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Comment by De Villo Sloan on March 21, 2013 at 8:20pm

OMG. People keep these Blaster Al masterpieces coming. Ruud, that's great: The Ching Master and the Ling Master, the Holy Madman of Saratoga Springs.

I'm gonna brave the cold garage and dig deep in the archives.

Comment by Ruud Janssen on March 21, 2013 at 6:44pm

Comment by Ruud Janssen on March 21, 2013 at 6:12am

John M. Bennett

Tuesday

From John Berndt: Yesterday (Sunday) the great writer, artist, and creature of infinitely unique sensibility Al Ackerman, C.A.F.S.C., passed away in AustinTexas. He was a titan in my life, and a one-of-a-kind, irreplaceable person for me.
Ackerman (AKA "BLaster," real name William Hogg Greathouse, of the Hogg family of Texas) was my friend from the time I was 15, when I first wrote to him after r...eading his "Confessions of An American Ling Master" in R. Kern's tiny "Dumbfucker" magazine.
We became lifelong friends through the mail; in the early 90's Rupert Wondlowski and I brought him to Baltimore where he was for about 20 years a frequent collaborator and performer, worked at Normals Books and Records, lived with both of us for various periods of time, and then ultimately convalesced with me for two years before finally deciding to move to Austin with his daughter, Stevie, to spend his last days. He passed away there in not too much pain of brain tumor that had been diagnosed in Baltimore but never operated on, because he was too frail to pass surgery.
Whatever official history makes of him, I have no doubt he was a creative genius of unique provenance: Blaster will always be for me (roughly tied with Flan O'Brien and Thomas Bernhard) my favorite writer; I consider him to have been one of the most visionary minds I've ever met and my life was immeasurably enriched by our long association and rich friendship.
He was also a person with a fascinating, colorful life, and in many ways, an impossible and impractical (but still totally loveable) person. My mind has an "Ackerman Wing" and I imagine many others that knew him feel the same way.
For those of you that did, I'm sorry to convey this news in this way. For those that didn't, check him out (those his works are hard to find).
Rupert Wondlowski and I (and perhaps others) will be organizing some Blaster dedication events in Baltimore in the coming year, and will involve many others in them. Its too early to plan them, as we digest the huge change of a world without Blaster in his passing, but I wanted to let folks know this news, and express my profound gratitude for having known this man.
With affection,
John Berndt
"There is no meat in a brownie." - Al Ackerman

Comment by Amy Irwen on March 20, 2013 at 5:54pm

Received these two from Haddock.Oregon.USA....

Comment by Ruud Janssen on March 20, 2013 at 5:33pm

Comment by Ruud Janssen on March 20, 2013 at 5:32pm

Comment by Ruud Janssen on March 20, 2013 at 6:05am

Comment by Ruud Janssen on March 19, 2013 at 6:51pm

Al Ackerman [27th Nov. 1939 - 18th March 2013] So overwhelmingly sad that my tru...ly great friend and mentor Dr. Al 'Blaster' Ackerman has passed away.  He was my one true great friend and mentor for over 30 years thru good and bad times. Like many friends and artists I will miss him terribly.See more

André Stitt : in the WEST NEW EXHIBITION opening 5th Jan. 2013 5 January/Ionawr –  16 February/Chwefror 2013 Oriel Myrddin Gallery  Church Lane, Carmarthen SA31 1LH /Lôn y Llan, Caerfyrddin, SA31 1LH    Tel/ Ffôn: 01267 222775   www.orielmyrddingallery.co.uk 

by: Andre Stitt

Comment by Ruud Janssen on March 19, 2013 at 6:46pm

Blaster Al Ackerman

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Blaster Al Ackerman is the most commonly used name by an American mail artist and writer who has been active since the early 1970s.

Heavily influenced by post-war pulp writers like Theodore Sturgeon, Raymond Chandler and Fredric Brown (with whom Ackerman corresponded as a young person) as well as by modernists like Ray Johnson, Francis Ponge and the Oulipo, the name Al Ackerman is a pseudonym most likely alluding to the Science Fiction editor and collector Forrest J. Ackerman.

Al Ackerman's writing has dealt playfully, if obsessively, with themes of madness and weird phenomena. His visual work is also in the tradition of black humor, often including a trademark character, the hebephrenic, with a wide upper lip and two protruding teeth.

His voluminous mail art output was anthologized in The Blaster Omnibus and given a one-man show at the Chela Gallery in Baltimore, Maryland. Other books include Let Me Eat Massive Pieces of Clay, I Taught My Dog to Shoot a Gun, and Corn and Smoke. Over the past twenty years, he has been mostly frequently published The Lost and Found Times, published by frequent collaborator John M. Bennett, and in the Shattered Wig Review published by Rupert Wondolowski, although his massive body of work is difficult to track due to his regular use of a variety of pseudonyms (which he relates to his childhood love of the pulps), including Eel Leonard,

 

• Mid-90s Ackerman Mail Interview

Comment by Ruud Janssen on March 19, 2013 at 6:43pm

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