Peter Max, the pop artist passed away last week. It reminded me of an interaction I had with him a few years back.
I was the editor/publisher of our daily news in the village and we had a Peter Max Night at one of the galleries which featured his work. I promoted the event and wrote about it to alert people.
The night of the event, I entered and saw Mr. Max standing there. I went up to him and introduced myself and asked for a photo for the news. Mind you, it wasn’t a selfie of me and him, it was a news photo, him standing with art or something at the event.
He declined, he said, “No one gets a photo of me unless they buy a painting!”
But I wasn’t having it. I needed the photo for the story I was writing covering the night’s event. I replied, “Well, I brought half the people here tonight, so I’m taking your picture!”
Max got all flustered and walked over to Roy Black, his attorney who was nearby, who helped him with some fraud charge in the 1990s. As we walked over, Roy called out to me, “Hi Tom! How are you doing?” I knew Roy from the gym.
We didn’t work out together, but in the village everyone knew everyone else.
So that greeting from Roy may have relaxed Max, but it also deflated his large ego. I got my photo and covered the rest of the night’s news, which was wild and colorful and had the whole village out.
The sad part is that I can’t find the photos now. I had the images on another server and that’s gone. I do have them on file somewhere on my computer but after so many years of publishing, I must have 30,000 or more pictures on file, none of them tagged or marked! I looked for the images for days, but so far, no luck. I even had Chat GPT check all my files, but no luck.
If I find them, I’ll post them another time. I’m still looking. In the meantime, that’s my Peter Max story.
Speaking of pop art, I have my own cartoons selling as pop art. I have small and large sizes, different subjects that go in homes, offices, anywhere really. Lots of Dorm Decor – which is a thing now. The pop art is here at Etsy.
While looking in my files for an image of Peter Max, I found this old thing. I mean the old photo, not me.
We used to have a Coconut Hunt in our village every July 4th, for months in advance we painted up to 500 coconuts to hide on the day of the event. There was a winning coconut and runners up. Anyone was welcome to come to a local gallery on Friday nights to paint the coconuts which went on for a few months in advance.
On the morning of the event, a friend and I walked through the village, hiding the coconuts by handing them out to various places that were part of the hunt. It was hard to hide them without people seeing us. One year, I put them in garbage bags and walked with them on a dolly.
As we walked through the village, various people who would see us would say, “Tom, where are you going? We have a dumpster in the back, throw the trash in there!” But I would say, no thanks, and proceed to place the coconuts out, trying to be secretive about it.
Some weeks before the event, I was walking by the bank one day, and Sandy, the bank manager, yells out to me, “Tom, you want a bike?” I thought she meant for me, but she meant as a prize for the upcoming coconut hunt. Of course I said yes, and this picture is me riding from the bank to where we kept the bike before the hunt. I think we ended up showing it in the bookstore front window, as an incentive to join the fun on July 4.
Village life, just another fun memory from days gone by. Now the village is overgrown, overdeveloped and more like a city than a small artsy village, which it once was. The coconut hunt and so much more is long gone.
Until next time . . . .
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