Family treasures

Just got back from a long 4-day road trip to pick up some family artwork created by my late uncle, Maurice Bernson -- work from a lot of genres, done over many years' time, that had been collected by another uncle, Claude Bernson. A veritable treasure trove of inspiration.

I'll write more about the whole adventure soon, a family history tour of sorts, covering over 1800 miles.

One highlight was a visit to the River Valley Pioneer Museum in Canadian, Texas where we found out about old family photographs that were discovered among the glass negatives of Julius Born. The collection was recently digitized and is available for viewing on The Portal to Texas History. My grandparents' amazing wedding photo, circa 1916ish, (shown here) was among them. Click to enlarge and see detail.

Uncle Maurice

I want to create a website in honor of my late uncle, the artist Maurice Bernson, and since I haven't been able to pull that off quite yet... I thought I'd put some posts related to him on my blog in the meantime. 

Maurice had a huge influence on me. He was a multi-talented artist and, from as early as I can remember, he considered me one too. Whenever I talked to him on the phone, he would always end our chats by saying, "Remember, us artists gotta stick together!" 

This photo was taken of us at Pebble Beach near Pescadero in Northern California in the early '80s. The area has sculpted rock formations and a beach that is made up of beautiful pebbles of all colors, wonderfully rounded, and a pleasure to let run through your fingers! It was a spectacular day, like many I shared with him.