Colony Hotel, Palm Beach, 30" x 30", Oil on canvas, 1980

Mount Saint Helens

Watercolor on paper, 12" x 9" 1980

Painted from life after hitchhiking up from Los Angeles. Tom had been keeping an eye on the events surrounding the mountains activity from his apartment in New York City. In exchange for a painting, Tom received a ticket to Los Angeles. From there he traveled to within 28 miles to the South of the Mountain. The hitchhiking went well with a full experience of what it was like to hitchhike up the coast. The Californian manner was to form a queue along side the entrance ramp with the last to come the last in place. In Sacramento Tom was befriended by a psycho. He was catapulted from San Francisco to San Jose in a Porsche driven by a beautiful long legged blond playing Exiles on Main Street. Tom visited friends in Los Angeles and relatives in Fresno. Ben Burton was a teacher and hobbyist painter. He and Tom went out into the field one day and work on a local slue. He gave Tom a copy of Robert Henri's "The Sprit of Art."  In Los Angeles Tom painted still life's of oranges, water coolers and rows of newspaper boxes.

Traveling with a black vinyl suitcase the only other piece of luggage was a guitar. Tom did not play very well but it tagged along anyway. His paint supplies were limited to a watercolor tablet.

The strangest ride was his last to the mountain. Outside Portland Tom was picked up by a lumberjack on his way back to the apartment next to the logging site, just at the base of the mountain on the Western side. He had to make one stop along the way to get a draw on his pay from the boss. I sat in the car waiting as I examine his unusual steering configuration. It had no support so that to drive the car you held the wheel about center and turned. It rested on your legs when you were not using it.

He got the draw and soon we were at the small apartment building, one story strip of about four apartments. I set to work drawing a mural on the wall as the night led on into a party. In the morning the sky was cloudy and it was to be sunny. It took no time to realize that the mountain had exploded during the night and we quickly organized a trip to the next mountain to the South, Tum Tum mountain. They left me there for the day as I rapidly painted four watercolors, one right after the other until dark. It was very lucky that Dave, my logging friend, was not at his logging site, for it was Sunday. The area was covered with ash. There was no ash where we were for the wind was blowing 45 miles an hour to the East. Being twenty-six miles to the South the dust did not settle in Chelachie Prairie until a a day or so later. Spirit Lake was just across the road from the apartment building as well as the Forest service building and a quick store.

There was lighting all afternoon coming from the edges of the erupting dust to the edges of the mountain. The eruption cloud went all the way up to the edge of the sky. You felt no movement from the ground during its eruption. As the day neared dusk the dust cloud leveled out.

He brought the four watercolors back to New York and later Cincinnati were they were shown at a local gallery with newspaper article.

Tom learned from the experience that painting great events does not make a great painting. It was a lesson that he did not learn until years later and in the mean time painted the first shuttle launch and the various planets that Voyager II encountered.

The view from Keyhole EarthViewer. In the foreground is Spirit Lake.

http://www.estately.com/p/WA_Amboy_Chelatchie+Prairie#p/WA_Amboy_Chelatchie+
Prairie Yale Lake Amboy
http://www.columbian.com/history/Chelatchie.cfm

compiled from Columbian archives
February 22, 1979
The big sign on the general store boasts that the building sits "in downtown Chelatchie Prairie."
It is the only store in town.
Among the hundreds of items for sale in the country store is a bumper
sticker: Where's Amboy? I'm from Chelatchie."
While the average person probably doesn't know where either Amboy or Chelatchie is on the map, the residents of the rural community 30 miles northeast of Vancouver take a special pride in their isolation.
"People here like to say they're from Chelatchie," explained Kathleen Handsacker who, with her husband Walter, owns and operates the Chelatchie Prairie General Store.
One of the more historic rural areas in Clark County, Chelatchie Prairie apparently was settled in the early 1860s. The fertile valley ringed by mountains and drained Chelatchie Creek was well-suited for growing grain and vegetables, and the area was among the first settled in the northern part of the county.
Chelatchie, according to historians, is an Indian word meaning a flat area covered with ferns. The earliest settlers found the prairie covered with ferns and other low vegetation, easily cleared to prepare the land for tilling.
By far the most prominent and eye-catching geologic feature of the area in Tum Tum Mountain, a symmetrical hill rising 1,500 feet above the plain. This mountain, which has become the symbol of Chelatchie, resembles a huge gumdrop.
Tum Tum, according to legend, means heart, and might have been so named because it vaguely resembles an inverted heart.
Another legend insists a famed Indian chief lies buried at the summit.
At one time, two school districts, Chelatchie and Tum Tum, served the area.
These districts consolidated in 1914, forming Chelatchie Valley District 84.
There had been several earlier schools in the area, but after the consolidation a "modern" school was built on the site now occupied by the Mt. St. Helens Ranger District Work Center of the U.S. Forest Service.
Now, all of those old districts are part of the Battle Ground School District. Elementary pupils from Chelatchie Prairie attend nearby Amboy School while high school students must be up at 6:30 a.m. to catch buses for the long ride into Battle Ground.
Although the Amboy School population has risen dramatically in the past year
- from 470 to 530 pupils - most of this growth has occurred south of Amboy.
"I know of only two families who have moved into Chelatchie Prairie during the year," said a school secretary.
Frank Emerick, road inspector for the Forest Service, is a lifelong resident of the area. He said there have been few signs of growth, despite the big International Paper Co. lumber and plywood mill that sits in the middle of the prairie.
Many of the historic farms are still intact, Emerick said, but few residents make their living from the soil.
The lumber and plywood mill, the only major industry in the Battle Ground School District, was constructed in 1960 to replace Long-Bell operations in Longview which were phased out. The Chelatchie Prairie mill has employed about 600 men and women, including those who work in the woods and haul the big logs to the mill.
Most of these workers, however, commute to their jobs, some from long distances. Some drive each day from Longview-Kelso or even from Oregon.
The economy of Chelatchie Prairie has moved up and down, depending on the cycle of the lumber industry. At present, residents said, there is a slump, and quite a few employees have been laid off.
Across the road from the general store sits a huge stack of fireplace wood.
Mrs. Handsacker said unemployed loggers cut the wood to supplement their unemployment benefits. It is sold for $40 a cord, with some customers driving out from Portland to buy it.
Mrs. Handsacker said she and her husband have complete confidence in the future of Chelatchie, no matter what happens to the lumber mill, which has been up for sale.
"We intend to build a new store across the road and turn this building into a tavern," she said. "We really like this area and believe it has great potential."
While there is little evidence of any new homes or building growth, she said, "We have at least 200 families stuck back up in the hills. Many of them are old-time families, although there are some transient younger people."
Mrs. Handsacker said there are a few attractions to hold young people in Chelatchie Prairie, but some effort is being made to provide some forms of entertainment for them. A large community hall, with a sign on it that reads Tum Tum Log Cabin Club, is being refurbished and may be used for dancing and other community activities, she said.
"We welcome growth," she added. "We just don't want to see it come too fast."

Fresno Slew

20" x 16", Oil on canvas, 1980, Painted from life with Ben Burton set up nearby. He was Tom's uncle and lived in Fresno. A hobbist painter, they enjoyed thenselves for a day until Tom continued his hitchiking up the coast to Mt. Saint Helens.

Cadillac, 18" x 14", oil on board, 1977

Painted from life outside Bearsville Recording Studio, Woodstock New York. At the time Tom was dating a Rock and Roll singer. As she spent several days inside working on her new album he sat outside and painted views from the parking lot.