In 1994 I was commissioned by a woman to do 2 pencil collage drawings as gifts for her sons. Their last name was Dalton, and the young men had started a company to sell a special recipe of BBQ sauce, capitalizing on their ancestors, the notorious Dalton Gang. The gang robbed a bank in Coffeyville, Kansas and died in the raid, along with 4 innocent citizens. This incident in history is a huge part of the identity of Coffeyville, 125 years later. (It happened in 1892 – did I do the math right?)
In the past handful of years, I have become friends with a woman who lives in Coffeyville. (Yea, internet!) She is a writer and blogger named Cheryl Barker and this is the link to her site. When I learned where she lives, I told her about the drawings and she was very surprised that I had heard of Coffeyville at all. (She had never heard of Three Rivers, duh.)
I told her if I ever found pictures of those drawings, I’d send them to her.
Last week I was procrastinating (quite productively, thank you for your concern), and decided to have another look.
Wow, in the last century I kept appallingly horrible visual records of my work. Here are the two pencil drawings, after scanning the horrid photos and working a bit of photoshop magic on them.
P.S. I googled Dalton Wild Times Enterprises and found nothing.
2 Comments
Jana, I’m so glad we connected a few years ago — and am still so surprised you had this artistic connection to Coffeyville! 🙂 The drawings are wonderful and I’ll enjoy sending my local friends to your site to take a look. Thanks for featuring our connection and in-common tie to Coffeyville! 🙂
Cheryl, friendship with you is a wonderful gift in my life and I was so surprised when you said you live in Coffeyville. What a strange time we live in, when we can build friendships without even knowing where someone lives! Thank you for your kind words about those drawings. (So hard to tell what is what with my lousy documentation from 21 years ago!)
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