The Photographer, the Painter

and the Young Musicians

Photograph by Chuck Nelson

Scott Valley’s Tom Pease, a bluegrass festival volunteer who coordinates the event vendors, has a relative, Kenneth Kelsoe, who spotted Nelson’s photo of the children online.  (The number of vendors almost doubled this year from last year, Pease said, to more than 20.)

I was on the bluegrass festival’s Web site and I saw some of Chuck’s photos, Kelsoe, a painter who lives in Oroville and works in acrylic, told the Daily News on the Saturday afternoon of the festival (that afternoon saw the largest crowd yet), “so I went on his Web site (www.chucknelsophotography.com) and he had some wonderful pictures.  I contacted him and he gave me free access to some of them.  I had a few to pick from, and I decided to paint one named “Etna Jammers.”

The artist finished the canvas in May of this year, “It’s still a little wet,” he joked.  “He actually pulled the two children out of the original photograph to paint, Murphy said later, and placed them in front of the drug store for the painting.  He added a gumball machine to the painting, which is a coincidence in itself.”  The pharmacist’s sister had given him one some time back as a birthday present, but Kelsoe didn’t know that. 

“I knew nothing about the painting until two weeks before the 2010 festival (held July 17-18) Murphy continued.  Tom Pease told me about a relative of his who had done the rendering of two children playing bluegrass on a fiddle and cello.  I did not know who the children were.  Meanwhile the artist UPS’ed the painting to Scott Valley Drug a week before the festival.”

On Friday evening, July 16 one year later Murphy placed it up front by the store’s soda fountain in hopes that someone this year would know who the children were.

“Friday night, I was looking at the band across the street (during the jam), and a mother and a little girl carrying a violin case walked to the corner of the drug store.  I asked the mother and the little girl if they would be so kind as to look at the painting and see if they knew who the children were.  When the mom came into the soda fountain, she looked at the picture, looked at me, and she said, “Well that’s this girl right here my daughter.”

“I could have fallen through the floor at that moment,”  Murphy said.  I then ask, “Do you know who the boy is?”  And the little girl said, “That’s my brother.”  “I was just totally amazed, and asked if it were possible to bring the brother over to look at the painting and pose by it.  I knew Chuck (Nelson), who took the original picture, was on the next block, taking photographs of the musicians who were playing in the street,” he said.  “Twenty minutes before, I had taken his cell phone number in case there was a photo opportunity, all this is so serendipitous, and I immediately called him.  He came up in about three minutes, which amazed as well.

Nelson began taking photos of the children with their instruments, by the painting of the children playing their instruments with the painter and painting based on the photo he had take a year earlier.

“Twelve months to the day, to the hour, actually from the moment this first photo was taken, Murphy added.

The children turned out to be Kristina and Westin McHaney; their parents are Patty and Steven McHaney of Humboldt County, and Patty told the Daily News of the Saturday evening of this year’s festival that she was pretty surprised to see her children in the painting as well.  “We were walking down the street when (Murphy) saw Kristina and asked us to come look at something” she said.  The McHaneys are among the many festival-goers who came once, liked what they saw and heard, and came back for more.

The coincidences continued into the festival itself.

“Come Saturday at the festival, (artist) Ken and his wife got up to go take a nap at the motel, and unknown to them, (the McHaney children) went and sat in (the Kelsoe’s ) seats to enjoy the festival.  It just continues, he laughed.  “And when they arrived back, they found that two children, now loved by them, occupying their chairs, and they just enjoyed the fact that the kids were enjoying the festival.

“Now the rest of this is pretty interesting, too, Murphy told the Daily News, “In that these children were adopted out of Moldova, formerly part of the Soviet Union, from an orphanage.  And here’s the fun thing.  One of the teenagers working at the soda fountain, Luba, is also adopted from an orphanage in Moldova, and she was working that night.  Luba means “Love” in Russian and she is the epitome of that” that’s her personality.”

Stories like this remind Murphy of why he volunteers his time to help make the festival happen, in fact, they are music to his ears.

The episode had come full circle, and then some.