Pictures to the Lost Era, 1962-‘78

Pictures to The Lost Era, 1962--'78

<Last week: Closing in on the Light

At one hundred sixteen pictures, archive 11 is, so far,  the largest single collection of work that Pete assembled. It took a long session with the camera to get the raw material, and several very long Photoshop  sessions to get the digital archive complete. 

 There were clashes between these great creatures over the lost avocado forests. Cerradda and a fire flarer in a violent fight. Part of the canyon is swept by raging fire only to be put out as we go into one of those great storms of the dark ages- 1941-45 when everything was green then. Indeed it wasn't the drab sunny California as we know it today.

And complete it is. The count, at this point, is five hundred eighty paintings and drawings. The pictures and notes from archive 11 still need to be entered into the catalogue, but the documentation is all done. The catalogue work is purely secretarial. It goes more quickly than processing the pictures.

Pete never finished The Lost Era show. I remember that he talked about it pretty frequently, but I don’t recall much other than that the show was about his childhood in La Habra Heights in the 1940’s. So I’ve decided I need to add one more chapter to The Lost Canyon Project. 

I have Pete’s notebook, “Script to the Lost Era and Lost Canyon Trip 1962—63”. If there is a key to any of these sequences of  paintings it will be in here. So I’ve begun transcribing the notebook. 

Pete had very good penmanship, but it’s not easy to follow a long piece of cursive writing done in pencil. Too, Pete’s stream of consciousness tends to meander all over the place. Oddly enough, it’s often easier to just copy the words off the page instead of trying to read them.  It’s much easier to read the text later in typeface. I should have some notable stuff to share in the upcoming posts.

We do know that The Lost Era is the story of both old La Habra, and a very young Pete Hampton. We got a look at Pete’s childhood world in the nightmares of The Deep Dark Hole.  Whether in dreams or daylight, fantastic creatures inhabited the world of Pete’s 
 imagination. 

 The birds featured in today’s post are the “Telephonepolies” from The Lost Era. 

I remember Pete showing me some of this stuff a very long time ago. There were many different kinds of Telephonepolies. Most of them were bad news.

 Cerradda smashing oil derek.

Incidentally, The Deep Dark Hole story will be revised again with some new and very cool pictures. Next week, we'll look at the Heights way back in the day.

Next: Rainy Nights>