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Dedicated to Ellie Miner & Gloria Vanderbilt
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“I paint life itself…I do it because my art sustains me.’’ – John Morgan Crapps
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BOOKS
SunStorm Arts Publishing Co., Inc. New York Design & Editorial content copyright Š 2018 SunStorm Arts Publishing Co., Inc. PO Box 120, Center Moriches, NY 11934, USA phone: 631.339.0152 Paintings & Photographs copyright Š 2017 John Morgan Crapps ISBN: 978-1-883269-09-8 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or manner whatsoever without written permission, except for brief quatations in reviews. contact the author at victorforbes@mac.com 4
The artist’s grandparents and mother, Virginia
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Photograph by John Morgan Crapps
The Bull Pen, where the infamous incident that preceded the birth of John Morgan Crapps took place. At right is the cause of all the furor. 6
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Flamingo Fun, photograph by John Morgan Crapps 8
Columbia County Living, photograph by John Morgan Crapps
There are nine springs within the Itchetucknee Springs group with an average total flow of 233 million gallons daily. The water temperature remains 73ĚŠ all year. 9
“Way Down Upon The Suwannee River” - Photograph by John Morgan Crapps
Born in Live Oak, FL, on the banks of the Suwannee River, John Morgan Crapps’ works span nearly half a century. Still at work today, John Morgan Crapps lends his unique flavor to the often stodgy and stuck-up art world establishment. He has managed to carve out a noteworthy career despite his outsider status and his lack of concern for art world rules. He has several museum shows to his credit and his work is in major collections, as well as part of the Best Buddies - the world’s largest organization dedicated to ending the social, physical and economic isolation of the 200 million people with intellectual and developmental disabilities worldwide. John Morgan Crapps paints with a flair and passion of the highest order. 10
Way Down Upon the… Live Oak, Florida, is the county seat of Suwannee County, which is named for the river celebrated in song by Stephen Foster. The name actually comes from the Indian word Sawani, meaning Echo River. The Suwannee River originates in the Okefenokee Swamp in southern Georgia, meanders some 240 miles through North Central Florida, and empties into the Gulf of Mexico on Florida’s western shore. Not literally “way down upon the Suwannee River,” the fabled stream encircles the city on the north, west and south as it flows from its source. Much of this scenic body of water (mostly the upper part) is still almost as pristine as it was thousands of years ago. The wildlife and the unbelievable silence of this river make it delightful to travel. All you hear is the wind in the trees and the birds singing, the sounds of the breeze gently rustling through the foliage. The Suwannee River was made famous by Stephen Collins Foster’s song, originally called “De Old Folks At Home.” More familiar as “Way Down Upon the Swanee River,” it was designated by act of the 1935 legislature as the Official State Song of Florida. It was played at the composer’s funeral; it was played on the USS Missouri when Japan surrendered to the Allies in September of 1945, thus ending World War II; it was played when President Roosevelt and Premier Joseph Stalin met at sea during the Second World War; it was played to welcome General Stillwell and his troops to India during the same war. It was heard during the Grace Kelley-Prince Ranier of Monaco wedding celebration and it has continued to be heard in hundreds of other places throughout the world. On October 27, 1951, Harry S. Truman, the President of the United States, declared January 13th of each year as National Stephen Foster Memorial Day. It has been stated that “Way Down Upon the Suwannee River” is the world’s most familiar melody. All of this from a composer who history records as never having visited the river he made so famous.
…Suwannee River 11
“I’ve been exposed to ridicule by the public and critics ever since I started painting, but I still have nothing but positive feelings about art.” – John Morgan Crapps
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“Sounds like an artist, a pure artist.” – Carolyn Farb Philanthropist/collector
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Dammit, The Stars Have Fallen Off The Flag and We’re In Big Trouble Oil on canvas, 72” x 66” 13
Just the other day John Morgan Crapps was on the phone. It was 15 years since the towers came down, the Pentagon was kamikazied and those brave souls rolled to their valiant end in a Pennsylvania field. He simply said, “… and we trained them. Right here in Daytona.” He’s not a forlorn artist. He’s a legitimate free-thinker and has the bootmarks from Coach Bryant tattooed across his butt as proof. But Crapps has other things to prove as well. As an artist and as an iconoclast who pays the price for speaking his mind (I reference Chuck Berry’s “I Never Thought” right about here — you’ll get the picture). There’s so much to say about Mr. Crapps that many books could emanate from the soul of this august and brave man. Here is the first.
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JOHN MORGAN CRAPPS
An American Voice
Bvdoors VICTOR FORBES beginnings. "It's almost like it was appreciation for Outsiders, A few west of the gallery where of John Morgan Crapps’ artistic odyssey isnewed rounding a curve along his per- Vi few doors west of the gallery in the Greenwich Village days, when sionaries and American self-taught sonal River of Life, sign decorates the window of a shop least for aJMC, few more days, Made everything was fresh and called, when at painters, where Johna hand-written Morgan Crapps' who certainly quali in the U.S.A., with these words: FINAL CLOSING everybody had a FOREVER. chance." artistic odyssey is rounding a SALE: fies as all, or most, of the above, has curveof along his personal River Dream Enter John Morgan is Crapps. a point ofant view thatanisarchetypinot likely to The irony yet an other American going out of business not lostAon this observ artist, self-proclaimed child of the sixties, of Life, a hand-written sign endear him to the policy makers of cal Southern Gentleman, American born and bred, who, with a propensity for descriptive titles, names the centerdecorates the window of a with a slight twist: his immediate pa the neo-hip and elitist galleries and piece of hisshop first called, New York exhibition, Stars Have Off The Flag and We’resoIninDeep Trouble. It toat least for a fewDammit, ternalThe ancestors had Fallen the foresight, publications vogue, at least hangs, propriately between two other large canvases, The Obnoxious Notions of an Artday. CriticReally, and Thedoes moreap days, "Madeenough, in the U.S.A." with these one have be in Fruit of My Labors, themes, apparently, that are propelling John Morgan Crapps, at lightspeed, toward his datetowith words: FINAL SALE: Castelli's, Boone's destiny: when he will stand exposed before a legion of observers amateur and professional whose great pleasure in or CLOSING FOREVER. Glimscher's stable life,The more often and as the irony ofthan yet not, an is to find certain artists and their ideas either unfashionable or unbearableor to then, the left of the Sheriff to the seed in Bob Marley’s musical narrative, “kill them before they grow.” otherdid American Dream Symbionese Libera going outthe of business tionfurther Army-to While economicis malaise ever-lingers and the art world as we have come to know it spirals into get a a not lost on this observ show on West Broad creative void of boorishness, waiting for, if not a saviour at least a breath of some invigorating air, we take solace ing artist-American way or a little ink in in the Tony Shafrazi, who finds this to be an era of beginnings: “It’s almost like it was inArtthe Greenwich bornwords and of bred-who, in America? Village when everything was fresh and when everybody had a chance.” with days, a propensity for "My daddy told descriptive titles, nam me not to talk about Enter John Morgan Crapps. A self-proclaimed child of the sixties, with a slight twist, his immediate pa ternal es the centerpiece of politics, religion or ancestors had the foresight, some would say gumption, to procure real estate in Dixie County, Florida, when most his first New York ex somebody else's mo locals thought it to beThe overpriced at twenty-five cents an acre. “In those days,” JMC relates, “buying that land stay wasout hibition, Dammit, ney-you'll considered the same level of folly in my hometown as my trying to make it as an artist is today.” of Andtrouble," while theresaid Stars Are at Falling Off The Flag and We're In Deep John Morgan Crapps is, in this retro-era, most certainly a renewed appreciation for Outsiders, Visionaries and American self-taught paintTrouble. It hangs, ap over a few cold ones ers, JMC, who certainly qualifies as all, or most of the above, has a point of view that is not likely to endear him to propriately enough, at a Spring Street thebetween policy makers the neo-hip and elitist galleries and publications so in vogue, at least today. Really, doeswe, one be two of other cafe, and have to be in Castelli’s, Boone’s or Glimscher’s stableor to the left of the Symbionese Liberation Army to get aand shot be large canvases, The Ob grudgingly noxious Notions of an Art latedly, will take his in Art Basel or a little ink in Art in America? Critic and The Fruit of advice. John's dad 15 My Labors, themes, ap dy was a maverick parently, that are pro
banker,
who was
“I was born happy, if not somewhat frightened,” John Morgan Crapps told me over a few cold ones at a Spring Street cafe. “We lived out in the middle of nowhere — uncivilized Florida for mile after mile after mile. Ours was the family that everybody else worked for. The evening I was born, November 17, 1947, my mother knew that the time was getting close and she went to look for the lady to help her, saving a few steps by cutting across a pen full of Brahma bulls. The big kind. As she walked through, one charged her quite seriously and I still have dreams about it. A lot of people think that when you’re in your mother’s womb you may not be aware of what is going on, but I can tell you that is not true. I distinctly remember that chase. Later that night, I was born out there in the middle of the woods.” Adamant about his pursuit of success he doesn’t want to be perceived as a failure, which is why he works at so many different things that provide opportunities for success. “My daddy told me not to talk about politics, religion or somebody else’s money — you’ll stay out of trouble.” “Daddy” was a maverick banker, who was known to get federal regulators out of his office by removing a pistol from his pocket and placing it ever-so-gingerly on his desk when they insisted he initiate foreclosure proceedings. “Daddy tried to keep the farmers going. It reached a point where he had to sell the bank because it just became too cruel.” Before his banking career, the elder Crapps studied to be a chemical engineer. Along the way he dabbled, quite successfully, in real estate, cattle and timber. “You can see that my artistic propensities are quite a departure from my background. So my being an artist is quite a stretch. Yet, my daddy encouraged me in his way. I started as a photographer and it just evolved into painting.” John Morgan Crapps’ early years were not easy. He was one of ten children. Before he was born, his father and grandfather went years, at times, without seeing a piece of money, subsisting by trading what they had for food and necessities. “It was a big-time struggle for me to do what I wanted. I grew up with a father who commanded absolute control of every moment. It turned out that I needed that kind of environment. I was a wild one — which has made me more determined to do what I wanted to do today. He told me the chances for success were almost zero. The fact is your chances are zero if you don’t try. Daddy told me that if I had time to play football, I should be doing something that would accomplish something. Every Sunday, without fail, he’d pack us all up in a long limo and we’d drive to the country where my granddaddy lived. In the morning, each one of us kids would have to come down to the breakfast table with a new wordthen spell it and use it in a sentence. I got more than my fair share of whippings. Yet today, because of — or in spite of — this training, I am able to do what I want to do. My creative side is satisfied and I do business because I have a keen desire to eat real well. My childhood taught me to have heart, courage and determination.” 16
Crapps went on to play varsity football under the legendary Bear Bryant at the University of Alabama, in the Snake Stabler years. He earned his bachelor’s degree and spent four years in the Navy before joining his father in business ventures that have provided him with a comfortable base from which to launch his creative side. “When I started my gas company, the first five or six years took all my time and energy just to keep it going in the right direction. Still, during that time, I was teaching myself to paint. I had to teach myself because I hated school, even though I consider my work to have a somewhat scholarly intent. I kept that commitment to art and endured an incredible struggle to learn and gain acceptance. People would wonder why I drove all over the state of Florida entering shows and the reason is that I am doing these paintings not so that they can be left in my house with no one knowing about them. I paint because I have something to say. Intellect is one thing, but the way that the art establishment of ten over-intellectualizes with no common sense is like putting sugar on cow manure — it doesn’t help the manure and it ruins the sugar. This kind of thinking tends to scare people away from buying or being involved in art. How many artists today are painting for anything other than the market?” Down-home logic is as much a part of John Morgan Crapps’ palette as are his bright colors and bold brush strokes. Indeed, The Stars Have Fallen Off The Flag... is a lament for our country — the discipline and work ethic learned in his youth have been lost or ignored, and the foreign being who somehow was transmitted into the scene is the only one aware that something is wrong. No one else seems to know, or care. “I’ve been exposed to ridicule by the public and critics ever since I started painting but I still have nothing but positive feelings about art.” As personable a fellow as you will find these days, JMC, despite nearly a decade of snubbing and drubbing from the aforementioned art mafia, is taking it in stride. After all, he ran for office a few times back home in Live Oak, Florida, and wasn’t very well accepted there, either. Too rebellious for the deep South, too rambunctious for the Big Apple. Fortunately for Crapps, and for free thinkers everywhere, there has always been someone, somewhere to champion his cause. “Everywhere I’ve gone,” he says, “there have been a few people who cared.” It started with Virginia Moore, an artist/teacher who was in charge of the Osceola Center for the Arts in Kissimee. “She had to do it on her own and by showing my work ... created a major clash. They were accustomed to seeing a deer or a rabbit or a squirrel or flowers. She was impressed by the originality of this brand-new fresh style of painting. Ellie’s in the same position ...” Ellie Miner, that is, she of Ambassador Galleries during the glory days of New York City’s Soho art scene, where a full spectrum of artists from celebrated (Tony Curtis, Bob Guccione, Billy Dee Williams and Jerry Garcia) to exalted (Picasso, Rembrandt, Renoir) to commercially successful (Tarkay, Fairchild, Behrens) to unknown have been shown there over the years. 17
SunStorm/Fine Art magazine publisher Jamie Ellin Forbes, Dorothea Chemiakin (the artist’s daughter) with Tuff Fluff Malcolm Forbe(s).
Mikhail Chemiakin with his sculpture in Soho, New York City, installed outside the Mimi Ferzt Gallery on Prince Street. 18
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“WILDASTIC”, “FULL-BLOWN” If William Blake can write his own literary vocabulary to further illustrate his engravings, why not the man from Live Oak, Florida? By his own count, John Morgan Crapps was rejected by 300 galleries before finding a home at Ambassador. Nobody in New York showed any further interest in him, or his work, until ... let Ellie recount the incident. “It had to be the coldest day of the brutal winter of 1993. Forty-seven below with the wind chill factor. I don’t know what made me even come in to work that day, but here I was, and here was this person who walked in the gallery and started looking around. He dropped one of his gloves, and when I retrieved it for him, I told him ‘The other one is on your hand and your glasses are around your neck.’ He thanked me and when I heard that accent, I offered him a cup of coffee. ‘What do you do?’ I asked him. ‘I’m a painter,’ he said. ‘Oh. I thought you were in to fix the gas burner.’ ‘Well, I do that, too.’” As this scene, not to be mistaken for an outtake from Ionesco’s The Bald Soprano, developed, JMC related his experience of sending all those hand-written notes to New York galleries. Ms. Miner decided to brave the Arctic weather and trudge over to the artist’s studio, a few long blocks south. “What struck me most when I walked in,” she relates, “was that you could feel as well as see the determination in his paintings. I decided that I would find a place for John’s work in the gallery.” Says John, who had been so rudely ignored by so many gallery directors and their flunkies for years, “What’s wrong with being courteous?’’ While John Morgan Crapps need no longer expend his energy on postage stamps and penmanship, his accep tance at Ambassador — the culmination of a decade-long push — is really just the beginning. Few galleries these days have the time or patience necessary to nurture a new artist while a collector base is developed. As John Morgan Crapps faced his first New York City exhibition, angst and trepidation could have been bubbling under that jovial southern persona, but Crapps, in a way, is like his paintings: brash, bold and courageous. They are full of them selves, just like their creator who checks the bragadoccio with real humilty. Young people have always liked his work. Those older, more established in the art world say, “What is this stuff?” Now that Ellie Miner has joined the courageous ones who have made that initial step, it remains to be seen how a tough town responds. But the artist has this insight: After six months in New York, Crapps said he learned one thing: that he is as uniquely different from everybody there as he was in Florida. His paintings do not fit in. As you walk through the galleries, they’re not what you see 20
hanging on the walls. The paintings are their own creatures. They have no formal educational art background, no boundaries, no obligations. They are the pursuit of life and liberty and happiness. They are “wildastic,” a word he made up to represent full-blown life. Crapps’ paintings are his own language, so unique and different that they are going to take time to be accepted. Live Oak, Florida, is a small town in the north central part of the state. A town in which, states John Morgan Crapps, an artist is held in low degree. People poked fun at his paintings there because he was not painting deer or rabbits or anything else people could see in the woods. Even his photography was on the eccentric side. His shot of plastic pink flamingos floating out in the Suwannee River caused quite the uproar in Suwannee County. But John Morgan Crapps has an idea. While it is hard to see how a malicious thought lurks in beneath his good ol’ boy persona, his eyes glimmer with delight when he rounds a corner in Soho and comes upon a huge bronze sculpture of a multi-breasted, multi-buttocked fertility goddess chained to the front of a Prince Street gallery. “Now that’s a piece I would love to have on the lawn of my museum back home.” A museum in Live Oak? “That’s correct. There are more people in one of these buildings here than in the entire county, but I have a building of my own down there in which I am going to open the Museum of Modern Art of Live Oak, Florida. “I have my own ideas of what painting should be all about: not a school of thought, not what everybody else is doing, but what life is all about by yourself. It’s nice to see a different point of view for a change. Crapps has been collecting work for the museum while he’s been in New York and is so far favoring a traditional style and collection, perhaps to balance the area certainly to be devoted to his own wildastic creations, such as The Maddening Rationality of Escaping Patience, 1987, which “has to do with the long, hard struggle of teaching myself to paint and the corresponding struggle to gain recognition for what I’ve been doing. I understand that painting is something you should do for yourself, but the icing on the cake is having others appreciate and understand what you do.” “I’d like to be the Hemingway of painting,” he concludes. “He had something to say and he knew how to say it. I have something to say and I’d like to learn how to paint it. It’s tough out there, but you can enjoy it.”
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The Big Apple
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SAVIOR OF AMERICAN PAINTING ARRIVES IN THE BIG APPLE
John & Freddy at work in Manhattan 23
“YOU CAN’T OUTLAW ORIGINALITY…” “Outside the wind was blowing, straggling cloudwisps, snow whirling in the red lanterned streets, city types scuffling around, bundled up—salesmen in rabbit fur earmuffs hawking gimmicks, chestnut vendors, steam rising out of the manholes.” —Bob Dylan, Chronicles Vol. 1
With a fist full of dollars, arms full of poodles and driving a truck called “Miracle,” John Morgan Crapps made his initial foray into NEW YORK, NEW YORK. Word spread fast about the big man with the molasses-coated drawl, sweeter than the sugar cane that grew rampantly down in his neck of the woods, Suwannee County, Florida. Cousin Morgan, as I came to know him, strode the streets of Soho purposefully with sleeves of slides of his own paintings for any gallery owner who would care to take a look. Mary Boone, Leo Castelli, Phyllis Kind, Jack Solomon, Ronald Feldman, Tony Shafrazi, they were all there waiting anxiously. Yeah, right. Cousin Morgan continued his walk over the ice-encrusterd terrain, with, as Dylan so aptly put it, steam rising out of the manholes. There was probably some steam emanating from Cousin Morgan’s psyche, enough to heat up the neighborhood, and the word was getting around. We were on the street then, selling gimmicks. Writing dreams. What the hell makes for good art anyway? You tell me. Cousin Morgan unleashed his considerable checkbook right there on Spring Street. Right there — in the dead of winter — this rube from Live Oak was making a few gallery owners very happy. “I’ll take this one, that one, the other one.” They were flying off the walls. Crapps was buying. What a fool, some thought. He’ll never get a dime for that garbage if he ever needs to sell it. But Cousin Morgan had other ideas. He was going to start a museum in his hometown. Bring some Northern light to the heart of the Bible belt. Hell, he said, I can’t even buy a legal bottle of booze in Suwanee County. So he hit the restaurants downtown when a $200 bottle of wine meant something. We met him almost right away. Practically bumped into him on West Broadway, then we walked around town. I showed him Washington Square Park where the beatniks gave way to the hippies and where they were still gathered around folksingers selling dreams of their own. My article came out. Cousin Morgan said it read like a Hemingway short story. That’s what people told him. The tickets were bought and the contracts signed. John Morgan Crapps was a member of the art world now. Making the scene at openings from Soho to Cannes, exhibiting at the Best Buddies shows sponsored by Anthony Kennedy Shriver; a one-man show at The Fine Art Museum of Long Island; visiting the White House as a guest of Hillary Clinton; hobnobbing at art openings with rock stars and Hollywood celebrities from Bon Jovi to Phyllis Diller to Brooke Shields. One recalls a particular furor that was caused in the art world when Jasper Johns’ Flag sold for a million dollars at auction in 1980, a then unheard of price for a living artist. We’re not here to dispute Jasper’s considerable skills, his cache, his collectors or his connections, but what makes his cans of Savarin of more cultural and artistic value than John Morgan Crapps’ Dammit, The Stars Have Fallen Off The Flag and We’re in Big Trouble? or The Obnoxious Notions of An Art Critic?
John Morgan Crapps always intended to be an artist. As a child, he enjoyed making things. “In the yard I’d get pine straw, sew it together and make bowls, dig up clay and make arrowheads. To continue producing art, I made different things. When I picked 24
James Perry, Miss Freddy, Freddy and John Morgan Crapps with the truck named “Miracle”
“WITH SUCCESS, WE GET ANOTHER CHANCE.” 25
tobacco, I would hang the big leaves on sticks across two poles to cure. They were my first sculptures. I also made sculpture from driftwood out of the Suwannee River.” He had plenty of yard to play with as his family owned tens of thousands of acres which cost, in those days, somewhere around 15-25 cents per. “In the 1920s, when the State of Florida told my grandaddy to put tags on all our vehicles — and we had many for our timber operations — he told the Sheriff, ‘We own everything from here to the Gulf of Mexico three counties wide and when we get off our property, we’ll buy up your tags.’ We never had to leave the property.” Things were booming when the University of Florida figured out how to make paper out of pine tree pulp harvested from the Crapps’ timber land. “My granddaddy retired and my daddy came up to Suwannee County and purchased more land and bought banks — our First National Bank of Live Oak was one of only three in Florida that didn’t go out of business during the Great Depression.” Then the regulators came in and took the fun out of the business. “My daddy was 80 years-old,” John said, “and still worked with a handshake, helping a lot of people. Farmers, shopkeepers, timber cutters and many others stayed solvent in good times and bad — all based on the word of lender to borrower. But we were growing so fast, his critics were jealous. They sic-ed the FDIC, the FBI and the IRS all at the same time, accusing us of being in the drug business. They stayed in the bank six months and found nothing wrong. Then they left. It just about killed him. “My daddy always told me I was wasting my time being an artist as I would starve myself to death, but my mamma encouraged me — she kept everything I ever made. The end of my dream is to turn mother’s 100 acre estate and 10,000 square foot house into community center for the arts and the garden club.” In college, at the University of Alabama, he had a desire to continue his football career, which started in high school, at the Staunton Military Academy. In 1965, he showed up at the athletic office wanting to talk to Bear Bryant (legendary football coach of Joe Namath and Ken Stabler, among others). Bryant wanted to know what Crapps was studying. “Economics, Income Tax Procedures, Business Finances,” Crapps said. Bryant retorted, “You go home. Get a letter from your mother excusing the National Champs from what is going to happen to you and come back.” Crapps did as he was told and after Bryant read the note, he put him on the practice field, in what was called “The Bull Ring.” He was up against “the baddest cats out there but they couldn’t get me out. Then in pass blocking practice, I ran over a guard and got hold of Snake Stabler. They had to grab my ass and get me off him and that’s a fact. Coach Bryant liked that.” Crapps’ career was short-lived, however, and even though he gifted the Coach with a case of Jack Daniels, he was scrapped. Some teammates didn’t like his attitude toward the equipment manager and when he went back to change after a practice, all that was left on his clothes hook was a jock strap. After four years in the US Navy, Crapps went into the family business. It was and still is very demanding to run a gas company and convenience store and create art, but he has managed with over 200 shows (all documented), fairs, festivals, some galleries and colleges in the South before packing up the poodles and the paintings and heading to New York City. It’s been a tumultuous life but all is fodder for the art. His exploits in Suwanee County are also documented, with mug shots and arrest reports available for those interested. He’s been, by his own account, thrown in jail eleven times. “Once I was arrested for playing my radio too loud. My lawyer asked the deputies if they knew what a decibel meter was. ‘How long you been in law enforcement?’ he asked. ‘Six years,’ said one. ‘Five months,’ said the other and my lawyer said, ‘You don’t have a decibel meter in your department? How did you know how loud it was playing?’ ‘We heard the radio.’” “They took me to jail in my underwear one night. Tasered me, beat me, paraded me around and the jailer said ‘Boy, this is my house!’ And I told him, ‘Hell no. It belongs to the people of Suwannee County.’ 26
Suwannee County Courthouse, Live Oak Florida, constructed in 1904, Photograph by John Morgan Crapps
I’ll bet that never happened to Jasper Johns. “They beat me up so bad … I had an old pair of underwear on ’cause they came and got me out of my bed, and my damn drawers fell off and this cop came by and said ‘Pull them drawers up, boy!’ and I said. ‘How can I pull them drawers up if you got me handcuffed?’ They hang people in that jail. They don’t hang themselves there. I’ll kick their fuckin’ asses even though I’m handcuffed and naked, then I went before the judge. An officer testified, ‘But judge, he called us pussies and assholes.’ I said,‘Judge, it ain’t illegal to call a p--y a p---y or an a--hole an a--hole.’” ‘Case dismissed.’ 27
“In the beginning, they was tadpoles… and I can prove it.” “In the beginning, they was tadpoles…and I can prove it.” Oil on canvas 8’ x 6’ From the Artists For Peace & the Environment Collection, Curated by Jamie Ellin Forbes for Woodstock ’99 28
The Gospel According to John Morgan Crapps
G
Chapter One, Verse I
ood – if not all – art arguably emanates from a void, a universe at once so vast it broaches the infinite and and so minute it can be held in the palm of one’s hand, balled up in a closed fist. An artist gives meaning to the meaningless, pouring out his or her heart and soul onto a vacuous slate of emptiness; mixing color, brushstrokes and draftsmanship to create a composition that gives dimension to the singular; life to desolation and meaning to a visualized thought. Coherence is often, though not always, required and many hours, days, months or even years of contemplation go into the creation of a single canvas. Whereas Pollock could splash out a monstrous driptych in a frenzied few hours, his contemporary, Pousette-Dart, would work on paintings over the course of decades, pulling out canvases begun in the 1930s to refine even as he approached his death in the 1990s. In the case of the subject at hand, one John Morgan Crapps, the cosmos spins in an orbit fraught with visions — some incredibly lucid and brimming with the here and now consciousness of journalistic clarity (Dammit, The Stars Have Fallen Off The Flag…), others swirling in a whorl of contradictions (Wildastic River), seeking transformation even as millions of gallons of swampwater from the Okefenokee Swamp of Georgia are distilled — like a Swedish vodka — to crystalline clarity each day, filtered through the limestone to form the springs of the Suwannee River, a body of water that surrounds his birthplace (Live Oak, Florida) on three-sides, a small town which remains his home today. It is not a stretch for an armchair analyst to note that artist and man is a product of the soil, the history and the purification process that transforms the Georgian swamp water — dark like a weak cup of coffee saturated with the tannins from billions of leaves, roots and bark — into the clear, cool (72 degrees) springs of the fabled “Swanee” River. You would have to understand that the tides and water table of The Suwanee begin as the dark waters of the Okefenokee Swamp, just as the Hudson River’s roots can be traced to a small stream on New York’s tallest mountain. A work in progress, like his beloved river, churning out billions of gallons of the coolest and clearest inspiring works of well-orchestrated brilliance coupled with a fair share of hard-won coherence emanating from the dementia of the terrain. Full of contradictions, of darkness and light, unreal and real, death and immortality, John Morgan Crapps is a walking rendition of De Old Folks At Home with Back in the New York Groove as the chorus. But while Stephen Foster never even saw the stream he made world-famous, John Morgan Crapps has carved out a life for himself as an artist whose creations are light years beyond the capacity of understanding to the “old folks at home.” In fact, Crapps’ penchant for the knock-out blow in his paintings, his technique, his, shall we say “punch-line,” shorts out the circuits of most of the hometown crowd. This carries over into his outside life, as well (note his perfect record of losses in political quests) and his approach 29
which borders somewhere between “screw ’em if they can’t take a joke” to that of a forlorn suitor/prophet despondent over lack of recognition in his hometown, yet determined to endure. His life and paintings move somewhat seamlessly between Live Oak, the Big Apple, and the art capitals of America and Europe. He has been received at the White House, has beheld the beauties in Cannes, and been recognized in the same breath as Rauschenberg, Haring and Johns for his artistic contributions to the cause of combating mental illness. You can put John Morgan Crapps in a French Riviera bistro, with a thousand dollar bottle of wine in front of him and the flavor and mannerisms of Live Oak remain in every word, every thought, every deed. Choosing a medieval typeface for the preceding page’s eleven word headline is an editorialization, admittedly, but it brings us, in a cinematic sense, to a further understanding of the philosophical and etymological basis for what is seemingly just a title of a painting. Of course, the evolutionists amongst us will gloss over this rather quickly. We all came from tadpoles, this work of art states, and Crapps paints a whole school of them on a massive canvas, rolling out of their own little universe, sperm-shaped and sperm-like in dedication to their mission of spawning the human race. Crapps’ tadpoles are a happy lot in their undersea garden, devoid of any danger, real or implied, from anything. These little creatures are living in their own world, quite swimmingly, thank you, and have never even dreamt about the human race: the group of which they were precursors, according to millions of believers (or, you might say, non-believers). But, if you know your history, you will note that when the Bible belt was put together, Northern Florida was the notch that tied up that belly. So when a son of Suwanee County comes out with a major painting called In The Beginning They Was Tadpoles… and I Can Prove It, seen by hundreds of thousands at the Woodstock ’99 Festival, memorialized in book, website and exhibition of same name, as well as in museum exhibits and magazine pages, he is contentiously throwing the high hard one to the power elite of his dry (as in alcohol-free) hometown. John Morgan Crapps, with his six by eight foot canvas, is, by raising the question of “How are we here?” as opposed to “Why are we here?”, basically giving a tadpole-sized finger to a whole heap of people, many of whom are his neighbors of many years and many generations. Never one to run from a good argument, Crapps approaches the problem creatively, fueling the fire, raising questions while some would say he’s raising hell. So in the spirit of seeking an answer, and to further understand exactly what the artist is trying to do here, and the depth of this slightly innocuous work of art, we searched the scriptures. “In the beginning,” according to the Good Book, King James version, “there was the word, and the word was made flesh and dwelt among us … full of grace and truth.” “In the beginning,” Crapps paints, “they was tadpoles …” Here we must stop and ask, does he mean, really mean “They was …” or does he mean “There were …” If we go with the former, we must surmise that Crapps, in his panhandle vernacular, is telling us that whatever he is referring to, in the beginning was. Does he mean the only things that were around were (was) tadpoles, or that in the beginning, mankind was a tadpole, and only a tadpole? Or that amongst what was around in the beginning were tadpoles? Are you following this? To understand the entire body of John Morgan Crapps’s work, we must relate it back to his hometown. Born on a ranch, his mother was chased across a pasture by a menacing bull on the day of his birth. The antediluvian aspects of the Live Oak power elite, entrenched in their theories, have been a thorn in the painter’s side almost ever since. He has challenged them psychically 30
and politically and has a perfect record (zero wins in five campaigns electorally) but continues to battle in the spirit realm, even to the point of creating his own gospel, in his own town, positioned 30.29 degrees north of the equator and 82.98 degrees west of the prime meridian, between Jacksonville and Tallahassee along Interstate 10 near the Suwannee River and the Georgia state line. Live Oak (pop. 6,332) is the most prominent of the charming towns that dot the landscape of north-central Florida, a region often described as the “Original Florida.” John Morgan Crapps is somewhat of a legendary character here, hailing from a family dating back almost to the beginning of the history of the town, which was founded in 1863 by the Pensacola and Georgia Railroad. Live Oak took its name from a large oak tree which stood beside a pond along the Old Spanish Trail (US 90). Unfortunately, the tree no longer exists, but in its day, the “Live Oak” provided comfort and a very popular spot for settlers and railroad workers who would stop to rest in its shade, eat their lunches, and water their horses The first settlers in what would become Suwannee County were the Timucuan Indians, a proud and fierce tribe whose villages and trails dotted southeastern Georgia and northern Florida over five hundred years ago. The tribe earned its name from the Timucua word “thimogona,” which means “my enemy.” Live Oak was formally established by the white man in 1878. Ordinances passed at the time included fines for using profanity; prohibition of shops and establishments from opening on Sundays; a ban on parking mules or horses on paths and sidewalks; and punishment to those who might “needlessly hammer pots at hours when slumber should have been the order of the day.” A p o p u l a r tourist site is the State Folk Culture Center, named in honor of Stephen Foster, composer of The Old Folks at Home, the song that memorializes the river. In 1851, Foster was a young musician searching for a Southern river that would fit into a song he was composing. Searching an atlas with his brother, Morrison, he located a meandering river in North Florida that would fit his intentions. Taking out the “u” and an “n,” Stephen Foster created one of the most well known melodies in the world, originally published on October 1, 1851. From a banking family, Crapps owned and operated a string of Ready Freddy gas stations and convenience stores, which in good times has allowed him to not only paint, but to acquire a substantial collection of art. He has plans to build a museum for these works in Live Oak but in the meantime has donated a number of pieces to the town, which now decorate the offices of the county seat. On a walk around Soho, he was so taken by Mikhail Chemiakin’s ultra-life size sculpture chained to the front of the Mimi Ferzt Gallery on Prince Street that he has been working feverishly for years to amass enough capital for such a major acquisition. The bronze is a goddess of some repute, with many sets of breasts adorning her front and an equal amount of buttocks bringing up the rear. From the moment Crapps first encountered this sculpture, he has been obsessed with placing it in an outdoor square in Live Oak. In the interim, he has collected a wide variety of works from artists ranging from Picasso to Gloria Vanderbilt, all of which were featured in his museum and then donated to the University of Alabama. He is formed and molded by the tides and water tables, the tranquility and the injustices, the two-legged predators and the many good people who have played such a positive role in his life from childhood. The glorious beauty of the region mingles with memories of robber barons and mean-spirited folk and are branded into the history of the region and the landscape of John Morgan Crapps’ heart. His artistic journey continues through a second half century, with this book covering in depth the life and times of a native son possessing the vision of an artist: as incongruous a concept as one might find in a land known more for its tobacco and watermelons, where life, for the most part, carries on as it did a century ago. 31
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Photographs by John Morgan Crapps 33
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b i h “ m o
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Staunton Miltary Academy, John in 2nd row, third from left 48
Cadet John M. Crapps, son of Mr. & Mrs. P.C. Crapps Jr., was recently awarded a monogram in football at Staunton Miltary Academy at Staunton, VA. He went on to play varsity football for legendary coach Bear Bryant at the University of Alabama where he was teamamtes with first-team All American quarterback and future Superbowl champion Ken “The Snake” Stabler. 49
“Coach Bryant was focused on more than winning football games. He prepared every player who ever participated in one of his practices and games for life after football. He stressed how to prepare for the upcoming event; how to leave no room for doubt on the field of play; and how to assess the performance for the purpose of making the next one better, whether it was the following week or decades later. In that respect, he lives on in the works turned out by every player he ever coached.” – Dr. Gaylon McCollough 2017 Distinguished Alabama Sportsman and center on the 1964 Crimson Tide Rose Bowl Champion team
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USS LEXINGTON, 1971
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THE PAINTINGS OF JOHN MORGAN CRAPPS John Morgan Crapps’ painted world is alive with a molten energy that seems released from the landscape
of his home, Dixie County, Florida. His highly personal vision of nature constitutes a kind of southem Garden of Eden, sometime after the Fall, complete with fruit and flowers, a naked Eve, and equal measure of high anxiety and high humor. Nothing is fixed in this landscape; it is animated by waves of energy that roils rivers, bucks mountains and brings the world and its sexy mysteries close up to our faces. This world is often drenched in sunlight and burning with saturated color. Even its moody side is activated, high-charged, and luridly colored. There is an unusually close identification between painter and the natural world. For Crapps, painting is not recreating the likeness of reality. Rather, the artist is imaginatively part of nature which surges around and through him. While he acts as a medium for nature, it provides the expressive language for his own inner dramas. The complimentary dialogue between nature and the artist is as old as Orpheus and the caves of Lascaux. German Expressionism, particularly as seen in the paintings of the Blue Rider group, is modern example of this dialogue. The works of Malcolm Morley and of Luis Cruz Azaceta display this tendency in a contemporary context. lt is the specific emotional weather of the paintings’ inner dramas which sets Crapps’ work apart. An overheated, turbid, slightly desperate atmosphere pervades. There is a sense of danger; emotion may flood everything. The work is rescued by a combination of faith and will which orders the chaotic into something edgy and beautiful. The whole enterprise is regarded with a kind of dark, celebratory humor, as if Crapps is declaring, “Life is a bitch, and ain’t it grand!” There is an unpremeditated-directness to the images that allow a canny, high-spirited craziness to emerge. Looking into these works, we become visitors to the world of a man who embraces life in its disordered confusion and paints with vigor his witness to its strangeness and its joy. John Mendelsohn New York City, 1992 56
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Suwannee Springs, a favorite cooling off spot for Suwannee County residents - Photograph by John Morgan Crapps
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The Fruits of My Labors 74
Self Portrait: The Maddening Rationality of Escaping Patience 28" x 22" 75
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The paintings on these pages (76, 77) were donated to Best Buddies International, founded by Anthony Shriver, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to establishing a global volunteer movement that creates opportunities for one-to-one friendships, integrated employment and leadership development for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. According to Mr. Shriver, vJohn's paintings were among the most in-demand at the annual fund-raising auctions. 77
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Freddy in the Field, Photograph by John Morgan Crapps
“If there’s such a thing as a Southern ‘God’s Country,’ this has to be close.” 112
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The Obnoxious Notions of An Art Critic Oil on Canvas, 96” x 84” 127
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JOHN MORGAN CRAPPS
JOHN MORGAN CRAPPS
The Obnoxious Notions Of An Art Critic
Dammit, The Stars Have Fallen Off The Flag And We’re In Big Trouble
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JOHN MORGAN CRAPPS
JOHN MORGAN CRAPPS
The Big Apple Poster
ARTISTS FOR PEACE & THE ENVIRONMENT Curated By Jamie Ellin Forbes
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with Tico Torres Super model Eva Herzigova with then-husband Tico Torres (Bongiovi drummer) at Tico’s Ambassador Gallery exhibition
Brooke Shields Supermodel Claudia Schiffer, magician David Copperfield 141
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Bob Guccione, founder and owner of Penthouse magazine was a painter of note and vvmajor art collector. His oil paintings and serigraphs were exhibited at Ellie Miner’s Ambassador Gallery in Soho New York. John Morgan Crapps held multiple one man shows there.
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FINE ART MUSEUM OF LONG ISLAND
Television personality Bill Boggs, artist Ishbel Macintosh, John Morgan Crapps, gallerist Ellie Miner, Museum Director Jamie Ellin Forbes at the Fine Art Museum of Long Island's exhibition of John and Ishbel's work, Hempstead, NY 1992
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Fine Art Museum of LongIsland (FAMLI)
Self Portrait, Ambassador Gallery
“I was treated like a guy who had nothing. My father wouldn’t allow it any other way.” 145
John with fellow artist Csaba Markus
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John with Gloria Vanderbilt at his museum show
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The author at Tuff City, Fordham Road and Belmont Avenue, The Bronx, New York City, 2008
About the Author Victor Bennett Forbes started off as a sportswriter in The Bronx back in the ’60s. Author of the children’s book The Sweetest Way Home, A Greyhound’s Tale, his friendship with John Morgan Crapps dates back to the robust New York City Soho arts scene of the early ’90s. Forbes is editor-in-chief of the award winning SunStorm/Fine Art Magazine, which he co-founded with publisher Jamie Ellin Forbes in 1975. 150