Extravagantly romantic yet sophomorically naughty, outrageously Bohemian yet primly Calvinistic, E.E. Cummings became known as the poet who didn't use capital letters. Except he did, just not conventionally. For years, he experimented with the use and appearance of letters and punctuation marks. He even had a personal typesetter, S.A. Jacobs, to work on the arrangement of his poems on the page. One poem describes pigeons suddenly flying up from a sunlit sidewalk as "sprinkling," except in Cummings' hands, the word becomes "SpRiN,k,LiNg." It's not a picture of "sprinkling," but it is a visual equivalent in type.

So it's not surprising that Cummings was also a dedicated maker of oils, watercolors, pastels, and pen and ink drawings. Once asked why he, a successful poet, also painted, he answered, "Why do I breathe." Because he was often broke, Cummings painted on shirt cardboards rather than canvas. That helps to explain the poor condition of many of the works. To help fund their restoration, SUNY Brockport's School of Arts and Performance, which owns 72 of Cummings' pieces, is bringing noted actor Anthony Zerbe to the Memorial Art Gallery to perform his one-person show, "It's All Done With Mirrors...An avalanche of E.E. Cummings," this weekend. (Zerbe's ties to Rochester go back to the early 1990's and his artistic direction of "Reflections: A New Plays Festival" at Geva Theatre.)

In addition to the Zerbe benefit, several years ago, unidentified individuals at Brockport hit upon the idea of having people "adopt" individual works, thereby agreeing to take on the cost of restoration. Grant Holcomb, director of the Memorial Art Gallery, thinks the idea of adopting a painting is a creative way to get an important job done: "Conservation is a prime task for any art museum, but it's not sexy. Adoption helps to make it personal."

Frank Short, dean of Brockport's School of Arts and Communication, estimates the entire cost of restoring the Cummings collection at $160,000. He adds that individuals have already adopted 42 paintings and drawings, 36 of which have been restored and are awaiting exhibition and storage space in new facilities. The cost of restoring individual pieces has ranged from $600 to $11,000. The damage to individual pieces ranges from stains, scratches, and folds to punctures and portions torn away. James and Patricia Hamm of Clarence are doing the professional restoration.

The works themselves have had a shaky history, especially since Cummings kept no records of what he painted, and Brockport initially showed little interest in having or showing them. Between their arrival at Brockport in 1978 and now, the works have spent most of their time out of sight. Short remembers that in 2004, escorting Interim President John Clark around the campus, Gallery Coordinator Tim Massey pointed to a storage closet and said matter-of-factly, "Over there is our E.E. Cummings collection."

A large number of pieces had previously found their way to Rochester, the home of Cummings' longtime friends, James Sibley Watson, Jr. and his wife, Hildegarde Lasell Watson. Throughout their lives, the Watsons purchased Cummings' art and paid his rent. They received another hundred works after his death in 1962. Cummings dedicated one of his books, "XAIPE," to Hildegarde in 1950, and of the four museum exhibitions of his artwork during his lifetime, three were in Rochester. Watson and Cummings' friendship began at Harvard before World War I. During the 1920s, Watson revived The Dial as a major American literary magazine devoted to such innovative young writers as Cummings, Ezra Pound, and William Carlos Williams.

At this point, things turn murkier. In the 1970's, Philip Gerber, professor of English at Brockport, and a Brockport graduate student named Tensil Clayton, had established contact with Watson. Both of them realized that the work needed to be seen and cared for, but different sources credit each of them separately with suggesting to Watson that he donate the Cummings collection to Brockport. (Watson was unwilling to give it to the Memorial Art Gallery because he reportedly felt that the University of Rochester had not treated the Memorial Art Gallery well when its founders - including his mother, Emily Sibley Watson - had presented it as a gift to the University.)

According to Gerber's widow, Eugenia, her late husband persuaded Watson to give the work to Brockport, although there was never any money allocated to their preservation or exhibition until recently. Nancy Dean, Watson's wife during the last five years of his life, remembers that at Clayton's suggestion, she and her husband signed a letter bequeathing the Cummings works to Brockport and establishing "The Hildegarde Lasell Watson Collection of Artworks by E.E. Cummings."

Memorial Art Gallery Chief Curator Marjorie Searle says that the work ranges from "the adept to the soaring," but agrees that its interest lies mainly in Cummings' reputation as a poet.

It's All Done With Mirrors

Benefit for the SUNY Brockport E.E. Cummings collection

Sunday, April 5

Memorial Art Gallery, 500 University Ave.

2 p.m. | $75 | 395-5809