TUESDAY WELL'D: 2/12/26 *

A GALLERY OF MY LIFE IN LONDON

1.

Here I am with my friend curator and writer Kathelin Gray at the October Gallery in Bloomsbury. It is part of the October Gallery Trust she co-founded in 1978 and is located in the building owned by the trust that is a hive of creativity and service. We are standing amidst some of the works in the ground floor gallery’s current group show titled Lineages which is described as exploring the “the employment of line within these artists’ practice, in which the notion of line is not confined to the drawn mark, but emerges as a connective thread in concept and form.” Kathelin has been in London a bit on her way to Sweden where she will be in residence at a writer’s retreat working on her next book to which she refers as “an hallucinatory memoir.”

In six weeks I’ll have reached my seventies. For six years, she’s been in hers. As I approach such a birthday it has not been lost on me that The Seventies was the decade that I came of age in my teenage years and began my twenties. There is certainly a connective thread there in the arc of a life still being lived if not youthfully then with the same yearning I felt when I was young, that gentle yank toward acknowledgement, culture, the unknown. I think, in fact, I might have furthered Kathelin’s knowledge about connective threads and she has certainly taught me that we continue in concept and form to come of age throughout our lives. She’s an inspiration.

Kathelin also put together a gathering of an assortment of pizzas and other friends while I was visiting. That’s actor Paul Rhys on the other side of the table from her. His accomplished credits are too numerous to list but click on the link at his name to read them. Next up, he’ll be seen in the role of Melba, the connective thread in Russell T. Davies’s upcoming Tip Toe for Channel 4 which stars Alan Cumming. On Kathelin’s right is artist/filmmaker/writer/curator Stanley Schtinter who spends a lot of time in Porto where I told him I hope to hang out a bit more the next time I am there. And to her left is editor/impresario/writer Gareth Evans .

The day after my visit with Kathelin and her friends, The New York Times featured the October Gallery in its story about Art Basel Qatar highlighting the work of the Ghanaian-based artist El Anatsui. Above is one of his bottle cap tapestry sculptures featured in the Lineages group show.

I first met Kathelin almost three years ago now when we were at neighboring tables at a cafe in Chelsea in New York City. I had just broken my shoulder in Paris and was on my way to Santa Fe where she lives a lot of the time. I inserted myself into her conversation with an art world journalist sensing that this was a person I’d like to know. The photo above is of us at the theatre that same night since I had an extra press seat and asked her to come along, this stranger who didn’t seem strange to me or, more precisely, seemed strange in many of the same ways that I am. When I look at this photo I see both how soothing a new friendship can be along with all that pain I was in when my shoulder was still broken in four places, my surgery still almost two weeks off waiting for me in Sant Fe. I even still had that bruise on my forehead where I had fallen face first down those steep stairs in the Paris metro only three nights before.

I wrote on Facebook when I posted this in 2023:

“Small-town NY. My date tonight for Kimberly Akimbo, Kathelin Gray. I didn’t even know her when I woke up this morning but I wrote about meeting her today and the Santa Fe connection where she has a home and is connected and where I am about to have my surgery reconnecting my shoulder. We are having coffee tomorrow to talk further since she is interested in my pilgrimage and I am interested in advice about Santa Fe as a place to heal. I googled her and told her I wasn’t sure I was smart enough for her. She said she had googled me too and I was smart enough. Everything connects seems to be her mission in life from being cofounder of Biosphere 2 to the Director of The Institute of Ecotechnics.”

2.

Some of the best thrift shopping here in London can be found in West Hampstead along its West End Lane where four or five charity shops are lined up next to each other. And “thrift” is not a misnomer. The coat I am wearing in the first photo in this week’s gallery was bought at one of them the other weekend for only 10 quid. It’s Zara but looks rather bespoke. I didn’t need another overcoat but because of its perfect fit and that price, I bought it. All the compliments I’ve gotten since have proven I was right to do so. And I love saying it was only £10.

3.

I live in Kilburn on Priory Road between Abbey and Belsize Roads. This is my local bakery/cafe around the corner on Belsize. Mohammad, its proprietor, is a real mensch who seems to appreciate my humor and sense of irony. There is a storefront mosque two doors down and the Kilburn Welfare Association is its outreach organization for the community offering social services.

It’s been exceedingly rainy this last month here even for London but with that has come rather unseasonably warm temperatures. So I guess it’s a trade-off. When the rain stops you can even see people sitting outside having their coffee and croissants at sidewalk tables on a February Sunday.

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*Also, I apologize for this Tuesday Well’d column being a couple of days late yet again. I’ve learned a lesson though about naming columns for the days of the week: it makes missing deadlines too obvious.]