First Visit After Many Years

Arc2P041, Paper, 1960, 8 X 10"

“near La Habra Bowling Alley Late on Friday night I witnessed an accident in La Habra”

(later note) I painted this from “memory,” of when a car crashed into a huge pole (Drunk Driver) I even captured sparks of Molten Metal raining down on Whittier Blvd.. I was a kid of only 20 when we had bought a new house in La Habra

 

<Previous: Finding Pete (the web of coincidence, cntd) 

First Visit After Many Years

Pete's brother Richard told me that Pete was living in a seniors' complex only a few miles east of where I live. I drove out there, and spoke with the manager. As I mentioned last week, she would neither confirm nor deny that Pete lived there. Nonetheless, she took my phone number. A couple days later I got a call.

Pete was indeed there; he remembered me and was looking forward to seeing me. 

The next day I made the short drive out to Brea. The manager let me in and directed me to Pete's apartment on the third floor. Afterwords I wrote Dion Wright:

9/1/2017

"I got the OK from the apartment manager, and yesterday I paid a visit to Pete Hampton. I hadn't seen him in well over a decade. But I knew it was Pete when I knocked at the door, and after several minutes I could hear him shouting something about "Burning in Hell! Burning in Hell..."

Pete is 77 years old, I think. He's bent over nearly double, He's pale, has a scruffy, white beard, and his hair hangs down to the middle of his back.  I brought my camera, but once I was there it didn't seem appropriate to be snapping pics. He had no problem remembering who I was.  He's mostly coherent, but he mumbles on in an odd sort of spiraling stream of consciousness where he'll drift from old stories, ranting about assorted random stuff, passing back to his dreams, apocalyptic nature prophecies, predictions he made that have come true, and stuff about living to two hundred because he saw it in National Geographic, and back to the hills, weather, recording thunder... In another age and time he might have been a Jeremiah, or held as some sort of sage. Your phrase "Divinely mad" fits. I asked him a couple of times if he remembered going to Laguna, and meeting you, but he couldn't recall it. The memory may arise later. We'll see. The guy has no one other than the caregivers. His brother and sister in law are the only relatives, and they're somewhere back east.  I don't know what has happened with either his show, or his artwork, but mention of both things surfaced in his ramblings. I will be making regular visits out there. I'm at that stage in the game where where I want to hang on to as many threads as I can. I've known Pete since 1963. I have always- from the time I first met him- believed that he is some kind of a genius- Sort of a later day Van Gogh. His work, his shows have always, to my eye, had that "something". But not everyone sees it, and I wonder if the work speaks to me only because I knew the artist. Hard to tell. "

 

Over the course of the next year I visited with Pete about once a week. I got in touch with his case manager from county Senior Services, and his Home Health assistant. I stayed in touch with Rick and Geri, and Jeff G. as well. 

The visits with Pete weren't easy.

<continued>

Archive 2: Sketches and Deep Dark Hole Pictures 

Archive 2 consists of a box labeled "Sketches and Deep Dark Hole pictures." Most of the paintings in Archive 2, are sketches, but there are some fascinating earlier works among them as well. We'll get to the Deep Dark Hole soon.

 Arc2P043, cardboard, 15 X 7"

Arc2P048, "Pole and Water Shed", cardboard, 15 X 10" 

Arc2P058, matboard, 13 1/2 X 8 3/4" 

Arc2P058, matboard, 13 1/2 X 8 3/4"

And finally, this scene from "The Lost Canyon Trip". We will get to "The Lost Canyon Trip" show in later posts. At some point in the project these pictures will be gathered into a single Lost Canyon archive. For now, I'm entering them as I find them.

Arc2P053, paper, 8 1/2 X 16 3/4" 

Next week: A year of infrequent visits