Untitled sketchbook, 1962

Barton’s preferred format when working in cafés such as Foster’s Cafeteria was the accordion-folded book, in which he painted using a yatate, comprising a brush and portable inkpot. Artist and poet Etel Adnan (1925–2021), who met Barton in the early 1960s, credited him with introducing her to this format:

Before that fateful afternoon, I had never seen any folding books. He opened the one he was working on, put it on the table after having pushed his drink and dried the surface, and I was in a state of wonder: tiny heads were drawn, each with its own character, the customers of the café were recorded with the utmost care, filling every page of the book the way they were crowding the place as well as Rick’s mind. Here
and there, tucked in what were empty places on the paper, were fingers holding cigarettes, swirls of smoke, an obsessed and obsessive mass of humanity running like a river all along the book which was so to speak growing in length, like a ribbon. Thus one of the
most lasting of my artistic impressions was happening amidst a crowd in the magic atmosphere of a San Francisco which was still primarily a harbor with all the feelings of alcohol and transiency that harbors create.