Qayyum Michael discovered the Sufi path in the early 70’s when he met Shamcher Bryn Beorse, and he subsequently did artwork for some of Shamcher’s books. Qayyum lived in the NYC 14th St Sufi Order Khanaqah community and traveled with Shahabuddin Less throughout the US playing guitar for the dances. Qayyum was born in Seattle, WA, and received a MFA from the Univ of WA. As an artist he exhibited his paintings in NYC at Jack Tilton Gallery and Juno Gallery (http:/www.GalleryJuno.com), the Edinburgh Festival in Scotland, and in London’s Bloomsbury Theatre, among other venues. Qayyum, partner/fellow Sufi traveler, will always be remembered with love. When Pir Vilayat visited him a few days before his passing, he remarked about Qayyum: “he is filled with light”.
Submitted by Sharifa Felicia Norton
I got to know Qayyum shortly after I moved to New York in the early nineties. We’d sit once a month, a group of us, in his and Sharifa’s apartment, and there’d be a rotation of his artworks over time, so I was lucky to get to know both his work and him at least a little bit. And hear him talk, in his quiet way, about the art he loved when we’d go to museum shows (not always what we saw on those adventures). Such a comment instilled in me a curiosity about Agnes Martin, an artist’s artist whose quiet, subtle and beautiful work I’ve watched for ever since and which I now know is is a lot like him.
Most of the time when I went to the apartment, there was a drawing, a line of buildings lightly penciled at the bottom of a square, a drawing I always admired. But never said anything about it. And after he left us, I was wistful about that: why didn’t I tell him. Then, sometime after he crossed over, there was to be an exhibition of his work–which there hadn’t been the short time I knew him–and in the mail came the invitation, and the image was that drawing (what I think of as the piano drawing) of Long Island City seen from Manhattan.
That penciled vision now hangs on the wall in my office in a museum in another city, the third I’ve lived in since those few visits Qayyum and I had together. And when I look up and see the drawing, look up and look at that ephemeral seeming line of almost geologically solid buildings just breathed onto the sheet of paper, a mineral/graphite presence of a fleeting vision brought into being and frozen as on the photographic plate of my heart, I realize what a gift that glimpse of eternal ephemerality is. Just like Qayyum.
I fondly have memories of Qayyum when we lived together at the Khanaqa a Safiya on 14th Street and 3rd Avenue in Manhattan
He would play guitar for Shahabuddin Less every Tuesday evening at St John’s the Divine Church on the Upper West Side. On my Birthday and other occasions he would gift me a variety of small paintings, pencil sketches .. I have them hanging at home and in my Office still. Bless His Soul, Peace be Upon Him. I’m particularly fond of the turquoise beach chair. His work is with us every day!