# https://marijkekogermemoir.com


## Posts

- [21. GRANADA HILLS](https://marijkekogermemoir.com/21-granada-hills/): STARS, CARS &#038; GUITARS An attorney friend of Don, Charles Foster, became my lawyer to finalize the dissolution of my marriage to Guard Hall and Charles accepted a very large painting “It’s a Wonderful Life” in lieu my attorney fees. Life went on and we enjoyed it by going to gigs in the local bars with Don’s band, drag racing Don’s Firebird, camping and taking his fabulous cabin cruiser to the local lakes. By 1998 Melvia had returned to total babyhood and finally her brain completely mal-functioned. She was released from her suffering and passed away in her sleep peacefully. [&hellip;]
- [20. MISSION HILLS](https://marijkekogermemoir.com/20-mission-hills/): FREE AS A BIRD From the rented house in Altadena I had to drive 20 miles every day to my friend Anne Grindley’s ranch in Mission Hills to take care of my horses Captain and Cherie. In lieu of paying board I took care of her three Arabians as well. I have always been an early riser because horses need to be taken care of on a regular schedule. They get their hay and stalls cleaned at 6 AM and again at 6 PM. I was extremely depressed about my abandonment situation but started to paint again which always puts [&hellip;]
- [19. SPACE SENTINEL](https://marijkekogermemoir.com/19-space-sentinel/): GUARD HALL After our introduction we started to date but it was not long before the new romance blossomed and Guard moved into my Camrose cottage soon after. I was captivated by his stories about the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Viking Mission to Mars he worked on as an aerospace engineer. Following the earlier Pioneer program, the Viking program consisted of two identical space probes; Viking 1 and Viking 2, launched in 1975 riding atop Titan IIIE rockets with Centaur upper stages. They entered Mars orbit in 1976 to return images used for choosing the landing sites after which [&hellip;]
- [18. INTO THE MYSTIC](https://marijkekogermemoir.com/into-the-mystic/): CAMROSE VILLAGE I started out the year 1975, living by myself again after a 12-year partnership with Simon Posthuma went on the rocks. The Highland Camrose Bungalow Village next to the Hollywood Bowl was one of those unique places in Los Angeles with its own special appeal and ambience and truly felt like a community. The pretty craftsmen style bungalows were painted different colors surrounded by mature trees and nice landscaping. The compound was managed by ex-D.J. for KFWB/radio 98, British “Lord” Tim Hudson. Built in the early 20th Century it was added to the National Register of Historic Places [&hellip;]
- [17. MEDITERRANEAN BLUES](https://marijkekogermemoir.com/17-mediterranean-blues-malibu/): MALIBU (Chumash word for rough road) The Booker Taliafero Jones ranch on Malibu’s Winding Way was a family affair. The main house was a typical California ranch house with four bedrooms, a huge living room with a fireplace and a cozy country kitchen. Booker had a special music room that he had outfitted with the latest electronic and recording equipment which he was keen to start using to produce and record our tunes for the “Mediterranean Blues” album on his “Homegrown” label for A &amp; M. Booker’s parents lived on the property in a separate house in a grove of [&hellip;]
- [16. SON of AMERICA](https://marijkekogermemoir.com/16-son-of-america/): WITH A LITTLE BIT OF HELP FROM OUR FRIENDS On July 16. 1969, the date of the Moon landing, Yosha &amp; Barry got married at “The Builders of the Adytum’” Temple in Highland Park. Their oldest daughter Violet Aurora was born a few weeks later, the first of their 6 children. It was a happy occasion with many friends from far and wide present, including Yosha’s parents from Amsterdam. During the evening celebration atop their Studio City hill house, we watched the television with bated breath when the announcement came: “The Eagle has landed”… While working on the “Summer Sunday” [&hellip;]
- [15. SUMMER SUNDAY](https://marijkekogermemoir.com/15-summer-sunday/): COSMIC COUTURE When he was not residing in his mansion in Montecito, Santa Barbara, to be near his beloved polo field at Earl Warren’s equestrian center, Michael Butler had a large four bedroom house with a pool off Kings Road above the Sunset strip where he conducted his various business projects. The latest of which was the launching of an exclusive limited edition fashion line called “Summer Sunday”. He invited me as well as some of my friends who were also designers, Marsia Trinder (daughter of a former Lord Mayor of London) and Simone Strauss, an established fashion designer, to [&hellip;]
- [14. AQUARIUS THEATER](https://marijkekogermemoir.com/14-aquarius-theater/): HAIR It was the “Dawning of the Age of Aquarius” and living in Hollywood during the late sixties felt like it was just the right place and time for “the Fool” collective. Simon and I immediately started to create more artwork in our a large studio upstairs in the Shoreham Drive house while our manager Ben Stagg did the rounds finding interested art and fashion buyers so we could pay the rent of $350 per month while also trying to promote “The Fool” album with interviews by DJ’s such as Mitchell Reed, “The Beamer”, on KFWB station and “The Rabbit” [&hellip;]
- [13. THE FOOL](https://marijkekogermemoir.com/13-the-fool/): A SHIP OF FOOLS The Fool celebrated New Year’s Eve of ‘68 being served dinner in our painted Bentley parked in front of Mr. Chow’s popular Chinese restaurant, because it was too crowded inside. Soon thereafter, we were approached by John Heyman of “World Film Services” (the agent for Liz Taylor &amp; Richard Burton), to do the production designs for a film entitled “Seventeen”, based on a script by Wolf Mancowitz. However, a visit from Lou Reisner, the representative for Mercury Record’s European division offered us an alternative project; we had the opportunity to record our own eponymous album on [&hellip;]
- [12.WONDERWALL](https://marijkekogermemoir.com/12-wonderwall-the-other-side/): THE OTHER SIDE The latter part of 1967 brought film director Joe Massot to The Fool’s door once more. We had met him first in our St. Stephens Gardens studio where he had been impressed with the painted Wonderwall armoire. Joe was tall, dark and handsome with a sturdy physique, we had seen him and his lovely blond wife Claire on and off several times at their London apartment to attend a party or get together with one or other of his cool actor friends like James Coburn and Ben Carruthers, best known for their roles in “The Magnificent Seven” [&hellip;]
- [11. APPLE](https://marijkekogermemoir.com/11-apple/): A IS FOR APPLE The Baker Street APPLE headquarters building was a dreary affair and the Beatles wanted to do something extra-ordinary with it so they approached us to brain storm the project. We met with the four of them and Brian Epstein in the upper floor offices and a general proposal was worked out that we would paint the building’s exterior and interior and design a manufactured “pret-a-porter” boutique clothing line for ladies, men and children. Apple would also print some of our paintings as lithographs for sale at the venue. The Carnaby Street culture was a huge influence. [&hellip;]
- [10. MEET THE BEATLES](https://marijkekogermemoir.com/10-meet-the-beatles/): THE FAB FOUR One evening Mal Evans, the Beatles’ assistant called to say John Lennon &amp; Paul McCartney wanted to meet Simon and myself so a few days later they knocked on the door and like an apparition suddenly stood in our living room in St. Stephens Gardens. They had seen the “Saville Theatre” program cover I created for Brian Epstein and were intrigued by the artwork. There they were, sitting in our living room with a dazed expression on their faces, blowing their minds out over the “Wonderwall” we had painted. I nervously served tea and we listened to [&hellip;]
- [9. The FOOL SG](https://marijkekogermemoir.com/9-the-fool-sg/): ERIC CLAPTON’S 1964 GIBSON SG During my adventures in London during 1966, my ex-partner Simon Posthuma and I had established our selves in a great Georgian style place in St. Stephens Gardens, Bayswater. The house was quite run down and dilapidated but had large rooms. The living quarters were on the ground floor and a spacious studio on the second floor gave us plenty of room to paint large canvases and objects, install work tables, store artwork and invite musicians to play and jam and do whatever we wanted. By early 1967 we had befriended the charismatic Simon Hayes, owner [&hellip;]
- [8. SWINGING LONDON](https://marijkekogermemoir.com/8-swinging-london-pop-rock/): ROCK &amp; POP From the island of Ibiza my ex-partner Simon Posthuma and I moved to London in the summer of 1966. We were invited to stay at our friends Harry and Pamela Kerr, a painter we had met during our exhibition in Madrid earlier in the year. Right away we were happy to eat fish and chips out of newspaper cones and to hear great rock and pop music on the radio, especially “Chuck Berry”, “The Yardbirds”, “The Animals” and “The Kinks” struck chords that hit us hard. Pamela was scheduled to participate in an art exhibition out of [&hellip;]
- [7. IBIZA](https://marijkekogermemoir.com/ibiza/): SERENDIPITY The notorious island of Ibiza in the Balearic Sea was waiting for us so Simon and I took a train from Madrid to Valencia and from there, a boat to the island. The Mediterranean smelt fresh and briny, at the island’s picturesque harbor the docks were busy with merchants and stevedores hustling sacks of dates, kegs of olives and barrels of sardines. We walked up the road through the great gate into the old town behind the walls of the fort, still guarded by canon. My first impression of the island was of a general bleakness, no waving palm [&hellip;]
- [6. MADRID](https://marijkekogermemoir.com/6-madrid/): ADELANTE Simon and I got off the ferry from Tangier in Morocco at Gibraltar but unfortunately didn’t see any of the resident Barbary Macaque old world monkeys…After clearing customs we boarded the train to the stately metropolis of Spain, Madrid. From the glass domed “Atocha” train station a taxi driver brought us to the “Plaza de Santa Ana” hotel, which had a convenient coffee shop on the ground floor where they served tasty tapas and café au lait. We were lucky to get a large room upstairs overlooking the busy plaza from the small balcony and settled in. The first [&hellip;]
- [5. MOROCCO](https://marijkekogermemoir.com/5-morocco/): IN THE CASBAH After the flight from Athens landed in Casablanca we took a bus to the city of Rabat, the capital of Morocco. From his previous experience in the country, Simon had an acquaintance in Rabat, an older man called Abdullah and when we looked him up at his business in the Medina he insisted we stay with his family in the Casbah des Oudaiahs. The family consisted of the parents with four daughters and three sons of varying ages and they lived in a white and blue washed house of two stories around an inner courtyard that held [&hellip;]
- [4. ATHENS](https://marijkekogermemoir.com/athens/): THE PYTHIAN ORACLE After returning from our Paris trip I was tired of the craziness of the Amsterdam scene so I accepted an invitation from Mr. Aristide Skylitzis, the director of the Greek advertising agency “Greca” to work there for three months. Simon wanted to come along so we soon were on a flight to Athens. Stepping out of the plane, I was amazed at the clear bright light, so different from anywhere else in Europe, there seemed to be more oxygen in the air. Aristide was waiting for us at the airport with his American Cadillac Coupe Deville and [&hellip;]
- [3. MAGIC CENTER AMSTERDAM](https://marijkekogermemoir.com/3-magic-center-amsterdam/): STONED&nbsp; IN THE STREETS The explosion of freedom of expression in the 1960’s by the baby boomers was a reaction to the turbulence of the preceding World Wars and the Great Depression. There was an urgent tendency of this younger generation to explore new forms of music and art enhanced by the expansion of consciousness through experimentation with mind altering substances as well as the proliferation of popular culture on radio and television through innovations in science. Young people were compelled politically to stand up together for human rights and racial and economic equality. The early sixties blew the lid [&hellip;]
- [2. MAD MEN](https://marijkekogermemoir.com/mad-men/): &nbsp; ALONE IN THE WORLD &nbsp; My life had changed drastically…After my mother married Wim Verhoef, I was made to leave my beloved foster family and live with them to attend a new middle school. I moved to a new neighborhood called the Watergraafsmeer at 5 Linnaeusparkweg, a few miles from my previous abode. We occupied the second floor of a three story Victorian row house consisting of two large rooms ensuite with one bedroom and a kitchen adjoining a shady veranda. &nbsp; My adorable baby half brother Willem and I slept in the bedroom. The front room served as [&hellip;]
- [1. THREE BROTHERS](https://marijkekogermemoir.com/three-brothers/):     WAR BABY The Wheel of Fortune turns in mysterious ways…During 1943 in the middle of World War II, the people in Holland were going through extremely hard times. I was born on November 6 on the Rozengracht in the center of Amsterdam. I can still remember the high whistling sound of falling bombs. After ’45 we could find fragments of those bombs on the beach, there were many unexploded ones too. My friends and I played in the dark cement bunkers in the dunes by the seashore, attracted to, yet scared of the creepy and cold intimidating spaces, [&hellip;]

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- [ABOUT MARIJKE](https://marijkekogermemoir.com/about-marijke/): MARIJKE ART STREET GALLERY &nbsp; contact the artist by email: donmar395@gmail.com &nbsp; Remember the spectacular mural whose colorful panoramas adorned the walls of the Aquarius Theatre during the Los Angeles run of “HAIR”, or the walls and interior of The Beatles’ “APPLE” Cultural Center in London? These remarkable examples of art history were created by Marijke, the multi-talented artist from Holland. As the lead artist of The Fool collective she also painted instruments, designed album covers, stage costumes and promo material for bands such as Cream (including the most recognizable rock guitar of all time: the Eric Clapton Gibson SG. [&hellip;]
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