September 19, 2023 by Pat Hartman

The Gram Parsons Dreamings

“Cosmic American” music founder Gram Parsons died at Joshua Tree, California, on September 19, 1973. He was 26 years old. Now, more than half a century later, devotees still make pilgrimages to the place where his life ended.

Because they had made a pact, Phil Kaufman acquired Parsons’ body at the airport and took it back to the desert for a poorly planned, highly unorthodox cremation. Around this event exists a mass of both fact and legend.

This series commemorates the love that Gram Parsons felt for Joshua Tree, and various aspects of his life and genius.

The Dreamings

The Dreamtime is a temporary autonomous zone where anything goes. Change is the only constant. Things are consistent through their very inconsistency. Symbolism can be traditional and shared throughout the culture, or it can be very personal and subjective.

The Dreamtime reconciles opposites. In the Dreamtime it can be day and night, past and present, simultaneously. Sun and stars, moon and rainbow, can coexist. Things can be seen from inside and outside, from level ground and from the sky above. Abstract and representational; spiritual and material; in the Dreamtime all dichotomies are reconciled.

Like the Australian Aboriginal art which inspires them, the paintings have no up-down orientation but can be hung any way. In line with tradition, most of the paint is applied with twigs from trees.

Gram Parsons Dreaming #1 (sold)

Gram Parsons Dreaming #2 (sold)

Gram Parsons Dreaming #3

Cap Rock, Joshua trees, a psychedelic sky in turmoil, and fire symbolizing either the cremation or the burning desert sun.

round 16″ diameter, acrylics on masonite, ready to hang

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Gram Parsons Dreaming #4

Cap Rock, Joshua trees, the cremation fire and smoke, acoustic guitars.

16″ diameter, acrylic paints on masonite, ready to hang
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Gram Parsons Dreaming #5 (sold)

with Joshua trees, and part of the hat Parsons wore with the rhinestone cowboy suit made for him by the designer Nudie.
Also, some wild horses. (Who really wrote that song?)
And Cap Rock, the nearest natural feature to where Parsons and his coffin were set afire.
The mass of flame is both the desert sun and the scene of the botched cremation.

Gram Parsons Dreaming #6

Amid Joshua trees, a shadowy figure embraces his guitar. From the coffin, flame ascends to the cremation fireball. Or maybe it’s only the searing desert sun. Or a symbolic Star. All is enclosed within the frame of a mirror, said to be the only object in Room 8 not replaced since Gram Parsons died.
Shown here against two different color backgrounds
16″ diameter, acrylic paints on masonite, ready to hang
Go to
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Gram Parsons Dreaming #7 (re-homed)

What might be seen on a trippy day, or even an ordinary day
16″ diameter, acrylic paints on masonite, ready to hang
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Gram Parsons Dreaming #8

In the grand tradition of Gram Parsons iconography, this round 16″ original painting includes
Cap Rock, Joshua trees, a Grievous Angel wing, the coffin, the cremation fire, wild horses, stars from the hat brim, sun, moon, and Room 8 door numeral.
16″ diameter acrylics on medium density fiberboard
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Gram Parsons Dreaming #9 (sold)

Central is the desert sun/cremation blaze.
The border is Mobius strip/infinity symbol/Room 8 reference.
A silhouetted Gram figure sits in meditation, with chakras and an aura.
accompanied by Joshua trees, horses with attitude, UFOs, and kites.
(Ian Dunlop’s book tells how he and Gram went kite-flying and agreed that it was like an out-of-body experience. Gram said his father made kites for him and took him out to fly them.)
This painting has glints of metallic copper.

A round painting, 12″ diameter Acrylics on MDF

Gram Parsons Dreaming #10

It includes Joshua Trees (of course); Möbius strip / infinity symbol / Room 8 numeral;
Grievous Angel wings; wild horses; kites and crystal balls (both referenced in Ian Dunlop’s book)

The painting is acrylic on medium density fiberboard, circular and 12″ in diameter.
(finished on New Years Eve 2023)
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Gram Parsons Dreaming #11

Centered on Joshua trees, with cannabis leaves in the style of Nudie, designer of the rhinestone cowboy suits.
A still figure whose mind is soaring. (Remember when he went tripping in the High Desert with Keith Richards and other friends?)
A flaming coffin.
A spacecraft illuminates Cap Rock.
The Safe at Home shrine.
Acrylics on medium density fiberboard, round 16″ diameter, ready to hang.
Go to
ebay.com gram parsons dreaming or etsy.com gram parsons dreaming

Gram Parsons Dreaming #12

A variation on #11

Centered on Joshua trees.
A still figure whose mind is soaring. (Remember when he went tripping in the High Desert with Keith Richards and other friends?)
A flaming coffin. Some wild horses.
A spacecraft illuminates Cap Rock.
The Safe at Home shrine.
Acrylics on medium density fiberboard, round 16″ diameter, ready to hang.
Go to
ebay.com gram parsons dreaming or etsy.com gram parsons dreaming

Gram Parsons Dreaming #13

The red, white and blue shirt with the fringe and fancy belt.
The blue velvet pants, said to have belonged to Mick Jagger then to Keith Richards before being given to Gram, who later passed them on to John Nuese.
The green top hat that Gram wore and then gave to Leon Russell, who rocked it throughout the Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour.
The gorgeous purple shirt lovingly made for Gram by Pamela Des Barres. The GP initials she embroidered also appear in the central star of the painting.
The border is the silver choker that now belongs to Polly Parsons.
Acrylics on medium density fiberboard, round 16″ diameter, ready to hang.
Go to
ebay.com gram parsons dreaming or etsy.com gram parsons dreaming

June 11, 2014 by Pat Hartman

Office when I Lived in Venice CA

This was in 1978-1984.

In one place where I lived before Venice, the only thing I had for a desk was a coffee table, and I liked it so much I kept the floor desk thing going for years and years, sitting cross-legged on a giant pillow. At this version of it in Venice, I wrote a whole lot of papers for classes I was taking at Santa Monica College. Oh, and two books and a screenplay, and a bunch of other stuff. No computer then, of course. I had a small, lightweight portable typewriter.

Sitting at the desk, if I looked up and to the right, the side of the file cabinet was there with things stuck to it. Tom Robbins, Bobby Sands, the Tarot Fool card, and what might be a unicorn.

Above the file cabinet: The Lenny Bruce portrait was painted (from a photo) by Dale Hartman who gave me it for a birthday or Christmas present. The colorful painting was by Joy Doyle, a long-ago friend when I lived in Buffalo.

You can’t really tell, but that bottle on top of the cabinet was covered with macrame, an art form I’d only seen hanging on walls but not embracing glass bottles. There was a little metal cat on a stand, whose tail had holes in it from which to suspend earrings. On the right is part of a long panoramic photo of Niagara Falls which dated I think from 1910 or so. Years later I sold it on eBay.

The closet changed a lot, depending on how fully I was inhabiting the room, which depended on who else lived in the apartment at the time. There was even a spell when the doors stayed closed with lights on inside, if you catch my drift. That chair was a rescue – it had a broken leg, so I cut them all off, and made covers of South American textile.

The yellow poster contained numerous sayings by a sage named Vernon Howard, some of which I found very helpful. I kept an ever-changing gallery of magazine photos up there too, and of course, always, schedules from the Fox Venice Theater.

Sometimes just a small cot was in there, and sometimes a bigger mattress. When the room had to serve as combination bedroom and office, I got 6 rectangular boxes with one open side each, made from composite wood, for the mattress to rest on top of. If you arranged them right, it created a lot of storage space underneath. Some spaces could only be gotten to by removing the mattress, and that was okay too, as a place to keep things that other people didn’t need access to.

June 6, 2014 by Pat Hartman

When I Lived in Venice CA

The TV was a bold innovation; we had been without one for a lot of years. Was I gonna leave the carton by the cans out back, and advertise a nice juicy steal-able TV? Hell no! I think I cut the box into pieces and stuck them in a trash bag. It was of course an exercise in futility, because the kids who were in and out of our place all the time announced the TV to the entire neighborhood.

I had moved to LA to study screenwriting, so it seemed appropriate to watch the occasional movie. The electronic device on top was to receive Z-Channel and/or SelecTV.

This acoustic guitar is inexplicable. A friend must have given it to us. My boyfriend played an electric, and would certainly not have left it in the living room under any circumstances. I had learned a few chords at some point in the past, but it’s no good if you don’t keep your calluses up to date. The machine under the plastic protective cover was a TTY for my deaf daughter. The coffee table was a crate, with one of my collages on top, under clear plastic.

The kitchen table – the art on the wall was a found painting, and the tablecloth a patchwork creation sewed by me. I wish I still had those solid, honest chairs. And then, another view of the kitchen, at least a couple of years later, with Dale Hartman paintings and a different patchwork tablecloth. The ceramic wind chimes were made by a friend from Joshua Tree.

This architectural feature, which went almost up to the ceiling, enclosed the trash can, brooms and miscellaneous cleaning shit, with space in the top compartment for seldom-used appliances etc. It was always covered with comic strips cut from magazines or the Sunday color comics. The theme was to put up cartoons that reminded us of stuff that happened in the apartment, and our own absurdity. Making fun of other people was second-best. The cool thing to do was find illustrations of what was laughable about yourself.

That refrigerator, I’m pretty sure I bought it from the neighbor two doors down, when the landlord wouldn’t replace the one that died. Many of the grim details have mercifully vanished from consciousness, but all the facts are in Ghost Town: a Venice California life, so if you read it you’ll know more than I do.

Sometimes I was given tickets to advance screenings at movie studios, and American Pop was one of them. Just because the poster hung above the fridge, that doesn’t necessarily mean we went. But we probably did.

“He came in through the bathroom window” – No, not Furkey. (See what I did there? “Turkey” was once a widely-used term of disapprobation. And the cat was covered with…)

Before the burglar bars were installed, a youth tried to come in. My boyfriend was home alone and investigated a noise or just intended to take a leak, I forget which. By yelling and cussing very loud, and making a lunge as if to grab the guy’s leg, he repelled the invader. We found one of the towels out in the back parking area, but I don’t think that’s what Homeboy originally had in mind.

Next one down: India bedspread curtains. I loved how the light came through them. That window faced the back parking area. When I moved in, it was the only one with burglar bars. Yes, the place was broken into, but not through the unprotected windows. Sons of bitches broke the front door. It’s all there in Ghost Town: a Venice California Life.

A bedroom shared with a musician. I made the patchwork pillow of course. A subversive poster urged NO DRAFT NO WAR NO NUKES. Over on the right, the fabulous hand-drawn map of Venice created by Jeffrey Stanton, who sold copies of it from a vending table on the boardwalk. When I got it home, I realized that the map’s title and legend covered up the part where we lived, authentic OG ghetto-ish Oakwood.

Next: Part of the living room, two different Christmases. Apparently, the bunch-of-branches-in-a-bottle concept was so satisfactory, we did it twice. Farther down, a later Christmas, with a Dale Hartman painting.

Time to move out, with stuff waiting in the living room to discover its fate. I had rescued and reupholstered all three of those chairs, but ended up giving them all away because of less space in the new place. Bummer.

Pat Hartman

I write and paint and make things.

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