#(55) SAN FRANCISCO SYMPHONY:

Edition of 634 with the words "Marathon 1976," of which 100 copies are signed 1-100, and 26 are signed A-Z as artist's proofs. An additional 689 are printed without those words, of which 100 copies are signed 1-100, 26 are signed A-Z as artist's proofs, and four sets are signed as progressives.

December 11, 1975 Seven colors plus imprint 15-1/4" x 24"

Influence: René Magritte Client: Margaret Ann Seamster, San Francisco 1-3: Margaret Ann Seamster, both editions A-Z: Artist's own use, both editions

When you're little-that is when you're little and live near the ocean-you wander around the beach and pick up the flotsam and jetsam and play with it for a while and then drop it back into the spume and spray for someone else to pick up and wonder at. Some bits and pieces you do take home and for a while the smell of the sea transplanted spices your horde of things that aren't where they belong. Then the smell fades and sometimes so does the fascination. The loveliest cast-ups were the blue glass fishing floats, come adrift from nets and bobbed to San Francisco from far-off, exotic Japan. Every now and then you'd find a big shell that hadn't been beat up too much by the tide and polished away to nothing by the sand that seemed so soft but eventually ground everything away to shiny dust like itself. You'd hold it up to your ear, as you had been told, and sure enough, you heard the sea. But of course the sea was right there in your ear anyhow, so I wasn't much impressed until one day in a classroom in Sacramento I pressed a big conch shell to my ear and there was the sea again.