Interview by Arthur Evans:

A:  My name is Arthur Evans. Today is the 21^st of January 2004 and I'm interviewing Dan Smith the stained glass artist and troublemaker. Tell me Dan how old are you.

D: I'm 59. In two months I'll be 60.

A: How long have you been involved with making stained glass?

D:  Since 1974. That's approximately 30 years.

A: How did you learn this art?

D:  One day I was walking by the front of a stained glass shop. At the time I didn't have any clothes and was wearing nothing but a sheet and in my bare feet.

A: Nothing but a sheet! Where was this?

D:  This was on 16^th Street between Church Street and Valencia.

A: Where you on drugs?

D:  No.

A: Why were you wearing a sheet?

D:  I didn't have any clothes.

A: How did that happen?

D:  Well I just ran out of clothes and I didn't have any money to buy them. I had a nice straight guy that I was living with who took care of everything.

A: OK. We'll skip this part. Now you were walking down the street and you saw a stained glass window?

D: No. I was walking down the street and the owner of the stained glass shop came out and said to me, "Would you like a job?" and I said yes.

A: What a way to get a job.

D:  She took me down into the basement and introduced me to her husband and he taught me how to make slumped lamps.

A: She's your benefactor.

D:  Yes. Her name is Caroline Shadomy. She now owns the shop on Divisidero named SF Stained Glass Works.

A: Was she your primary teacher?

D:  No her husband, Giles, taught me to slump lamp panels and I learned everything else on my own. I worked in her shop for about three years.

A: What's a slumped lamp?

D: You place a piece of glass on a mold that is shaped perhaps like a lily leaf, place them in a kiln and heat them to a high temperature and the glass becomes soft and relaxes onto the mold.

A: You're also a Gay Liberationist and a dancer. Tell me how did you get to be a Gay Liberationist?

D:  Well in 1965 I was a soldier in France and I read a LIFE magazine article about the Mattachine Society in New York. It showed a photograph of maybe thirty men setting in rows looking toward a podium and they were all wearing suits and they were all homosexuals! I thought, "What an interesting thing." After I got out of the Army I accidentally ended up in New York. That happened because I had the wrong discharge papers. So I went to the Mattachine Society, which was absolutely nothing like the photograph!

A: What was it like?

D:  There was a secretary, an office and no courtesy what so ever.

A: They were rude to you?

D:  They were very rude.

A: Really how were they rude?

D:  Just totally dismissive. Also they didn't have anything there. I was a cultural Liberationist you know and I didn't find any culture there just some limited political outlook.

A: Did you go to any of the meetings?

D:  No, but I did find out that there was a group named The Westside Discussion Group which was many years old. It held meetings once a week where Homophiles would go.

A: What's a Homophile?

D:  Homophile is a discarded word for Homosexual. It means you like the same and it means you're a friend to Homosexuals.

A: So it gave gay and lesbian people a little bit of a distance from the stigma of Homosexuality. 

D:  I went to the meetings every week and we discussed such questions as: "Is Homosexuality caused by a strong mother or a weak father?" I was extremely unhappy with that situation. However I did join the News staff there and helped increase the club paper from a two-sided leaflet to an eight-sided News Letter. I wrote a number of articles and I also introduced the first nude drawings, done by a friend, placing them beside two poems that I'd written. There was quite a bit of a stir about that.

A:  But that didn't quite meet your desires, right?

D: They didn't meet my needs because I was twenty-three and their ages ranged from forty to seventy. They asked questions at our meetings that didn't have any meaning for me.

   I was extremely happy when I met a Guy named Earl Galvin who was in the group but very, very disruptive.

A:  He was disruptive in the West Side Discussion Group meetings.

D: He interrupted a meeting once and said. "Why don't we stop talking and go out and dance in the street."

A:  What a great thing to say!

D: I thought that was incredible.

A: How did people respond to that?

D:  They thought that he should shut-up, he had not been recognized and that question was not on the agenda. I'm not putting these people down though. They were wonderful people.

A: Well they gave you a chance to meet Earl Galvin.

D: While in this group I also learned about straight people who say that they are allies. 

A: What do you mean?

D:  Well there was a Minister and we met in his church.

A: He was a straight minister?

D:  Yes and he worked very hard to allow us to meet there. He was completely supportive of gays being in all businesses and organizations and being completely out. He thought it was a very good idea. Then I asked him one day, "Are there any homosexual ministers in your denomination?" He responded, "That would not be suitable." I said, "Why?" He said to me that a minister is a spiritual guide and a homosexual is not properly morally organized to be a spiritual guide.

A: He actually said that?

D:  Well I'm paraphrasing, but yes.

A: What did you say to him?

D:  I asked, "Why?" He went on to explain that when he was a little boy a minister basically raped him. So he had a very personal reason for not accepting it. However nevertheless he was a straight person who said he was for us being able to work everywhere except were he worked. The West Side Discussion Group was a wonderful organization and I loved it.

A: This was before Gay Liberation?

D:  Yes this was 67,68, 69.

A: How did you meet the Gay Liberation front?

D:  Could I tell you about the next thing I was involved with before the Gay Liberation Front? There was an annual event held by a group named East Coast Regional Homophile Organization as well as the group named The North American Conference of Homophile Organizations (NACHO).

A: Were these political or social groups?

D:  They were groups of organizations like the West Side Discussion group, all across the country. The two organizations together sponsored a demonstration on July 4th of every year in front of Liberty Hall in Philadelphia.  

A: Was that something that Barbara Gettings was involved with? Did you participate in those annual demonstrations?

D: Yes she was there in fact that's how I met her. I was in the Third and Fourth Annual Reminders as they were called. I think that was in 67 and 68. It was quite remarkable. We marched with signs saying Equality for Homosexuals and things like that. Almost no main media came. The only News Organization that I recall was East German National Radio. I don't know why they did it but they came, probably to write negative things I imagine at that time.

A: Or perhaps the correspondent was a closet gay.

D:  But it was remarkable that we got so little media coverage. We had three or four busses, maybe forty or fifty people marching, all the men wore suits, all the women wore dresses.

A:  Did you wear a suit?

D:  Yes. There was a huge argument about the clothing code.

A: How did the public in front of Liberty Hall react to the demonstrations?

D: Basically with indifference. There really wasn't anger because they had no history of hearing about Gay Liberation therefore they'd had no opportunity to think about being irritated by it. It was the first time they'd ever seen such a thing.

A: That's a good point.

D: It was a different response then you get now.

A: Did they understand what the demonstration was about?

D: No but they didn't shake their heads and they weren't't disgusted.

A: Did they know that you were homosexuals?

D: Yes, the signs said, "Equality for Homosexuals", "Equal Rights for Homosexuals". I loved it because I met all those interesting queers.

A: Yes you met the people who were at the forefront because it took a lot of courage to do that. Was there any other step for you before the Gay Liberation Front?

D: Yes. My lover, Jose Ramon Rivera, and I were having a dinner Party with his friends who were all Puerto Rican. It was a great dinner with rice and beans. We were living on Fourteenth Street at the time. Late on that evening the doorbell rang. I answered the door and someone came running in and said, "Oh! There's a riot going on down the street." I said, "Let's go down there." It was about homosexuals being upset.

A: I take it that this was June of 69?

D: That's right.  It was the Stonewall Riot.  So I said we should go down and see what it's like but my lover said,  "We're having a dinner party, you're not going anywhere". So I didn't go. I did go down the next two nights.

A: Who lasted longer, the lover or Gay Liberation?

D: The love will never die; Gay Liberation will eventually pass away. But my relationship with Gay Liberation started and with him stopped very soon after that night.

A: That can be a very big division in a relationship, one person with gay pride and the other without it.

D: That's right, Jose thought that we should be quiet and not bother anybody and that we were kind of maybe mentally ill.

A: How did the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) differ from the other groups you had been in? I'm sorry, first, so you didn't go to the Stonewall Riot?

D: No but I went down the next two nights.

A: Where there riot scenes on those nights?

D: I only remember a riot on the first of the two nights I went down. I was walking down the street; people were running every-which way and a trash can blew up because someone had put large firecrackers in it. It hit a guy down the street from me. I walked to the hospital with him. The Doctor came out after seeing him and shouted at me, "What's going on out there, your friend may lose his eye!" The Doctor was very upset.

A: How did this connect to GLF?

D: Well when we went back to the Westside Discussion group meeting a week later we had another discussion like: What is the difference in the way that Greeks treated Homosexuals and we treat them? Earl said, "We need to do something".

A: Was Earl at Stonewall?

D: I'm not sure exactly what his direct part was but he was overwhelmingly affected because the people were dancing in the streets. That was one of the things about the riots; it was not only breaking windows but also it was people dancing in the street. I thought that was quite beautiful. Other people would have been horrified.

A: So Stonewall was significant not only because of the riot itself but because it inspired people to open their eyes to new dimensions. Would you say that?

D: For most people but for others such as Earl and myself it simply allowed us to go forward with the vision that we had.

A: So it allowed you to go forward in ways that other groups weren't open to?

D: They couldn't be open to it because at their meetings you had to be recognized to speak.

A: How did you find GLF then?

D: As I recall sometime shortly after Stonewall, maybe the first week in July, I read a very short leaflet directing people to meet and talk about what to do.

A: Who were "we"? Was this GLF?

D: No. There was no GLF until several months after that. At the meeting we decided to March from Washington Square to the police station at the end of that July. Martha Shelly suggested that we try and get the use of Mattachine's mimeograph to write a first class leaflet directing people to meet at the south end of Washington Square. The Mattachine Society agreed to let us use their machine only if we called ourselves the Mattachine Action Committee and that was fine with us. During the planning of that March I met, besides Martha Shelly, such wonderful people as the professional troublemaker Jim Fouratt, a wonderful person.

A: Basically it sounds like this group was a magnet for people who felt the way you did, that it was time to move to the next stage.

D:  Or really people who want to move through every stage that's possible as quickly as possible.

A: Doesn't your art seem to follow that same desire to move on to the next stage? Look at the way that you've created this project. What impressed me about it is it seems to be taking your creativity and your vision to the next stage. I know something about your personal life and it seems that you're a person that's always looking to take the next step.

D: That's why I'm square dancing because I want to do the next step. I want to do it esthetically.  

A: That's a good title, "The Next Step" because it's a metaphor for all sorts of things. How would you characterize GLF once it had got up and running?

D:  Fantabulous!  It had no existence in and of its self. It was simply whoever came to the meetings doing whatever they did when they came to the meetings and after they left the meetings. There was, of course, a group of people who like to have organization and they wanted it to have reality. But to me it had absolutely no reality whatsoever. It was always energy spinning into the center and spinning back out again.

A: It sounds like square dancing doesn't it?

D:  Well (chuckles with surprise) you're right. As long as GLF did that it had existence. 

A: What did you get out of GLF?

D:  What did I get out of GLF? What did I learn from it? Well I learned how to relate to people better, which is nice. And not to relate to them in an official way but to listen to what they think is interesting and try to develop something from there. Either it's a friend you talk to and argue with all the time but in a very positive way or it's somebody that comes forth with an idea for a window and you modify it but you always listen to what they want because in the end you want to create their image. If you look at the windows you'll see that no two are similar. 

A: Let me interrupt for a second. What did you learn about homosexuality and change as a result of GLF.

D:  When I was in the Gay Liberation Front I listened to from 175 to 250 men talk in Encounter Groups and later in Consciousness Raising Groups about their experiences as homosexuals. I was in several groups myself and helped to start many others. I heard their views on Homosexuality and how those views were changing, I found only four or five out of that number who had the same view as I.  I always thought it was natural, always thought it was good, always thought, "Gee I'd like to get into that". In fact I came out to my Mother in 1958 when I was 15. She gave me The Leaves of Grass to read saying, "There's beautiful poetry in here that'll be interesting to you." It had lines like, Oh boy of responding kisses and we lay in the fields at night.

A: You were lucky to have such an intelligent Mother.

D:  Right, so my view of homosexuality did not change in any fundamental sense. A sad thing I found out while in GLF and afterwards was that many Homosexuals think that only queers who act the same as themselves, are good people. They can't see that people may do things that are different and be just as good. For instance the Leather Community or the drag Community or churchgoers.

A: Was there respect for difference in GLF?

D:  No. They became very doctrinaire after the Encounter Groups became Consciousness Raising Groups.

A: Did GLF make any contributions to your evolution as an artist?

D:  They taught me how to organize things and deal with people. This project could not be done, or any project that I do, if I can't get people to do things with me or for me.

A: So you learned collective or cooperative interaction in GLF?

D:  I learned how to spin into the center and spin out again. I couldn't be the artist I am today in any sense at all if that wasn't the case. My art is not like a writer's who sits down and even if no one else pays attention at all, is still able to do her craft. My art requires that others be involved in some way.

A: What other Gay Liberation activities have you been involved with? You knew Harvey Milk didn't you?

D:  I knew Harvey Milk.

A: Were you involved in his campaign?

D:  In a tangential way. For instance I videotaped him on his way down to City Hall to be sworn in when he was elected. I was in a group called Queer Blue Light and we taped many things from that period. We taped the Bakersfield Gay Student Union, Tom Ammiano in front of the Board of Education when he was a teacher, four or five Castro Street Fairs, gay poets, dancers and lesbian and gay singers; things of that sort. The square dancing grant was rewarded to me under the name of my business, which is called Queer Blue Light Studios.

A: Did you ever visit his headquarters?

D:  His headquarters were in his camera shop on Castro Street. I went to meetings there perhaps seven or eight times. I set on the couch and he laughed at me a few times. But I think if he picked his closest three thousand friends I'd be below that list.

A: What did you learn from Harvey Milk?

D:  Well, the most wonderful thing. There is a fellow named Dan Nicoletta who is a photographer who does beautiful photographical things all the time and some things that I don't like. He was twenty at the time.

A: How old were you?

D:  I was around thirty.

A: So you were both kids.

D:  Yah, but you were that age also at that time sweetheart.

A: I was never that age.

D:  Anyway Dan Nicoletta was setting on the couch with Harvey Milk. Now Harvey was a very big person, tall, big hands, big everything. Dan has a very small frame. Harvey and Dan were smitten with each other at the time. They liked each other. It was the most delightful political moment I've had in my life when Harvey extended his arm; Dan rapped his entire body around it and did summersaults around Harvey's arm. It was just beautiful.

A: What other Gay Liberation activities have you done?

D:  I was on the AIDS NIGHT LINE for just under three years.

A: People called in from around the country?

D:  Yes. I was there on Saturday nights from eleven at night tell five in the morning.

A: What did you learn from that.

D:  That AIDS is as racist as any other disease. I would get calls from 32-year-old black women living in Mississippi with two children saying that she was starting to get sick and was terrified that her children would be left alone if she died. She didn't have a Doctor, her church had turned her out, her husband or boyfriend wouldn't have anything to do with her and where could she get help? I'd look and there was nothing to recommend. All I could do was listen and they seemed comforted by at least that much. Then I'd get a call from a young white guy in New York and I'd say, "Oh! You can go here, you can go there. You can do this, you can do that." It's pure racism that the women in Mississippi had nothing but the guy in New York, as meager as it was, had a lot. I mean a lot of the money to run those programs comes from the National Government. That's one of the things I learned.

A: Do you think there's any difference in facilities for black women in New York and Mississippi?

D:  Yes. In reality if you've been in New York and you've gone to a place where a black woman would go for facilities you'd say, "WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT!" But you'd be able to go to a place. In Mississippi I mean forget it. And this wasn't one woman this was a lot of women.

   But it was a beautiful experience. I loved being on the Night Line.

A: Why did you stop?

D:  Well they had a candy machine that did not always work. I'm a Union person and I think Administration should listen to the workers. I respect the Night Line administration and they run a very good ship. However for two years I repeatedly wrote notes and asked them to fix it but they didn't. If you're working the Nightline phones at four in the morning and you want some popcorn and you put fifty cents in the machine and nothing comes out it can be upsetting. So one day I simply took the machine and turned it upside down. All the candy came out and I put it on the counter for anyone to eat.  Several weeks later I reluctantly left the Night Line.

A: Is there a common insight that you've gotten from all your Gay Liberation activities?

D:  That Gay Liberation is not a movement. It's every single Lesbian and Gay person in the world moving on with their life. So liberation is infinitely varied for both queer and straight.

A: Now tell me about Dan Smith the square dancer. How did you get into square dancing?

D:  For many years I've had roommates because that makes it possible to have a large place and because it's nice having people around as long as they don't bother you. Roommates fit those needs beautifully. I had a roommate who was a square dancer and he suggested I try dancing.

A: How long ago was that?

D:  It was a little over three years ago. I said to him, "Well I don't know. I don't want to go all the way across town." He said, "There are three clubs a block away from here." So I went and it was fun.

A: What was it like when you went there?

D:  The first club I went to was the Foggy City Dancers.

A: That's a gay group?

D:  It's a Gay and Lesbian club although it has two or three women who are straight and at lest one man who's straight as well as two hetero couples that come from time to time.

A: What was it like when you went there?

D:  Andy Shore was the Caller and he's a very good Caller.

A: A Caller is someone who tells people what steps to take?

D: Yes a Caller tells everyone which formations to move though during a Tip, which is a ten-minute dance you do with seven other people. You start the dance formed up as a square.

A: What images do you have about your encounters there?

D:  Well, you live in the Castro and you see a bar and you see a restaurant and you see a coffee shop and a pizza place and that's what you see. And you know that people go to the movie and the drugstore but you wonder what's going on culturally here?

   In the early 70's when I moved here there were Salons with painters and dancers, musicians and puppeteers, jugglers and costumed plays. That seemed to vanish when AIDS took off in the eighties and it became more expensive to live here. I love living in the Castro but I spent a number of years wondering when and if the cultural activity would return. Well during all that time there were three square dancing clubs within a block of where I lived and the Castro had a chorus and a band and a whole world of artists and performers. I didn't see it because you just don't see it on the street any more.

   The first time I went to the Foggy City Dancers I didn't think there'd be very many people but there were 45. Most of them I'd never seen but the majority live in the area and they all dance.

A: What was it like dancing the first time?

D:  They start off with what they call Basic level. That's the first level and you learn ten or eleven calls. They teach you enough to dance the first two times you come and it's free. If you come a third time because you liked it you pay to take a Mainstream class and that's $65 and lasts for about three months. You learn 75+ calls. After that you can dance Mainstream anywhere in the world.

A: They use standardized calls?

D: Not only standardized calls but they are called in English. So the Japanese dance to English calls, as do the Danes, the Nigerians, the Vietnamese and even the France if you can believe that!  Tomas Todd who became interested in square dancing while he was in Viet Nam working as an interrogator during the war created one of the stained glass windows in the project. One day a friend and he were walking down a street in Saigon when they heard music coming from the second story of a building. They climbed a set of rickety stairs and at the top were all these Vietnamese and they were all doing Do-Sa-Do and Allemande Left. Everything was in Vietnamese except the calls, which were in English.

A: What attracted you most about square dancing?

D:  You can be very close with people, extremely friendly, in fact hold them in your arms and you twirl them around or they twirl you. Everyone holds hands at the end of each tip and says, "Thank you." and embraces each other. On the other hand after you leave you don't have to deal with them anymore, which is great for an artist like myself who needs lots of private time. It's a very nice social thing in that it's intensely friendly but it doesn't invade the artistic live that I lead.

A: How far have you gone in square dancing?

D:  I've taken the Basic, Mainstream, Plus levels and I'm now trying to learn Advanced.  I've taken all these levels as both a boy and a girl. There are six levels beyond that

A: Can you explain what those terms mean?

D:  A boy is the person who stands on the left in a couple at the beginning of the dance and he is in his home. The girl is on the right side of the couple and during the dance she moves from her boy, to a second boy then a third and forth boy and then back to her boy. The dance is over when she arrives back to her boy.

A: So the terms, boy and girl relate to positions in lesbian and gay square dancing and not sex.

D:  That's true, and queer dancers usually learn both girl and boy right from the beginning. However beginning with the fourth level (Advanced) even the dancers in straight clubs must become bi-dancial. At that level if a boy fiends himself to the right of a girl he is called a Belle and if a girl fiends herself to the left of a boy she is called a Beau.

A: Bi-Dancial is a great phrase.

D:  Yes it is and it is quite shocking for straight square dancers because they've learned a great many complicated steps all the way up to the Advanced level and then suddenly they have to switch their sex and do it quite differently.

A: That's enlightenment!  So queer people as they move to higher levels have plenty of practice dancing both parts.

D:  Lesbians and gays may start square dancing thinking they'll dance only boy or girl but I think 99% of them very quickly find they want to dance both parts. You are more likely to get into a square of eight dancers if you can dance both parts.

A: It's more practical if you can dance either part. How did it occur to you to take these three different worlds (square dancing, stained glass and Gay Liberation) that you move in and put them together for this project?

D:  One day I was having lunch with my friend Arthur Evans.

A: Oh! I've heard of her. That right wing reactionary!

D:  He said to me, "You know Dan you're very talented and you should try for a grant". I said, "What could I get a grant for? Please that's beyond me." And you said, "I got a grant for publishing my book, Critic of Patriarchal Reason from the San Francisco Art Commission. Why don't you submit something"? I said, "What could I do?" You said, "Well I don't know. What are you interested in?" I said, "Square dancing and stained glass." You said, "There you go." So that's how it occurred to me.

A: I don't remember that conversation.

D:  You don't? It's good I did.

A: Did you apply for the grant?

D: Yes I applied to the San Francisco Art Commission Equity Arts Grant program. One year they give out grants for performing arts and the next for instillation art, which is photographs, pictures, sculptures, things like that.

A: And yours is instillation art.

D:  That's right the grant was for stained glass windows.

A: What are the details of the grant?

D:  I was given a grant to help dancers make stained glass windows on the theme of square dancing.

A: These were people involved with the Lesbian and gay square dance clubs and they were to make stained glass windows that celebrate their experiences. Is that right?

D:  I'm requiring each of the dancers to make a window. It will cost them nothing for glass, materials or instruction and they get the windows. There are two other requirements. They have to bring me a single piece of fruit each time they come and they have to write two papers; "What Square Dancing Means to Me" and "What the Window Means to Me". Their window must relate to square dancing in some way.

A: So these are people who've had no experience making stained glass windows?

D:  As of this point, the first ten people have had no real experience with stained glass.

A: So you've trained them from square one so to speak?

D:  Yes from square one. I've taught them how to Do-Sa-Do.

A: Tell me about the various technical parts of stained glass window making. What did they have to learn?

D:  The first thing they learn is that they have the ability to conceptualize a creative idea. Most of them are not artists and non-artists quite foolishly think that you need to be an artist to do art. Once they learned that they were able to make a sketch they'd bring it to me. Now some of them like Don Queen brought me a cartoon. A cartoon is the pattern that you use to build the window from. With the cartoon you know where to put each piece of glass that you cut. His cartoon was full size and all ready to use. Because he has been doing embroidery for years he knew how to make a cartoon. Before making his cartoon he'd asked me what shapes can't be cut in glass. Then he created a complete drawing of how he'd like his window to look, including where he wanted different colors. On the other hand Fabian brought me photographs of a fern, leaves and a red wood tree and said, "I'd like to have these things in my window and also a blue jay." So those are the extremes of student involvement in their windows.

A: So the first step is to have a concept?

D:  A concept is the most important thing because almost everything else is simply craft. The conception is the art. Most stained glass windows that you see are not art, they are craft because they have no conception. You see, most stained glass craft people have a very limited aesthetic sense.

A: So you aren't just training people how to put pieces of glass on a cartoon you are helping people to have an aesthetic concept, a vision.

D:  Yes because the project is to create art, not craft. The project won't succeed because I get people to make stained glass windows but because the windows are art. For me it is a requirement that each of the windows is art. But I'm not going to lecture so I'm simply teaching them how to conceive art.

A: They had to bring an idea but not necessarily a finished one?

D:  Yes. Some people had wonderful ideas but needed some help, like Abbie who did BOX THE GNAT. She had the wonderful concept of hands interwoven and a gnat placed near the center of her window. I edged her on by saying why not place the hands around the gnat. Then she thought it would be a great idea to have the hands held in the various positions that they form during that call. I said why not put the hands all around the gnat so that they form the shape of a box.

A: Did she respond to that?

D:  Very positively because at every step along the way I let her do it.

A: So you tried to only help people clarify their vision?

D:  Yes, but when it actually came to drawing the hands I did that and when it came to painting the hands in her window I hired my x-lover Gary Thomas because he's an expert in the use of stained glass paints.

A: What are the main steps in putting a stained glass window together?

D:  There are five or six ways to make a stained glass window. I have my Favorite technique and I taught them that technique.

A: What are the steps in that technique?

D:  I tape the cartoon to a piece of plywood and then nail raised wood around the edges. Then I place the zinc channeling that will become the edging that will hold the window together along the inside of the raised wood. Then I cut the piece of glass that will be in the lower left hand corner of the window.

I grind it so that the edges are smooth, place copper foil around that piece and push it into the zinc channeling. Then I cut a piece that is next to the first piece in the drawing, grind and foil it and place it against the first piece and solder the two together. Then I go on to the next piece.

A: So the window grows from the bottom left hand corner across to the upper right hand corner?

D:  You got it.

A: How do the students react as they see their window begin to take physical shape?

D: That varies, for instance there were two students who showed up to design their cartoon but then didn't show up to cut glass and make their window. One had a death in the family and the other couldn't find enough time to be there. However they were overjoyed when they saw the completed window. There were three others who worked on and off over several months. They were very proud of the few pieces of glass that they were able to cut and solder each time they came and startled by how many pieces I did in between the times they could come. There were five people who came every week and labored hard to complete large sections of their panels. They almost sometimes got misty-eyed as they saw their windows grow to completion. I have three now that have finished their cartoons and are raring to go because they've seen the windows that have already been done. There are three others who want to do a window but have not yet discovered that they themselves can make a wondrous conception. I'm talking to them and I think they will soon be convinced that they can.

   I took many digital images of each student working on their window. For instance I have forty images of Dan Queen doing his window, "Reshape the Diamond" and he's smiling in ever one of them. He loved every second that he was working.

A: Would you say that most students have a positive reaction to the experience of doing their window?

D:  They've all had positive reactions except for one. That's the one that we're animating as we do it. To begin with his panel has sixteen hundred pieces in it, which is more than any other four of the windows put together. That's a huge amount of work! Each time we put a piece in we click the movie camera so after we finish there will be a short movie of the pieces magically appearing and fitting together. Hopefully the camera is working properly and the movie will run smoothly. But doing the camera work is irritating to him and he said he did not sign on to do that. I said to him, "Well you signed on to do an art project and this is part of the art project. You don't need to come three times a week as you've been doing. Why don't you come once a week and I'll work in between then."  So now he comes once a week and works for about two hours and seems to be enjoying it. He comes over after doing a full days work and he is kind of tired so it's understandable that coming once a week is enough. He's also hypercritical and wants all the lines to be straight and everything to be technically perfect. I'm sorry, I'm an artist who's been commissioned to do a lot of windows in fourteen months. I think if the window has beauty and elegance that's enough and his does. But after saying all that, he has designed a brilliant window and he's a great guy and I'm very happy to have the chance to work with him. Also he's been a Calling for twenty years.

A:  Let's talk about some of the windows. Tell me about this window with a blue jay in it.

D:  That was done by Fabian, who lives in Guerneville, which is nicknamed "Stump Town" sense it's near the Red Wood forest. His window celebrates the annual Stump town Stomp.

That's a dance held in Guerneville and sponsored by the Capital City Dancers, a gay and Lesbian club in Sacramento.

A: This window is interesting because it has both energy and delicacy. Sometimes stained glass windows come across looking rather static, stolid and dead.

D:  That's because they're made by craft people.

A: But this window is alive.

D:  Well thank you.

A: You're welcome. Here's another window, it has a mallard duck floating in water, some rushes and mountains in the background. What's this all about?

D:  This was done by Gary and he was a delight to work for. He loved to come over and he loved working. He cut all the pieces himself except for three or four of them and took supervision excellently.  We have lots of good pictures of him working. He loved the project beyond belief. His window represents the square dance call "Acey-Ducey" in this call the centers of a line trade and the ends circulate. A number of years ago there was a dance at which the caller said, "Acey-Ducey" and a dancer heard the call as "Acey-Ducky" and she shouted out "Quack, Quack"!

A: Who was she?

D:  No one remembers, it is only remembered that she did it. Now when ever dancers hear "Acey-Ducey" everyone says, "Quack, Quack".

A: It's become a tradition.

D:  Yes, all around the world.

A:  How did you get the luminosity in just part of that piece of glass between the mountains?

D:  That glass is called Spectrum wispy. It's a transparent blue glass with wisps of translucent white glass in it. The light from behind the window passes through the blue but is refracted towards us by the white wisps. Gary took that photograph and he worked hard to get it.

A: Here's a window in a completely different and very striking geometrical style. It looks like a dodecahedron, a crystal of some kind. What is the title of this one and what does it mean?

D:  It's based on the call, "Remake the Diamond". In diamond formation four people are facing at right angles to each other and that makes a diamond. Remake the Diamond is a C1 level call. I only dance up to level A2 right now so I haven't learned that call yet. Don Queen did this and it was created entirely by him.

A: Here's a window with quite a different style then his.

D:  They're all in different styles from one another.

A: That's a large part of the joy of this collection.

D:  If there were two with the same style I would be very disappointed.

A: This next one has interlocking teacups floating in the air with some flowers. What does this mean?

D:  This is from the square dance call "Teacup Chain".

A: It shows some teacups floating in the air with the handles interconnected. What this all about?

D: It's from the square dance call Teacup Chain where the girls cross in a complicated pattern, visiting all four boys. The teacups are the girls and the flowers are the boys. It was created by Rojean who is a straight woman who comes to dance at the Gay and Lesbian clubs.

A: Why does she do that?

D:  Because she doesn't have to have a date, in most straight square dancing clubs you have to come as a couple. In Gay and Lesbian clubs it doesn't matter. Also in straight square dancing you usually dance with the same person most of the time while in lesbian and gay square dancing you are encouraged to dance with lots of people; Rojean liked that idea. She had cancer at the time she started dancing in the gay and lesbian clubs and was worried about going to the straight clubs but at our clubs no one made any negative comments at all. So coming to us means friendship to her. Of course teacups connote friendship so her window makes a lot of sense.

A: I noticed in her window that there are some striations in the background. You indicated that was because the transparent part of the window was photographed in front of a building with horizontal wooden slates. That made me think it was a positive thing because it looks like stained glass windows are contextual. That is, that they can seem to a viewer as blending in to the environment that they wouldn't see if the window wasn't there.

D: Yes that's true. Also the window itself can relate to the environment. I ask each one of the dancers: "Where are you intending to put this window?" Fabian, who did the redwood/blue jay panel is going to place it in his house in the middle of a redwood forest and there are blue jays all over the place! We used clear window glass as the background so that as much light would come through as possible since he lives in a forest. In Rojean's case she used a very playful design but vary elegant color scheme, it was her color scheme. She wanted to see the trees and the house across the street from where she lived. She was going to hang the stained glass in the window beside the front door. We designed it with transparent blue glass for that reason. Allen's window was done with translucent glass because it will hang in the dance hall of the Western Star club and will basically be seen with the light reflecting off the front of the glass. So we chose bright solid colors that show up will in reflected light.

A: When and how will these windows be displayed after they are all completed, Dan?

D: There is some question as to that. I got a Letter of Intent to Display from the GLBT Community Center. Which means they're thinking of doing it if they like the resulting windows. The Center has all these fabulous front windows facing onto Market. If the Stained glass were hanging in the Center’s window no one could drive by without seeing them and thousands drive by every day. At night they would be incredible. However they haven't decided to show them yet.

A: Haven't some of the windows been displayed at square dance clubs and places like that?

D:  Every window, as soon as it's finished, is shown at all three gay and lesbian square dance clubs here in San Francisco. They are displayed with four 8x10 photos of the dancers working on the windows as well as two papers written by the dancers, one titled "What My Window Means to Me" and the other paper titled "What Square Dancing Means to me".  The student's window, papers and photos are mounted on a portable rack. The response from club members has been incredibly positive to every window that has been shown.

A: How will you know when the project is over?

D: The project has two parts as far as I'm concerned. The first part is the grant that I got from the San Francisco Art Commission, the Ten Thousand to do windows. That will be over July first of this year (2004). I have to have a display at some venue.

A: Oh, really? The conclusion of the project then is that you will have a large venue somewhere? Aren't you doing something with the Historical Society about the historical aspects of the project?

D: Yes. After the project is over I'll submit photographs of all the windows and all the students working, and their paper work plus my own observations, DVDs, videotapes, tape recordings, transcripts. They'll all go to the GLBT Historical Society of Northern California.

A: So this will be a very comprehensive documentation for future generations? Keeping an eye on what was some of the creative energy on Castro.

D: That's right! Even though I'd lived here since 1971 I didn't learn about gay and lesbian square dancing until 2000! That needs to change.

A: So this project also has a Historical side? You've done some volunteer work for the Historical Society haven't you?

D: Yes. I've transcribed interviews from 6 or 7 people or groups. I also went through all their files, cataloging all their video and audio materials.

A: So this is another dimension of your life that you've brought to this project: square dancer, Gay Liberationist, window maker and a person who does the work of gay history. You've tapped into this interest as well.

D: Oh, that's true. 

A: Your project really does have lots of different aspects to it. What project do you see for yourself after this project is completed?

D: Well my conception for this project is not only to create windows it's also to write a book about lesbian and gay square dancing.

A: Oh!

D:  I'm going to, at my own expense, pay for an additional eight windows, the glass and materials. The students will get to keep the windows. It will be exactly like the project except it will be me putting out the money. At the end of that time I hope to get a grant or find a way to finance a book on Gay and Lesbian Square Dancing in America. Or how about even in the world!

A: That sounds like a worthy idea. I think you'll make money on that. Aren't you also thinking about another project? You mentioned something called, "Clerks on Castro". Tell me about that.

D: Oh, yes. If the San Francisco Art Commission will put up another grant, which I think they could, we would do a group of windows named, Clerks on Castro. They would be fifteen different people who work on Castro as clerks would each make a window. In this case the theme of the window would be their own conception but they would still write a paper about how it is to be a clerk on Castro in the early part of this century.

A: They would express those feelings through their stained glass window the same way that the dancers are doing.

D: No, because with the dancers you have a conception already, which is square dancing.

A: So what would the conception be for "Clerks on Castro"?

D: It's hard to say. That's going to take a little thought to figure out. There does have to be unifying theme to the windows not just the fact that all the people doing them are clerks. How and what that unifying theme is, is up to me to provide. When I decide I'll convince each clerk that they really want to do that theme.

A: There may be some concepts that they share in virtue of being in the neighborhood like perspectives about working in the neighborhood.

D: Or it could be that the windows will only be a part of the project and that the entirety of the project will be a history of the Castro. Maybe a web site with interviews from a hundred different people; those who own or work in stores or have homes in the Castro or who are homeless, a whole verity of what there is in Castro. All this taken not from the view of a politician that wants to create a positive image or a negative image but from an Historian who wants to see everything. 

A: Yes, the real people.

D: You want to know what the Pharaoh is doing. You also want to know what's going on in the mud hut. You want to know what the Priest is doing and you want to know what the baker's doing, from that point of view that is not judgmental.

A: That's history from the bottom up.

D: No. It's History. It's not going in one direction or the other because there is no bottom or up. Every person on Castro Street is equally alive regardless of how much money or what position they have.

A: Wouldn't you say that your present project is like that too? There are some people who will look at it as art but you could say it was history also, couldn't you?

D:  Yes It's quite consciously history. All things pass away into total oblivion, OK. So what! It's still nice for a little while, as long as you can, to record a couple of those things.

A: That seems to be what's wonderful about this project. You've brought so many aspects of your own life to it and you're creating something that is multiple disciplinary or rather multiply dimensional. You have an esthetic dimension to it and an experiential dimensional because the people are bringing their own personal visions to this, their own life experiences and there's a history element.

D: And also there's an apple or an orange for me every couple of days.

A: That's right. That's a special treat. There are all these different energies coming together. You don't find that happening very often. Thank you Dan Smith for this wonderful interview.

D: You're welcome.