”, the catalog for the career survey at Opalka Gallery, Albany, NY.

Dear Lucy…

The Alphabet is an installation of 26, 45”x36”, fiberglass and honeycomb aluminum panels. The panels are coated with modeling paste to give an absorbent, fresco like surface. I used acrylic paint and charcoal for all: the F picture has a real mummified frog embedded in the goo. 

The work came from reading to Lili (my daughter) at bedtime. We sat on the red couch or squeezed into the rocker and both relaxed from the day. I read to her every night until she was 8 and we covered a lot of great books. Since Lili had become the new center of my life, I thought I should make art about the experience. And the alphabet seemed like a good conceptual structure on which to base a series of paintings. 

The images in each panel begin with the same letter. In the B panel, for example, you can find baby, butt, boat, bath, bug, beetle, behind, and back.  It’s a game and I think this accounts for the popularity of the exhibition with families…Some of the works are a little hard to get. The M picture, for example is machete, maple seeds and muchacha.  Most of the combinations have a reason. I combined “maple seed” with “muchacha” to represent other little girls who live in very different circumstances from Lili, who was born on a nice New England farm with giant silver maples that make winged seeds, which float to the ground like toy helicopters. 

Lili’s face appears only once, in the “C” picture. I chose not to include many portraits, since I wanted the child figure to represent any kid. Instead, I chose to include Lili’s legs, which appear in most of the pictures. I got the idea from looking at Piero, whose figures are always so sturdy and column like. I tried to copy this and make her legs equally sturdy and reliable. It was my wish to give her stability in an uncertain world. Lili was three when I started the work and four when I finished. Just before the work was crated and sent out, Lili came to the studio. She walked back and forth looking at the works, paused and delivered her critique. “Daddy” she said, “but this girl has a head”. 

After dinner in Galesteo, I realized that you were the person to write about the Alphabet.  It was your mentoring that got me thinking about masculinity and motivated me to make the White Male Power exhibition in 1981 and the accompanying artist book. The White Male Power show was a rant, which felt great, but did not suggest an alternative to traditional, white male identity. The “Crying Men” series, which I made during and shortly after WMP, was a beginning, since they showed men breaking down, which is the first step toward change. The Alphabet of Lili was a resolution of this crisis in that it proposed nurturing as a fine and suitable role for men. 

My best to you as always, Mike