This is our anniversary month, and it’s a big one. For the occasion I’ve put a book together to share with friends, and anybody else.

It’s another of our now classic 8 1/4 inch square books.

The book is published in commemoration of our 50th year married (2/17/66). But it features the earliest years only . . . from when we met through our fifth year. It’s of that period we’ve recently rediscovered a trove of black and white photos, classic and telling of broad adventure. That’s us on the cover, painted recently from a photo in our second year married, in Michoacan, Mexico.

Click on all these photos for larger view (and almost legible text).

Here’s a starter for photos that I, myself, didn’t know existed. Anne doesn’t talk much about her early days, here as a school queen (“Chadwick,” Palos Verdes) and in the Mariners club (Newport Beach). At this point Anne and I had not yet met.

(Left) Asian Child, Hyatt Moore, 1962, oil, 16×12 inches.

(Right) Graceful Nymph, Anne Moore, 1962, terra cotta, 11 inches.

Only a small part of the book features art, but since this is an art-related blog, here are a couple of those pages.

I was not considering myself an artist in those early days, not a true artist anyway. The Asian child was virtually my first oil painting, just post high school, in black and white, me knowing nothing about color. Anne, meantime, was winning awards for art in high school.

Though we lived in the same town, we went to different high schools and didn’t know each other. People ask if art was what brought us together. Not necessarily. More like just fun, and conversation, and blind love.

Head with Figures, Anne Moore, clay, 1962, and ceramic, c. 1967 and later.

Long before Anne became a printmaker, for which she’s most known these days, she did many other things. In their periods she did tole painting, macrame, weaving . . . including pine needles baskets, sewing, and anything her hand finds to do.

Another sample spread, the photo at right from a negative test strip, all we have left.

Here’s Anne, in our early years of marriage, photographing something, and refurbishing cabinets in our first Dana Point house. Once, before we were married, I asked Anne what she was hoping for for Christmas. Answer: “A soldering iron!”  She had other crafts in mind. (Again, click to enlarge.)

Here’s one more photo of that terra cotta statue. It’s a piece that’s graced our home for many years, now accompanied by a menagerie of such by other artists, picked up on travels. I can’t help seeing in this one a likeness between art and artist. Yes?

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Our Lives Together, Available Now

Full of black and white photos, many classic and candid, and with stories to match (also classic), 140 pages. Great entertainment and inspiration. Just $20.

For a taste of other topics, and for ordering info (for delivery soon) click here.
or
Available now on Amazon here.

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Further Blogs

Do you know I have two blogs? One’s Blank Canvas (this one) and the other Blank Slate. Each has its own mailing list. More from Our Lives Together will be on the Blank Slate blog. If you’re not subscribed and would like to be, go here. (Or unsubscribe just as easily, same place.)

Here’s the most recent Blank Slate post, as sample. I think you’ll enjoy it.

Either way, keep finding joy in your own life.