Eyes... and more eyes

 

"Eyes of the woman standing behind the grassy knoll in Dallas in 1963"
Charcoal on Paper, c. 2007
2 x 6 inches
Sold

"Eyes of The Morrigan"
Charcoal on Paper, c. 2007
1 x 2.5 inches
Sold

"Eyes of Frida Kahlo"
Charcoal on Paper, c. 2007
1 x 1.5 inches
Sold

"Eyes of Frida Kahlo"
Charcoal on Paper, c. 2007
1 x 2 inches
Sold

"Eyes of Queen Boudicca, also known as Bodicea"
Charcoal and colored pencils on Paper, c. 2007
2 x 4.5 inches
Sold

"Eyes of Humphrey Bogart"
Charcoal on Paper, c. 2007
.75 x 1.5 inches
Sold  

"Eyes of a small New Orleans girl after Katrina"
Charcoal on Paper, c. 2007
.75 x 1 inches
Sold

"Eyes of Lauren Bacall"
Charcoal on Paper, c. 2007
.75 x 1.5 inches
Sold

"Eyes of John F. Kennedy"
Charcoal on Paper, c. 2007
1.5 x 4 inches
Sold

"Eyes of John F. Kennedy II"
Charcoal on Paper, c. 2007
1 x 3 inches
Sold

"Eyes of John F. Kennedy III"
Charcoal on Paper, c. 2007
1 x 3 inches
Sold

"Eyes of Horus"
Charcoal and colored pencil on Paper, c. 2007
2 x 3 inches
Sold

"Eyes of a Happy Man"
Charcoal and colored pencil on Paper, c. 2007
1 x 5 inches
Sold

"Eyes of Africa"
Charcoal and colored pencil on Paper, c. 2007
1 x 2 inches
Sold

"Eyes of a Woman who in 1994 sent me naked photos of herself"
Charcoal on Paper, c. 2007
1 x 3 inches
Sold

"Eyes of Very Stormy Woman"
Charcoal and colored pencils on Paper, c. 2007
2 x 4.5 inches
Sold

"Eyes of a woman about to make a mistake"
Charcoal and colored pencils on Paper, c. 2007
2 x 4.5 inches
Sold

"Eyes of Very Strong Woman"
Charcoal and colored pencils on Paper, c. 2007
1.5 x 4.5 inches
Sold

"Eyes of Mr. Spock"
Charcoal and colored pencils on Paper, c. 2007
2 x 4.5 inches
Sold

"Eyes of Diego Rivera"
Charcoal and colored pencils on Paper, c. 2007
2 x 4.5 inches
Sold

"Eyes of Paul McCartney"
Charcoal and colored pencils on Paper, c. 2007
2 x 4.5 inches
Sold

"Eyes of Frida Kahlo"
Charcoal on Paper, c. 2007
1 x 2.5 inches
Sold

"Eyes of Bettie Page"
Charcoal on Paper, c. 2007
1 x 2 inches
Sold

"Eyes of Bettie Page"
Charcoal on Paper, c. 2007
2 x  4 inches
Sold

"Eyes of Barack Obama"
Charcoal on Paper, c. 2007
1 x 3 inches
Sold

"Eyes of Anderson"
Charcoal and Colored Pencils on Paper, c. 2011
1 x 3 inches

"Eyes of Bettie Page"
Charcoal on Paper, c. 2007
2 x  4 inches
Sold

"Eyes of Frida Kahlo"
Charcoal on Paper, c. 2007
1 x 3 inches
Sold

"Eyes of Frida Kahlo"
Charcoal on Paper, c. 2007
0.5 x 1 inches
Sold

"Eyes of The Morrigan"
Charcoal and colored pencils on Paper, c. 2007
1 x 3 inches
Sold

"Eyes of an Irish Woman"
Charcoal and colored pencils on Paper, c. 2007
1 x 3 inches
Sold

"Eyes of a woman with an eye freckle"
Charcoal and colored pencils on Paper, c. 2007
1 x 3 inches
Sold

"Eyes of a Sad Woman"
Charcoal and colored pencils on Paper, c. 2007
1 x 3 inches
Sold

"Eyes of Maeve"
Charcoal and colored pencils on Paper, c. 2005
1 x 4 inches
Sold

"Eyes of a Small Child"
Charcoal and colored pencils on Paper, c. 2007
1 x 3 inches
Sold

"Eyes of a Power Lawyer"
Charcoal and colored pencils on Paper, c. 2007
1 x 3 inches
Sold

"Eyes of a Power Lawyer"
Charcoal and colored pencils on Paper, c. 2007
1 x 3 inches
Sold

"Eyes of a Professional Athlete"
Charcoal and colored pencils on Paper, c. 2007
1 x 4 inches
Sold

"Eyes of Candy"
Charcoal and colored pencils on Paper, c. 2007
1 x 4 inches
Sold

"Eyes of an Airport Hustler"
Charcoal and colored pencils on Paper, c. 2007
1 x 4 inches
Sold

"Eyes of The Morrigan"
Charcoal and colored pencils on Paper, c. 2007
1 x 4 inches
Sold

"Eyes of a Famous Porn Star"
Charcoal and colored pencils on Paper, c. 2007
1 x 4 inches
Sold

"Eyes of an Artist"
Charcoal on Paper, c. 2007
1 x 4 inches
Sold

"Eyes of a Sad Woman"
Charcoal on Paper, c. 2007
1 x 4 inches
Sold

Hotel California at auction again!

"Hotel California" shows up for auction in Ohio of all places! This is an art school assignment from 1976!

https://www.ebth.com/items/12072487-f-lennox-campello-jr-acrylic-painting-hotel-california-1976

Mortgage and Rent Relief

In accordance with the Arts and Humanities Capital Funding Emergency Amendment Act of 2020, the Commission on the Arts and Humanities (CAH) has established the FY21 FAB: Mortgage & Rent Relief (FAB-R) grant program to assist DC-based arts and humanities organizations with rent or mortgage expenses. Funding is being offered in response to the financial impacts related to COVID-19 to help ensure arts and humanities organizations remain in place, vibrant, and viable to open when safe to do so. The complete Request for Applications (RFA) is available online.

Submission Deadline: Friday | January 29, 2021 | 11:59 pm

Prospective applicants should read through the Request for Applications (RFA) in its entirety before initiating an application.

Merry Quarantine Christmas!

 

The Giving Season, 2007 David FeBland

The Christ, the Last Supper, and the missing afikoman

A few years ago, before governors in many states made it a Covidian crime, I was invited to a Seder meal by a friend who is also quite a well-known Philadelphia area artist and an even better known curator.

Somehow the conversation turned to Christ’s Last Supper, which of course was a Seder meal, and she observed how most paintings depicting The Christ’s last meal showed regular bread instead of the unleavened bread required by Jewish tradition to celebrate the Passover. This is very interesting to the pedantic part of me, already troubled by the fact that nearly every depiction of The Christ that was presented to me in art school depicted mostly Northern European-looking Christs, rather than the Semitic Middle East Israelite that He was.

And now I wonder, are there any contemporary depictions (or any depiction) of the last supper which depict this last Seder for Christ in a more historically correct perspective?

I am sure that there exist versions of the unknown supper created by pedantic, history-aware artists of all sorts.

Religious art has pretty much been pushed aside by the postmodernists, in what can best be described as a self-mutilation of intelligent subject matter. It would be interesting to see a new contemporary view of religious art, and allow us to discover how today’s artists would interpret our diverse religious backgrounds.

Is that a great idea for an up-and-coming curator or gallery to take on or what? But I want to see The Christ as a Semite and I want to see the middle of the matzoth on the Seder plate broken in two with the larger piece hidden, to be used later as the afikoman.

GASP at Artists in Middleburg

 

Earlier today I stopped at the Artists in Middleburg art gallery in Middleburg, Virginia (which is one of the nicest and cutest little towns less than an hour's drive from the DMV.

The Artists in Middleburg (AiM) is "a 501c3 nonprofit organization. Based out of a small art gallery in Middleburg, AiM hosts themed exhibitions each month for local artists as well as offers art classes, from Plein Air experiences to sculpting instruction."

On exhibition was GASP (GREAT ART SMALL PRICES), which features artwork under $500 and which runs through January 10, 2021.  This is a terrific show, loaded with exceptional art and clearly worth the short drive to Middleburg between now and Christmas if you're looking for that most super special of gifts: original art!

The show was juried - not sure who the juror was, but as readers of my writing know by now, I love to not only tell you who the prizewinners were, but also who I'd would have given the prizes to... this is always a healthy exercise (in my opinion anyway), as it is a great example of a Campellification of that well-established art saying: "art is eyes of the beholder... in this case "it depends who the juror is."

By now I have juried hundreds of art shows at all levels of the art cabal food scale, and I am always honored to be a juror, no matter for what of for whom.  I am also an opinionated juror, but that opinion always comes from a good place.

Best of Show was awarded by the juror of GASP to Greek Man, a stone, Smalti, 14k gold, and Swarovksi crystals mixed media piece (14.25 x 13 x .5 and selling for $475) by artist Charlene Sloan.

First place went to Winter's Day End, a lovely oil landscape painting by Laura Hopkins.

The second place award went to Hanging on the Vine, Mixed Media (20 x 25, $500) by Maribe Chandler-Gardiner, and third place to a spectacular sunset oil painting by Sharon Clinton titled (of course) Sunset (oil, 12x19 and $375).

Congratulations to all the prizewinners - well deserved!

Now... for my personal choices.  

First and foremost, I really, really liked all the paintings in the show by that same Sharon Clinton, including that prizewinning Sunset, and also After the Storm, a highly demanding and superbly executed small (8x10 inches) oil - I would have chosen either of those two as Best in Show.

That's Sunset to the right - showcasing the power of color when executed by a talented painter.

The paint application shows an exuberance of that certainty in applying and mixing paint that only comes after a thousand mistakes - each one a learning episode in the glorious path to dominance over the medium.

Another prizewinner for me would have been Jill Garity - her End of Summer (Oil, 16 x 12 for $485) was exceptionally well painted and clearly she has mastered also the palette knife . Garity writes that most of her paintings are "a combination of places that are both real and imagined.They are begun with rough shapes and a pattern of light and dark and are then developed with layers of opaque paint and glazes. Underlayers peeking through providing interest and visual texture. Use of the palette knife in places also provides a randomness that provokes creativity and often takes me on a path I had not planned."  Another winner would have been Contemplating Jackson Falls (Oil, 8 x 6 for $285).

Besides Clinton and Garity, an artist named Anne Reid also caught my eye.  Reid is what my art school professors would have described as a "painter's painter." Her brushwork is forceful and skilled, and it is the application of paint that makes her work stand out.  I quite liked Afternoon Drive (Mixed Media, 5 x 7 for $175) and The Farmer (Mixed Media, 9 x 12 for $450).

That's The Farmer to the right - note the way that Reid has decided to define the road just trod by the tractor.  Notice that colors, and shapes, and texture define the road, in an abstract way that once inside the entire composition becomes a highly realistic road! And yet, if you put a roughly square frame around that foreground road, you have quite an intelligent abstract work!

What else did I like?

I liked Margaret Cassidy's photos, Peggy Weed's Chicks (which was the rest of the Campello family's top pick!), Karen Merkin's Purple Onion, and a few others.

Some constructive criticism: I want several of the artists in this show - including some of my prizewinners - to read this article from over a decade ago: How to Sign Your Artwork.

This is a jewel of a small, intimate show in a memorable small town full of cool little shops and top of the line restaurants - the fried oysters at King Street Oyster Bar are really good, and the Thai food at Thaiverse Restaurant was among the best Thai food that our family has ever had.

Opportunity for Photographers

 The Shining a Light International Photography Contest is organized by the Muhammad Ali Center. 

The topic of this year's contest is “Water”. 

The Muhammad Ali Center requests submitted photographs pertinent to the above described topic. Images should relate to women's work, lives, sanitation, and hygiene involving water. 

Photographs from this contest will be used to produce a documentary-style exhibition of 30-45 photographs, which will be exhibited at the Muhammad Ali Center in Louisville, Kentucky beginning Saturday, March 6, 2021.

For more details, please see the section "contest theme" here.

No Entry Fee. 

Details here.

Academy graduate

As I noted earlier, when I was in the Navy I did dozens of illustrations and cartoons for many newspapers (such as The Stars & Stripes), and sketches of my shipmates and other US Navy sailors in ports in the US and European ports. Most of these drawings, cartoons, and paintings were given away to my shipmates over the years, but I also kept many of them - this one has been in storage for over 40 years and was recently found! Some of you asked for more... so here is another one!

This one is from a series of cartoons that I did for a base newspaper where the main character was a sentient money changing machine.

Opportunity for Photographers

The Shining a Light International Photography Contest is organized by the Muhammad Ali Center. 

The topic of this year's contest is “Water”. 

The Muhammad Ali Center requests submitted photographs pertinent to the above described topic. Images should relate to women's work, lives, sanitation, and hygiene involving water. 

Photographs from this contest will be used to produce a documentary-style exhibition of 30-45 photographs, which will be exhibited at the Muhammad Ali Center in Louisville, Kentucky beginning Saturday, March 6, 2021.

For more details, please see the section "contest theme" here.

No Entry Fee. 

Details here.

Adrian and Mila

Adrian and Mila
2020 by F. Lennox Campello

 

Birth Control Glasses

 One of the things that every Navy sailor or veterans knows about is the curious case of Navy-issued glasses, known to sailors as "Birth Control Glasses" or "BCG."

Somehow these nerdy glasses became hip in the 2000s, a great testimonial to the overwhelming power of Millennials and follow-on generations to enjoy what their predecessors abhorred and detested.

Upon arrival to boot camp, one of the first things confiscated - if you wore glasses - were your nice, hopefully cool "civilian" glasses. They were almost overnight replaced with BCGs, which had the magical power of turning anyone, no matter how beautiful or handsome, into an immediate geek, not worth procreation.

Therefore, one of the first things that most sailors then did upon graduation from boot camp was to head to the Navy Exchange, find the eye doctor, and order some "civilian" glasses. Only those unfortunately born to be nerds, kept their BCGs, and I suspect that the BCGs and their original glasses were quite similar.

When I was stationed in San Diego in the late 1970s, our gang of squids and leather necks used to have as part of our group a Third Class Hospital Corpsman (HM3) who worked at the medical facility next to the San Diego boot camp area, which I think also served the Marine Corps boots in the Marine base on Barnett Avenue next to the Navy base then in Point Loma and now closed for many years.

This HM3 managed to have access to all the BCGs that boots would discard when they got their civilian glasses at the Point Loma base, and he'd rescue them from the garbage dumps and save them in a box.

Why would an HM3 save BCGs by the dozens each week you ask?

Each weekend, my then girlfriend Andrea, who was the only one among us losers who actually had a car, would pack her Toyota with my friends and I and drive us to the border with Mexico, where we'd head for Tijuana, or "TJ" as sailors call it, for a night of drinking and fooling around - is was essentially the only option for the under 21 crowd, as back then the only place around San Diego where a Navy sailor under 21 could get a drink was at the Enlisted Club on base (weird to think that back then a sailor could drink booze on base, but not out in town if you were under 21).

Going to the Enlisted Club deserves another story... suffice to say that usually there were usually a few hundred sailors and Marines in there and four women. If you brought a girl to the club, you better be ready to fight a few dozen drunks messing with your girl every few minutes.

So we'd go to TJ, and Andrea (who was perhaps the nicest person whom I've ever met) would drop us off at the border crossing and either agree to pick us up early the next day... or sometimes wait in the parking lot while she studied (she was in college).

When I say nice, I mean super nice!

We'd then head to the border crossing and once in Mexico hail a taxi.  As most of us were usually busted a few days after payday, the "in-betweens" is where the BCGs came into play.  First we'd hail a taxi and - since I spoke Spanish - I'd explain to the cab driver that we'd trade him a few pairs of prescription glasses for a ride to town.

That's some of us in the pic below...

It always worked - every single time! A few times (to my surprise) the driver would even start trying glasses until he found his prescription - that always left a bit of squirm in the pit of your stomach to realize that the driver needed glasses and didn't have any until that point.

At the bar(s) we'd bring out the box and start trading drinks for glasses... with the bar tender, with the bouncers, with the bar girls, with the customers... essentially with anyone interested... and who needed glasses.

It always worked!

The trick was to estimate (and we got good at it) how many glasses we'd need at one or two o'clock in the morning when we'd need them to get a cab back to the border crossing.

And that's how discarded BCGs bought all kinds of things in trade for a bunch of broke-ass American sailors in search of a drink!

Dan Marino

"Dan Marino"
1983 limited edition lithograph 4x4 inches

Opportunity for Photographers

The Sony World Photography Awards are organized annually by World Photography Organization and sponsored by Sony. 

The Sony World Photography Awards features four competitions: 

1. Professional competition

2. Open competition

3. Youth competition

4. Student competition

No Entry Fee. 

Details here.

The Macha

The Macha

c. 2019 Original charcoal and conte on unfired Bisque

"The Macha" is an original charcoal and conte drawing on unfired broken Bisque - the plate is curved and sticks out about 1 inch from the wall once hung -- It is signed and dated in pencil recto and titled, signed and dated in marker recto on the verso. Again... the work hangs on the wall and projects about 1 inch off the wall, so it's a bit three-dimensional... 

The Macha is the Celtic Goddess who is the protector of women and children.

Feet wet

 Sometimes people ask me why I'm always drawing mostly women... like the Carlos Gardel song says: "Si soy así ¿qué voy a hacer? pa' mí la vida tiene forma de mujer..."

"Feet wet (soon to be feet dry): Cuba loses another daughter" Charcoal and conte on paper 1990s In a private collection in Boston

This is "Feet wet (soon to be feet dry): Cuba loses another daughter" circa late 1990s, done after President Clinton imposed the "feet dry/feet wet" policy which condemned to jail thousands of Cubans trying to escape from Castro's Workers' Paradise and who were caught "feet wet" and returned to the prison island. It is in a private collection in Boston. 18x24 inches, charcoal on paper.

The Johnson Twins

 

The Johnson Twins - USS Saratoga Port Visit Taranto, Italy, 1976
By F. Lennox Campello

The Lilith Creating Darkness

 

The Lilith Creating Darkness
2009 by F. Lennox Campello

Isla Torturada

"Isla Torturada"
Hand-colored monoprint with embedded pins
5x7 inches

 

Isla del Ciervo Herido

 

Isla Golpeada
Hand-colored monoprint, c. 1980 by F. Lennox Campello
(Verse by Jose Marti)

A sailor and his date

A Sailor and his date
1986 vintage US Navy cartoon by F. Lennox Campello

 

You think that's hard?

 When I was in the Navy I did dozens of illustrations for newspapers (such as The Stars & Stripes), and sketches of his shipmates and other US Navy sailors in ports in the US and European ports.  Most of these drawings and paintings were given away to his shipmates, but I also kept many of them - this one has been in storage for over 40 years and was recently found!

Congrats to President-elect Biden

And so the Orange one appears to have lost... maybe another casualty of the Covidian monster!

I sincerely hope that President-elect Biden can handle the Presidency and this doesn't turn out to be a case of elder abuse, as sometimes Joe seems to be a bit out of it.  

I pray for him and wish him the best of luck - I didn't vote for you, but now that you're about to become President, I will support and respect you and hope that you're not being used as a stooge by the DNC to set up your VP.

I gotta bad feeling about this - keep your eyes peeled Dr. Biden! Protect your husband!

God Bless you Mr. Prez, and God Bless the USA!

Saint Ninian Preaching to the Picts

St. Ninian Preaching to the Picts
1995 Charcoal by F. Lennox Campello 

When Marines go wild

All I said... by F. Lennox Campello, circa 1983

The Sonoma Ballet Conservatory Drawings

These are some of the drawings that I did as a fundraiser for the Sonoma Ballet Conservatory in early 1993 - there were almost a couple of hundred of them! I exhibited about 30 of them at the Chevrier's Presidio Gallery in Sonoma, and they all sold out on opening night!

I used some of these in 1994 or 1995 to apply for a studio at the Torpedo Factory.

I was rejected, and one of the reasons given for the rejection was that the drawings were "clearly copies of Degas' works." 

I was furious that someone's lack of art history knowledge had disqualified my application, but later I realized that whoever that erroneous and anonymous juror had also taught me an unintended lesson: there are some subjects in art (in this case ballerinas) that are so imprinted into the collective mind as coming from a particular artist (in this case Degas), that the subject has been signed off into eternity as not to be re-done by anyone else!

That was a harsh lesson to learn, but a very valuable one! 

Portrait of John Lennon

This portrait of John Lennon is from an assignment at the UW School of Art - circa 1980. The assignment was to incorporate a complex pattern (his shirt) into an otherwise plain line drawing. It has been for years in the collection of my lawyer.

Portrait of John Lennon by F. Lennox Campello - circa 1980 

The Gunny

A 1975 sketch from observing a USMC Gunny conducting counseling on some drunk Navy sailors from USS Saratoga.

The Gunny conducting squid training outside the Texas bar in Naples
1975 sketch by F. Lennox Campello

My grandfather

My paternal grandfather - a Galician immigrant to Cuba. Together with his brother he started out as a ditch digger in Guantanamo at the beginning of the last century, sleeping in the woods and saving money to eventually buy a cow, and then they began to sell milk while they alternated working as ditch diggers in the growing city, which was one of the first in all the Americas with underground sewers. 

By 1959 he owned a large estate and provided milk for most of the region around Guantanamo. By 1961 the Socialists of the Castro Revolution had shown their true cards and declared themselves Communists and confiscated all of his assets. Within two years there were milk shortages all over the island and they remain to this day.

This is what we Americans of Cuban ancestry mean when we say that "we've seen that movie and know how it ends..."

Calls for Entry: HoCo Open

 All Howard County artists are invited to participate in HoCo Open 2021, HCAC’s annual, non-juried exhibit showcasing local artists. In lieu of a one-day drop-off, entries will be accepted online beginning November 5th on a first-come basis, one entry per artist, until 100 submissions have been received. The drop-off dates for the exhibit are December 17 & 18. Accepted artists will be provided with instructions for scheduling a specific time to drop off their artwork at the Center for the Arts.

HoCo Open will be on display from January 9 – February 20, 2021. For the full prospectus and to apply, visit their website.

Now Open: Artist Applications for the 2021 Festival

Let's go back to normal in 2021! Apply for the annual Northern Virginia Fine Arts Festival.

Now in its 30th year, the Northern Virginia Fine Arts Festival has a long-standing reputation for showcasing high quality, hand-crafted, one-of-a-kind artwork in a dynamic outdoor setting. The Festival provides an opportunity to engage directly with exceptional artists, as juried in by leading art practitioners and artists in the visual arts field, that meet a high level of artistic standards. This unique open-air event is presented in Reston Town Center and attracts affluent patrons and knowledgeable collectors from the Washington, DC metropolitan region and beyond. 

This year, the 2021 Festival will implement new health and safety adaptations for the care and consideration of all. 

Artist applications are accepted through ZAPPlication through December 27, 2020

2021 Susan Beech Mid-Career Grant

 Art Jewelry Forum (AJF) is pleased to announce the 2021 Susan Beech Mid-Career Artist Grant opportunity for mid-career artists.  The purpose of this grant, established by San Francisco-based jewelry collector Susan Beech, is to recognize a mid-career artist who has made a substantial contribution to the field and to provide resources to develop and implement a significant jewelry-related project that the artist would not otherwise have the ability to undertake.

The 2021 Susan Beech Mid-Career Artist Grant is open to makers between the ages of 35 and 55 at the time of the proposal deadline, and must have an active and ongoing record of activity in the field. 

The proposed project should be about jewelry, loosely defined. There must be a specific outcome to the project, and it must be completed within a two-year time frame. Examples could include (but are not limited to) creation of a new body of work; a book, catalog, or other publication; research and development (including travel study); performance art involving jewelry; or an educational/social initiative involving jewelry. A proposed budget must be included as part of the proposal. 

A proposal that was previously submitted may be submitted again.

The grant recipient will receive a cash grant of $20,000, to be paid over the two years in which the project will be implemented.

Grant proposals must include:

• A biography of the artist 
• A project proposal outlining the project, including an explanation of how the grant will help support the artist’s work and career and enhance the field  
• A detailed budget 
• A project proposal portfolio of five - ten images that support/define/clarify the project proposal 

The jury of distinguished professionals for this grant cycle will be: grant founder and collector Susan Beech (United States); internationally recognized maker and educator, Daniel Kruger (Germany); and curator of jewelry at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Emily Stoehrer (United States). 

The deadline to apply is midnight, MST (Denver, CO, USA), on January 10, 2021. More information and complete guidelines can be found at www.artjewelryforum.org.

Colton’s Time Machine: Book 4

 Colton’s Time Machine - Book 4: Betsy Ross, Mount Rushmore, and the Statue of Liberty 

by Rebecca Massey

Time travel books have always been a favorite of mine, ever since I read Heinlein’s masterpiece “The Door Into Summer” when I was 8 or 9. As a result of that preference, I knew that I would enjoy reading Rebecca Massey’s series of children books in her series “Colton’s Time Machine” and I wasn’t disappointed when I started with book 4 in the series.

Colton is a young boy who has a bunch of dragons as friends – read Colton’s Pocket Dragon books for that series. In this time travel series, a spin-off the original series – he wants to expose the dragons to a little American history, so he builds a machine to time travel and off we go.

Concurrently with my reading the books, I also had my son Anderson – who was 10 at the time – read them and give me his impressions. He liked them, and because Anderson is already a history buff, he enjoyed learning the somewhat deep in the weeds facts that Massey likes to communicate in the stories.

Anderson and I agreed on that aspect – if one enters the make believe reality of the fact that these are aimed at children to start with, and if one sets aside the pedantic tendencies of the Virgo that I am (I was bothered by the facts that the historical people that Colton visits seem to immediately accept time travel and the existence of dragons with little resistance… but we overlooked that and did enjoy the learning parts cleverly woven into the narrative.

One thing that did bother us was the static quality of the illustrations. While no credit is given to the illustrator, it appears to me that they are computer generated illustrations, which while the serve the basic goal of an illustration – to “illustrate” a passage in the story – they felt and looked computer-generated and lacked the individuality of a human-made illustration. My apologies in advance if these were indeed hand-made by a human… I would check the DNA for Vulcan blood.

We learned a lot and that’s all that counts… really. We learned what the 12 folds in the proper way to fold an American flag mean – something that after serving almost 23 years in the US Navy I actually never knew; we learned the history of the Pledge of Allegiance, and we learned that Betsy Ross eventually made six more flags after the first one.

We also learned the spectacularly cool name of the Mount Rushmore sculptor, and the “secret room” that he started to carve into the mount. Colton’s liking of sculptors then leads the reader to Bertholdi’s Lady Liberty (we did know his name) and the story behind what is perhaps the most famous statue in the modern world.

In summary, this book is both immensely readable and superbly informational to get your little tyke ahead of his peers when it comes to cool aspects of American history and how easy it is to believe in dragons.

Hotel California painting at auction!

 This may be of interest (or not!) to some collectors who like unusual art - a very early 1976 (pre-art school) and very weird painting of mine based on the Hotel California song! - super low starting bid!

The link for the work may be found:

https://www.weschlers.com/auction-lot/f-lennox-campello-cuban-american-b-1956-hotel-cal_F18442BBEC

If anyone is interested in bidding, they will need to register in advance.

It's at:

Weschler's Auctioneers and Appraisers
T (202) 628-1281
F (202) 628-2366
www.weschlers.com

The great Frank Frazetta