October 12, 2024
A great guy with even better taste in art, just came out to the Triple B Ranch and walked off with my original painting of Charles Poston.
Yes, and he's wearing a Joe Arpaio junior sheriff's badge to answer the Patinas question, "I got your stinking badge right here!"
Meanwhile, down Douglas way. . .
We are getting set to honor the guy who took this wonderful photo of Julie Hagan way back in 1981 at the Wagstaff Land & Cattle Company in Wyoming. My best friend, Charlie Waters gifted me a signed print of this image and it now hangs prominently in my daughter's house. The photographer's name is Jay Dusard and he is a Master. He lives in Douglas, Arizona and is an Arizona legend.
Two More Covers I Wish I Had Back
To put the cover failures conversation in context, it isn't that I didn't like how these covers came out, it's that they wayyyy underperformed on the newsstand, thus the Dumb Cover title. When Craig Schepp came out today to pick up his original painting he commented that he loved all the covers, and in fact, some of them were his favorites. Well, yes, he and I and two others as crazy as we are. So, here's two more to discuss:
Covers That Were Too Hip for The Room
One of the pitfalls in choosing an image for the cover is the discovery of an actual photo of a major Old West character that is a little mind blowing. Take this cover for example:
The crazy thing is this is an actual photo of Sitting Bull wearing snow goggles! And we were just so excited to print it on the cover for the joy and benefit of our readers. And we knew everyone would freak out and tell their friends. Well, turns out, many of them were turned off by the image and thought it was faked. Later on, we ran the same photo of him without the goggles (taken at the same photo session) and it did quite well. The moral is, be careful about being too hip for the room.
Lots of negative phone calls on this one (not a surprise) but the extra attention did not result in extra newsstand sales. Still it's a classic and I'm glad we ran it because my Kingman kin all puckered at the site of this. And anytime you can make Kingman folk pucker, that is a fun thing to do.
Oh, and here's the painting Craig Schepp bought today.
"The Father of Arizona Charles Poston"The lad has such good taste in art.
"The quality of a painter depends on the amount of the past he carries with him."
—Pablo Picasso
Love your magazine and the covers….even these! Just curious, what were your best covers?
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