Late in 2002, at a time when we were both living way too close to ’Ino on Bedford Street, I became friends with Stewart Waltzer. Many lunches later it had become clear to me that the New York art world, which Stewart knew in his own very particular and personal way, was colliding and arguing with the distinctly Australian worlds that were presently coalescing in my notebooks.
Stewart sometimes bought an extra bruschetta, although less often than he remembers. He certainly fed me a thousand scandalous, possibly reliable stories, and introduced me to the first of many expert individuals who, in their turn, would give me what I needed to make my creatures stand up and walk around.
The first of these (blameless) volunteers was the New York conservator Sandra Amman, who in turn led me to Tom Learner, a conservation scientist at the Tate in London. Dr. Learner enthusiastically engaged with the technical problem that Butcher Bones was going to have to solve. Jay Krueger, Senior Conservator of Modern Paintings at the National Gallery in Washington, would prove to be equally helpful, and it was he who later alerted me to the sample boxes of Magna paint that Butcher would later find at New York Central Supplies.
The sculptor Michael Steiner—another friend of Stewart’s—was wonderfully forthcoming, and I stole and reconstructed whole slabs of his opinions before giving them to Milt Hesse to pass on to Marlene Cook.
Writers are of course obsessive, so there was hardly a friend who did not contribute in some way—David and Kristen Williamson, David Rankin, Patrick McGrath, Maria Aitken, Paul Kane, Philip Gourevitch and Frances Coady thank you.