A Greater Hand

A Greater Hand

<Last week: Revisions and Slow

I remember mentioning something about winding up archive 12 this last week. And I did. Wind up archive 12, that is. In fact, I just got it done a couple hours ago. It is a little after nine o’clock Saturday night as I sit here at the keyboard.

Took me all damn week to do it.

 The task started with re-formatting the catalogue of paintings. Reformatting was just lots of mouse work: re-size images, change page breaks, make sure labels, captions, and notes are all consistent. I like working. I complain a little, but I really don’t mind this kind of dull clerical stuff. And it was all going along pretty smoothly. Was.

  I got all the entries in the catalogue re-sized, and proceeded to put the last 80 or so pictures in the catalogue.

When I finished entering pic number 659 I noticed that the serial numbers on the .jpg files, and labels on the pictures suddenly jumped from arc12P659 to arc12P670.

 Shoulda’ been P660.

I made an error consisting of a single key stroke. Then I multiplied that error by 63 times. The count on all the serial numbers and, worse, all the labels was off by ten. I noticed this on Tuesday of last week. Like I said, I just got done fixing it all a couple hours ago.[insert angry face emoticon]

I was pissed. I set to work with  Pete’s voice in my head.  Pete could be volatile. He was subject to overwhelming anger over frustrations and setbacks, and he wasn’t one to hold it all in. I could all too easily imagine Pete being caught in a similar fix. I could see him shaking his fist at the heavens, and hear him shouting one of his favorite curses: “YOU TRICK OF A LIFE!”

Actually, it kinda’ made me laugh. It’s hard to stay pissed when you’re laughing. But I still had to fix all those entries.

This week I looked through some message files from last year. It was a year ago, July 26, that I got the phone call from Pete’s sister-in-law,  Jerri, and dropped what I was doing to drive over to St. Jude’s. The visit with Pete was as horrible as it was brief. I never saw anyone so sick.  He was gone that night.

 Yesterday,  I got this note from Pete’s brother, Richard:

John...Peter left his worldly bounds to begin his new journey one year ago today. Peter was a believer in the after life and judgement day. Looking at Peters life holistically, I truly believe he will get the well deserved peace he never experienced on this planet.

 All I can add to that is “Amen.”

Pete seldom talked about it, but he had his own  deep and private faith, and he did believe in God and in Jesus. Writing this brings to mind a snip of conversation I had with Pete when I was in the angry atheist phase of being young and stupid. I asked Pete, “If God’s so powerful how come I can insult him all I want and he doesn’t do anything about it?”

Pete simply answered, “He will.”

And Pete turned out to be right. He did, and over the years I have become a believer, myself.

And that dovetails into a subject that Richard and I talk about pretty much every time we touch bases: the notion that there is a Greater Hand at work in our lives. The Voice is real if only we will open our ears to hear it.

I look at Pete’s easel set up in my den, and consider the months of work that have brought me to this point, and will continue into the foreseeable future. Consider the blog, the photo archives, the catalogue now at over 400 pages. A year ago, all this stuff was days away, and I had no idea that any of it was going to happen. I consider the  long and tenuous string of events that began two years ago, and how those events have converged into my sitting here at the keyboard this very moment.

“John, do you want to go to the Sawdust Festival?...”

There is a pattern that flows through all things, and there is a purpose underlying that pattern.  Call it what you will, the Greater Hand is real, and there are things in our lives that happen for a reason, and to a purpose. 

So for now the project is up to date, and I am ready to move on with the last couple of collections. Tonight, or tomorrow I’ll set up for the next photo session. By next week we should have Pigrats.

Pigrats!

Next: The Long Night>

Revisions and Slow

Revisions and Slow

<last week: nightmares in the Whittier Hills

I had hoped to be well underway on photographing the pictures from archive 13, but, you know- life intervenes. I had to do some revisions on the Word document, which led to revisions in the photo album, and that ate up all the Lost Canyon time this last week. We’ll continue this week  with some more paintings from “The Lost Canyon Trip”.

The Lost Canyon Project is actually three different projects going on at once. The first is photographing the pictures, and processing them into digital photo albums.  The second is creating a catalogue of the work.  It’s here that I got hung up this last week. 

I've been laying out the catalogue with three thumbnail photos plus notes per page. As it turns out, at three pictures per page the thumbnails were just too small.  So I’ve been re-formatting the pages at two pictures per page.

Problem is, I have about 320 pictures done out of 733 photographed so far. This is going to take a few sessions to finish, but it will be well worth the effort.

The third part of The Lost Canyon Project is this blog, and my efforts to promote it, and in so doing, promote Pete’s work. 
I’ve made some calls, sent some links and emails, but beyond that, who knows? I’ll be able to shift my focus better when the other tasks are completed.

There is one more box of  Lost Canyon Trip paintings yet to photograph. After that there is a bunch of large framed pieces at the storage. And after that? There will be a phase in the project that follows all the picture taking, and cataloguing but I don’t yet know what that phase will be. 

 This part of the project remains rather vague, and undefined. We shall see what follows. But for now, enjoy this week’s selection of pictures. More stuff next week.

Next: A Greater Hand>

Nightmares in the Whittier Hills

Nightmares in the Whittier Hills

<Last week: Deep in the Whittier Hills

The photography is finished, and all the pictures are processed for Archive 12, “Paintings From The Lost Canyon Trip 1962- 1970.” At 145 paintings and drawings Archive 12 is the largest single collection of Pete Hampton’s paintings so far. At this point there are 733 paintings and drawings recorded. The next archive is easily as large as this one. I'm guessing the total will come out to somewhere just under a thousand pieces all told. We shall see. 

For those who are just joining us We are exploring the artwork of Pete Hampton, 1940-2018. The paintings we’re looking at are all from Pete’s masterwork, The Lost Canyon Trip. 


 Follow THIS LINK for the background information on the Lost Canyon Trip show.  It’s fascinating stuff.

The paintings in this archive were created specifically as scenes in Pete’s multi-media slideshow. I attended showings of The Lost Canyon Trip four or five times during the 1960’s and 70’s. Of course, many years have passed since I last saw the show. Nonetheless, I do remember these scenes well. 

In the show, a teen-age Pete, and his pal Jeff are camping overnight in Pete’s hut up in the Lost Canyon. During the course of the night the boys have nightmares. Dreams were of profound importance to Pete.

This is Jeff’s nightmare:

…And Pete’s:

 

 

 

 

  

But later on...

Next Week: A look at #13