Robert Indiana kept a series of illustrated journals during the late 1950s and 1960s, in which he discusses the development of his work as well as his daily life on Coenties Slip.
Indiana begins his journal entry for September 30, 1962, describing the mood on Coenties Slip:
"Randy’s suicide, so close on [the] heels of Agnes’ [Martin] trip [to] Bellevue puts the Slip in a dramatic light, and with Lenore’s [Tawney] eviction and [the] tearing down of [Jack] Youngerman’s last building, it would seem [that] perhaps [the] last days may be at hand. [Ellsworth] Kelly wants [to] leave; Jesse [Wilkinson] is thinking of Callfornia. Violations pile up at 25 and [the] ever ready boys in red could burst upon [the] scene anytime. Those 15 days left before my show are not long enough and may be too long at [the] same time."
The show Indiana references is his first solo show, which would open on October 16, 1962, at the Stable Gallery.
The journal page includes a sketch of one of the circles from The Calumet, with a note that he began the "long delayed second coat of yellow" on the painting's bands.
Indiana also records a call from gallerist Rolf Nelson, who was ready to leave for the airport to catch a flight to Los Angeles, where he was moving (Indiana would have a solo show at his gallery there in 1965). He writes that his resentments, built up over the years, came spilling out, and that Nelson seemed "staggered by [the] force of my accusations," and "professed his usual wide-eyed innocence and amazement, shocked [that] [the] purity of his actions should be questioned." He continues to say that he is certain Jim Rosenquist would get Nelson's loft, by giving him the "impression [that] he is showing with him wh[ich] I doubt v[ery] much if that will ever happen."
He then notes that John Ardoin and Norman Fisher came to the loft for a photography session, and that while he continued to work on The Calumet upstairs, J. (his partner, fashion designer John Kloss) was having his portrait done downstairs. Ardoin then took some more photographs upstairs, including shots of Indiana's Polygon series. He records giving Ardoin and Fisher a Nonagon Diamond (Nonending Nonagon) temporarily so that they would have an Indiana when Theodate came to dinner at theirs, but that they forgot to bring it in the cab.
Indiana frequently referenced current events in his journals. Here "listened to Kennedy address nation on Mississippi affair," is a reference to Ole Miss riot of 1962, a major turning point in the civil rights movement which resulted in the desegregation of the University of Mississippi, the first integration of any public educational facility in the state.
