My Mom's 16 Magazine Collection

My Mom was a big fan of The Beatles, right at the height of their popularity, from 1964 to 1966. (Remember, she wrote this previously.) She had a big collection of teeny-bop magazines that featured all the big hot movie, tv and music hearthrobs at the time. She would only buy the ones that had anything to do with The Beatles, most importantly Paul. She was a big fan of Paul.



Growing up, I remember digging these 16 Magazines out of the closet and checking out all the covers, studying in detail all the fun and kooky cartoon activity going on. Big source of influence for me right here, folks. Loved how all the run-of-the-mill press photos were transformed into brand new scenarios by ingenious positioning and pasting. I really admired the artist who worked on these covers -- I could tell that they had to work with only what was available, and that inspired me.











Check out the entire set HERE.

(Oh, and if you like more of this type of stuff, then The Retro Teen is your bag, baby.)

Mom had some other publications in her collection, mostly one-shot deals that were basically 'special issues' from 16 Magazine or Photoplay. Here's one specializing in the Great Debate of 1964: Who's better -- The Dave Clark 5 or The Beatles? Oh, the world must know!



This next one is my favorite. It's my Mom's notebook that has been stuffed with newspaper clippings on the Fab Four. The band played one of their last live shows in Atlanta in 1965 and my Mom was there. There's lots of clippings about that event in here:


Thanks, Mom, for being a teenager and being so passionate over four mop-tops from Britain. And thanks for keeping these fun & silly magazines around the house as a souvenir so that they may become a big influence on my creative upbringing. You never know what will influence young, budding artists.

Photobooth Friday

My Mom came to Portland for the first time last week. Of course, she was only here for the grand-kiddies, not me. I'm not hurt. I understand completely. Andrea and I are only the parental units who've begot two adorable human beings that our parents get to lavish their love and affection (and gifts and sweets) upon. It don't bother me a tall.

This was the first time that my Mother and I got to be in a photobooth together. In fact, Mom tells me that this was only her second time in one altogether. Funny, isn't it? I mean, I guess we weren't the photobooth kind of family. Andrea's family has been doing the photobooth thing for years, decades even. I guess when you don't have one in close proximity then it's not a big deal. So could this be the start of an annual thing? I hope so. It was so funny when we took this strip. Right before, Mom got all nervous. "Why?" I asked her. "Oh, I don't know. I'm just nervous." I reassured her that there's nothing to be worried about. It's just us. As we sat in the booth, we worked out our plan for each shot. The first one, we did the basic smiling shot. The second one features our infamous "twisted smile" -- a strange quirk that's been passed down from, what I would like to believe, generation to generation in my Mom's family. As far as I know, all my aunts do this diagonal smile. (And I just found out that Ava can do it, too!) (Bonus points if you can do it both ways.)

It was so fun to have my Mom here. We had a blast showing her around the city, checking out the great downtown, the streetcar, Multnomah Falls, Cannon Beach. One of my favorite excursions with her was to the Portland Art Museum where they had a Rembrandt exhibit. She's a big fan of Rembrandt, so it was only fitting that we brave the massive crowds on the weekend and get a chance to see these incredible works of art up close. I couldn't help but remember back when my sister and I were very young, when Mom took us to the art museum to look at the classics. We would stand there with her, all of us with mouths agape, taking in all the centuries of figures and self portraits and landscapes and colors and shapes. Art and the act of looking at art is open game for my Mom. And I'm proud to say that she's bestowed this opportunistic trait along to me.

It's come full circle now: while at the Rembrandt exhibit, I stood in front of a huge painting and held Ava up so she could have a better look at the details in the clothing of the figures before her and my Mom was right there beside me.