My Modeling Days

John and Ian Schoenherr posing for a scene in Incident at Hawk’s Hill

I finally found the photograph of my father and me that I’d been looking for for about a year. Check out the post on my “John Schoenherr” blog to learn more about it.

A First Grader’s View of John Schoenherr

I wrote this illustrated “story” about my father in Miss Pace’s first grade class at Delaware Township School in Sergeantsville, New Jersey. I can interpret my hieroglyphs thusly:

• circle on the easel: a side view of a roll of paper towels.
• vase of dead flowers: a jar full of paint brushes
• flowers on the table: fly lures that Dad was tying for fly-fishing
• the “X” thing: a folding aluminum stool with a green seat
• ladder 1: a bookcase?
• ladder 2: stairs
• animal in a square: one of Dad’s bear paintings

On the far right is the workbench with a fly lure and, on its side, a walkie-talkie. I’m not sure what those dark, curved things are: possibly fly-tying vices.

Very nice.

Eulogy for John Schoenherr

(This is what I said during the memorial service at Calvary Episcopal Church in Flemington, NJ, on May 15, 2010)



In the past few weeks, as I've I tried to process my father's death and life and work, I've often felt that I'm only just beginning to understand who he was and that I'm far from being able to talk about him meaningfully. Sometimes, though, when Dad was making a picture, he'd muck around and around until something coherent took shape, so I'll apply his method now.

And, when in doubt, quote Shakespeare:

What's in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet...

Little Johnnie, John, Jack, Jex, Honey, Grandpa. Or, in my and my sister's case, Dada, Dadoo, Uncle Daddy, and, occasionally, Pa, Papa, and Father. Or Dear Old Dad.

Actually, I don't think we ever called him "Dear Old Dad." But he called himself that, and he'd often sign his emails "DOD." He did it jokingly, but he knew we felt that way about him. And we knew how he felt about us, although he tended to express his feelings "not in words but in deeds."

Dad was all about eliminating extraneous details, about cutting to the chase, about distilling and discovering the essence or nature of things: the way things worked and felt and what they meant. He wanted truth - absolute honesty - and he was honest in return. Sometimes brutally honest. But he was never cruel. Cynical, maybe. No: cynical, definitely.

Dad was a true believer in Sturgeon's Law which (officially) states that "Ninety percent of everything is crud." In Dad's mind, though, it was "Ninety-five percent of everything is crap." A subtle, but perhaps a more precise distinction. Dad also savored that bitter old chestnut: "Awards are like hemorrhoids. Every asshole gets one in the end." And he enjoyed quoting H. L. Mencken's remark that "No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public." Of course, Dad, too, was unapologetically fond of certain unfortunate things: he liked awful TV sitcoms, warm butter as dip for pretzels, shoes with velcro straps, Steven Seagal movies, instant coffee, and not-safe-for-work photographs of morbidly obese naked people farting in swimming pools.

But Dad's earthy sense of humor and of himself kept him grounded and kept him going. And despite his bouts of cynicism and his strong opinions - about art and politics, especially - he wasn't a proselytizer and was never (well, rarely) condescending. He treated everyone and everything as an equal: cats, dogs, aphids, slime molds, Republicans, Democrats. Even small children. He didn't talk down to them. He was live-and-let-live and instinctively followed the Golden Rule.

Although Dad sometimes grumpily expressed the need to be left alone to do his own thing, by himself, in his untidy nest, among his toys and his tools, perhaps more than anything else he wanted to communicate, to connect: to connect with animals and plants and water and rocks and bones and clouds - and, now and then, with people.

Dad was very matter of fact about life - and about death. And I've only just realized that he approached both without fear.

He was fond of snakes and rock-climbing, caving, kayaking, flying in small airplanes, driving interesting cars, working through the night, and being a freelancer. He broke the sound barrier, once, and he got close (maybe too close, here and there) to wild boars and snapping turtles and moose and bison and tigers. But he wasn't foolhardy about things that were bigger or more dangerous than he was.

He once wrote, "I know that life for a wild animal is demanding, and that very few mistakes are forgiven. When I encounter a wild animal in its world, whether a field mouse or a skunk, an owl or a bear, I am in awe of this marvelous creature that is so alien to me. The more I learn about them, the more I respect them."

I could say the same of that marvelous creature, Dear Old Dad.

Dad and the MAD Man

I really appreciate all the public and private tributes to my father that have appeared over the last two weeks. They fortify my opinion of him as an artist and as a person, and sometimes they shed light on parts of his life that I knew little about.

Today I got a note from Nick Meglin, editor of MAD magazine for 20 years (and on its staff for decades more) and author of Drawing From Within: Unleashing Your Creative Potential- among many other books and articles. He also went to Stuyvesant High School with my father, but they had fallen out of touch after 1952. In recent years my father had begun to re-forge old friendships, and I feel like it would only have been a matter of time before he found his former classmate. Here is the message Nick sent to his family (reprinted with his permission):

My family...

Joel Haas sent me an obit from the NY Times and I'm feeling very, very bad to learn that this John Schoenherr was someone I knew in Stuyvesant H.S. He was a year ahead of me, a terrific artist. Like me, we were rare talents in a school known for science and math.

We weren’t close friends; he was modest and rather shy. Our only time together was our involvement with the school literary magazine. Despite his fine talent, I had no idea that he was that dedicated to art as a future direction as it was for me. He thought I was better at it than he was, but I truly wasn't, just more driven at that time. I had to validate going to School of Visual Arts rather than a state college where art departments had little to offer a would-be commercial artist. There was no money available that would allow me to attend a university like Syracuse or Pratt with highly regarded commercial art departments.

John and I collaborated on the title page art of the magazine in his senior year and I had to insist that he initial his half of the stylized cartoon illustration we designed together. I believe I have a copy of it somewhere in one of those boxes I still haven’t gotten to since I moved to Durham seven years ago.

Spotting a similar name as his on a magazine illustration some years after our high school days, I tried to learn if this was the same person I knew. But those were the days that if someone lived out of NYC and/or had an unlisted number, it was impossible to communicate with them, so I guess I just forgot about it.
 
I could have written articles about him and his work as I did other friends for American Artist Magazine when they published just about anything I offered them.

When I read the obituary and some other biographical data about John I learned he was a fine person and indeed that bright fellow I knew back then. I was taken by our similar passions and priorities -- he, too was more dedicated to his family than his own artistic aspirations. The more I read, the more I felt saddened that I had lost a personal, lifelong friend that should have been but never came to be.

nick

Dad

My father, John Schoenherr, died on Thursday night in a Pennsylvania hospital. As was usual in his company, we were telling sad and funny (mostly funny) stories when it happened. He was only 74, but he'd been in poor health for a long time.

Dad was a born artist and - in my prejudiced eyes - a rare genius. He was never bored, never boring, and the most intellectually curious person I've ever known. When something piqued his interest, he quickly morphed from an enthusiast to an authority. He lived for his work, yet our family never wanted for his affection, attention, and love.

Although Dad devoted his recent years to painting wildlife, he'd spent decades making thousands of illustrations, primarily for science fiction magazines and paperbacks and for children's books. He also wrote a few books of his own.

I often think that Dad's science fiction pictures brought out the best in him: they brim with bold and dynamic compositions, technical dexterity and inventiveness, imagination, and humor. His passion for natural history - and for zoology and geology in particular - informed his work in such a way that his alien creatures and landscapes looked real. This quality spurred Frank Herbert to say that Dad was "the only man who has ever visited Dune." Then again, he visited countless other places - and invited countless viewers to come along with him.

Children's books revealed Dad's softer side. But this "softer side" was like a Grizzly's underfur: the warm and fuzzy still had a sturdy, powerful core. His empathy for animals - from lowly mole, to raccoon, to owl, to moose - was always apparent. He was part bear, after all.

It was an education and a gift to see and talk about his paintings as they took form in his studio - and it was never easy to see them crated up and shipped off to their new homes. Even at the end, when Dad's physical limitations had the upper hand, nothing could curb his drive to communicate in words or in pictures. I know he had a lot more to say and I'm grateful for the things he did.

John Schoenherr (1935-2010)

My father, John Schoenherr, passed away tonight. He was a man of many talents and I can't say what he was best at, but he was, among countless other things, a great artist, a great husband to my mother for almost 50 years, and a great dad to my sister and me.

Father's Day

Since the fifth grade, one of my best and constant friends has been Carl Zimmer, the science writer. Not long after Carl and I met, my dad made some illustrations for The Illustrated Dune by Frank Herbert, which were also used in a Dune calendar. Well, with his ever-watchful eye, Carl noticed that the cover art for both items found its way into John Hodgman's speech before President Obama at the Radio and TV Correspondents’ Dinner and then talked about it (and my dad and me) on his blog. Makes a nice Father's Day gift. Thanks, Carl!