Graham was a terrific sculptor, probably more famous for being married to Angelica Huston than his work. He was a Venice fixture and we met when I first moved there. I got more involved with him when I was helping my friend, Rick Valente, do a documentary on fitness attached to Gold’s Gym. Robert was most famous or his nude sculptures and Rick wanted to use one of Robert’s models for a female subject on fitness. It was important to her to keep extremely fit for Robert as he sometimes worked from life and she would have to keep extreme poses for some time. When I went to art school, we sometimes had to pose for each other, and that meant keeping still for quite some time. It was difficult just to sit (still) so I understood her issues. The model had to hold extreme poses for Graham’s work and she was incredibly fit and worked hard at keeping that way. I filmed some of her workouts at Gold’s and them a session or two at Robert’s studio. He was doing a great deal of work for a show and I marveled at his ability to capture the essence of the model with very few strokes of his pastel crayons. He used these sketches to capture the flow of the subject’s form but then used the model for various details (that were extraordinary).
I was able to see the show before the opening and in gratitude for his largesse, I filmed a short documentary of the sculptures.