A Note From the Scribe
NEXT WEEK:
The Lost Era Transcripts
UPDATED 12/5/2019
Welcome to The Lost Canyon Project. This post marks one year
of the Lost Canyon Project Blog being on line here at Blogspot.
If you are new to the blog
or are just visiting, you may feel like you’re stepping into the middle
of an odd, and pointless story. You may wonder what exactly is going on here.
I, J.W. MacLean, am
your narrator. The subject at hand is
the artwork, shows, and stories of my late friend, Pete Hampton. (1940—2018)
Pete was a painter of
Nature. The subject matter of his paintings was the Puente Hills in mid-century
La Habra Heights, and Whittier California. He created shows of his work as part
of his life-long crusade to save the hills from development. Pete was one of a
kind. He was an eccentric genius, the genuine item, in real life.
I met Pete in 1963 when
I was 11 years old, but I had lost contact with him over the years, and by 2017
I had not seen Pete in over 15 years’ time.
August of 2017 I
accepted an invitation to join my wife and her friends on a trip to The Sawdust
Festival in Laguna Beach. Accepting that invitation was the first step into a wildly
improbable, almost eerie web of
coincidences that led to me searching for, and finding Pete Hampton, and then
coming into possession of his entire body of artwork.
The story of how I found Pete, and all that follows, including
how this project came into being begins:
HERE: [link]
HERE: [link]
The first part of The Lost Canyon Project was photographing, and creating a catalog of
the nearly 900 paintings and drawings that Pete left.
Now, with that complete, and the blog at the one year mark,
the task has changed.
I and many other
people believe that Pete Hampton deserves a place among California’s, and
indeed, America’s great regional
painters. We see in this work a transcendent quality that sets it in the realm
of genius. I talk to Richard and Geri Hampton, as well as a few other people
about this. Sometimes we jokingly refer to ourselves as “The Believers.”
Of course, the goal of The Lost Canyon Project
is to see Pete Hampton gain the recognition that we believe he deserves.
My wife and I are speaking to people, and working the
contacts that we have in the art community. Truth to tell, we’ve left some few
people very impressed, but nothing has played out any further. We’re still
workin’ on it.
And at this point in the project I don’t have anything as
exciting to show as a new archive of paintings that haven’t been seen in
decades. Nonetheless, I am working on
something wonderful.
As I mentioned, Pete Hampton created shows of his work. Pete’s
shows were strange affairs, consisting of hundreds of slides of his paintings along
with a narrative, and sound track on reel to reel tape.
His major work, a story about the Whittier Hills called "The Lost Canyon Trip", is intact. We have all the slides and tapes. But it is Pete’s other project, the never completed Lost Era show, that has become my focus for now. The Lost Era is the story of Pete Hampton's early childhood in the hills above La Habra California in the early 1940's.
His major work, a story about the Whittier Hills called "The Lost Canyon Trip", is intact. We have all the slides and tapes. But it is Pete’s other project, the never completed Lost Era show, that has become my focus for now. The Lost Era is the story of Pete Hampton's early childhood in the hills above La Habra California in the early 1940's.
Last November when I was going through the second archive of
paintings I discovered the pictures from Pete’s nightmare story “The Deep Dark
Hole”. Now, jump back to 1964. Pete used to scare the hell out of us kids with
this weird story and the hideous pictures that went with it.
What we did not realize, then, was that the nightmare story
was a segment from the larger Lost Era show. Similarly, when I discovered the
Deep Dark Hole story written out in longhand in Pete’s journal, I transcribed
just the monster stuff. I left the rest of the notebook for later, and moved on
with the photography project.
But when I got back to the notebook, recently, I discovered
that a great deal, if not all of the Lost Era narrative is written out in very
neat longhand, in pencil on looseleaf paper. I also discovered that I had
missed a lot of material in the haste of just working through the project.
Later on in the photography I also discovered the eleventh Archive, which is a treasure trove of Lost Era paintings.
Later on in the photography I also discovered the eleventh Archive, which is a treasure trove of Lost Era paintings.
So the task at hand is transcribing the Lost Era texts, and
matching Pete’s narrative with the paintings as best I can. It is slow going.
When I have completed enough of the work in progress I will,
of course, share it here on the Lost Canyon Project.
In the meanwhile the blog will continue to feature a new
painting from the Catalog each Monday morning.
Thank you for stopping by.
J.W. MacLean
