In 2004, fourteen years after the death of the genius puppeteer Jim Henson, Disney purchased the entire Muppet franchise and set about installing Henson’s favorite dazzler, “The Great Hot Air Balloon Circus,” at their new mega-store on 5th Ave.
The design team became intimidated upon viewing the giant crate containing this 3.5 story tall sculpture that had graced the halls of the Muppet Mansion for 20 years. On opening day of the new store, it would hang down the middle of a vast circular stairway, but who would undertake the responsibility of placing it there? Finally, an answer came from on high: “locate the sculptor and hire him to install.”
The creator of “The Great Hot Air Balloon Circus,” proved to be none other than John Kahn, a long-time collaborator and protégé of Henson’s, who by this time had sold off and moved to the most far-flung shore on planet Earth, otherwise known as Easter Island.
The two first met in 1978 when the Muppet King purchased an early work from a then-twenty-two year-old phenomenon at his final one-man show at The Neuberger Museum of Art. This was a Rockefeller-sponsored museum located on (but independent from) the SUNY Purchase campus. Student work hadn’t been shown at the Neuberger until its curators encountered John Kahn, who, as a senior, was enjoying his third and final show. The museum made a further concession by discretely pricing each of the thirty pieces on display. Kahn sold all but one.
“I was taught by my folks that making a living was – of course – central to living,” John Kahn explained to me one morning early in August, his bare feet nestled in sand borrowed from a volcanic beach five thousand miles away. “And though I can’t remember ever having an actual job, I knew that if I had to make stuff—and it was clear from the age of ten that I did–well, I’d need to sell it. So starting with craft fairs at ten, sell stuff, I did. But…
“Ten years later I had absolutely no idea who Jim Henson was. Because I didn’t watch TV. The Neuberger Museum director tried to cue me, of course, with, ‘You know — Jim Henson… Kermit the frog.’”
“Funny,” I said, “you don’t look like a frog, Jim.” And with that we were friends for life.
“The next time I saw him was a year later,” he said. “I’d won a stipend with a place to live and a studio over in Morris, NY. But the thing about Jim was… he was already a prisoner of his own success. When all he really wanted to do was what I was doing… which was whatever came into my head over coffee. Until I got to Easter Island I didn’t ever remember my dreams. Or very, very rarely. So you could safely say my creations were my dreams. And Jim understood that instantly.”
Slightly confused, I ask, “But you were the guy inside the Fraggle puppet, right? So you had to be on the Muppet payroll, no?”
“Despite the fact I’m intensely claustrophobic,” John admits, “yeah, I was one of the promotional Fraggle characters. And while at the Muppet Mansion, I was invited into many projects but only selected those that interested me. That was, until Jim and I found the historic brick School House built in the late 1800’s in Saugerties. Around ‘82-’83 Jim and I became partners of The School House. It became headquarters for my company– ‘Kahn Artist’, and I persuaded Jim’s son Johnnie, who had a remarkable spatial awareness and had already been my apprentice for five years, to join me on this new adventure.
“But to understand my work at all you have to go back to the start and realize one thing,” John says, smiling broadly while remembering, “My older brother, Peter, was a natural born painter and a magnificent draftsman. So I quickly realized that that corner was already taken…leaving me to lean in heavy on mechanics, gadgetry, kinetics… Mobiles? Sure. ‘Calder,’ people say. Fair enough. But I gravitate towards recycled materials so Clarence Schmidt and his Dadaist castle of cast-offs overlooking the Ashokan reservoir…that’s a better call as far as a primary inspiration is concerned. Him and Duchamp. Dean Robert Gray, the Visual Arts Director at Purchase, had me drive Julien Levy [credited with bringing Surrealism to America], to and from NYC to his guest professorship at SUNY. And man, did we talk a blue streak or what! And Levy invited me to private showings of films never seen in public of that glorious madman—or was he a– ‘showman?’ Anyway…
“You’ll see plenty of what I’m talking about in this retrospective show. I’ll get back to work on it just as soon as we’re done here. But you’ll have to come over though and see it coming together for yourself.”
“So is this the “Farewell America” show?” I asked.
“No, no. I’m lightening my pack is all,” he said. “My two boys, Jules and Jasper, wonderful men and wonderful sons. They’re assisting me. I’m creating several massive pieces even while retrieval and rescue missions are underway in locations I’m not at liberty to divulge. But just you wait! It’s going to be… I-Kahn-o-gra-phy incarnate! Including, of course, the world’s largest skateboard—as confirmed by the Guinness World Book of Records. Which is an actual and true to scale specimen right down to the shock absorbers. We put together a team of apprentices. Skateboarders all–of course. Must have been 8 weeks of work. Shout out to Kenny Benson and Benson Steel crew for the ton and a half metal skeleton. All to promote a fundraiser for Saugerties’ skateboard park back in 2007, the building of which launched my son Jasper’s skateboard park building career.
“Just last week we pulled off the rotten top and gave it a fresh plywood platform with three coats of fiberglass resin. Rolls like a champ still. So? There’s machines and machinery in the mix, of course. Sure. But just as often it’s machines of a primitive sort. See, I was always attracted to archeological digs and relics from other civilizations—so there’s another hint of what awaited me on Easter Island. But that isn’t quite fair either. Because early on I created these over-sized objects… a gigantic director’s chair for Bob Malkin’s Think Big company. Scissors for Vogue magazine. I was personally congratulated and forgiven infringement on the Hasbro patent by Alan Hassenfeld. And so as my Homage to Scrabble, the world’s largest Scrabble Board, was included in The Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, NY.
“But from the start, I also had a serious hankering for the circus arts which have contributed so prodigiously to my trick bag. Back home I had a unicycle growing up. So I guess you could call me a son of the circus. And all that goes back to Purchase, too. Sure, I was earning tuition on those blazing hot summer days, juggling as ‘The Fifteen Foot Tall Man,’ at Great Adventure, while wearing a three-foot high top hat with all my gear stowed in it. A slew of us all became involved in the Big Apple Circus around this time. And that’s where I connected with up-and-coming mimes, acrobats, tight-rope artists, clowns, and jugglers, including the young man who would soon become the greatest juggler on Earth: Michael Moschen, all of whose props I developed, including his most famous one known simply as ‘The Triangle,’ featured in ‘Moschen in Motion.’ It and several other tour de force performances resulted in a half million dollar MacArthur prize for Michael. No, I didn’t share in any of that. But then I didn’t lock myself in a room for several years on end to master the feats he performed inside my triangle!
“Sure and those friendships with mimes like Bob Berky, Fred Garbo and Bill Irwin–not to mention the co-creator of the Runaway Circus, Niki Swarthout, my partner and the mother of my kids–the entire cavalcade of which resulted in those pixelated pygmy pachyderms pulling the runaway stagecoach of…you guessed it—‘The Runaway Circus’.”
“John, I’m full up! I’ve got all I need and more,” I said.
“Nonsense, we haven’t even gotten to my castle yet,” he replied. “Just look at The Tower House preening itself on that perfect hillock peeking through the pines.”
“Too bad you had to sell it,” I reply.
“No, it is not. Both owners have treated me like visiting royalty. Giving me use of the studio and my Rapa Nui sand cabin. The new owner is a total sweetheart, couldn’t be more obliging.”John all but sings, happily squinching his toes in Easter Island sand. “Okay – go and write this up. Then come on over to MARS [Massive Art Research Shop] for round two. My boys will be there and Anita who you met years ago. Call me when you’re ready.”
Tower House
It was when John Kahn’s astounding “Tower House,” originally went on the market back in 2004 that I first met its designer/builder,—a man you’d have to be made of stone not to instantly like. Here was his sanctuary: the solid as-a-rock dream-structure which took 15 years to build, where, (after the death of Jim Henson and the eventual, more than amicable separation from his sons’ mother) John co-parented his boys. It’s a Swiss Family Robinson meets The Barnum and Bailey Circus citadel – and it’s about to become a museum, too. Certainly, Tower House could easily have graced the cover of Woodstock Handmade Houses except it was over the line in Saugerties. While its builder? John remains your classic introvert unless someone or something interests him, at which point his mouth becomes a veritable firehose.
We meet again over at MARS where Jasper, a younger and yes—deadly handsome—version of his father, is giving a final polish to yet another forty foot, freshly welded, spiral steel tower. Inside the warehouse a whimsical piece entitled “Self Portrait”–the zeppelin, a sole survivor of a sold-out show of some 40 years back–has just been hung in a corner.
A moment later I’m told “two lovely ladies will join us today, whereupon I greet John’s soul-mate, the sparkling-eyed, native Easter Islander, Anita Rapu (who I’d met a decade earlier), and Jasper’s companion, Sefra Alexandra, whose exceedingly calm face also looks vaguely familiar. But as to why these two are to join the interview?…I have no idea.
“The famous Jim Henson,” John began, “had traveled extensively, of course, but I never did. So while we couldn’t imagine Jim dying so young, once he did [in ‘90] I knew it was only a matter of time before I’d have to disappear for a while. Michael Lang insisted the Runaway Circus should have a role in Woodstock ’94, here in Saugerties. But the weather had something different to say about that—and we only had one performance before the mud became untenable. Shortly after that I booked a couple of weeks with survivalist Tom Brown Jr. down in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey. I then told my secretary, ‘Get me as far away from so-called ‘civilization’ as is humanly possible.’ She typed something into her computer and up popped Easter Island, or…’Rapa Nui’ as those who live there call it. And so I disappeared…to that most distant place on Earth five weeks a year for the next five years. I took a bicycle loaded with very little except fifty pounds of clay, 20 pounds of pewter and assorted jewelry supplies. Then? No one knew who I was. I later learned I was called ‘the bicycle man’. And unlike other visiting Westerners who were invariably making a movie or writing a book, I wanted nothing whatsoever to do with anyone. Until year five, before which the only relationships I had on the island were with the Moai–the giant stone heads I’d sleep under and clamber over, and mind-meld with…these vast carvings that supplied me with what felt like a direct portal into the collective unconscious for the first time in my life! Well, in the fifth year a Swiss guide who spoke some English convinced me I should go into the village as it prepared for its yearly festival. Though reluctant to do so, I immediately met craftspeople who were as eager to learn what I knew, as I was eager to share. Then I met Anita who was from an important Rapa Nui family. She seemed neither surprised nor unsurprised to meet me, which was an early hint of the Rapa Nui way. Her brother turned out to be cultural ambassador to the rest of the world, which, in turn, neither surprised nor didn’t surprise me. For I’m relatively intuitive and I pick things up quickly. And through them…the next chapter in my life has unfolded. And here we are.”
“Now, Anita–to use Woodstock parlance–blew my mind regarding the dream portals uniting her Rapa Nui community with other native islanders as far away as New Zealand. She explained the mystical connection her people experience with the Moai (the Easter Island heads) which, ‘educated Westerners’ claim are without any factual history.”
A moment later Sefra succinctly explained the following: “Just as archeologists study ancient civilizations by examining their relic piles, known as ‘middens,’ John Kahn (in this Arc of An Artist retrospective) digs back into the soil horizons of his own career. His expert crafting of modern relics – ARTifacts – pay homage to the traditional cultures he has been inspired by and immersed himself within.”
At this point, JK shot me a sly smile, as if to say: “Understand now why these ladies are part of our talk today?”
As if to comment on this unspoken subtext, John now asked me, “Remember when I told you why I stayed clear of the human figure… because my older brother had such mastery in depicting it?”
“I do.”
“Well, before the Islanders began protecting the Moai heads, back when some nomad like myself could throw a sleeping bag next to one under a star-stuffed sky, and find himself dreaming for the first time, ever…”
“Yes, you told me the Moai gave you your first dreams.”
“Well, what I began dreaming about became the basis for the first figures I’ve ever created. I’ve made them small and huge and every size between. They’re these String Figures, made out of wire and coated with silicones, latex and Rapa Nui sand. And I can move them into different positions like puppets. “
“They remind me of the Hopi’s Kokopelli figure,” I interject, “which is said to represent ‘story,’ itself. And growth. And joy.”
“The story itself.” John mused. “That’s right. Which is growth, of course, You can’t tell a story without growth. And joy? There’s plenty of that on Rapa Nui. And the Hopi teach the story of human emergence after the flood, right? Bingo!” John proclaims, happily standing to continue the tour of other wonders from the last 45 years of his dream works’ unfolding narrative.
IKAHN: Arc of An Artist will exhibit at MARS (Massive Arts Research Shop) in Saugerties from Sep. 2nd-30th. An opening reception will be held Sat. Sep. 2 from 12pm-5pm. For more information, head to www.ikahnic.org.
Join the family! 
