| HeraldNet - Snohomish County's online news source |
 FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 2008 5:14 pm |
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Local News 
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Lake Stevens man honored for plane art He can't recall much algebra, but Jack Fellows remembers being busy in class."I'd sit in the back and draw Hellcats sinking Japanese ships," the Lake Stevens man said. Fighter planes are still a keen interest. At 67, Fellows hasn't stopped making them the subjects of his art. His oil painting "Corsair" recently won two top awards, the American Society of Aviation Artists Award of Distinction and Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine's first place for military aviation art. Fellows received the awards June 21 at the Museum of Flight in Seattle, which is hosting this year's American Society of Aviation Artists International Aerospace Art Exhibit. More than 50 paintings are on display at the Seattle museum through Sept. 14. Born in Seattle in 1941, just before the attack on Pearl Harbor plunged the United States into World War II, Fellows grew up in an aviation family. His father, a tool engineer, worked in the old "Red Barn," birthplace of the Boeing Co. Work on the B-17 bomber at the Douglas Aircraft Co. moved the family to Long Beach, Calif. By his teens, Fellows was back in the Seattle area. He was in Mercer Island High School's second graduating class, in 1959. This has nothing to do with art or airplanes, but I had to ask: Fellows does remember Stanley Ann Dunham, who was a year behind him at Mercer Island High. Dunham, a 1960 Mercer Island graduate, is the mother of Sen. Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president. After high school, she moved to Hawaii, and met and married Obama's father. She died in 1992. "I did know her, the school was small in those days," said Fellows. "She was a very bright young person, I know that much. Unfortunately for me, I was not prone to get to know people like that. I was one of the rowdy folks." Rowdy maybe, but he was accomplished in art. Without a TV as a boy, he took to reading and copying pictures from a junior encyclopedia set. One of the first serious books he read was "Guadalcanal Diary," by war correspondent Richard Tregaskis. "I read that over and over, and literally memorized every picture," Fellows said. "I was always intensely interested in the air war in the Pacific." He was schooled at the Burnley School for Professional Art, now the Art Institute of Seattle. He served in the Naval Reserve at Seattle's Sand Point, where he was an air crewman and operated anti-submarine equipment. Reserve duty took him to Hawaii, Florida and California, but not to Vietnam, although the war coincided with his service. "One of our pilots was Richard Nixon's brother, Ed Nixon," Fellows said. He worked as a car mechanic, a shipwright's apprentice and later at Boeing, all the while nurturing his avocation, fine art. The Lake Stevens home he shares with his wife, Louise, is decorated with his paintings, mostly landscapes and oil paintings of dancers. Louise Fellows, a former ballerina, is retired from Cameo-Carrabba Dance, a Bothell dance school she founded in Seattle. Their home's lower level is where the airplanes are. In Jack Fellows' studio, there are airplane models and books on aviation history. There's an easel and paintbrushes, but today much of his work is digitally rendered. He works as the art director for International Historical Research Associates, a Colorado-based company that publishes combat unit histories. His computer-created image of a Japanese Seiran float plane appeared on the May 2008 cover of Aviation History Magazine. He has designed postage stamps for the Marshall Islands. And more than 100 of his illustrations are in the book "War in Pacific Skies." "As an aviation artist, the painting is about 10 percent and the research about 90 percent," he said. At quick glance, his works look almost like photographs. "With aircraft, you have to be historically accurate," said Fellows, who often works from models and photos. "You want it to look real, but you can do that without being photographic. There's a painterly aspect to my style." Even with deadlines forcing him to set aside his oil paints and work on a computer, his art has a certain light, a vintage quality of bygone illustrations. "What I'm all about is making pictures, ever since I was a little kid," he said. Columnist Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460 or muhlstein@heraldnet.com. Art on view "Corsair," an award-winning painting by Lake Stevens artist Jack Fellows, is on display through Sept. 14 at the Museum of Flight as part of the American Society of Aviation Artists 2008 International Aerospace Art Exhibit. The Museum of Flight is at 9404 East Marginal Way S. in Seattle. Information: 206-764-5720 or www.museumofflight.org. |
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