While we’ve been able to put together the remote and isolated kernels of information gathered in the dusty archives of census records and long forgotten microfiche to extrapolate an adjunct profile of the artist’s historical and cultural context, he himself has remained an enigma. Without any records of marriage or traceable offspring we’ve been left with wild speculation as a surrogate for facts in painting a picture of the child he was and the man he might have become.

To my elation and surprise, the flea market vendor who more than a decade ago acquired the bulk of this man’s collected worldly possessions informed me that an identification card from Beauparlant’s service in the Merchant Marines had surfaced in his basement. While this weathered and noticeably warped memento allows us to assign a face to, and perhaps offer additional clues into his life, it leaves more questions than answers. But for now, let us relish in this small moment of victory as we gaze into the eyes (and perhaps the soul) of our protagonist, Albert J. Beauparlant.

To follow this story from the beginning:
Albert J. Beauparlant
On the Shores of Wonder Lake
Mother, Father, Sister, Brother
Maps and Legends
The Lingering Question Mark of Beauparlant
The Weight Room
Gold Dust

Really, I should have seen this coming.

But allow me to backtrack: a few months ago Will’s Flyers appeared everywhere and almost overnight, for the most part stapled at eye level on bulletin boards in coffee shops and video stores. But the ones that caught my attention were the ones taped to utility poles just above curb level: easy to overlook unless you, the captive two-legged target, happened to be waiting for your dog to finish its business. Base, intuitive, and as calculated as the diaper commercials punctuating educational afternoon cartoon line-ups, this was brilliant advertising, clear and simple. I was immediately attracted to the incongruity of Will’s industrious sense of self-promotion and the aesthetic naiveté of the portrait services being offered at the bargain price of $20 per drawing. So I got it in my head (where most of my life-long regrets tend to originate) to commission Will for a rendering of my cat who was about to undergo long neglected oral surgery, a procedure I hoped would exorcise the flat of the strange, sardine-like stink that crept into bed late every night and curled up to stay. I called the number on the flyers, left a message and waited.

Two weeks pass, the cat has her surgery, and I give up on hearing back from Will. Then I hear back from Will, calling me from a phone booth. I know this because he opens the conversation by telling me that he is in a phone booth and that he doesn’t have much time to talk because he doesn’t have many quarters and his friend outside the phone booth is waiting on him to buy pie for dinner. Traffic tears through his voice while he talks. He asks me about the cat, about her surgery. I’ve forgotten my mention of this in my initial message, and caught off-guard by his concern I confess my surprise. “I don’t forget anything,” Will shouts. His mouth is far away from the receiver, and he sounds like a man accustomed to talking one way and looking another. Ignoring his tone I press for a back-story and Will obliges:

One man, three dogs. They live in a truck and share the front seat to stay warm. One of his dogs, Natalie (the namesake of his business), has a tumor the size of a golf ball on her neck that requires immediate removal, hence the assertive advertising campaign. All proceeds from Will’s dog walking will go directly to the welfare of his animals. As for the twenty dollar price tag on the pet portraits, Will considers this an insult to his talent but is willing to accept it on behalf of his charges. “Twenty dollars buys a lot of dog food,” he assures me, and because I have no idea what it’s like to survive on subsistence level as a struggling artist who happens to share most of his body heat and personal space on any given winter night with multiple kibble-craved dependents, I acquiesce.

Will’s instructions: photos of the cat, along with the money, are to be left in an envelope at a pet store on Stanyan street. The store’s owner, Gordon, will contact Will when everything is in place. “Don’t worry about Gordon,” Will assures me, “he’s the last hippie in the Haight.” But I ignore this red flag for the only reason that makes sense: if I deal with Gordon I don’t have to deal with Will, meaning his dogs. I don’t like dogs, and I hope to keep them as far removed from this experience as possible. “One more thing,” Will adds before we hang up, “how would you like your cat posed in the picture?” Like in the flyers, I tell him, meaning the cartoonish iconography I’d come to love, in which dish-eyed owls leer over leather clad mice popping wheelies on thumb sized (and undeniably sweet-ass) motorcycles. Cheesy Rider rides again, I quote, and Will laughs. “I just made it up,” he says. I tell him that’s why I called in the first place, expecting more laughter. Instead, there’s a long pause. “But I made that shit up,” Will insists. And that’s when I begin to suspect that everything is instantly and unexplainably fucked.

Continue Reading Part 2

Back at Charles’ apartment we find that his cat was way too fat for the harness, so we spend the afternoon taking turns with the leash, dragging her on her side across the kitchen floor to get her used to the sensation of moving when dead-set against it (the feline definition of catastrophe, we assume). Attempting to console Charles in the wake of his failed contingency plan, I point out that the cat’s unwillingness to be moved could mean salvation, given that in the event of a major cataclysm I would be chief among the grief-stricken and hunger-crazed mobs tracking him through the underbrush with the intention of devouring his cat, pink leash and all.

Now that the whole pet-portrait scenario is out of our hands, Charles and I kill time by scouring the city for Will’s flyers, which seem to be plastered everywhere from the Great Highway to the Embarcadero. The cost of dog food aside, Will must be spending a small fortune at Kinko’s for an effort that seems to be going completely unnoticed by most people, except for the two of us and a friend who calls one afternoon to say that he’s just seen Will tacking up a flyer in an Outer Richmond café. But when I ask for a description all my friend can offer is that Will seemed really tall. Which is about as useful as describing a shark as really wet.

Two weeks go by, and while I’m not an impatient man by any means, I often like to know when things are going to happen and exactly how they’re going to go down. After all, it’s not everyday that I walk into a pet store and hand a wad of bills to a man who’s likely to mistake my envelope with his monthly mail-ins to Mr. Kite’s Benefit. So I call Gordon to see if Will has been by. Gordon reports that Will has been in the week before and might have picked up the envelope, but is reticent to offer any more information. I decide to call Will and track the order’s progress.

In my message I’m polite, asking Will if he’s received the photos and the money (you know what they say about the fidelity of hippies), but Will’s beeper service cuts me off mid sentence. I call back and am cut off a second time. After dialing again I get several seconds into my new message and forget my train of thought so I hang up and call back a fourth time.

The following night I come home to a voice mail from Will, one that I’ve saved on my machine and replayed for friends enough times that their immediate look of shock and concern upon hearing it has begun to erode at my initial amusement. The message starts and ends with Will referring to me as “man,” a bit slurred and unmistakably riled. “You’re really starting to irritate me now,” he warns, “and you don’t have to be calling me every day.” Then he insists that if I’m “in such a damn hurry” we can make arrangements for me to pick up the drawings from him “as is.” Hearing this the first time I briefly considered his offer to meet and collect, until I began to imagine the actual transaction: a night scene, most likely under a freeway, with me fumbling my way around pallet fires and mounds of discarded doll parts until I’m suddenly blinded by the high-beams of a camper as somewhere beyond the light the ring of tags and collars begins to close in.

Needless to say, I decide to sit on things at this point, prepared to take a forty dollar loss if need be. But when I play the message for Charles he’s convinced that the whole thing is too hilarious not to pursue, insisting that I call Will back to apologize for my impatience. Admittedly, I give in despite my knowing that every additional phone call I make carries the potential to ramp up Will’s hostility. So I keep it brief, speaking quickly to avoid multiple truncated and rage-inducing messages. I apologize to Will for rushing him, and apologize for wanting to know where the money was. Then I apologize for any past apologies that I may have accidentally offered in any past messages, expressing my regret for anything that may have come across as remotely overly-apologetic, after which I’m cut off. And as I hang up, it’s impossible to ignore the likelihood that all this false humility has done little more than piss Will off, further jeopardizing the chances of seeing any pay off for my troubles. Quite naturally, my thoughts turn to devouring Charles’ cat feet first.

Continue reading Part 3

This time Will answers and I take the opportunity to jump right in and explain that he’s got me confused with someone else. Hell, I tell him, I don’t even know any professional dog walkers. Not in the mood for talk, Will cuts me off. “I’m done with this,” he says, “you can pick up your drawings at the Peet’s Coffee on Van Ness.” And with that it’s over. I’m shut out and cut off, and whatever Will wants to throw my way is what I get for my money. The man has my name, my phone number and my money. He also has a vehicle filled with dogs that may or may not be eager to meet me. Needless to say, this has gone badly. No doubt, Will is in charge, and has been from the outset. Any thoughts I’d entertained of cultivating patronage, of commissioning endless ‘outsider’ masterpieces of my own dictation have been instantly exposed as pure hubris. And to top it all off, I can now add decrepit vehicles boasting ominous ‘Beware of Dog’ signs propped on the dash to my ever-expanding register of indelible phobias.

But I feel like I should end this on a semi-positive note. As promised, Will has delivered the final portraits along with the original photos, and after collecting them midday from a thoroughly confounded employee at the specified Peet’s, Charles and I have spent an evening staring at them spread atop the bend in a neighborhood bar. Tracings. Nothing but tracings:

“Wow,” Charles says, “I mean . . . wow.” Then he buys a round for my troubles.

For further reading and great posters from this infamous artist:

The Way it Could Have Been
Cheesy Rider! Rides Again…
Don’t Let The Tumor Stop Me!
I Love My Cat

I’ve labored over a suitable introduction to these photographs for too long, trying to find the right tone, the right thing to say about something that’s far beyond anything I’ve ever seen, let alone experienced. With no hope of easing into things gradually, I figure it’s best to simply relay the facts and let the images do the rest.

We came across the following photographs at a local flea market while shopping for ugly belt buckles and used baseball gloves. All of the photos were found in a three-ring binder, prefaced by a number of schematic renderings on graph paper detailing experimental mechanical limb replacements (compiled by engineer Don O. Honing).

Multiple subjects are featured, each the survivors of wartime grenade injuries. What follows is some of the strangest and starkly beautiful found photography I’ve ever seen:

Even the process of fitting and testing is documented with an arresting combination of curious fascination, aesthetic awareness and respect to those involved.

The next four images (by far the best of the set) fully capture the idealized intentions of both the project and the Post-war era. But beyond that, they offer an accidental political commentary that is at once haunting and prophetic. Too relevant and too close to home these days, I find it impossible to dismiss these photographs as mere flea market detritus . . .

To see the entire set of images check out http://flickr.com/photos/artgoodhitlerbad/tags/prostheticlimbs/

. . .if you love pictures of treacherously rigged schooners and comic book thugs wielding blackjacks (which we do).

We also love these things, whatever the hell they happen to be.

Our fondness for Beauparlant’s drawings, and perhaps why they continue to register so strongly is in part due to a vague familiarity that defies the age of the work (most of what we have is dated in the 1920s) and the specific subject matter. In the skewed perspective and non-linear paneled narratives there’s a sense of curiosity and imagination run amok, something that we’ve all experienced, but which most of us have either lost or given up.

But what really gets us going are the unanswered questions concerning the artist himself. We could (and maybe should) take the work at face value, but with all the little clues offered on the reverse of each drawing how could we not try and piece together Beauparlant’s biography?

For example, we’ve got snippets of schoolwork:

And both his father’s name (J.A. Beauparlant) and address (2330 Washington Blvd, Chicago):

We also think we may have found an odd bit of information online (how many J.A. Beauparlants could there be?):

So how did a collection of drawings done by a seventh grader in Illinois over eighty years ago end up in San Francisco? We haven’t the slightest idea. But damn it, we’re going to find out! Because, to be perfectly honest, we don’t have much else to do.

The seller told us that the art had been purchased at an estate sale in Chicago. Evidently Beauparlant had a fascination with the military and had dies an old man with a house absolutely filled with military paraphernalia and souvenirs. Among his collection of guns, medals, and helmets were his childhood drawings, which show an amazing eye for detail, with a very crude technique. Needless to say, we both really thought they possessed a special quality to them and snapped up as many as we could. Even though we purchased a majority of the art, looking back I wish we would have purchased the collection as a whole. Since when did being broke hinder the serious art collector?

Anyway, this is my piece of the collection. Behold Beauparlant!

We can see what he wanted for Christmas.

And his dream business. Make sure to view this next image up close in Flickr. Notice the attention paid to every small detail. Yet it still possesses the technical skill of a child. See what I mean? He even wrote the lettering in the store window backwards!

Here we see the first of the military themes.

This is the back of the army officer picture. March 192_?

While the art looks like that of a 10-year old, this piece shows fairly complex algebraic equations. This could have been an older siblings scrap paper, however throughout this collection we see so many examples of his school work.

Judging from the sign, I think I’ll look from on this side.

That’s a nice box for only $7.50.

Phrenology chart on the back.

This is one of the best examples of his signature, which also dates this piece to 1929. Check out all the writing on the nose of the plane.

27 notches? I got 30, you pussy.

Look closely at the right-hand side of this drawing. It’s a scale showing the size of a large plane.

Simply awesome.

Makes you want to be a cop, eh?

The above piece was drawn on the back of a real estate solicitation letter from 1929. Evidently, while the Beauparlant family was living in Chicago they were being offered new development property on Lake Michigan.We can also see that his father’s first initial was “A.” This might indicate that Albert was a “Jr.”

In the next 4 close up images, notice the detail given to the diving apparatus. It looks almost fully functional, and probably was based on the technology of the time (or at least the technology shown to a child).

This is one of my favorite pieces in the collection. Make sure to read all the text.

The back offers us some parting words of wisdom. “Why turn aside a help that thousands of intelligent mothers have used to bring up fine children?”

More to come…

There are many other websites and references to Haning’s work online, and he even temporarily had an entire Wikipedia page devoted to his story and subsequent art. While the page has since been removed, thankfully it was archived by Answers.com and listed below. While I am fortunate to own a number of Haning original poster prints, I found an ample supply of well-taken photographs on Flickr that were used below (Photo credits/links associated with each picture can be found in our flickr account).

The first thing you’ll notice when looking at the images below is that the writting bears a strong resembalance to our logo. You’ve got a good eye and perhaps a good memory! In fact, it is the hand-wrtiting of Mr. Haning. We “borrowed” a few choice letters and arranged them to suit our needs (and our message). Anyway, aside from the prophetic messages contained in the words, I am more drawn to the rough, calligraphic element of his writing style and his connection between images and words. These are some of my favorite images. More can be found by clicking on the images or browsing the links at the bottom.

Posters by David Bradbury Haning.

The Wisdom of Mr. Haning, by Which We Choose to Live Our Lives:

Haning on consciousness: “I put everything inside your head. Nothing is seen, everything has been seen. Not everything is heard, because the voices are in your head. Everything you see, hear and feel is already inside you. Conversation is in your head.”

On politics: “Jesus Christ is going to kill the President so everyone can go back to Heaven.”

On Kurt Cobain: “Most people can’t see Kurt, but he’s still here.”

On religion: “Jesus Christ hates makeup. Jesus Christ loves ribbons and braids with barets.”

On love: “Love is the only true feeling. Blame Jesus.”

For more info, check out:

http://www.answers.com/topic/david-bradbury-haning - the content from the wikipedia entry

http://haning.blogspot.com/ – Blog dedicated to DBH and his posters. Includes interview and background info (and evidently author has conducted a video interview)

Flickr: DBH – Collected pictures and images of posters (where images above were harvested)