Farblondjet

An Interactive Memoir
Jerry Ross, the Painter

Wikipedia: 

"After graduation Ross moved to Arizona and changed his surname to Ross. He later moved to Oregon where he met his wife Angela at Ken Kesey's Poetic Hoohaw in Eugene during the summer of 1977. His marriage to his first wife, Pamela Fore Tyree, of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, ended in divorce. Pamela died in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 2008.

Shortly afterward, Ross was juried into the New Zone Art Collective and helped to found the Downtown Initiative for the Visual Arts (DIVA) in Eugene, Oregon.

Recognized as a painter with vision and facility in a variety of painting styles, Ross was identified as one of a handful of truly mature artists inhabiting the artistic landscape of Eugene, Oregon, where he has now worked for over 25 Keefer 2001, Eugene Register-Guard, pp. 1–2B. Another observer described Ross as a "master of portraiture." His talents are evident in the portrait of his wife Angela, entitled a Bologna", which was considered one of his best: "subtle, tender, suggestive, spare in composition and palette." This work has the unflinching directness that characterizes all of Ross's portraits, an approach that is aided by his tendency to choose models who themselves express confidence and strength.”



Graduation picture 1984 (U of O Masters Degree), several paintings in background, the one on the right is of Angela with red beret and occult Hebrew letter  by her elbow (painting was lost many years ago).


Angela was born in Shamokin, Pennsylvania, a large town nestled in one of the many mountain valleys of central Pa.  She grew up in a European atmosphere.  Her grandparents had emigrated from Poland around the turn of the century and had settled in this isolated, very old world, coal mining community.  Her paternal grandmother spoke five languages: Polish, Lithuanian, Russian, English, and Latin.



Her older sisters, Carol and Janine, and she attended a Polish, Catholic school, St. Stanislaus, where things were as strict as a military school and with a very strong academic emphasis (Angela has straight A’s on her report card up through 8th grade!).  I am not sure if her younger sister Elayne escaped a similar fate. But there were no extra curricular activities, no art, music, PE, or library!  So she and her sisters made up for that fact by playing school.  (note: all three sisters ended up as educators). 


 Elayne became a nurse.  But it is interesting that to play school the girls set up a “multi-media” library with check out cards and all.  No wonder that Angela became a media specialist and school librarian.


Up until the time her younger sister  Elayne was born, her parents had a small neighborhood grocery store in the lower level of their huge 4-story house.  But because they were over generous inn extending credit to customers, they went out of business.  The now abandoned store became a perfect “schoolhouse” for the girls to play in.  They could even teach consumer education because lots of store equipment remained there.  They had music: a huge pump organ and various out buildings to learn home economics, animal husbandry, and storytelling.


Her neighborhood was situated on the edge of town, and behind her house were orchards, fields, hills, and valleys.  One of her favorite activities was hiking and exploring the beauties of nature.


But at the age if ten Angela was suddenly uprooted from this little paradise to a different town, Havre de Grace, Maryland, 120 miles away.  Her dad had obtained a new job as computer tech at the Ballistic Research Laboratories, Aberdeen Proving Grounds, a huge military base.  Angela had arrived in American culture!  She must have felt like an immigrant.  In fact, some kids did make fun of their accents and their name Czyzewski – pronounced Shu zev -ski.  It was a hard adjustment but probably helped in the formation of her personality and a specific characteristic: her ability to be flexible and adjust to situations.

She attended a very small Catholic school in Havre de Grace, St. Patrick’s from 5th through 8th grade.  Students had to wear disgusting uniforms which was a double wammy because the school was right next door to the town’s public high school.  This was undoubtedly a factor in making Angela a clothes-aholic. In fact, she began sewing many of her own clothes at the age of 12.

But for grades 9 through 12 Angela attended the public high school.  The school was unique in some ways.  She was able to take a philosophy course.  She also took an architecture drafting class and designed her own house.  Generally high school was a good experience but it was always a “hard act” to follow two over-achieving older sisters.  At times Angela rebelled.  Once when an art teacher was abusing another student, Angela intervened and was ejected from class and given a failing grade.  On another occasion she corrected a Latin teacher was making gramatical errors and she was marked down a grade or two.

Like me, Angela experienced the class divide while in High School.  For a while she lived in the Havre de Grace projects and had to put up with hillbilly music and noise, some drunkenness.  Meanwhile her fellow students living just a few blocks away had large homes and boats on the Bay.  Like me she liked to take trips to the city library.  For her it was Baltimore and for me it was Buffalo (Grovner’s Public downtown).  Too bad I didn’t know her while I was in high school!  We had similar interests.  I was reading Buddhism and Ginzberg, she was reading anarchist like Machno.  I was reading Eric Fromm who introduced me to Marxism.  She was reading theatre if the absurd.

In college (Towson State University), she majored in English and dreamed if moving out west to attend graduate school.  After teaching one year in Maryland, she did just that.  She began taking classes at San Francisco State college in Film Studies, but did not finish that program due to a difficult first marriage, to put it mildly, and due to the many distractions provided by living in San Francisco, especially during that period.  While she lived there, Angela held a variety if jobs:  she was a bank teller at the Hong Kong & Shanghai Banking corp, she ran a Mexican Import shop at Ghradelli Square, and she initiated an astrological  calendar business which is still in operation.

Early in 1972, Angela moved back to Maryland, because her mother’s health was not good and in addition, Angela was expecting her first child, Genessa. Unfortunately, her mother died one month before Genessa was born and so she did not live long enough to see her granddaughter. 

With no reason for remaining back east, Angela returned to Eugene in January, 1973 to live above a new age restaurant on 13th and Hilyard, the Eggsnatchur (a vegetarian cooperative).  Eugene reminded her of Shamokin: the steep hills, the abundance of greenery, the quaint little neighborhoods.  But I did not meet her at the “snatch” but instead had to wait until the summer of 1977 and the Hoo Haw event.  

Angela, me, Eric Peterson, Bobby DeVine.

Just a word about “faith” here.  When you are painting away on what you hope will be a masterpiece there is a stage one passes through when one thinks everything has gone to hell and one has exhausted all one’s options.  There may be a fairly good painting on the canvas but not “in your guts” what you are striving for.  At this moment the trained artist uses the razor knife and “scrapes off” the painting, leaving just a ghost of an image of the original effort.  In Italian this process is called "pentimenti." Then, rebuilding the painting with new, fresh paint one often recovers this or that area if the painting.  With additional corrections and faith in ones “gut” as the driving, directing factor, one often succeeds as the finished work emerges.

This is where I was at in my social life when I met Angela.  I had become so lonely and so depressed that upon reaching a “low point” for me, I really wanted to “scrape off” my life and start anew.  I did this through the sun dance at the Oregon Country Fair and by asking the universe directly to lead me to my life’s partner!  And it worked, much quicker than I realized when in the aftermath of a “bad trip”, or so it seemed at the time, I had actually been on the receiving side if a profound gift, a response from the universe if you like, and events that led me back to Angela and my “bollabuster.”

This may translate as “ball buster” but what it really means in Yiddish is a woman who can take charge of a household and run it like a well-oiled machine.  This is, in fact, an ideal for a wife and has implications of an organized, well-functioning home, that is always clean and organized.  At the time in my life I got together with Angela, I needed that.  But more importantly, I need the “twin” my mother always ranted about in her schizophrentic daze. I needed my soul mate, albeit with an identical birthdate, identical tastes and proclivities in almost everything, a true companion.

In Yiddish the number 22 is “tsvey un tsvantsik.”  Angela was born Mary 11, 1946 and I, May 11, 1944.  !!   When I was living in Tucson I had met Al Marusa, a math book salesman and failed seminarian.  He sold a book on mystical math with all kinds of insights into ancient Egyptian math and Christianity.  This echoed another Tucson “nut case”, a street numerologist calling himself “love 22” who claimed to have lived on 22 22 nd Ave in New York and who had a long string of encounters with the number 22.  But on one occasion I had the pleasure of invoting  Al Marusa (he was fond of saying “I am from Mars visiting the USA” just to give you an idea )to Eugene to give a lecture for the Tao Te Ching Society.  He came and lectured and he had a rather good turn out .  In any event, Angela and I have always viewed our bond as a “love 22”,  a truly cosmic union and it is so.


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