Michael Bashaw has worked out of the same art studio in the Davis-Linden Building in East Dayton for the past 44 years. The expansive space is a cabinet of curiosities of story-filled objects, whether it’s an old friend’s piano, an overflowing bookcase, or one of the huge metal “Sound Sculptures” that function as percussion instruments.
Michael started on drums as a kid, inspired by his father’s time in a 1940s swing band. He moved on to flute, harmonica and blues and jazz harp.
Sandy has played music since the age of 7.
“Ukulele was my first instrument because I was little and it’s little.”
She picked up the guitar when she was 14.
“I would play anywhere, I was really focused on it. By the time I was 18, my singing partner and I had a manager here in town. He took us to New York City and we got a recording contract with Vanguard Records, which was the premier folk music label.”
Playing music in the 1970s also brought her to Hollywood, Texas, and New Mexico, where she, respectively, recorded an album for Atlantic Records (squashed by a squabble with the producer), sang in coffeehouses, and played piano in a country western swing band.
Somewhere along the way back in Dayton, the Bashaws married and formed the ensembles Puzzle of Light and Theater of Sound. The latter is an experimental group that traveled across the country in a 26-foot truck, big enough to hold Michael’s Sound Sculptures.
They compose, perform and record music for video and film and have held a musical residency at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater House. It’s likely you’ve seen Michael Bashaw’s public art around Dayton, including the pieces “Wind in the Garden” at the Dayton Garden Club Centennial Overlook on Riverview Terrace, and the gravity-defying “Wings: Lift Compounded” by Shafor Park in Oakwood.
The couple live in Kettering.
A day in their lives
SB: “We get up in the morning at 6:30 or 7 and have coffee and listen to the cat, Cozi, yell at us.”
MB: “He’s named after the jazz drummer Cozy Cole, who was from Columbus.”
SB: “We have breakfast. Michael does the Wordle and reads the newspaper — Dayton Daily News and the New York Times. I look at the news and get mad.”
MB: “A lot of mornings after breakfast I’ll go to Hills & Dales or Houk Stream and walk.”
SB: “Then Michael comes to the studio pretty much every day in the late morning.”
MB: “I sit down at the piano and get my flute or saxophone out. I’ll play a little bit of piano and loosen my fingers up. That was Jud Yalkut’s piano. He started the film school at Wright State. He was a Renaissance man. We called him ‘The Legend’.”
SB: “He was from Brooklyn and his main thing was early video art. He collaborated with Nam June Paik and Fluxus.”
MB: “He knew everybody. He was hitchhiking through Big Sur in the ‘60s, and was standing outside the post office there and this guy pulls up and asked where he was going. It was Henry Miller! So he went and moved in with Henry Miller and his wife.”
Credit: Hannah Kasper
Credit: Hannah Kasper
Michael walks through the studio, pausing to rhythmically tap a mallet on a huge round patinated bowl, a project from a collaboration with a choreographer. The sound reverberates up towards the heavens. “One of our artist friends used to call Michael ‘Captain Bing-Bong’,” Sandy said.
Michael welds his sculptures in the studio.
“Right now I’ve got three things in the works, one of which is when the winds blew through here a couple months ago, it knocked down the Dixie Drive-In sign that had been up since 1958. I got a call from Karen Levin from the Levin Foundation — the family owns the drive-in. She asked me if I could make a sculpture out of some of the sign parts. It’s gonna be pretty cool.”
Credit: Hannah Kasper
Credit: Hannah Kasper
SB: “I’ll do stuff around the house if it needs to be done. I’ve been writing. I finished a novel during Covid — ‘Sight Unseen: Emma’s House’ is a bit of a ghost story. It’s told in two time periods. It’s very much like this town. Emma is compelled to buy this old house, based on my grandmother’s house in St. Anne’s Hill. When she starts renovating it, unusual things start happening, residual to what happened to the original family.
I think reality is on a continuum. I explored that idea in the novel. A lot of cultures have that notion of being able to walk through worlds in their belief systems.”
MB: “Sometimes I’ll take a break and walk in Woodland or Calvary Cemetery. Or through the Oregon District or Eastwoods. It varies. A lot of times I’ll walk with my best friend, who I’ve known since 1970. He lives in Yellow Springs, but he’ll come in or I’ll go up there and we’ll walk.”
SB: “I do behind-the-scenes office work.”
MB: “That’s the whole other side, the business side. When we have a gig we call it our ‘office for the night’. If we’re getting ready for a show we rehearse up here. We had a gig last night playing with Puzzle of Light.”
Credit: Andy Snow
Credit: Andy Snow
SB: “I have my little spot in the basement, my home studio. I have a big iMac that I write music on. We do commissions for documentaries. We did a PBS kids show. It’s called ‘The Big Adventures of Little Ioda’. I have a big chunk of ambient orchestral music playing in the Wright Brother’s building in Carillon Park.”
Michael pulls out a brass prototype. “I designed the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, which Jimmy Carter just got!”
SB: “Bill Clinton’s got one, and Gloria Steinem.”
MB: “The idea is that it’s an abstract quill and parchment with the word ‘peace’ engraved in 350 languages. I feel privileged that all these authors have it now.”
Credit: Hannah Kasper
Credit: Hannah Kasper
Sandy is at work on a sequel to her novel, this one requiring historical and architectural research. “Some of the 1911 characters moved to New York and live in Greenwich Village. I didn’t know very much about that era of Greenwich Village. I’m looking at floorpans to see how the people moved around the house.”
MB: “I leave the studio at suppertime.”
SB: “Dinner is usually 6 or 6:30.”
MB: “If I have a deadline, I’ll eat and come back. Sandy cooks at home, she’s a great cook.”
SB: “Lately I’ve been exploring some crockpot recipes that are pretty amazing. This butter chicken recipe is to die for. We eat a lot of soups. I learned a New Mexico style of cooking when I was living out there. They use a lot of hatch green chiles which we can get now at Dorothy Lane Market.”
MB: “I’m reading a book by Adam Moss called The Work of Art. I just read Percival Everett’s James which is Huckleberry Finn as told from Jim’s point of view. It’s really great.”
SB: “The day ends with the cat yelling at us. As it starts, so it ends.”
MORE INFO
Puzzle of Light, the Bashaw’s world music quintet, play at 7:30 p.m. on the third Thursday of every month at Gather by Ghostlight in the Dayton Arcade at 37 W 4th St.
Sandy Bashaw’s music, including Sound Sculpture Music for Fallingwater, can be found at sandybashaw.bandcamp.com.
More information about Michael Bashaw’s work can be found at https://thepuzzleoflight.wixsite.com/michaelbashaw.
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