J'Mel Pop

The paintings of Thomas Kinkade: Everett’s Cottage, 1997 A New Day Dawning, 1997 Footprints in the Sand, 2007 San Francisco, Golden Gate Bridge, 1995 Mountain Paradise, Mountain Retreat II, 2006

Eventually, no longer content with the letter N’s he added to honor his wife Nanette, Thomas Kinkade began hiding human corpses or other suggestions of grim violence within his idyllic paintings. These “little frownies,” as he called them, were Thom’s dark gifts to the viewer, small but unsettling reminders of mortality. As he wrote in his 2004 autobiography, LIGHT MAKES RIGHT:

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)

Announcing the 2016 APPLE CABIN CALENDAR!

In 1816, illiterate Finnish explorer Alpert Redford Walker stumbled upon a small, unmanned grocery store hidden in a clearing deep within the forests of California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains. Pleased by the bins full of exotic fruits and fresh vegetables and impressed by the shelves well stocked with reasonably priced snacks, Walker learned that this remarkable little store was called oha paddaki'e, or “Apple Cabin,” by the local Paiute tribe, who nevertheless denied any knowledge of the store’s origin. Feeling that Divine Providence had guided him to the market, Walker donned one of the aprons that hung waiting in the employee break room and thereby assumed ownership, ensuring Apple Cabin’s tradition of savings + quality would remain strong to this day.

200 years later, you (+ your family) can finally enjoy the look and feel of Apple Cabin Foods… in a genuine calendar! Featuring ALL TWELVE colorful Apple Cabin ads, this handsome, chronologically precise 12” x 12” full-color wall chart showcases the savings + quality that have been the store’s legacy since Alpert Walker clocked in for his first shift all those years ago. While the savings + quality are the focus of each month’s image, several attempts have been made to add a delightful photographic background that is occasionally appropriate to the month in question. Small clipped coupons decorate the periphery of the monthly grids, pushing the already unbelievable savings into realms of value difficult for the human mind to grasp.

The Apple Cabin 2016 Calendar is being sold to benefit Reading Frenzy, a small press bookstore in Portland, OR. Independently owned and operated by Chloe Eudaly for over 21 years, Reading Frenzy has been a tremendous help to me and many others. 100% of calendar sales go to the store, so that it might continue to help others achieve their dreams and realize their own hopes and also reach their goals of reaching for the tops of the limits of those dreams, as well as believing in dreams, goals, and hopes, plus riding the lightning to the top of their dreams’ limits/goals/achievements.

The calendar is officially available for pre-orders! It will be shipping by mid-October, 2015, in plenty of time for the holidays. If you’re interested, pre-orders are best, since they help set the print run.