BAWNANA

BAWNANA

When I wrote the word banana,
I heard it, not in my own voice,
but in the voice of my girlhood friend's father.
He'd drawl: bawnanah. He was from Jersey
(as in the Isle of—not the Jersey Shore).
Pat Wall sold the family farm and arrived here
by way of the Big Apple—and he marveled at it all.
A failed farmer and artist who never even tried to paint,
he opened the first modern art gallery on the West Coast,
in Carmel-by-the-Sea. He was a friend to Steinbeck,
Miller, and Doc RIcketts. The art openings lasted 'til dawn,
with patrons slipping a little something into the punchbowl.
Then staggering home for brekkies of bawnanah and milk
to combat the colossal group hangover, I assume.

8/10/09

Banana

When I wrote the word banana this morning, I heard it, not in my voice, but in the voice of my girlhood friend's father, Patrick Wall. He'd luxuriously drawl it out several full syllables: bawhnawnah. Redolent on the tongue. But he was a curmudgeon of affection with his only daughter. Patrick was from Jersey (as in the Isle of); he took his family inheritance, sold the family farm, and emigrated to California. Patrick was the first to open a modern art gallery on the West Coast, in Carmel. He was a friend of Henry Miller, John Steinbeck, Doc Ricketts, etc. The stuff legends were made out of. Oh, the art opening parties they had were legendary, where Patrick provided the starter tea punch and everybody contributed a flask of hootch. The parties lasted until dawn, everyone staggering home for brekkies of bawhnawnah—to combat the cumulative hangover threatening to sink the entire Monterey coast, I presume.

Jeanne D’Orge, painter, exhibit at the Pat Wall Modern Art Gallery “Paintings Not for Sale“

While trolling through Google looking for articles on my friend Micaela’s father’s art gallery, the Pat Wall Modern Art Gallery in Carmel, and Monterey, during the 1940s to 1960, I stumbled across one of Micaela’s mother’s article from the Carmel Pine Cone in the Internet Archives. Because it’s an OCR scanned newspaper archive, it was a mess. But I cleaned it up and restored it and then I realized it was something of interest. It fleshed out the stories I was working on about Pat Wall. And then it becomes a gift to my friend Micaela, a Memento Mori, words written by her mother so long ago. It’s safe to say this Jeanne D’Orge interview of Rosalind Sharpe Wall hasn’t seen the light of day since 1946. Obviously this blogpost was written much later than 1998, but since these are themed pieces, I am posting it here. 

During the 1970s, my boyfriend Bob Hamilton, and I spend most weekends in Monterey County. We camped in the VW Bus and explored the Big Sur area. We were interested in the bohemian artists of the 1940s. I have a vague memory of visiting the Jeanne D’Orge gallery and spending an evening looking through her work. In retrospect, I realized the kindly gallery sitter was probably Jane Wilgress (see below). Because I was not yet a writer, I don’t have specific images to share, perhaps visiting all of this is a way to regain memories from that time when I did not write. —Maureen Hurley, Spring Equinox, 2021.

Cherry Center for the Arts

Jeanne D’Orge, neé Lena Yates, was born in Cheshire, England in 1877. When her father, a seed merchant, deserted the family, she and her mother moved to the outskirts of Edinburgh. Lena published her first poems at 20, and wrote a series of children's books on animal fables under the pen name of Lena Dalkeith—playing on a combination of her birthname, Lena, and the quaint Midlothian village of Dalkeith, near Edinburgh, where she was raised. Thus was the beginning of a woman of many identities.

While on a walking holiday in France in 1906, Lena was swept off her feet by geographer and engineer, widower Alfred Burton (dean of M.I.T.).  Lena and her mother joined Burton and his two sons in Newton Grange, Massachusetts where she and Alfred were married. A pioneering modernist poet, Lena became involved with the Others, a poetry group that included Marianne Moore, William Carlos Williams, and Wallace Stevens, and she began publishing her work in literary magazines, Others: A magazine of the new verse, and Poetry. Some of her prose poems were published under the name Lena Dalkeith Burton.

Suffering from poor health, and a profound dislike of east coast weather and New England mores, Lena moved to Carmel in 1920 with her 3 children in tow—where she built a Craftsman style house. Her husband retired from M.I.T, and joined her a year later. They became involved in community theater, with Dr. Burton building sets and acting in Forest Theater productions; Lena wrote and produced a series of Commedia dell’ Arte styled plays, including Crazy Ann, under the penname of Lena Burton.

In 1928 Lena created a scandal when she left husband and children to live with the Forest Theater lighting technician, and M.I.T. graduate, Carl Cherry, some 20 years her junior. They converted his mother’s old Queen Anne cottage, a wedding gift (they were married in 1930), into an art studio for Lena, and a workshop for Cherry. During the lean years, they lived off canned tuna and coffee. She began painting in earnest in 1937, and Carl Cherry struck paydirt when one of his inventions, the one-sided blind rivet, revolutionized airplane and shipbuilding construction during the war years. Lena took up her painting name Jeanne D'Orge, after a river in France, having shed all vestiges of her past lives. For D'Orge painting embodied the intangible moods of form, color, and feelings that cannot be expressed in poetry or music.

The Cherrys carried on as before, living a simple lifestyle, but used their newfound fortune to establish the philanthropic Cherry Foundation to "further the culture of America by sponsoring experimental fine arts, sciences and education." The foundation underwrote arts events, concerts, plays, lectures and seminars featuring world class lecturers and performers. She became friends with Robinson Jeffers and Edward Weston, and wrote plays under the pseudonym of Juniper Green, after a neighboring village near Edinburgh. After her husband Carl Cherry died of cancer in 1947, D'Orge continued to run the Carl Cherry Center for the Arts, and "often appeared on the streets of Carmel wearing a big pink hat, ankle length Chinese robes and paint-stained tennis shoes." She died in 1964. Her former home, now an art center, houses over 1200 pieces of her art, plus letters, books, manuscripts, photos and memorabilia, as well as an extensive library.

Pat Wall, Modern Art Dealer: Ellwood Graham (journal)

Patrick Wall, founder of The Pat Wall Gallery, Carmel/Monterey, ca. 1973

When I was a child, my eyes feasted on the paintings collected by my best friend's father, Patrick Wall, when he was an art dealer in Monterey during the 1940s. Pat's gallery was on Olivier Street, we never did collect his oral history, so this is a placeholder for what we collectively remember. We also didn't realize that Pat singlehandedly changed the face of West Coast art with his controversial unorthodox exhibits. 

Pat, who was from Jersey, the Channel Islands, UK, came to California ca. 1940, with his inheritance and a dream of art. He took a chance on the local "moderns" and created The Pat Wall Modern Art Gallery, and through this connection is how I got to know the work of Ellwood Graham who "painted out loud" with lots of hot colors. His abstract portrait of John Steinbeck was controversial at the time—circa the 1940s.

What I loved were how Graham's personal hieroglyphics, or pictogram paintings which were almost quilt-like in nature, I loved the way the heavy dark colors were a combination of thick impasto, a drawing, and transparent glaze. A doodle, a half a whale (the tail end) captivated my attention. He compared his work to a composer working on a "musical canvas." Graham painted an egg tempera mural in the Ventura Post Office. Is it still there?

So much history attached to those old paintings of Pat's. There was John Steinbeck and Ed Ricketts, known as Doc Ricketts— they too were juxtaposed in Graham's work. It was John Steinbeck who told the artist to paint out loud imagine that—paint out loud. Graham moved to Monterey because of John Steinbeck.

Steinbeck also created in Graham's [Monterey] studio. He wrote Sea of Cortez while Graham rendered his portrait. Of course he sold the painting to Steinbeck, but "I kept some studies and sketches." 'Where is that portrait now? "People have been calling me for years... I don't know." he says, "I haven't seen it in over 50 years."

Then he adds, "That portrait was very good... I hear it was bought by Burgess Meredith but I also heard it belonged to John Huston. —from Alta Vista Magazine, 1992 "Ellwood Graham: Never Say Die," —Susan Lea Hubbard (see bottom of this post for more stories).