In 1973 my mom wanted to live on a farm. My dad knew better than to stand in the way of any idea my mom had, so they started looking and soon found an old log cabin at the end of a three mile dirt road near Dixonville Oregon (population 339). The farm backed up to untouched forests and you could ride your horse from our house east for 100 miles before you would run into a road. At first we just had a couple of horses, then a few more, then we added some sheep, lots of goats, several cows, a burro, some geese, a couple of pigs, ducks, lots of chickens, and a pony named Snowcloud. We had 17 cats and two dogs, not to mention all the other animals that lived with us on the mountain, the deer, cougars, skunks, raccoons and porcupines. It was a humongous menagerie of friends for my young and wild imagination, and a pretty great place to grow up.
In 1976 the county decided that our little dirt road needed to have an official name, so my mom started asking all the old timers that lived in the area about all the old stories of the region. She gathered all kinds of anecdotes of the antics of the early settlers of the area, but most notably an annual trading gathering between some of the local Indian tribes and the settlers that would apparently get pretty raucous, epically when they fired up a hidden moonshine still. So the clearing near the creek at the foot of our mountain apparently became known as ‘Hoot ‘N Holler Hallow’ due to these wild annual gatherings. So she decided to honor the tradition and named the dirt road Hoot ‘N Holler Lane.
In the early 70’s my mom also started to explore photography. Growing up, our bathroom was converted into a dark room and our walls and photo albums were mostly filled with these portraits of all of our farm animal friends, rather then our human family. When I started making these illustrations based on my favorite animal portraits, I was looking back at the aesthetics of that time period and surprisingly found myself feeling a bit nostalgic and inspired by those weird color combinations, unique wallpaper patterns and the wild fashion of the time. I was always a bit artistic and loved making up stories and acting out plays with all of my animal friends.
I feel it is now safe to finally reveal to the rest of the world the secret lives of all the animals living up on the farm, at the end of Hoot N’ Holler Lane (when we were not looking, of course.)
