Four Mood Photos of Danny Allen by Eva Weiss. These are crop-outs from larger photos.
Looking at Danny Allen, pensive, smiling or smoking, there’s a sadness in his face in spite of the whimsy of wearing a leopard headband with wilted mums tucked in at the top. Dan was forever doing things that made people laugh. But I think that secretly he nursed a continually nagging broken heart—and the camera would invariably betray that. I can relate. I’m guilty of the the same thing, so I’m wise to it in others. I could make Danny laugh until his sides hurt. It’s one of my many talents, but laughter isn’t happiness. Laughter, like tears are a release. Happiness is contentment, and that’s far more difficult to achieve. Danny had a totally tickled laugh that I can still see in my mind’s eye. He’d throw his head back with his mouth agape, so wide that his eyes were nearly closed, his ribs would shake and his Adam’s apple would bounce. Without transition, his expression would go distant. The moment was over, and he’d fall back into his art. Art was his business. He knew a lot about art but nothing about business; which makes two of us….
The KickStarter.com page for An Early Work Late in Life is making progress. I’m working at keeping it moving along so as to earn revenue. I feel like Jerry Lewis in some sort of weird psychedelic, extraterrestrial telethon—or PBS hounding the living daylights out of people for money when all they really want to do is get on with watching the originally scheduled programing. The trick is to keep everyone from changing the channel. There’s a fine line between being productively persistent and being persistently annoying.
I’m not really good at asking for money, and neither was Dan. He’d often give his art away because money in his eyes seemed to cheapen it. But when someone offered to buy something, it was like a joyful affirmation, and that was different. Someone asking to buy a piece of art was/is like being told you’re loved.
The book galleys are due very soon, and I’m beside myself to see them. I already know I’m going to be delighted. I instinctively know that the designer (Katherine Denison of Denison Creative) is personally invested in this being a beautiful book. She knows too many of the people IN the book to do anything but bedazzle us all. Who knows, maybe the book will do well, and I’ll be able to put out an edition in hardcover with a dust jacket and everything. Stranger things have happened. But for now, I merely need to focus on reaching my Fundraising goal. So here comes the commercial. Be sure to watch the one minute video, the best part is how much I’m beginning to resemble the Travelocity lawn gnome. I’ll have to look into getting the hat to match. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1149501600/an-early-work-late-in-life-the-art-and-life-of-dan
An Early Work Late in Life 