Melissa

=//"Toward Evening" by Junius Allen (1951).// //Smithsonian American Art Museum.//=

//Oil on canvas. 24 inches x 20 inches.//


=//"The Bluest Eye" by Toni Morrison.//=

//© 1970, Plume Publisher: New York. Page 35.//
There is an abandoned store on the southeast corner of Broadway and Thirty-fifth Street in Lorain, Ohio. It does not recede into its background of leaden sky, nor harmonize with the gray frame houses and black telephone poles around it. Rather, it foists itself on the eye of the passerby in a manner that is both irritating and melancholy. Visitor s who drive to this tiny town wonder why it has not been torn down, while pedestrians, who are residents of the neighborhood, simply look away when they pass it.

=//"The Grapes of Wrath" by John Steinbeck.//=

//© 1967,// Penguin Books: New York. //Page 227.//
They drove through Tehachapi in the morning glow, and the sun came up behind them, and then--suddenly they saw the great valley below them. Al jammed on the brake and stopped in the middle of the road, and, "Jesus Christ! Look!" he said. The vineyards, the orchard, the great flat valley, green and beautiful, the trees set in rows, and the farm houses. And Pa said, "God Almighty!" The distant cities, the little towns in the orchard land, and the morning sun, golden on the valley. A car honked behind them. Al pulled to the side of the road and parked. "I want ta look at her." The grain fields golden in the morning, ,and the willow lines, the eucalyptus trees in rows. Pa signed, "I never knowed they was anything like her. " The peach trees and the walnut groves, and the dark green patches of oranges. And the red roofs among the trees, and barns--rich barns.

Links.
Connection [|Artist biography at the SAAM]

Wall One {Current page} Wall Two {"Profit I"} Wall Three {"Dodge"} Wall Four {"Gone with the Wind Portrait"}