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February 16, 2020 by tomdalzell

Jim Riley – Sweaters – And More

I met Jim Riley at the 7-Eleven on University at Sacramento.

I am reminded of my childhood hymn “I Sing a Song of the Saints of God” and its assurance that we can meet saints of God “in school, or in lanes, or at sea, in church, or in trains, or in shops, or at tea.” Or the Grateful Dead’s “Scarlet Begonias“: “Once in a while you get shown the great light/ in the strangest of places if you look at it right”

Jim was ahead of me in line, wearing an outrageous, bulky sweater. I stepped outside my expected behavior and asked where he got the sweater. He told me he knitted it, and had knitted about 80 sweaters in all. I invited myself to see his sweaters.

It looked like I had a winner, or at least a very good chance of one.

John Storey and I visited Riley’s house to see and photograph his sweaters.. Yes indeed – we had a winner. I will be surprised if I find anything or anybody quirkier this year – that’s how quirky Jim Riley and his sweaters are.

Riley makes art in many different media – knit sweaters, paintings, sculpture, painted saws, painted plates, and more.

For example:

When you approach Riley’s house you see this.

Boots as planters! Up on the porch you see more clearly.

Doc Martens boots as planters. Brilliant. He first saw this done in Portland, Oregon. He knows a good idea when he sees one, no?

Next stop: paintings by Riley of this brilliance:

Dig the frame!

This is a triptych, a work of art that is divided into three sections, or three carved panels that are hinged together and can be folded shut or displayed open.

As you will learn when you read about Riley’s life, he likes to play darts.

He has several dart boards. Open two doorss and there is your dartboard.

Close the doors and – boots as planters.

And, of course, a boots-as-planter sweater.

We will see examples of Riley’s art from all media, but because the knit sweaters are the main event in the main arena, we will start there.

Riley started knitting about 25 years ago. For a digression more or less about knitting in literature, see this.

The woman who owned a now-gone knitting store in southwest Berkeley, was very helpful. He’d show her a drawing and she would help him design the sweater.

Riley starts with a sketch that gets translated into a knitting pattern. The graph paper is rectangular, not square, to reflect the reality of the sweater.

The entire image is knit. The only other application is a black outline around some figures that he crochets into the sweater.

Riley will start a new sweater just hours after finishing one. There is an imperative to knit, to produce.

Here are many but not all of the sweaters.

Human angel and angelic worm
Vespas
Making a mold of a sculpture
Back of the first ugly Christmas sweater
Reflecting a dim view of President Trump.
Pouring wax into the mold after it is completed
Vespas
Back of the angelic worm sweater
The joyful front of the intense Donald Trump back
A late 2019 work – ancient Roman copies of ancient Greek sculpture
Just ducks = and a troutl.
Chelsea. The Thunderbirds, Dr. Who – television from Riley’s boyhood
A Ural sidecar parked next to a river scaring the ducks. IMZ-Ural is a Russian maker of heavy sidecar motorcycles. In 1940, the Soviet Union acquired the design and production techniques for BMW R71 motorcycles and sidecars. The first M-72 model was finished in 1941.
Scratches hanging out with pigeons
Another Vespa
An early sweater. Inspiration for this design – forgotten.
Made for son Rhys.
Characters from Thunderbirds a science fiction television show that began its first run of 64 half-hour episodes in the United Kingdom on the ITV network. between 1965 and 1966.
A Bajaj, an Indian version of a Vespa. Bajaj Auto Limited is based in Pune, Maharashtra. It manufactures motorcycles, scooters and auto rickshaws. It was founded by Jamnalal Bajaj in Rajasthan in the 1940s
London calling to the faraway towns/ Now war is declared and battle come down… “London Calling” is the third studio album by the Clash. It was originally released as a double album in the United Kingdom on 14 December 1979 by CBS Records, and in the United States in January 1980 by Epic Record
Riley’s former 1981 BWM R80GS. The bike in a sculpture we’ll see later. It is often considered the world’s first “Adventure Bike” able to be equally as capable both on and off-road. The designation G/S stands for the German words Gelände/Straße, which mean offroad/road..
Eye Heart Scratches. I love my cat.
Six is afraid of seven because seven eight nine.
Angelic dog,cat, rate.
Angelic squirrel and raccoon
Flying rats. Inspired by his fellow drivers who called pigeons “flying rats.” Riley was drawn to pigeons while driving bus. He slowly tamed one at the San Francisco bus lot to the point that it would land in his hand to eat.ƒ
Kid sweater, probably for Ruby.
Little kid sweater.
Scary!
Also scary!
Animal skulls.
For Ruby as she discovered the joy of swimming.
A courting present for Linda. It depicts Sluggo the Cat, aka Mr. Handsome.
Sluggo.
Little girl images.
Rocking pig that Ruby loved.
Scratches as a Chelsea player (#26 was John Terry, captain of the team).
Scratches
For Ruby (or Rhys?)
Chelsea rats.
2008 Triumph Scrambler. The Scrambler it was the last Triumph styled by designer John Mockett, The TR6C Trophy Special was the major influence on the new Scrambler, and the new bike shared the same key features – most obviously including the high level stacked twin exhausts and crossover exhaust headers
Vespa, 1971 BMW R75/5. The BMW/5 motorcycles were manufactured for model years 1970-1973, featuring electric starting and telescopic forks.
For Linda. For Christmas.
For Ruby, who swam with the Barracuas.
Aka Sluggo. Linda’s cat.
Naked woman on motorcycle. A waitress from the Albatross. Originally a sculpture.
Flying snail. Of course.
Anti-smoking sweater. Jim smokes. He tries to quit.
Fish and cat throwing darts and knocking off a few beers.
Pigeon waiting for the winner.
Biology lesson. Attraction. Result = babies.
Angelic babies. Black. White. Male. Female. All the same.
Turkey vultures. Waiting for lunch.
Turkey vulture having lunch.

Of course – the Rubens painting “Prometheus Bound” comes to mind.

Kratos (God of Strength), Bia (God of Violence), and the smith-god Hephaestus chained the Titan Prometheus to a mountain in the Caucasus. Prometheus was punished \for stealing fire and for thwarting Zeus’s plan to obliterate the human race.

Early medieval church sculptures.
Animals love Chelsea! Maybe I should have placed this in the Chelsea post?
More animals love Chelsea.
Daughter Ruby’s swim team

That, my Quirky Berkeley friends, is a lot of sweater photos, no? There are more, which I have placed in different posts.

Riley’s rude sweaters, mostly involving dog poop, may be found here.

His sweaters celebrating the Chelsea Football Club are here, although Chelsea iconography is part of many of the sweaters shown above in this post.

I am not done with Jim Riley. In a next post about him I will recount his journey to Berkeley and sweater-knitting and I will show you his paintings and sculpture and collections.

I showed tho draft post and photos to my friend. As is often the case, he had to show me something that he was working on before he would engage in my stuff.

He handed me a postcard.

And?

He has found the Travel Lodge sign in a basement in Richmond and says that he is close to working out a deal to buy the sign.

He had been tripping on Sleepy the Bear, the Travel Lodge Mascot. He read a great blog on Sleepy. I checked out the blog and boy oh boy it is the real deal. The focus is Lorain County, Ohio. The county seat is Elyria. Lorain County is near Cleveland.

I did my best to discourage his attempt to acquire the sign. Simply put – where does he think he can possibly display this sign? I suggested he review Berkeley’s rules on signs.

He wasn’t done. He handed me these

I could see that these were Tijuana Bibles (aka eight-pagers, Tillie-and-Mac books, Jiggs-and-Maggie books, jo-jo books, bluesies, blue-bibles, gray-backs, and two-by-fours) were palm-sized pornographic comic books that parodied popular newspaper comic strips of the day. They were produced in the United States from the 1920s to the early 1960s. Their popularity peaked during the Great Depression. My friend’s collection of them is smaller than the collection owned by Madeline Kripke in New York, but it is impressive.. What, though, is his point?

“Do you not seethe similarity? Professor O. G. Whattaschnozzle and Crumb’s Mr. Natural?” Professor O. G. Wotasnozzle is a character created by E. C. Segar in his comic strip (as “The Five Fifteen”) in 1920 A few years later, the strip was renamed after protagonist John Sappo. The strip was made into the “topper”, or complementary strip, to Segar’s better known “Thimble Theatre” (later “Popeye” in its Sunday edition. Sappo characters sometimes have supporting roles in “Popeye.”

Yes I do see the resemblance. If he remembers, I identified this theory of Mr. Natural’s origin in my post on Crumb. Nice to see that nothing gets by him for long.

That taken care of, what does he think of the post?

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« Jim Riley’s sweaters – soccer/football/Chelsea
Jim Riley – Collections and Art He Made »

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