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Bellflower High School Alumni Association
Mesa AZ Valentine Luncheon 2001 and Fritzie's Birthday
A Memorial and Tribute to Ezee Two

The music accompanying this page is "Indian Trails", an original composition by Lawrence Goodman. Click Here to Play

PAINTED DESERT
16x20, Oil, © 1995

This building is in the middle of nowhere, in the California high desert between El Mirage and the Palmdale area. It appears to have been a gas station or diner in some long-forgotten era. I wanted to portray the emptiness and desolation... a gutted, abandoned building, covered with graffiti, a lone Joshua tree, two hawks fighting in the vastness of the desert sky... and nothing else visible for miles and miles. This is now a piece of history; the building as depicted here no longer exists. It is now a major movie set. It was first redone as a diner and appeared in one recent movie, then more was added and it appeared in another one (sorry, I can't recall the names, but I will find out and make note here later). The graffiti in the painting does not glorify the desecration of much of the desert with cryptic scrawls... I changed it to include something related to each of my loved ones and the words "Viva Vieja" for myself (that translates as "long live the old woman.") The title of the painting refers to the graffiti.

SPRING AT AUNT MABEL'S
20x24, Oil, © 1995

This place will always be Aunt Mabel's to us because she built it and lived there for many years, raising acres and acres of apples, livestock, children, etc. The child is my youngest daughter, Ali, at about age two. Aunt Mabel was famous "up home" - a tiny woman with blue hair, in her early hundreds, now gone to her reward, who could often be seen tootling around on the mountain roads, peering valiantly through the steering wheel. There is a saying there, when one sees a car being driven erratically, "Well, that's either Aunt Mabel or a drunk Indian..."

The next two are what I often call my "junk" paintings.... just slapping paint on canvas and playing with color. These were in response to a show where the winners appeared to have done just that... kind of the "dead fish and eyeball" or "dunk your dog in paint and let him shake it off in the studio" school of painting. And wouldn't you KNOW it??? I put these in shows and won AWARDS for them! Sheeeesh... I guess that underscores the idea that we all see differently. I always put in something at least somewhat realistic, though, so that people don't say, "My five-year-old could do THAT."

THE OLD ONES
15x30, Oil, © 1995

Two very ancient pieces of pottery from New Mexico...and a bunch of color.

ACROSS THE WASHITA
16x20, Oil, © 1995

This painting mourns the loss of Indian men, women, and children in the massacre at the Washita River by the white soldiers. That is why there are no people in the painting...they were all murdered.

Like the Holocaust and other atrocities of man against man, we must always remember so that these things can never happen again, and we must do what we can to right the wrongs. But we did not do them and they were mostly not done to us, personally; we must put them down and move on. It is my belief that the only road toward peace and harmony begins at one-on-one, We must love, respect, and care for each other as individuals before we can have harmony as large groups.

Haiku for White River

Dreaming, heart listens,
Songs cry softly on the wind
Our ancestors dance.

An Interesting Story

When NASA was preparing for the Apollo project, they did some astronaut training on a Navajo Indian reservation. One day, a Navajo elder and his son were herding sheep and came across the space crew.

The old man, who only spoke Navajo, asked a question, which his son translated. "What are the guys in the big suits doing?"

A member of the crew said they were practicing for their trip to the moon. The old man got really excited and asked if he could send a message to the moon with the astronauts. Recognizing a promotional opportunity for the spin-doctors, the NASA folks found a tape recorder. After the old man recorded his message, they asked the son to translate. He refused.

So the NASA reps brought the tape to the reservation, where the rest of the tribe listened and laughed, but refused to translate the elder's message to the moon. Finally, NASA called in an official government translator. He reported that the moon message said, "Watch out for these guys; they've come to steal your land."

Let's go on to two pages of newer paintings...and after that I'll tell you why I think you can do this, my all too brief history as an artist, some of the obstacles I have had to overcome, and show you a picture of myself and some of my wonderful family.... Come on along... just grab a hold of that brush once more...

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