Last of His Race

 

The cultural clash between the noble Indian with his pipe and empty tobacco pouch, and the lack of a feather on his head, yet the well dressed lady riding the bicycle has one in her hat. I think there are plenty of clues as to why this is so stark and telling of Charlie's story in pen and ink.  

Yemassee Pure Rye Whiskey

Bateman & Switzer

The document is a letter from Dan Sullivan on his letterhead, to Bateman & Switzer, a Great Falls, Montana business that provided Wine, Liquor, Cigars and Billiard supplies to a great deal of Montana saloons and bars. The letter is dated July 9, 1904. The little vignette in the upper left hand corner is fascinating to me.

The bottle itself is a dug bottle from Unionville, a small mining community near Helena. It was given to me by a fellow here in town - a patron, actually. I used this bottle in November of 2011, and posted it HERE.

A month ago, I removed the Last Chance Whiskey label that was affixed to the bottle, and glued a good copy of a Yemassee label which I obtained from a bottle collector in Bozeman. I then had a Vietnam veteran friend of mine take a photograph of the bottle with whiskey in it. I worked from his photograph with his permission. I was told yesterday of a different Bateman & Switzer label with a different Indian depicted. I love these labels! 

Red Dots from Footprints

BEST Footprints on the Trail Show EVER.

I Want Your Chocolate!

For this year's Western Heritage Art Show & Sale, I will be participating in two events: The Quick Finish and Auction on Thursday evening, and the Quick Finish and Live Auction on Saturday evening. I have not yet decided which one of these I will be doing for which event, so I could use some assistance from the audience.

I realize that  these images are not really 'finished', but that's the idea behind the Quick Finish events. Potential patrons get to watch more than twenty of us put forty-five minutes to good use.

The Thursday evening event supports the Western Heritage Artists by raising funds to defray the cost of putting on the five day show. The Saturday evening event is called Art Competing for Causes, and this year we are supporting Breast Cancer Awareness along with other worthy causes.

Gallery 16, Great Falls, Montana

This is one of sixteen pieces that I will have hanging for the month of September at Gallery 16 in downtown Great Falls, Montana. The Gallery participates in the Great Falls First Friday Art Walk, and I will be there from 5 PM until they throw me out or 9 PM, whichever comes first. I look forward to seeing some old friends and new folks from Great Falls and the surrounding area that may not be familiar with me - or my art.

Quick Finish! Western Heritage Art Show

I'm going to be participating in the Quick Finish and Auction fundraiser to support the Lewis & Clark Interpretive Center on Thursday evening, the 20th of March during the Western Heritage Artists Show and Sale.

 

There will also be a Quick Finish on Saturday evening prior to the Art Competing for Causes fundraising Auction, and I'll be participating in that one as well. For more information about this event, visit the Art Competing for Causes event Facebook page, or the Western Heritage Artists web page.

This years show and sale is the 33rd annual event to be held at the Holiday Inn, and it begins on Wednesday evening with the Preview event. Artists are encouraged to enter one piece in the Juried Lobby show and offers the public an overview of the art that they'll find in the artist's rooms through Sunday afternoon. Best of Show, People's Choice, Artist's Choice, Best New Artist as well as First Place in each category receive cash prizes and ribbons.

I have not decided which of the above pieces I will finish on either Thursday evening or Saturday evening, but I have done Russell 'Brownies' for the past two years for the Quick Finish events, and they've been well received. I'm not going to meddle with success until I run out of  'Little People'. I will have both of these pieces cancelled at the C.M. Russell Post Office on March 19th. This year is special since March 19th is the 150th Anniversary of Russell's birthday. These mail art pieces are all the more special to me, because Charlie is the reason I started doing mail art as a youngster. Old Soak is in the Buffalo Bill Museum in Cody, Wyoming, and W.C. Fields is in the Russell Museum collection in Great Falls. I have seen both, and photographed W.C. Fields several years ago when it, along with several other of Charlie's 'Little People' were on display.

Indian Motocycle Rides Home on a BMW

I completed two pieces of Indian paper before going to the Western Heritage Artists show in Great Falls, Montana, the 14th through the 18th of March past.  Bob (and his wife) purchased a piece of Winchester paper in 2010, and they didn't find anything in my room last year that piqued their interest.

My theory is that if you offer a little bit of history with some art in the mix, people sooner or later will fall for a nice dose of both.

Bob liked Contact Point #2, which I tied with a leather thong to a BMW badge from a 1923 BMW motorcycle for his Thank You. Indian paper is not only hard to come by, but hard to hold onto. I love it when that happens. And thanks to my Brother-In-Law Tom Benson for gifting me the wonderful paper.

C. M. Russell Shoots Pool

In September of last year I posted an image of a single-striped number 9 Hyatt pool ball on a piece of letterhead from a Chicago business by the name of Hubbell & Grote. The letter itself was interesting enough that I had a difficult time sizing the ball so that sense could be made of the letter. I'm not just in this game to put the art on a piece of paper without allowing the paper to tell its story as well.

The story was not a very long one, but the folks to whom this Thank You is addressed found it to be interesting enough that they decided to take it home. Why is Charlie parked next to the pool ball? Well - Because they are also C. M. Russell fans, and this one of Charlie with a pool cue in his hands was just the right touch.

The name is Hyatt - I'm Single.

In 1869, John Wesley Hyatt patented the process to turn nitrocellulose and camphor into billiard balls. The process was dangerous and the end product was just as dangerous as the balls were purported to explode on heavy impact.

I can find no information about the company whose letterhead this happens to be, but the most important information is contained at the top - They sold Hyatt composition billiard balls. They also imported IVORY GOODS, which up to the turn of the century would have included pool and billiard balls made of Ivory.
Since acquiring this piece of old paper in March of this year, I've spent countless hours on the web searching for images of a single stripe and double striped number 9 Hyatt composition pool ball with little success. Photographs tend to be too small of the balls in their box, and I simply couldn't locate anybody that had a set of double stripe Hyatts. Those I could locate were pricey - nobody but nobody wanted to sell a single number 9, and I could not afford an entire set. Way out of my league.

I visited the source for the paper (actually, in search of MORE paper), and I mentioned to him that I would like to find someone willing to take a photograph of a number 9 Hyatt, and he drew his breath in and went to the basement of his shop. What he came back with was a box of Hyatt pool balls, including a set of Snooker balls. He entrusted the number 9 to me, so I brought it home with me. Two days ago I visited the local billiard supply store, Paper and Felt Billiard Supply, with the ball and camera in hand, and took photographs of the ball on an antique pool table with green felt. One of the owners, Becky Zapata, turned the lights over the table on, and let me take some photographs.

Armed with the photographs, I came home and proceeded to try various sizes of the ball on my light table to come up with an image that would not only stand on its own, but also reveal enough of the text of the letter to make some sense of what this piece of old paper is all about. I will probably never find another piece of paper quite like this, and I simply couldn't wait to "rack it up."
The contents of the letter itself are interesting. Hubbell & Grote have sent a note to Bateman-Switzer Company of Great Falls, Montana, requesting clarification of their order. --- "...You have neglected to state whether you want the number 9 ball to fill in a set of single or double stripe balls." Could the number 9 ball have exploded? After all, he was single.

BURIED TREASURE '11 - Jamie Ford, Oscar Holden & The Alley Cat Strut

Henry and Keiko's record

Mail Art Thank You to Jamie Ford

Seth Apter of The Altered Page has once again invited blog artists to post a bit of Buried Treasure from their archives. In the previous two editions, I posted MY favorites. This time, I'm posting one that has has been a favorite of readers - music lovers, and Jazz buffs in particular. Well... First of all, Oscar Holden is the only 'real' character in a book which I'll call a love story and historical fiction. The traffic to my blog for this particular post has more than tripled the overall page views, but strangely enough - visitors are here looking for MUSIC, and one song in particular - "The Alley Cat Strut".

The title for the post I've chosen to spotlight was the following:

                  Jamie Ford, Oscar Holden and The Alley Cat Strut

Google rapidly moved my post up into the top two places for any combination of author, musician and song title. Combining them together was an even bigger boost.  If you don't believe me, try putting any combination of the words from my post title into Google search. There's not much art involved in this endeavor, but it did take my art to a different level. How many more records (or rather record labels) can I actually create that people will enjoy?
 
Back on January 24th of this year, my brother-in-law Chuck Pefley put up a post about the Panama Hotel. Chuck generally posts a neat photograph that he's taken in and around Seattle on an almost daily basis. I follow him not only because he's my brother-in-law, but because he's an excellent photographer and a source for models for a number of my pieces of art.  I don't know whether he discovered the book Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet first and the hotel later or the other way around. It really doesn't matter to me whether the chicken or the egg came first. There's a fascinating story to be told about the real Panama, and Chuck discovered it long before I did. I was initially taken in by the gold leaf sign on the doors in his photograph, so I followed up on it. I was hooked.

In late January of this year, my wife and daughter and I were planning on being in Seattle.  I managed to follow the link Chuck had given to the Author Jamie Ford's blog, quickly skimmed it and discovered a small but very meaningful connection which I planned on exploring - after returning home from Seattle. We arrived in Seattle to an empty house - Chuck was at work, and my sister was in Tacoma with my brother Dan, doing what she does best. After unloading the car, I was ready to sit down and take a nap (at my age, it's almost a necessity). I can nap anywhere and in my short trek to the couch, I spotted Jamie's book on my sister's desk, picked it up, and quickly fell in love. No nap. I had discovered a BOOK. A GOOD book. Over the next twenty-four hours I read it. It came very near to being a Sleepless in Seattle moment. I'm a history nut. This book should be read by everyone who wants an understanding of the social upheaval caused by the Second World War in these United States, and the West Coast in particular.

Chuck took us to the Tea Room of the Panama Hotel that evening for a cup of  Rooibos tea, and I was able to experience first hand the basement of the Panama Hotel. The story had taken me right in. After returning to Chuck and Penny's that evening, I read the Author's notes at the back of the book. They're there for a reason: *** Jamie lives in Montana *** As a matter of fact, he lives ninety miles up the road from me.

To tell you why the book was so interesting I have to revisit my childhood, or rather that of my father. As a teenager, my father had spent time at Fort Lincoln, south of Bismarck, North Dakota. My grandfather was an Immigration officer charged with guarding German, Italian and Japanese 'prisoners' at Fort Lincoln during WWII. My father also met my mother while attending St. Mary's Catholic High School in Bismarck, so I knew some of the story of the internments.

The love story Jamie has written is about a young Chinese boy of 12 (Henry) and a Japanese girl (Keiko) of the same age, who both attend an almost exclusively white school in Seattle, and the story begins shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.  A key element in the love story is a 78 recording of a Seattle Jazz legend by the name of Oscar Holden. I will not reveal the significance of the recording. If you haven't read the book, get a copy. Suffice it to say it is a key element in Henry and Keiko's life, and in the belongings of thirty-seven Japanese families in the basement of the Panama Hotel - and the belongs are still there, unclaimed.

Upon returning from Seattle, I had it in my mind to do something special for Jamie Ford. I started my artistic journey by searching the local second hand stores and thrift shops for old 78 records - with sleeves. I purchased a stack of them at a Veteran's thrift store, brought them home and selected one that was in fairly good shape, although the paper sleeve was unusable for my purposes. I also spent a great deal of time on the web, looking for a record label for a recording studio that would have existed in Seattle during the 1940's. I then soaked and removed the label from the vintage 78 and spent several hours creating one of my own with all the 'right stuff' on it. I also took a Ben Franklin brown paper bag and created a paper sleeve for the record. I was assured by Jamie that although Oscar Holden was a very real Jazz musician, the song is a fictional creation of Jamie's. His book is still on the New York Times Best Seller list, and if you haven't read it, you should. But of course I told you that already, didn't I?

I created the record label for a recording that does not exist, but because Jamie had brought some of my childhood family memories back to me, I gave him something tangible the end of March that existed only in his creative 'storyland'. What I received from Jamie in return was a signed First Edition of his wonderful novel of love lost - and found - in the grooves of a 78 record. Thank You Jamie. You did my spirit good. There's more songs yet to be sung.

And just so you can be sure that the piece of mail art I've included above did indeed go through the mail, check out the post he put up on his blog after he received it. He hadn't yet taken the removable label off of it, but you'll get the picture.