Kimberly Kradel

Today would have been Keith Haring’s 54th birthday. I remember him when he was a curly long locked kid of 17 who was into the Grateful Dead and doodling in his sketchbooks. I remember him pacing my living room, telling me about the Alechinsky exhibit he had just seen at the museum. I remember parties. I remember Suzie. I remember him being too big for Pittsburgh and leaving for New York. I remember a really quick visit with him at his studio in New York in 1986. I remember being at a party with him and my friend Julie in San Francisco. I got a letter from him once. He also doodled in my passport. He sent me an anti-apartheid t-shirt when he found out that I had a South African boyfriend. There are some pieces of his in San Francisco – at Grace Cathedral and outside at Yerba Buena.

I remember the day he died. I heard it on NPR while I was at work at Lonely Planet. He was the second in a long line of friends that passed away from AIDS. They say he was drawing when he died. After he died I visited the Pop-Shop in New York City, but he wasn’t there. I also saw an exhibition of his drawings in Paris, that made me feel vacant.

We weren’t close friends, we just knew each other before all the hoopla.

Today he would have been 54 and I often wonder how his work would have changed over the last twenty years. I wonder if he would have gotten to be more painterly and less graphic. I mean, his work is what it is, he died in the middle of it.

But today we get to say, Happy Birthday Keith, Wherever you are!

Have you got a memory of Keith? Share it in the comments!