Beyond Words

At the start of 1993 I moved from my forty year home of Hawaii to Los Angeles - something I
had talked about for years. Circumstances finally came together to allow it to happen and I think I
surprised everybody by doing it. My youngest son Kipano Keoni a ke Kai Ko'o set out on his own,
like all my four children he is very self-sufficient and responsible.

Waiahole Valley had been perfect for me to raise the children but now it was a very big empty
nest. The police mural was completed and like most of my murals, left no profit to cushion my
search for the next job. My personal fortune improved when a phenomenon took place in Hawaii
that like a huge wave consumed the islands and then flooded across the world.

Milk caps were first used as game pieces when I was in grade school. Kids took the small round
paper stoppers from the tops of milk bottles and created a game. Slapping your favorite "slammer"
on stacks of caps the player would win the ones that flipped over. The hot players would evidence
their prowess by carrying around bags bulging with their winnings. It flourished in the fifties for a
moment and then became a fun memory for my generation. In the eighties a grade school teacher in
a Waiawa public school introduced her young students to it -- and it took off. A total phenomenon
completely consuming the culture. Glass milk bottles were no longer used but boxes of unused caps
were brought out from forgotten storage, mostly though people designed and printed new ones. A
business friend Eileen Fong approached me for images and together we created the first art pogs.
"Pogs" was how these round pieces of cardboard were now called. We printed a sheet of twenty
pogs using images from my murals and illustrations, a Hawaiian series, a proverb series, a children's
series. Pogs were lucrative. Eileen and I would go from pog show to pog show signing our prod-
uct for collectors.

Two aspects of this phenomenon were especially interesting to me. One... pogs were the ultimate
antitechnology. Their popularity was a reaction against the high technology that is being rammed
down all of our throats. One reason I like oil painting so much is the direct simplicity of the tools.
Two... pogs created a situation where two generations that normally don't mix as equals suddenly
did. My generation, the old masters of the milk cap and the grade school kids, the new masters of
the pog — collecting and trading, playing and celebrating — these odd groups of the older and
younger were seen in discourse all over the place. Negotiating skills are essential as the rules for
each new game to be played are made up and agreed to before each contest. Teens and young adults
were left scratching their heads as they found themselves out of the mix.

Pogs financed my move to California — where pogs were starting to catch on. I moved to Venice
CA and Eileen Fong moved to Orange County. We would rendezvous at pog shows and continue
the success. Eileen and her family rode the pog wave across the states and on to Europe, before it
finally ended.

The twenty-five murals I had done in Hawaii meant nothing to anybody in Los Angeles. The
months of introductory letters sent from Hawaii were mostly unanswered. Moving to Los Angeles
was in every sense of the word, starting over. The cushion of the pogs carried me as I located and
applied to every city arts organization listed. There were some graphic and portrait jobs but I also found
myself doing construction work to make ends meet. A friend, Les Biller, had taught art at the
University of Hawaii, so when I came to LA. he helped me find a studio. An excellent architect
Lise Matthews was in the process of building her offices and had included in her plans an artist
studio — Les made the introduction and I was in. The studio is the best I had ever experienced. A
cool shadowless and sun-streak free light from morning to dusk all year long - the perfect light for
painting. Lise Matthews' kindness to me as I struggled to establish myself in Los Angeles was the
cushion I needed to survive. If I fell behind on my rent she would say "don't worry Martin, I'm an
artist too." —That is something I will never forget.

In Venice CA I was no longer odd man out but just another artist neighbor — understood at last.

One ploy artists run into when they move to L.A. is well to do people asking for a free sample
painting that they will put up in their home or office where their well to do friends will see it and be
so amazed they will commission from the artist other works. Not a good idea.

Thankfully I did start to acquire some fans - one young actress Christine Hartz loved paintings
and animals and commissioned me five times to do portraits of her pets. Michael Lombardi and I
worked out at the same World's Gym. I heard he was a developer and gave him a package of my
images. People can't react to your wares unless they know what they are. Michael reacted imme-
diately and positively. He introduced me to Dr. Cherilyn Sheets and her husband Mark Moehlman
who were building the Children's Dental Center. They too loved what I had to offer and commis-
sioned me for my first L.A. mural. It had taken me three years since arriving in Los Angeles to find
the right situation — I was very grateful. At last someone was giving me a chance to prove myself in
this new market.

Dr. Cherilyn Sheets is a very energetic, charismatic individual who was putting together a new
concept in dentistry — a state of the art facility available to all. Dr. Sheets recognized the positive
effect of fine art in people's lives and sold her board of directors on the mural. The fact that these
doctors were not part of the L.A. art world was to my advantage. As usual my work was completely
out of the "in" style of the official art market

The one input that Dr. Sheets wished me to consider was that the mural should express to young
people that they can aspire to be whatever they want to be. The completed mural showed this in two
ways — a firefighter giving his fire hat over to a young boy to wear and a portrait of Ferol Robins, a
police officer, who is the first woman to become the pastor of the Los Angeles Police Department.
The dignity she carries with her is the real anchor to the whole mural.

I had several imperatives that formed my thinking for this mural. One was to create an image
that would enter into the dental process — that would become part of the healing. This could be
achieved, I decided, by painting something so magical, so beyond words, that as a young patient
walked into the dental center they would be so engaged visually that the pain they walked in with
would be forgotten for ten seconds. I have observed this happening at the center and feel this
objective was realized.

In 1985 I had made oil sketches for a proposed mural for the Thousand Oaks Library — those
sketches had been inspired by the exposed heat and air conditioning ducts that the library architec-
ture exhibited. My idea then was to bring those shapes of the architecture into the landscape of the
picture. That visual had stuck in my mind and I saw its application would be useful in the dental
center. My "Beyond Words" concept could be achieved by the juxtaposition of free flowing abstract
forms and identifiable California people and scenes. I surmised the art scene in LA. could relate
with the abstract elements of the composition which fit in with what is acceptable as art to the L.A.
eye and maybe I hoped that same art viewer could be trained by seeing the two styles side by side to
accept my more realistic imagery.

The "abstract" images I picked were chosen from actual objects.

The stone floating in the center is a counter edge sample from a marble company. The metallic
rocket is a 1950s car ornament. The corkscrew wood is a Chippewa pipe stem. The larger spiral is
a portion of a sculpture by artist William Tumberg. The rusty metal undulating pipe is a bicycle
rack from the park — the hope being that a child running through the park recognizes the shape and
flashes back to the mural. The twist of the rope and smoke mirroring each other is a visual I de-
lighted in. The little girl on the ledge reaches to touch the airplane, a game most of us have played.
Frozen like this emphasizes the big being small and the small being big. The powerful being deli-
cate and the delicate being powerful.

The translucent images that float around the little girl are in actuality very large. I presume they
are another artist's failed sculpture, that cracked apart in the curing process. They are used as
parking dividers at Hasting's Plastic in Santa Monica. I arrived one evening as the setting sun
illuminated them. The one tube of paint that gave me the glaze color I needed was almost squeezed
dry and no longer had a label. An old tube I probably inherited from my dad more than likely over
thirty years old - still searching to find a replacement.

The gigantic horns protruding from the hill represent for me the history of the cattle man. In my
mind starting with the early Mexican ranchers, the Mexican roots of the land —the Caballeros. In
my early drawings and oil sketches though what I wanted was a pure abstract crescent shape. I
searched and searched to find a crescent I could use always describing it to people as " like a horn."
I bought a shampoo bottle that was close but nothing I found quite gave me what I was after. At the
time there was an American Indian trading store almost across the street from me where I finally
gave into mv words "like a horn" and photographed the horns of the cattle sculls.

The hill in the background is in Malibu Creek Park — a huge beautiful almost wilderness. I
often slow jog at this park where my turn around spot is the post marking the location where the set
for the TV show M.A.S.H. was. The hill above that spot was a gigantic pink rock ridge that to me
looks like a monstrous snake. I had used this ridge in several small paintings but this was my first
opportunity to paint it large — have still not captured the sense of largeness and snakiness I see in
real life.

In Malibu I saw a young lady throwing roses into the waves at the place where her boyfriend
died. My dad told me once about a dream he had had of roses churning in waves and foam — an
image he had tried unsuccessfully to paint, he said. Putting the roses on the beach felt very per-
sonal.

In Southern California dolphins do swim with the surfers right next to the shore so having the
dolphin that close to the beach is very familiar to people here.

The twins restate the imagery of the mural — one twin touches the sand — the earth, and the other
twin touches the plastic ball and pail — the designed, colorful, non-organic.