Roy Skodnick

My name is Sam Leiken. Roy Skodnick and I have been close, lifelong friends since we met at summer camp at age six. We later resumed our friendship as freshmen at Columbia University. Like many of our generation, Roy has outlived his resources. I am organizing this GoFundMe account to ask his friends to replenish his resources to help him pay day-to-day expenses and continue his creative work.

Life has blessed Roy with many friends from literary, artistic, musical, and academic circles. Many of you know his accomplishments as a teacher, writer, editor, literary historian, biographer, and art curator. His relationship with the poet Charles Olson led him to edit the journal All Area. Aligned with the early ecology movement, it linked Olson’s work with anthropologist Gregory Bateson and literary theorist Kenneth Burke. In this project Roy collaborated with noted artist Frank Gillette, whose publication Radical Software set the agenda for video art, and about whom he has also written.

Gillette subsequently introduced Roy to sculptors James Metcalf and Ana Pellicer, which led to a lifelong association that yielded essays, lectures and exhibitions documenting their work in Santa Clara del Cobre, Michoacan, Mexico where they established a renowned technical arts school that fostered an arts and crafts renaissance. Roy was awarded a Smithsonian fellowship for his work with them. His biography of Metcalf, True Son of Hephaestus, was published in 2014. His portfolio also includes essays on poet Miguel Algarin, the founder of the Nuyorican Poets Café, the Black Mountain poets who worked with Olson and research for the Sehgal Foundation for village development in India.

He is currently writing a memoir of great teachers and friends, editing memories of Shaker Village Work Group and completing a history of Santa Clara del Cobre, as well as assembling his archives on Algarin, Metcalf and Pellicer for placement in a university or museum archive.

This plan to help Roy is my invention. Roy simply gave me permission to proceed. I will be the administrator of the funds. My intention is to provide Roy with a monthly stipend to help him pay his bills and give him the freedom to bring his work to fruition. Those of you with more ample assets might consider contributing whatever multiples of $500 you are able to provide. Roy will be celebrating his Eightieth birthday on November 6th. I invite you to honor this milestone with a generous gift.

With gratitude,

Sam Leiken