catapult magazine

I was mowing the lawn of a friend of our family and took a break to say hi to her neighbor. His name is George and his garden is beautiful. I’ve chatted with him before about art and gardening (he was a professional photographer) and he didn’t mind striking up another conversation. So we talked about gardening, landscaping and sailing.
Then…
Then we started talking about art. I started by mentioning the darkroom that I’m building in the basement for my photographer wife Amy. Eventually he started talking about his work. He worked at the DesMoines Register for 20 years before doing free lance work for 15 years for Time, Life, National Geographic and a host of other heavy duty titles in the magazine world.
Then we took a tour of his home. What he’s got hanging on his walls I haven’t seen since visiting the Chicago Art Museum a few years back. He had two Picasso’s, one etching and one lithograph. He had photographs from Edward Steichen and Alfred Stieglitz who he said had been friends of his (!) and the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen that wasn’t in a museum was an etching of the scourging of Christ by Albrecht Duerer from 1512. I was in awe. My hair stood on end and I was a mass of goosebumps. He at one time had 5 original Rembrandts, but an ugly divorce stole most of those. He didn’t tell me or show me if he had any left. Maybe next time.
He invited Amy and I over for some wine and cheese to talk about and look at art. I can’t bleeding wait.
Has anybody run into a treasure like this in an unexpected place before? I’ve seen some Picasso’s for sale in an art gallery in South Florida, but I’ve never been this close to an impressive private collection before.

Wowzas. That’s pretty neat. (What’s he doing in Sheboygan??!)

An old (as in he’s older than 50) friend of mine is a freelance photographer who does tons of work for Rolling Stone, TIME, Newsweek, etc. He covered a lot of the Gulf War for the major news magazines. Anyhow, he owns two Picasso sketches.

I’m starting to wonder if freelance photographers are the only type of “artists” who don’t starve …

Well Norbert, I think you have just entered the land of the blessed! Maybe this is what Zion will be like?

A truly unique experience!
Geoff