"JanSport '25"

     When my friend, Skip Yowell, one of the founders and initial partners at JanSport called me and asked if he could commission me to do a painting to celebrate their 25^th Anniversary, I really got excited.  Not long after that I was on a plane to Seattle to work out the details and hopefully get a feel for the Northwest and what JanSport was all about.  Skip gave me the grand tour (we ran out of gas on I-5 north of Seattle and had to hitch a ride to a gas station), and together we picked out great “stuff” to put into the painting.  Skip’s basement was like a museum, much like my studio.  As you can see, some of it was complicated and tedious to paint, i.e. the lantern, with all the reflections and the snowshoes with all the complicated shadows on the log wall.

      When I got back to Wilmington, Skip sent me enough packs to outfit a Boy Scout troop.  I actually used about half of the props he sent me and the painting is almost too “busy” as it is.  But I wanted it to look like the cluttered interior of a log cabin, with Mount Rainier visible through the window, so I actually built the log wall in my studio and painted the mountain from photos I shot  both on my way to the mountain and actually on the mountain.  The books, which are a staple in my various sporting still life paintings, all relate to mountaineering and hiking.  The patches and badges represent some of the many expeditions that JanSport outfitted. 

     Finally, the old time ‘photo’ depicts the three founders of JanSport, ‘Skip’ in the foreground,  ‘Murray’ (upper right), a designer who holds several patents on tents and backpacks, and ‘Jan,’  a former Fabric Design major, who did the sewing, and for whom the company was named.  These three friends were backpackers who simply did not like the products on the market in the late 1960’s, so they set out to design and make great outdoor equipment, including flexible frame packs and dome tents. Starting in a garage, today they are a multi-national corporation.  I was pleased and honored to have been commissioned to help celebrate and commemorate a milestone with “JanSport ’25.”

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