EASTMAN HOUSE (PINK): Edition of 100, 16 copies are signed.
1972
Four colors
15-1/2" x 24"

If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Following the sage advice of Thomas H. Palmer's 1840 Teacher's Manual, I did just that. I had only a small amount of paper, and spoiled it laying down the first color. So, I turned it over and began anew. As I laid down the last color, a complex split fountain, a miller moth the size of a baseball flew into the rollers, and quick as you can utter a heartfelt curse, the ink was polluted with insect parts, and many of the printed posters were wrecked. So, I set aside the messed-up posters, and cleaned the rollers, and ran an opaque silver ink over the no-good parts of the image and finished the run. Not entirely satisfactory, but you can't just lay down and die because things don't happen to be going your way right now. Tomorrow, as Margaret Mitchell said through the throat of Vivien Leigh, is another day.




OLYMPIA: Edition of 250 of which 24 copies are signed.
1972
Four colors
18" x 24"
Some of us upon occasion make it possible for athletes to win gold medals. Not by assisting them in their efforts, nor by cheering them on, nor yet by financing education and training. We do it by losing. Somebody, usually a lot of somebodys, has to finish out of the money in order for the athletic Secretariat to shine. Though we would, of course, like to stand on the high podium and bend our necks for the rainbow ribbon, we recognize that it probably is not going to happen at this time and in this place and under these circumstances. For us the pleasure lies in the striving. I like to feel the sweat coursing down my face and know I've done a decent job of it. Though others do better, I am not diminished. Everyone is a spear carrier in someone else's life.





BACH: Edition of 250 of which 25 copies are signed.
1973
Five colors
18" x 24"
Irish stonework and a bit from the Book of Kells seemed just right for the Fifth Evangelist, as Bach has been called. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John and Johann. The first edition of this design was for a sedate film about Anna Magdalena Bach, shown once or twice at the Pacific Film Archive and so crashingly dull that it played nowhere else, far as I know. The poster's reincarnation as general publicity for the California Bach Society came somewhat later. Artists probably invented recycling.










MARIUS, FANNY, CESAR: The following three posters were printed simultaneously.
One set of signed progressives of each poster.
Edition of 300, of which 100 copies are signed.
August 13, 1973
5 colors
13-1/2" x 24"
Marcel Pagnol began in theater, and all his life believed that films were nothing more than a means for giving stage plays a wider circulation and recording them for posterity. He directed films that were adaptations of his own plays, as well as writing adaptations which were then directed by others. In Pagnol's world, the screenwriter was king. This is no longer so, it wasn't true even then, and the world is not a better place for it. The screenplay is the skeleton upon which all the rest is hung. A strong, healthy understructure gives an invisible form, strength and reliability to the visible skin created by actors, directors and skilled technicians. Without a good backbone, most films come to resemble The Blob (1958).








IMAGES MEDIEVALES: Edition of 500. 100 copies are signed.
Three sets of signed progressives.
October 30, 1973
10 colors
18" x 24"

Salome, daughter of Herodias, danced before her mother's husband Herod Antipas on his birthday, and so pleased him that he offered her anything she wanted, even unto half his kingdom. You don't get a king publicly swearing that he'll give you whatever you want just every day, so little Salome ran hotfoot back to her mother and asked, all atwitter, what she should ask for. What her mother wanted was John the Baptist dead. John, Baptiser of Christ, a serious-business prophet and holy man, had done the usual stirring up of hornet's nests and told Herodias that her marriage was illegal and nasty.

Herod, though already married to an Arabian princess, while on a trip to Rome had fallen hard for Herodias, who was his brother Philip's wife, and resolved to marry her. The princess found out about this, and ran back to daddy, who mustered an army and dealt Herod Antipas quite a pasting. But, despite the cost, now he had Herodias. Herodias was not delighted to have John, the hairy troublemaker, out bugling to every Tom, Dick and Harry about her private affairs, and she wanted him silenced. Herod was afraid of him and, though for his wife's sake had arrested and imprisoned John the Baptist, he refused to have the prophet executed. So, Herodias dangled her daughter (by her first husband) as bait in front of her husband, and tricked him. In answer to her daughter's question, Herodias said, Darling, ask him for the head of John the Baptist on a silver plate. You can keep the plate. Salome dutifully trotted back and did just that. Well, like it or not, Herod had to keep his promise, so he ordered his executioner to behead the holy man, and bring his head on a charger, and give it to Salome. With a little curtsy, Salome accepted the gory present and carried it to her mother.

Salome married a couple of times herself; first, to her step-father's brother Philip the Tetrarch (a different Philip from her own father, it doesn't help that all these folks have the same name), and later to Aristobulus, son of Herod of Chalcis. She had a daughter Veronica, who lived in Jerusalem, on the road to Calvary. Veronica was diseased for twelve years with an issue of blood, but was cured by her faith when she touched the hem of Jesus' garment.

When Herod Antipas heard of Jesus of Nazareth, he first thought that Jesus was John the Baptist, whom he had beheaded, risen from the dead. When Jesus was brought before him after his arrest, Herod was delighted to see the miracle worker, but was disappointed when his prisoner refused to perform any parlor tricks, and sent him back to Pontias Pilate, thus patching up an old quarrel. Much against his better judgment,and against the express wishes of his wife ,Pilate condemned Jesus to be crucified. On the Via Dolorosa, Jesus staggered under the burden of the cross upon which he was to be hanged. Veronica, daughter of Salome the Dancer, took pity on him and stepped out of the crowd and wiped his face, and its bloodied, agonized image was transferred to the cloth.