Reception

My photos came out awful. These were taken by our good friend Linda Oberholtzer. 

She came with her father, Yoshio Nakamura, who is, among other things, a  WWII veteran, and an outstanding artist himself. 

 

 

 With Yoshio Nakamura

 

 

I left the Canon SLR at home, and brought the little compact.  The LED lights in the gallery are bright, but set to a warm yellow. Cell phone cameras compensate for this just fine, and the Digital Rebel does OK with a little tweaking in Photoshop, but the older compact camera needs a white balance setting, which I did not make.  So all my pics are uselessly yellow, and P/shop didn't help much. Light should be light, but LED lights are like artificial flavors, or recorded sound. There is something, well, artificial about them. I took pictures of the other artists, and their work, but none of pics I took came out worth a damn. Bummer. I'll try to get some photos later on from some of the other people who were there, and get a post up later this week.

 

 My work was very well received. It is all kinds of cool hearing people tell you how much they like what you've done.  Of course, nobody is going to walk up  and say, "Y'know, this stuff is really mediocre. Why don't you get into something you'd be good at." Nonetheless, when you hear enough people slinging adjectives, and calling your work amazing, you get the suspicion that maybe they aren't just BS'ing to be nice. Maybe I really am one of the real guys. Humility is a difficult virtue to cultivate. On the one hand, no one likes a braggart. On the other hand, the "aww, shucks, it ain't nothin" bit is every bit as annoying.  

The point of balance is knowing how good you are, and how good you aren't. If you're a world's champion, it's no brag to say so. If you're a participation trophy recipient, it's cheating to call yourself a "prize-winning" anything.

 

I had the opportunity to meet with William Ohanesian, who did a documentary film on Turnbull Canyon Road, which snakes over the Whittier Hills. Turnbull Canyon is where many of Pete Hampton's paintings were done. There are many legends, and spooky stories about the canyon, and the road. William came to the reception to meet with me, and talk about Pete Hampton's art, and the work I did with The Lost Canyon, and Lost Era projects. The folks from the Whittier Museum and Historical Society are also interested in this work. His visit gave me a chance to duck out into the parking lot for a while so I could show him the Lost Era book, and the catalogue. William seems like a great guy, and we hit it off right from the gate. I'm looking forward to meeting with him again very soon. Mary and I will be going to see the film next Saturday at the museum.

 

 

It is odd how very exhausting these events can be. All I had to do was put on clean clothes, remember my hearing aids, stand around for photos, and talk to the visitors. The reception ran for three hours. 

 

Harriett Foley, one of my favorite people. (This gal is a trip, and a half!)

 

Add an extra hour to help Mary and Harriett clean up, and we were on our way over to California Grill for dinner. Our friend, Holly joined us.

 California Grill used to be a favorite stop for Mary and me. They had a London Broil served rare with red wine gravy that just gave your taste buds orgasms. Times have changed, and not for the better. The London Broil is now a pot roast with gravy. The meat was microwaved, and the gravy came from a mix.  Holly just got a calamari appetizer. The tab for two meals with wine, plus the appetizer just barely ducked the hundred dollar mark, but I can't blame them for the prices. It's like everything else in this age and time. Sometimes I get very angry about it all; other times it just makes me sad.

We got home around nine thirty. We were both of us just dizzy tired and stumbled into bed. Joys of post-middle age. Sunday was cold, and gray, and wet, a perfect day to just flop and reflect on the Good. And despite everything, we have much, so much to be grateful for. I have been so richly blessed.