How does that classic oldie go? No, further back….”Summer is a’ cummin in?” The mediaeval ditty, you know what I mean. To me here in Hollywood, summer is not the cruelest month, but it does last forever. WE have heat waves that go right on into what is Fall season for most of America….
I am not complaining. I DO live in what is advertised as the “creative capital of the world.” At least it’s not as braggadocio as the motto of Boston, my home town, “THE HUB OF THE UNIVERSE.” Not the country, and not the world….the Universe revolves around Boston. Actually, the world revolves around wherever you are, no? Think about it. But not for long.

Here’s something pretty cool we can do here in L.A. Otis Bardwell, artist, is paricipating in an open studio event on Sunday, April 21, from 4-8pm. at 1500 South Central Avenue. There will be several other artists in their studios. How great is that? Have you ever been to an artist’s workplace? Imagine dropping in on Van Gogh, or Matisse? Just the other day I was talking to a friend who said she knows someone who met Picasso when she was a kid….Wow! If I see you at this event, I will imagine one day we both can say we visited the studio where______________fill in the blank, created his/her work!

Check out my pages to read about Otis Bardwell and several artists who preceded him…..ENJOY!

I still have a little original Pablo Picasso for sale:

Original/ Signed, dated on lower right in stone. Portrait d’Arthur Rimbaud. Dec. 13, 1960. Litho, limited ed. 97 proofs on Rives wove paper. Ref. Bloch 1007, Mourlot 342. (11 and 3/4 X 9) 30cmX23cm. Burnished gold frame with matte. PICASSO.

Ah, yes. Sometimes it helps to remember those who went before us, trailing clouds of glory behind, or maybe just a wisp of inspiration for we who follow. I am glad I shared my time on earth with some of the greats in literature, art, music, and all the other arts. This gallery is dedicated to those people as well as those who I missed. Today I would like to spotlight some of the images in my little online shop in case you would like to own some inspiration for your walls.

I begin with Raymond Carver. When I had a TV show in Santa Clara many years ago, I asked Ray to be my initial interview/guest. He agreed. Because I was an unknown commodity working outside of a major metropolis, perhaps nobody saw or remembered the occasion and the tape was recycled as usual. I cannot forget it and cannot help wondering what the tape would be like today, priceless conversation with a now-famous writer when he was only beginning to be known. He had recently returned from his journey with his family to Israel and was living in the student housing at San Jose State where I was in a graduate class with his wife, Mary Ann Carver. I remember the class was with Dr. Hans Guth, 18th Century English Literature and we were reading Clarissa, and long odes to Isaac Newton, deists, scientists. Ah the age where machines were the promise of our future. Now I am far away from youth and student days and Ray is gone but very famous after all. I was at a lovely house in the hills in Las Trancas Woods celebrating with others who have become celebrity authors since, a party for the publication of Winter Insomnia, Carver’s slim first poetry collection published by Kayak Press in Santa Cruz.  It is time for me to place this personal copy in the hands of someone younger who can treasure it as I have. It is signed twice, once to everyone, and once, “To Joan” who is the baby in his short story “Popular Mechanics.” ( Yes. I told him that anecdote about my own parents never thinking it was a subject for literature. ) If you are interested in this precious artifact, email me: joanjohnson4@msn.com for information.You can read more about the specifics and see the autographs on these pages.

How about this? Did you live when Robert Louis Stevenson was hot stuff for high school students? I remember reading Treasure Island and The Black Arrow and loving every adventure story of this frail Scotsman who was nevertheless an adventurer himself. Of course, when I teach children’s Literature I never forget the Child’s Garden of Verses! I have kept this image over my desk for a while, would you treasure it as I have? Let me know. There is more information about this special piece in the gallery. Look it up. All the images on these pages are framed with museum archival papers and mattes and professionally framed by Grey Goose in Los Feliz, LA.

Robert Louis Stevenson

1909 Henry Wolf Born: Eckwersheim, Alsace 1852 Died: New York, New York 1916 wood engraving on paper image: 7 7/8 x 5 7/8 in. (19.9 x 14.8 cm)  (There is a copy of this in the Smithsonian.)

AND what about the grand lady herself?

This is a large poster-sized image, beautifully rendered by the National Portrait Gallery in London. You may want to inquire about the price? If you have a room of your own, or if you are working towards getting one, this portrait will inspire you every day to keep on keeping on.

And, one last image for you to consider, especially if you tend to be in a romantic state, or maybe know someone who would like a piece of art along with that box of chocolates for Valentine’s Day. (read about the work in these pages.)

“When the moon is on the wave,
And the glow-worm in the grass,
And the meteor on the grave,
And the wisp on the morass;
When the falling stars are shooting,
And the answer’d owls are hooting,
And the silent leaves are still
In the shadow of the hill,
Shall my soul be upon thine,
With a power and with a sign.”                                 ( Now, tell me if this isn’t astounding beauty! and tuck this into that bouquet of flowers! )

Even if you are not in the mood to research one of the great love poets of all time, perhaps you will take my word for it and share this with someone you love. Byron lived during the English Regency Period. He was a heroic type, a true adventurer in the world and in love. I heard he once rode his horse into the palazzo in Venice where he was living, clip clopping on the marble floors….Ah Love, What a day that must have been!

“She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellow’d to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.”     (Read the complete poem online when you can.)

And if you can, listen to Joan Baez, another great artist/writer I interviewed twice, and who sang in my car to the radio when I drove her home where we sat in her kitchen and she made tea and talked about the old days with Phil Ochs and Dylan and so much more….Those were the rare days of the past. Joan recorded Byron’s words. Listen and enjoy!

So we’ll go no more a-roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
And the moon be still as bright.

For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And Love itself have rest.

Though the night was made for loving,
And the day returns too soon,
Yet we’ll go no more a-roving
By the light of the moon.”

Enjoy this season. It will soon be Valentine’s Day!   Art is where you make it!

“CHILDHOOD” by John Hunter (American)   colored lithograph, signed in upper right corner in crayon, titled, dated, edition: 39/50, on ivory wove paper, Lakeside Gallery. matted and framed.
22 and 1/4 by 15. With certified authentication signed by both the artist and printer.

It’s that time of year that always comes too quickly for adults and too slowly for children. In a country that, as Arthur Miller said once, does not love its children, I pose the question many of us are asking today, “Why is this so?”

                                                                                                                      “Precious Moments.” Original edition. The Teacher and her pupil. 

(This was given to me a long time ago by a student who began her childhood working in the fields    and graduated from college to go on to a good technical writing job at Hewlett Packard. It can be done!)

There can be no argument here. All we have to do is read the latest news,  look at pictures of child laborers in the not-so-distant past, the kids in Los Angeles selling flowers and oranges on the streets every day, the students left stranded as their parents are seized by immigration officials and driven away to another country, the migrant worker children who have never had a home, andevery little kid who has a lunchbox and classroom to go during the week. Who thinks about what we are really teaching our children? All the hyper-kids killing cartoon images as fast as their fingers can operate the “joysticks”, and all the children on meds in kindergarten because they do not sit still like “good little girls and boys” with stifled curiosity and energy in the overcrowded warehouses. Am I being overly harsh about the situation? Not much has changed since Dickens wrote his heartbreaking stories about children. There are orphans, I am reminded, even with fathers and mothers in the home. (Read “A Child Called “It” by David Pelzer and tell me about parental cruelty.) Then there is the constant sliding downward in our country’s economic situation, two parents forced to work more than forty hours a week because they have children to house and feed, taxes to pay and increased costs for food and gas. Nobody home?  Then there are the parents I won’t waste time on who give their kids to strangers to care for while they go to Vegas or party with drugs and alcohol. The latchkey kids who will raise themselves if they are lucky, and take longer to learn about reality.

Of course we can see all too clearly that children can be cruel too, and they are not all innocent of mean behavior, the hateful jealousy of their parents, the growing number of vicious schoolyard bullies. (Here in Los Angeles a young mother told me last week her daughter had to promise to keep quiet around grownups because she was going to be jumped into a gang on the playground; and how grateful she was that her daughter still was not yet  swallowed up by her peers, still loyal to her mom.)  And is there not a newly named mental illness every month?  Again, I ask, “Why?”

It is not TV or movies that wipe out our loved ones, although they show how to do it;  it is sick people who should not ever have access to weapons, sick people who nobody knows what to do with, people with serious disorders left to fester and grow into total insanity. What is a parent of such children to do? You can only send an “incorrigble”  juvenile delinquent to lockup so many times and then she or he has the freedom to harm others for years. There is no cure for borderline personality syndrome. Yet. And it is rampant among us. Statistics prove this.

Do you think that more mindfulness around the young in our lives can help at all? Do you think repressing  gun violence in movies and  TV is going to help while the battering hours of continual advertising to” buy, get, acquire and consume” continues to create  inordinate desire in a child’s subconscious mind, a deep dissatifaction with anything a parent can obtain?  After the dreamscape on the media, can the world ever satisfy or soothe our violence-battered national psyche?  Maybe a ban on the gunfire on screens, less pornography and more innocence would lead to a kinder gentler nation? Maybe it is too late already. We are raising a country of children with trigger fingers, acceptors of world news accompanying supper with a relish of acceptable cruelty, unspeakable crimes.  We are deadening consciences before they are formed. We are breeding psychopaths. Sane children will not grow into dangerous adults. Sane people will listen to their consciences no matter how many guns they own. Statistics prove this.

So, was Arthur Miller correct about Americans hating their children?  (He said this long ago at the Chicago Democratic Convention while police were beating college students in the background.)

What about childhood?  Where does it begin and end? Every loved one lost in war was once a child. Just today I heard on the radio on my way to work that 12 little girls were killed in a bomb blast in Kabul, Afghanistan while out gathering firewood. Their ages ranged from 6 to 12. Here’s a question: Should we just get used to it? Take it with a grain of salt and go on about our business as usual? Can we numb ourselves sufficiently by altering our own minds, our inborn consciences? Who or what can help us do this? An overkill of violence in the media, in games, the news? Is this why there will always be a drug problem in our country? A general “numbing out” to  an impossible reality? People who lash out violently because the world will not, cannot fulfil their aching need for something impossible to give them? Psychopaths are people who are often charming, cult leaders even, but they share a common trait: a lack of empathy. How fast are we breeding these people? Check out the statistics on “ borderline personality disorder” and ask again.

And so, it is Christmas once again. Unlike quincinearas, debutante announcements and a twenty-first birthdays, Christmas comes around again and again to remind us, if we are still sensate, that we have another chance to ponder the life and the birth of Jesus Christ, who demonstrated for all of us just how much evil lurks in the breasts of fellow creatures, how much hatred lies waiting in human nature. Can this be fought with non-violent resistance? His brief life showed clearly that if one is to preach love, peace and brotherhood one is asking everything evil to come out to play. We in America are growing a litany of  names, peacemakers who dared to speak out for non-violence. Human beings have, for the most part, always gotten it wrong. Something there is that doesn’t love “ love.”

Where does art fit into this quasi-sermon (forgive me the digression)? Beauty! Beauty! The beauty of God’s Grandeur. When America was a more God-fearing place, it seems to me now, there was more peace, harmony and beauty in our country, and a lot less bloodshed and evil. Can we get back to innocence? At least re-institute it? The so-called Jesus Freaks have done more than enough damage to Christianity with their Bible thumping distortions and emphasis on hate and obsession with the devil. The control- obsessed phoney religious people who know how to talk the talk are trying to scare us with condemnation and hellfire. I actually had a person tell me I should keep crackers and good running shoes in my car for when the rapture comes. ????  Can we find some compassion even for them, scared as they are of reality, at  Christmas? The wonder of birth and new life? And after compassion what  happens? Why can the world not accept the message of the Christ without distortion, aggression and the need to propogate division and subverted hatred? These are rhetorical questions, of course.

“The Little Wanderer” by Berthe Hummel.

God bless us all. My heart grieves for all the lost children and parents and all the perpetrators of suffering.  In honor of the suffering parents this year, I offer this:

Pray for our country the way our forefathers and mothers prayed for her.. God Bless America with safety for our children, every one of them.

And to those parents who try to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ, perseverance and comfort until the end.

by Botticelli (my title: It never ends)

God’s Grandeur

by Gerard Manley Hopkins

The world is charged with the grandeur of God

It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;                                                           

It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed.  Why do men then now not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell; the soil

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;

There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights off the black West went

Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

“Thinking about the perfect gift for that hard-to-buy-for person?” (This is the old line that wakes us up to the fact that it is time to give gifts.) I always know what to give any person I love, something made by hand, a small ceramic pot, the product of another breathing, thinking, human person. No matter how large or small, expensive or humble, something from the  mind and heart of another is priceless, without measure. Look for the thumbprint, the signature, the small imperfection that says a human being made it. How precious!This is the first gift I bought my mother with saved allowance.  An original Hummel figurine from the (believe it or not) drug store down the street from Mrs. Burroughs’ boarding house in Brookline, Mass.  (Yes, it was a Charles Dickens childhood: my mom and me in a tiny rented room with a hot plate on the closet floor and a carton of milk outside in the snow on the window. Tomato soup and Ritz crackers are still my comfort food.)  I’ll never be as good a writer as Charles Dickens, but there is much of his life to which I can relate. 

This is the real “Father Christmas.”

What small thing is inexpensive now that will be a treasure for years to come?  You could make something small too, a collage, wooden box, handmade card, pressed flowers, embroidered handkerchief. If you have the time, you could write a short story for your favoirte children. If you haven’t the time, space or inclination to create something yourself, think of original work by others who are making things now, or whose work has been  lovingly collected and protected throughout time.

I have a couple of Daumier prints in my collection, but even if you are a keen and perceptive collector, you may not know about the treasure chest website I am going to share here with you when considering a gift for someone very special:   http://www.daumier.org/index.php?id=10This site has many affordable DAUMIER original prints from the days when newspapers included presents for anyone who could afford them, in other words very inexpensive worlds of original art. Take the time for a quiet shopping tour.  You can shop at leisure any time and give a gift beyond compare, an original Daumier lithograph from a vast collection.

This is one of my two. ICARUS by Honore Daumier. Original lithograph at a very low price considering its true value.

Write a little poem and tuck it into a pretty frame from the Goodwill store near you, or dress a doll from the dollar store. Christmas is not about how much money we have to spend, but the way we think of someone we know, or love.

And, of course, you can find my very famous original Picasso print with description on these pages…under “prints”  and you can own it for a reasonable price. Ask me about this: A Portrait of Rimbaud.Ah Halloween! Thanksgiving! Christmas! New Year’s Eve! Traveling through the darkness to a bright new beginning can be an interesting, enlivening trip. I love black and white together from the old movies to a French costume (I am thinking of Pierrot), from an etching to a newsprint and of course, the photograph.  Let’s open the gallery and see what fits the season at the moment. This is just a sampling of the many pieces of art I have collected for your perusal and purchase something if you are so inclined. Email me for more information on any of the art on my pages. www.joanjohnson4@msn.com

Enjoy your visit……….

It’s costume time!

Can you think of anything more magical than this fine print from Hunter and Plucked Chicken (the famous) press?

From John Hunter’s rare Suite: a signature wizard in a corner. A little bit of magic.

Check out all the rare John Hunter prints and two Suites, the originals on these pages……..

It wouldn’t be Halloween without a troll or???? Here is Otis Bardwell’s image of someone weirdly fascinating….also on these pages….Find it with the facts attached.

This is without a doubt my favorite of all the Peter Tagore Tan’s photographs in the gallery.  I know it is not scary, but it is black and white and beautiful taken on a beach in Indonesia.

Time to get out the Edgar Alan Poe and scare yourself at bedtime.. I have a print of this fabulous bird! Inspiring to any writer of horror stories. You can order one here of any size.

Peter Tagore Tan: Indonesian Blackbird. (Okay I am cheating a bit with the color. You know what I mean, don’t you….)

Now for Thanksgiving in Black and White……Hmmmmm…..Let’s see…..what do we have here on these pages for you?

Sorry, it’s a stretch, but we can be thankful when the big bad guy loses?

Check out this exclusive never-to-be found anywhere else (?) very old original print on these pages.

How about an artist from Maine?

CARROLL THAYER BERRY (1886-1978)  A WOOD ENGRAVING 1935….When we say “Downeast” we mean the coast of Maine. Here is an iconic original print, famous. And I have one for half the price elsewhere.

“Retired From the Sea” an original wood etching. (1935)       Spotless condition, and very beautifully comprehensive depiction of the Maine seacoast village and harbor. See it elsewhere in this gallery. Explore. Be my guest.

Don’t think Maine is scary? Remember it is Steven King’s home! have you been able to read Salem’s Lot without shivering?

Here we can see how Peter Tan spent his summer vacation… Wouldn’t we all like to enthrall in the natural splendor of the forests and meander to the cliffs and sea?

In travelling the Pacific Northwest, Mr. Tan seized the magnificence of the mountains and rivers, and charted their course to the ocean. His keen eye for landscape and talent in capturing the movement and thrush of scenery catches the throat. Click on the image for a larger, breathtaking view of each photograph!  

I love creeks and the music they make.
And rills, in glades and meadows, before
they have a chance to become creeks.
I may even love them best of all
for their secrecy. I almost forgot
to say something about the source!
Can anything be more wonderful than a spring?
But the big streams have my heart too.
And the places streams flow into rivers.
The open mouths of rivers where they join the sea.
The places where water comes together
with other water. Those places stand out
in my mind like holy places.
But these coastal rivers!
I love them the way some men love horses
or glamorous women. I have a thing
for this cold swift water.
Just looking at it makes my blood run
and my skin tingle. I could sit
and watch these rivers for hours.
Not one of them like any other.
I’m 45 years old today.
Would anyone believe it if I said
I was once 35?
My heart empty and sere at 35!
Five more years had to pass
before it began to flow again.
I’ll take all the time I please this afternoon
before leaving my place alongside this river.
It pleases me, loving rivers.
Loving them all the way back
to their source.
Loving everything that increases me.

–Raymond Carver

The silver scapes of Oregon, with all its misty magic.

Mr. Tan’s eye for contrast and symmetry harken us to see the sublime in unexpected places.

I’ve known rivers:
I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
     flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
   I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
   I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
   I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
   I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
     went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy
     bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I’ve known rivers:
   Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

–Langston Hughes

Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea.

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home!

Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;

For though from out our bourn of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crost the bar.

–Alfred, Lord Tennyson

This exhibit composed and arranged by Mariah K Young.

ALL IMAGES ARE THE PROPERTY OF THE ARTIST, PETER TAGORE TAN, AND ARE UNDER COPYRIGHT. FOR INFORMATION OR PERMISSION/DISCUSSION PLEASE CONTACT THE GALLERY.

Because it is almost time for a two-day class I am teaching called “Reading Moby Dick by the Sea” and because I live most of the year in Hollywood, I took a trip to New Bedford to soak up authenticity. And, because the trip was inspiring, I want to share the effects with you. First, forgive me for exhibiting two of my own paintings. This first is a “dream home” I would like to live in all the time, but alas, it belongs to someone else. I love the red houses of New England. If you live in one, you are very lucky!

This second painting is very large. I painted it long before the Hedge House at 126 Water Street in Plymouth, Massachusetts was the home of the Antiquarian Society. When I was lucky enough to visit the house, I fell under the enchantment of the upstairs nursery. This painting is of the  doll house  interior exactly as I saw it. Now we can all share it as it was, and even if we cannot recapture the original view except in my picture.  If you do visit Plymouth, be sure to tour the magnificent example of how the “one percent” lived. The Hedge family made their fortune from the shipping industry at the start of the 18th Century, and this sea-captain lived very well as evidenced by the splendid home with a three-story ell in the back of the original two-story house and a perfectly intact carriage house as well. The toys in my painting are the ones the Hedge children played with. Some things never change.

Now for the trip. I stayed at a charming, comfortable, and peaceful Herman Melville Inn Bed and Breakfast on Madison Street. The innkeeper was gentle and gracious, the breakfast a delicious omelette made with fresh broccoli from the garden outside. This was the home of Melville’s sister and I stayed in the room where he most likely slept when visiting. The price was moderate, the room authentic 19th Century elegance replete with a decanter of Harvey’s Cream Sherry on a tray behind the red velvet settee, and a four-poster, white marble fireplace and modern bath with more than enough plush towels. As old as the house is, the owners have made it “green” and the thoughtfulness behind the enterprise is clearly evident. There are only three rooms, so reserve one early if you plan to imitate me. They have a website for your perusal. (This is not a solicited advertisement for the place, but an endorsement of course!)

One night I stayed at the Moby Dick Motel in Dartmouth. The sign outside said from $49.50. My little haven was clean, bright and comfortable. Renee, the owner told me her husband bought it more than thirty years earlier, and when she heard about my Moby studies, gave me a brass whale paperweight! Why is it that the love for Melville’s work elicits such generosity and kindness?

Then it was off to the New Bedford Whaling Museum where five hours sped by like minutes. If you go, park in the town structure and walk two blocks over. It cost me $7.50 to park for the day. Well worth it! Check out their website for an idea of why it takes hours to absorb the information, all of it fascinating.

New Bedford is a perfect place to get the feel of New Englanders. There was a Buzzards Bay Regatta about to start at the Fort Taber Military museum when I visited. Essential New England, local factories employing local residents, a proud history, a working-seriously seaport, fresh seafood, friendly people, a lovely owner of a Burger King gave me so much information about things to see, it was clear the natives are proud of their town.

This is from the exhibit, “Life Aboard a New Bedford Whaling Vessel”  at the Whaling Museum. www.whalingmuseum.org

Ah Herman Melville! How much he gave to us of himself, his wisdom, talent and experience! I will never forget visiting his house in Lenox, Massachusetts, “Arrowhead” which so impressed me I named my little theatre company Arrowhead Readers Theatre. Is there anyone out there who remembers those Monday nights at City Lights theatre and the original plays we put on for local authors?  Let me know if you do.

There are always people interested in Melville and his work, and the admiration for our Great American Novel grows every day. If you have been putting it off, start now!