ARTISTS/WRITERS: THEKLA

Thekla Hammond was a painter and multimedia artist. She also sang with four different ensembles devoted to early music and contemporary music. Her work was interrupted by unexpected illness and she died in 2017. Her passing came as a sad shock, for she was loved and admired by many.

I knew Thekla in youth then again later in life. Our first encounter was in our late teens. She was smart, gifted, pretty - a singer then, not yet a visual artist. We sang and performed Lambert, Hendricks and Ross jazz songs together. I was always a little in love with her, though I never confessed it. I dimly recall a trip to Las Vegas along with her brother and a presumed boyfriend. My strongest memory of that trip, other than my longing for her, is coming upon Duke Ellington conducting a scaled-down unit in a hotel lounge. A small compensatory thrill.

Later Thekla re-entered my life, though I’m not sure quite how except that it had something to do with Mexico. Both of us were married, and she and her husband visited us there and stayed in our casita. She had emerged as a visual artist years earlier and had a gallery and a studio in San Francisco, another in Oaxaca, in southern Mexico. Periodically I would get announcements for her shows or installations.

A few years after that, I was on a book tour and scheduled to do some readings in San Francisco. Thekla and I met for dinner after one of the readings. She was working on a new exhibit and singing with several ensembles.

At one point I said, “You know, when we were kids I had a terrible crush on you.” 

She looked surprised, then said, in mock rebuke: “Well, why didn’t you tell me?” 

“I was too shy. And you had a boyfriend.”

“Did I? Oh, that guy in Las Vegas. He was just a friend of my brother.”

“He acted like he was.”

“My boyfriend? He wanted to be.”

We laughed then fell silent for a while, perhaps lost in resonances of what might have been.  

Not very long after that dinner, she was gone. 

Her shining voice, her fierce beautiful spirit, her haunting arts. 

Thekla.

Further examples of Thekla Hammond’s art can be seen at: Thekla