Book Review: The World is Your Studio: Travel Stories by Irene and Franklin McMahon
The World is Your Studio: Travel Stories by Irene and Franklin McMahon. Deborah McMahon Osterholt, StudioPress, 15 November 2021, Paperback, Hardback, and eBook, 118 pages.
Reviewed by Gerry Souter.
This is the easiest review I've ever done because I lived a small part of it. When I was sixteen, I applied to the Famous Artist School, where Franklin McMahon served on the faculty. I passed the talent test, went through the entire set of correspondence courses, and later built a portfolio that got me accepted by the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Deborah McMahon Osterholtz's book about her father's career as an internationally acclaimed artist and her mother's award-winning career as a travel writer triggered memories for me long forgotten. Deborah has followed her parent's lead as an author, artist, international speaker, and teacher. The product of her parents' legacy and her own creative diligence has produced The World is Your Studio: Travel Stories by Irene and Franklin McMahon.
Deborah has packed her pages with Franklin's breathtaking art. She begins her exhaustive project with sculptures of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza—drawn by her father, of course—and ends the drawing's caption with "I believe they lived the impossible dream." She is the fourth of nine McMahon children and, as she remarks, "...had a front row seat to [Irene and Franklin's] creative process."
From this unique perspective, she describes both Franklin's and Irene's work habits. Much of his work is artist-journalism: Like most fine artists, quick sketches and impressions of a scene precede the final work, adding a score of details and memories arranged in carefully conceived designs before the final rendering. His eye-to-hand coordination was remarkable. What the photojournalist captured with the press of a shutter, Franklin brought to life in acres of detail with a Waterman ink pen. Many of his larger renditions were created on 20" x 30" sheets of 140-pound cold pressed watercolor paper, drawing with Veriblack 2B Charcoal pencils. Some, he chose to treat with brushes and acrylic transparent or opaque watercolor. His architectural renderings landed on the sheet surrounded by people, ordinary folk going about their tourist selfies and poses. Many of the images illustrate Irene's words.
Irene McMahon preferred to write at night when the silent dark let thoughts and images coalesce into what she observed, remembered, and researched, and often what Franklin transferred to image status.
Historical events became fodder for McMahon's renditions. The British confrontation with colonials at Lexington: "...if they mean to have a war, let it begin here!" enhances the life of Irene's words with Franklin's acrylic. Pitcairn's British "Lobsterbacks" with bayonets leveled slash red and white across the page at Captain Parker's ragtag band of Minutemen standing fast on Lexington Green on that early April morning in 1775. McMahon's artist essay continued for his contemporary readership with color renditions of tourists observing the British-Colonial clash, snapping photos, peering out from blankets on that chilled morning's reenactment show.
"In Tune with Japan: Travels with the Chicago Symphony" was an artist-journalism assignment in 1977 which took McMahon to Japan with conductor Georg Solti. Watercolor images show modern Japan, with the gaudy glare of the Ginza, the crush of the Tsukiji Fish Market, and the NHK Studio, where the symphony played Debussy's "La Mer." McMahon added images of Seoul's rush and crowded auto traffic, its press of shoppers in 1993 Korea.
Franklin traveled around the world on assignments for magazines which, in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, were significant enough for media to support Franklin's ink and color designs. His work appeared in books and publications such as The Constitution of Illinois, which reproduced fifty-two of his illustrations. McMahon wrote, "In this sort of drawing the design grows out of the artist's work on the site and his interaction with the subject matter, rather that being superimposed later in the studio. The drawing is not blocked in or planned in advance; it just grows..."
Deborah's quotations from Irene's writing fill in many questions about her family's life. Her dad had been a B-17 navigator, shot down and held prisoner by the Germans. Her mom had been a United Air Lines Stewardess during World War II. In later years, the McMahons themselves brought their children and grandchildren along when traveling on assignment.
Deborah tells how Irene recalled that Franklin got enough exercise "...chasing after presidential candidates, climbing the steps of far-off temples and occasionally raking leaves." Irene noted that during the years "Mac" was circling the globe on assignments, she remained home involved with school boards, volunteering, family life, and Head Start. One of these ventures was a..." panel of racially diverse women talking about how prejudice had affected our lives."
I have to thank Deborah for choosing me to review her book out of sheer coincidence. I am also in debt to the Famous Artists School, who, many years ago, accepted me as a correspondence art student. I have admired Franklin McMahon's artwork for decades. I have a collection of ten of McMahon's limited edition Chicago Collection dinner plates showing Chicago scenes. The collection was commissioned by the Continental Illinois Bank from 1972 to 1982 and were given out as premiums; they are now collectors' items.