Backgrounds

Master's Thesis, "Backgrounds:" on file at California State University at Long Beach. The project consists of watercolors of ten people sitting in their favorite spots in their homes, the objects around them reflecting their inner makeup, including the astrological influences on character of the four elements. The portraits are a small part of what Little Richard calls "God's Bouquet" ...or what Jack Kerouac called Desolation Angels


the one above is Bob Anderson; ten paintings comprise the group; in a vague chronological order they are the Hansens, Patricia and Amanda Noonan, Gary D. Elsey, Pete Martin, Patricia , Daniel B. Freeman, David Forrester, Don de Lew, who was working on paintings for his own master's exhibit, and I wish I could say I did the picture I had in my mind of my mom and dad sitting together on the little sofa in the dining room to add to this, but....


Even older than that, Ive finally put it up, is the 1969 Fugs' album cover I did for Warner Brothers: "The Belle of Avenue A:" an early excursion into the field of tasteful vulgarity. This is an album cover done for an east coast cult band (you know, those people who didn't think there was any culture west of the Hudson) by a beach kid (you know, one of those people who didn't think there was any life east of Pacific Coast Highway).
Time and Tide

Please see the tile mural installed in Bayshore Branch Library, Long Beach, California (Second and Bayshore) in 1979 as part of the Long Beach CETA Public Works of Art Project. It is titled "Time and Tide, or The Whole is Greater Than the Sum of Its Parts." Please go see it in person: the linked photo here (even though I took it myself) doesn't do it justice. It's a 196-piece tile mural of the water surfaces of Marine Stadium over a 9-month period; each tile is individually hand-painted and fired and shows the high or low tide from the day it was painted. You can ride the lunar tides visually through this piece, as the periods of higher high tides and lower low tides are the full and new moons throughout the year and so are seen at regular intervals throughout the piece. It is a graphic study of time. One of the preliminary watercolor panels, "Time and Tide VI," is on display on a page of water imagery in the McArchives

"East is west and west is east and Rudyard Kipling never met Hello Kitty--" --Bill Griffith, Are We Having Fun Yet?, p. 104
...nor had he met Alison McMahon nor the numerous people of that so-called bland Generation X (sometime I'll put on that other hat and put my treatise on Pluto as a generational influence out there) who have, thankfully, begun to inhabit the ghost town that is now the 60's...and 50's. Don't be fooled by alarmists in the media: there is hope for the future.
For my students: Go toMrs. Johnson's Hot Links or Mrs. Johnson's Launch Pad (908A Photos)

Quote of the Week

"Preemptive boringness. Being one-dimensional is the most satisfying method of coping with out-of-control people--with any situation that's out of control. Keep your face like a screen-saver software program. Don't let people know the ideas you love, the games you've played, the places you've visited in your mind. Keep your treasure to yourself." --Douglas Coupland, Shampoo Planet, p. 47
24 June - 26 June 1997; 3 July - 21 July 1997

Recent appearances in the print media: a brief artist's bio and description of the "Time and Tide" mural are in the 1995 addendum to Robin Dunitz' Street Gallery (p. 81 & 55)and at the L.A. Mural Conservancy web site; Animal Spirits reprinted in Lynn Johnston's Remembering Farley, 1996 (p. 165)

"If you're a McMahon, you can never have enough hats."

...or webpages

Artist,
Itinerant English Teacher,
International Hash House Harrier,
and sometime film extra*
Watercolors a la prima, specializing in Architecture.
Greeting Cards, Postcards, Business Cards, Stationery
Altered photographs.
Printed Patches and T-shirts (specializing in Tasteful Vulgarity)
Proofreading and Editing.
Amazon Associate
M.A. Drawing and Painting, CSULB 1977
Ph.D, Art Criticism, American Institute of Art Criticism, Austin, Texas, 1994

ESL/Education: Teachers and students: For a list of reading and reference books for ESL and/or developing readers, go to Ali Baba's Annexe.
If you like my art, you might like what I read: In association with Amazon Books, you can click on any book titles you see on this or other pages to look at and order at discounts of 20% - 40%. For a listing of relevant personal favorites, go to Ali Baba's Old Bookshop or Ali Baba's Constant Recommendations. For example, The Long Day Wanes, A Malayan Trilogy, by Anthony Burgess. Other of my personal favorites you can find there are Earthly Powers, by Anthony Burgess; Desolation Angels, by Jack Kerouac; and A Course in Miracles.

Back to opening page of the Alison McMahon Johnson Archives
archives, page one
Water Imagery
archives, page two
Holes in Reality
archives, page three
Drawings
Robert James McMahon
My Dad's work: engraving and painting
archives, page five
archives, page six
Dallas Old City Park
archives, page seven
Landscape Panorama
archives, page eight
Linoleum Blocks, 2003
Early Work:
Page nine of McArchives
Early Work: "Backgrounds," "Belle of Avenue A," "Time and Tide"
Holding (Page ten of McArchives):
Drawings from old family photos (includes Girl Scout Troop 212)
archives, page eleven
Endangered Species (Taiwan's traditional farmhouses)
archives, page twelve
More "endangered species"
archives, page fourteen
More old stuff

Images are archived. Thanks for visiting. Let me know if you find any links that don't work.

ALL THINGS ARE BUT ECHOES FOR THE VOICE OF GOD ALL THINGS ARE BUT ECHOES OF THE VOICE FOR GOD ALL THINGS ARE BUT ECHOES OF THE VOICE OF GOD ALL THINGS ARE ECHOES OF THE VOICE OF GOD
*What? Yes, while I was working as a studio teacher on a set, the woman they sent to play the frail old woman wasn't quite frail enough and my wonderful white hair reflected the candles in the columbarium nicely. The film is Adrian Velecescu's "The Secret Life of Houses," shown on PBS as part of the American Families series. If you ever get a chance to see it in a theatre, the dark humor of it comes through clearly; as edited for and shown on PBS, it was more gloomy.
last modified 11 August 2003