Function at the junction -- back to the graphic arts studio.

Next door to The Studio was the Stat House. Joe, the owner, made all of our stats for enlarging type, illustrations, halftones, etc., and he actually kept regular business hours. Besides being a camera guy, Joe was an artist.

Joe was several years older than I was, somewhere between my parents' generation and mine. If I remember correctly, he was stationed in Monterey during his stint in the service. I really can't even think of Joe without thinking of Cannery Row. He said he used to sit in his office and stare out the window --  and he painted beautiful, small, meticulous watercolors of what he saw. His images were Steinbeckian in feel and hue. You would look at those little paintings and see a connection between the now days, Joe's days in Monterey, Steinbeck's stories and his days in Monterey when the town was oozing with character and characters. Now that's been cleaned up for tourists.

In a way Joe was Steinbeckian. He could have been a character in one of his books. Creative, smart, funny, quirky and decidedly Mid-Western in his basic values and perspective. As well as being a camera guy and painter, Joe was a master at silk screen printing, which he had taught somewhere. He said it was easy to work on a small scale with a small silk screen. The larger the screen you used, the greater the difficulty: the problems increased exponentially with the increase in the screen size. Anyone who has printed with a scilk screen knows you can't help but make some mess and get at least a little dirty when you print with silk screens.

On the first day of classes, Joe demonstrated silk screen printing. He wore a suit, white shirt and tie to do it --  and he stayed clean. . . Joe chuckled when he told me that.

Gotta love the mess.