MENDOCINO STORIES EVENTS

David had lights installed, people could see the paintings better. 

I stretched another canvas and waited. 

Evenings at the Gull livened-up as the PTA, historical review board, various meetings, etc., convened at the end of their sessions.  Victor Biondo's Marathon therapy group, (Victor, the King in The Princess and The Pea), Women's groups (self explanatory), and Men's self-help groups met weekly.  After rousing sessions of emotional release or telling confidential tales, they all mixed together at the Sea Gull Bar for social interaction.  Because I was a part of that scene, I heard their appreciation for Rapunzel, my last painting.  Humor brought it all home.

In the winter of 1978-1979, our lives were put on hold while Three Mile Island almost melted down.  The outside world suddenly encroached on us.  I was in a Men's group and we discussed the fear of a meltdown happening in California.  We were glad to be far behind our Redwood Curtain. We felt safe here, purposely innocent to the outside world.

We had six men in my group.  The most dramatic change in all of them was Richard Albright. He had just quit drinking.  From a tragic non-responsive alcoholic, he blossomed into a comic stage performer.  His new-found humor brought healing laughter.  I knew one day I would paint him.

I’ve learned I have to pay for inspiration. The cost to me has been waiting – waiting, and the discipline to wear out countless visualizations. I looked for stories to paint that had more than two or three characters involved in conflict.  One of my favorites had a Giant, and was an adventure for wealth. I struggled to get my head around all the.  This tale did not fit the psychology of personalities that related to one another as in a myth. It was simply about power, because “Jack and the Beal Stalk” told of a moment in history.  Daily, I was confronted by my own history in Mendocino.  Considering that I came from a life in Los Angeles, being alive here in Mendocino was more precious than any story I could imagine.

I think that the contrast of past against present is reason why I like being told stories - I reconnect with the importance of living life.  I held to my idea that there is a happy ending - I was living mine.

Jack and the Bean Stalk

Jack and the Bean Stalk is a new story.  It is told through the eyes of a young boy, we glimpse the glory in a successful war. Jack … is new in comparison to the ancient stories told in Grimm's, this one fits into the fifteen-hundreds.  It is an English parable. Jack stands for the Union Jack.  The Giant stands for the Spanish Armada and/or the King of Spain. (England and Spain were at war, remember.) Jack’s mother is Queen and Country, more than likely Elizabeth of England.  The story was created during Shakespeare’s time, more than likely a lesser theatrical production whose bawdy symbolism entertained the royalty. The magic bean salesman stands for the banks that financed Jack's trip to capture the Golden Goose, the newly discovered wealth of North America.  (Beans grow – right. And Spain held control of the sea. America had all the tall trees to make sailing vessels. Didn’t you know, War was a pass time for making money. And, the banks had all the beans.) This is an adventure story of stealing wealth, killing the bad guy, and living the good life, happily ever after and RICH.  Straight forward, five folks, easy, clever twists in the story and it is fun, fun, FUN. Hey! Just for a moment let’s suspend any idea there is morality in taking something that isn’t ours. It is simply a children’s fairy tale after all. A bedtime story about magic beans. Think, early Disney. Think Garbonzos. Think, “What’s in your wallet?”

Now you’re scaring me.

Thank God for my Polaroid camera, and friends to play along.

Now fear - fear is good. Don't forget you were driven by lots of fear.

Thanks. I'll keep that in mind, and not in my actions.

I chose the moment of the most danger in the story.  If you recall, everyone knew the Giant had a Golden Goose (The new world, the Americas, The Caribbean).  A shrewd bean salesman came along and traded Jack magic beans for the family milk cow.  Jack's mother tossed the beans out as worthless trade for the good cow, but they grew and grew.  (Investors. Public opinion.) In the morning the stalk had magically shot up into the Giant's lair, hidden in the clouds, high in the sky.  Jack climbed the beanstalk – he inadvertently woke the Giant while convincing the Golden goose it would be happier in his farmyard, not some golden cage. Jack, with goose, escaped.  The Giant chased them across the sea of clouds to the safety of the beanstalk.  When Jack was safe on the ground he chopped down the stalk and the Giant fell and killed himself, or Jack chopped the stalk down and there was no way the Giant could reach them.  (The telling of one of those two endings depended upon which parent that night told the story.)

I feel obliged to interject the irony of some symbols here, and some not so obvious homonyms. Caribbean – Karib Beans – (we have a sleepy child we want to lull to sleep) - pearls, the size of beans. How about the abacus? Looks like an orderly bunch of beans to me. Aren’t accountants called bean-counters? And Beanstalk – Wait! Isn’t “stalk” a verb? I could go on tediously.

Ok! The scene I chose to paint was when the Giant, about to catch Jack on the beanstalk, sent lightning bolts his way. (Fairy Tale canon fire war, or perhaps a class 5 hurricane at sea.) 

My composition would not be too unlike the vertical long braid of Rapunzel's hair.  The scale was dramatically different as I planned to paint the Giant life sized. He would take up the top eighth of the canvas.

For someone to lean over a good size cloud, I chose the poet, Bill Bradd, to be the giant. Bill was one of the first people I met at Antonia's party when I first arrived in Mendocino.  He not only had the poet's gift for words, but also could be critical in such scathing detail I would learn something about the politics behind the questionable subject of his focused attention.

So many barbs to that man's tongue, you never wanted to see him angry at you.

This is important - I need critics like Bill, so I come away with a bigger picture. He used lightening bolts of language to make sense.

His poetry was like that too.  I could see what he saw.  A Canadian, his detached point of view gave me another's insight.  I listened to him. So, my admiration for him made me consider him a giant.  It had nothing to do with the Spanish Armada, Jack or beans, or Bill’s physical presence or his standing as a poet.

Today, he still surprises me with his comments about being a writer. He said, one must consider the author's breath as a component to keep a connection with the reader. No fairy tale there.

In thick paper, I sculpted Bill some little lightning bolts.  I gave him a pillow to use as a cloud.  I suggested he lay down and lean over the edge of my dinner table. As he tossed lightning bolts at a knothole in my floorboard I took several snapshots.  Bill did not question.  Out of context it could have looked kind of weird.  But I did tell him of my ideas. In the painting, we don't see the giant’s body, just his head and arms. A giant’s face filled with a hard-to-hold-back, good humor.

Jack could only be Christopher Larsen.  No other choice - hands down.  He was eight then.  He had seen many of my paintings in process while he colored on my cabin's floor. He had a part in my Pied Piper painting. 

When I asked him if he would pose, he considered it for a moment then asked, "When."

"I'll get my camera, now if it's Ok?"

"No,” he said, "I mean, which part of the story.  Beginning - middle - end.  When?"

I brought out Bill Bradd's Polaroid. I showed him the sketch I had made for the painting, where the Giant would be, the bean stalk. The bean salesman was roughed in, as was the house where Jack lived. I hadn't chosen who was to be Jack's mother.  She had to have gray hair. That was certain.  I was going out on a limb to finalize anything other than composition at the time.  It was all a pretty spongy beginning.

Christopher studied my drawing. "Jack is rescuing the Golden Goose, right?

"I'll have to hold a pillow under one arm while I climb down." He told me,  "You can paint the Goose in later."

He was a super-kid.

We found an old arbor ladder behind the barn. I photographed Christopher, a pillow protectively under one arm.  He really got into it - imagined what it would feel like to see a Giant above him with a lightning bolt aimed at him.  He emoted as only an eight year old could. (Inject here screams of fear, followed by screams of delight at getting away.) Three photos did it.  One nailed it.

For Jack's mother, I couldn't choose Christopher's mother, Lee looked like a young girl.  Queen and Country was my direction, I held to the story.  This was MY painting, my only chance at absolute tyranny and POWER.

Well, a little tyranny.

I was teaching. The College of the Redwoods and the Art Center had me.  I worked five days a week, and sometimes weekends.  I painted when I could. I taught figure drawing, portraiture, oil painting, and watercolor.  I made friends with many of my students.  I obsessed daily on Jack - the painting, and Margo Farrar looked up over her drawing board during one of my classes. Something clicked. I think Margo only smiled when she saw something else was going on, or was it her sharp blue eyes. Jack's Mother? Well, she didn't hang out at the Gull.  And, she was over sixty at the time.  A bit old for mother of an eight-year-old, but she was an actress, a fine one. And she absolutely fit my dream. I love inspiration. She was perfect.

Margo and Stanley Farrar were fixtures in Mendocino culture when I arrived.  I saw them in productions at the Art Center.  They were both on stage during a production of a Moliere play when Stanley had a heart attack and died.  The show could not go on.  My men’s group was moved by Stanley’s death; that took up a whole evening. At the town wake, I realized the guy died doing what he loved to do best, and I admired Margo, how she got through his passing.  She possessed great dignity and warmth. 

Along with art and acting, Margo loved time in her herb garden.  We had been friends already for a few years. Upon hearing of my little garden at Toad hall, she gave me a pot of Arrow Bane.  “Plant it in some shade,” she said. “You could make a poultice to help in the removal of any slings and arrows, or splinters, of outrageous fortune you may encounter.”  At Xmas, she gave me some of her rose petal jam.  She was right on for this painting. She was a queen.

My characters were showing up.  I told her the period of art history, how I planed to use the colors of that time. She looked over my compositional sketches.  When I arrived with my camera, Margo had chosen her costume, including a humble handmade shawl.  To capture the image of Queen and Country, all I had to do was to follow Margo, and keep my eye glued to the lens finder.

In my next men’s group, I told them I needed their help before Richard Albright arrived.  I brought my camera and the pictures of Bill, Christopher and Margo. I needed assurance from the group they would support me to get Richard Albright to pose for the bean salesman.  Later in the session, Richard admitted to be touched by the idea.  I showed the napkin I had sketched, I had some possible poses for the bean salesman, told them that the cow, which I had to invent, was NOT leaving home.  The bean salesman would have to strain against the cow's resistance.  We tried first having Richard push against a large dresser drawers, but his energy didn’t seem authentic. Then, Richard requested someone to resist him.  One of the fellows stepped forward to oblige.  That was Corry Wisnia.  (Later on I would paint Corry as the Beast in The Beauty and the...)

Richard improvised a complete scene for the group, showing how one must influence a cow to move along and Corry provided necessary sound effects as "The Cow that Would not go". For that session, for therapy we laughed.

After group, we went to the Sea Gull Bar, I saw what the new lights did to my two other paintings between the beams. I could now be confident in the color pallet that would be best for the open spot between the rafters.  The two other paintings were composed of muted blue tones.  Both were in moonlight.  Our Jack, our beanstalk, our giant, mom and country, the salesman, cow, along with some newly imagined, ducks in a row, all of them had to be painted in bright afternoon yellows and oranges. Together they would act out the heat of battle for the golden goose.  Six weeks after the dust settled from the Three Mile Island melt down we installed the painting over the bar.

I chose to put a smirk on the giant’s face.  The cloudy sky, the castle in the background over Bill's shoulder, everything in the top eighth of the canvas is in shades of alizarin crimson.  The giant’s pink clouds used to send his lightning bolts, transition to the afternoon sky below. I painted shades of orange/red to orange and then to intense yellow at the horizon.  A white large sun on the right side of the canvas balances the organic shapes of Christopher, and the Golden Goose on the dark stringy beanstalk.  The Golden Goose and Jack precariously look skyward. To suggest the fear experienced during their chase, I had the goose lay a golden egg spontaneously.

This landscape is pure 'Fairy Tale'- the politics of making children thrilled with the glory of war be damned. The melt down in Pennsylvania averted. In our “Jack and the Beanstalk”, we have high, snow clad mountains, forests, rivers and a glen. they leads to the meadow where Jack and his Mother try to eek out a living from their little farm.  The mother with silver hair runs from the door of the little house into the yard to help her dear son in any way.

The bean salesman is caught mid-pose, he grimaces, strains from the resistance of a disgruntled cow who won't budge. The cow looks towards us the viewer for some support.  The Golden Goose's egg hangs suspended on a collision course to the salesman’s head.  A mother duck and her ducklings are in a row, a straight line, they witness the scene, quietly awaiting.

When we hung the painting in the Gull, it showed beautifully at night under the new lights, each painting stood on it’s own, slices of my life here - our lives. 

One Sunday afternoon, I witnessed a delicious compliment.

A five-year-old boy was hurriedly plopped on a barstool nearest the women’s restroom while his mother went to the bathroom. He was placed right under Jack and The Beanstalk.  The kid scanned the bar, then looked up. Studying the painting, he suddenly grabbed onto the bar for support, as he nearly fell off his stool laughing.

I brought it all home.