PVK, Ten Years Out

Low resolution copy of one of my favorite, Peter Van Kleef images. Photo credit pending.

    Today marks the ten year anniversary of Peter Van Kleef's passing. He was an extraordinary man, whom I almost did not meet. Were it not for the concerted efforts of another good friend of mine Di Anne Love, Peter and I would likely have slipped past each other in life."There's this person you just gotta meet, whose place you're just gonna love!" 

    She was right.

    Needless to say, I am ever grateful to her for having coaxed me to step out of my shyness and into the enchantment that was Peter and Cafe Van Kleef.* 

    I remember the particulars well..

     For months Di Anne Love, my employer at The City of Oakland Crafts and Cultural Arts Gallery, was doing all she could to introduce me to this amazing guy who she told me had some kind of fascinating art space., she was certain I would really love. Albeit, reticent as I was to meet people unknown to me or to enter unfamiliar territory, I simply hemmed and hawed, putting it off.

    Luckily Di Anne never gave up trying. She merely had to wait for the opportune moment and propitious of circumstances. In reality however, she didn't have that many chances available to her. This was because Peter's accessibility at the time. His schedule didn't exactly make it easy.

     For in 2001, Cafe Van Kleef, was still largely an on again - off again affair, its doors were literally sometimes open for business and not as the budding business underwent a couple of trial incarnations from bistro to bar. In the meantime, Di Anne would simply have to bide her time.

    That opportunity finally presented itself one afternoon, when on the occasion of returning to the art gallery from lunch, we chance to drive pass CVK** with its front gate momentarily up, although the nascent was currently in its "closed" phase.

     Catching sight of the open gate and acting fast, Di Anne immediately parked the car, and asked me to follow her inside,the establishment on the sudden pretext that she had something to hand its proprietor. This, she later confessed, was merely a ruse to get a diffident me "in the door". Suspecting nothing, I obliged her, completely unaware this, in fact, was that very place and person to which she had been trying, and almost in vain, to introduce to me! 

    Once she succeeded however, I was simply agog at the artistry confronting us. The sheer eclecticism, wall to wall; floor to ceiling; front to back as far as the eye could see was astounding!

     Seconds later, Peter stepped under the gate behind us with some items retrieved from the basement. When he saw me my awe and staring moments later at the "flying aquarium" mounted high in the wall overhead, he mused "I bet you're wonderin' how I feed them?!" (Indeed, there were live fish in the tank!) "I do it with this!" 

    Standing beneath a huge, parabolic mirror, mounted on a tripod he himself had cobbled, Peter winked. Then coming around to the back side of the bar, he extended his hand. After that, a drink followed.    

   When Cafe Van Kleef permanently opened to the public, I was there at his side as his employee on that first business day. Peter, myself, and his nephew, Lance Cardenas. We three. Peter had won me over, although Di Anne was probably not expecting the degree to which he did. To her credit, she graciously let me go, as the position Peter extended to me was full time. My work for the Crafts and Cultural Arts Gallery was only for two weeks every other month.                                                                                                                                                             

    Peter the man I came to know, work for, and remember, was the living living embodiment of one my favorite quotes from the 1964 comedy 'What a Way to Go!' - the first half of the maxim in particular: "Art erupts!" His prodigious creativity was nothing short of volcanic.

    To me, Peter's personality was larger than life, and I was fortunate, thanks to Di Anne, not only to have made his acquaintance, but experience the fleeting wonder of it.

 

 

 

 

*Sadly, Di Anne preceded Peter's death by about a year. Di Anne, by the way, was the one also responsible for introducing me to Trish Keefer, a remarkable person in her own right. Trish is still my best female buddy to this day.

 

**CVK (Cafe Van Kleef) is now CRVK (Cindy Reeves Van Kleef). Cindy, all along, the true owner of the business, was Peter then wife.