Name recalled, “It was the end of the period of the romantic avant-garde, the romantic bohemia, where artists kept younger artists and a male artist would always have a young man around.” (Watson, 61) Under Cernovich’s guidance, Name designed lighting for performances by Yvonne Rainer, Lucinda Childs, Merce Cunningham, Freddie Herko, and Diane di Prima for venues such as the Judson Memorial Church, the New York Poet’s Theater, and the Living Theater and his circle of friends and collaborators grew rapidly and exponentially between 19. Linich became Cernovich’s apprentice and in exchange Cernovich became Name’s employer, teacher, lover, and guide. In the 1950s, Cernovich had designed the lighting for some of downtown New York’s most experimental and avant-garde performing groups such as The Living Theatre, the Judson Dance Theater, James Waring, and Alvin Ailey. The year before Linich met him, he had received an Obie (Off-Broadway) award for his lighting. The class focused much of their attention on creating short theater pieces using projected slides, painted backdrops, music and dance. At Black Mountain College, Cernovich was involved with the Light Sound Movement Workshop taught by Betty and Pete Jennerjahn between 19. There, Linich met the individuals that would soon comprise his inner circle of friends including Robert Olivio (better known as Ondine), the artist Ray Johnson, and most significantly, the lighting designer Nick Cernovich. Cernovich had studied at Black Mountain College before moving to New York City where he became a sought-after lighting designer in the 1950s. Link introduced Linich to the social scene at the San Remo Café, a bar located at 93 MacDougal Street in Greenwich Village. Sometime after graduation, interviews suggest the late summer or early fall of 1958, he moved to New York City with a few dollars and a three-piece barber set gifted to him by his maternal great-uncle, Andy Gusmano, a barber in Poughkeepsie. According to Gary Comenas, Name described growing up as an "average repressed young American" until 1958 when he transplanted himself to Greenwich Village in New York City and “magically” became an occult artist.Īnother important friendship that Linich developed at Serendipity III was with a fellow waiter named Ron Link, who would later become a celebrated off-Broadway director. So popular, that he was elected President of his senior class and was awarded the superlative “Most Versatile” in his senior yearbook. He excelled in his classes and was popular. It was such a relief to have it come into the public eye and have it be open, open, open until it was a blossom.” – Billy Nameīetween 1954–1958, Linich attended Arlington High School in Poughkeepsie, located on Raymond Avenue. Then I started thinking, “What is this genealogy we have with being heterosexual? Where do these archaic monstrosities come from? Where did these different names and categories come from, where you have to be one or the other?” I was gay because I had always been gay. I was just using it because it was available. I told people I was a homosexual, even though I hated that word. “I came out in 1958, in my senior year of high school.
“I always thought of it as a sort of magic thing to do, paint a whole big thing all one color, silver.” (Watson, 14). Sometimes, he would take long walks around his neighborhood, gazing up at the massive expanse of the mid-Hudson Bridge which was repainted every seven-years with heavy duty-industrial aluminum paint. Sometimes he would attend drag car races in upstate New York or visit The Congress, Poughkeepsie’s only gay bar. When he was fifteen, he went to a tattoo parlor in New York City’s Chinatown where he picked out an image of a black panther which he had tattooed on his bicep. By the time he reached adolescence, Linich had developed an interest in literature and film, often hitching rides to nearby Vassar College on the weekends, to see Italian neorealist films and MGM musicals. His father, a welder, was a member of the local ironworker’s union and his mother was employed as a telephone operator.
Born February 22, 1940, Linich was raised in Poughkeepsie, NY.