The John Adams Song

John Adams was a one-term guy.

It took a long time for him to die.

He lived in a place that evokes weird imagery

A town in Massachusetts known as "Braintree."

Washington to JQ Adams

I found these fellows last week after I started the still-continuing excavation of my studio. I have no idea when they were drawn or what I had in mind during their creation.

Caricature has never been my thing, obviously. I don't think these portraits are particularly good, which is probably why I buried them in a corner of the studio. But they provide a springboard for me to talk a bit about my interest in history in general and presidents in particular. Only natural for someone who lives in a state named after George Washington, one of the greatest presidents.

They are drawn in pencil. The originals to Monroe and JQ Adams have yet to surface, but the photocopies of these two were with the others.

Jefferson was one of those presidents I always found fascinating for his contradictions and complexity. In the few trips I've taken Back East over the years, I count visiting Monticello as one of the highlights.

Here's what I wrote in 2008 when I reviewed Ken Burns' Jefferson documentary as part of my Cheaper by the Dozen film reviews on OlyBlog:

Thomas Jefferson / directed by Ken Burns (1997, VHS off-air). George Will, Gore Vidal, Daniel Boorstin, Garry Wills, Ossie Davis (Narrator), voices by Blythe Danner, Gwyneth Paltrow, Sam Waterston, Julie Harris, Derek Jacobi, Arthur Miller, George Plimpton. A favorite subject for students of paradox, Thomas Jefferson remains one of the most enigmatic of our Founding Fathers. A visionary who was also a captive of his era, he articulated the spirit of American liberty and human rights in the beautiful Declaration of Independence, yet was a total racist when it came to Native Americans and African Americans. He was a champion of small government and states' rights, yet took matters into his own hands as President when ordering an embargo and arranging the Louisiana Purchase. A small army of historians and writers tell us how Jefferson's contradictions reflect the conflicts in the founding and early years of the United States. Such disparate characters as George Will and Gore Vidal share their insight. Ken Burns is one of the few documentarians that has such an indentifiable personal style, raising the sharing of history to an art form. I love the way he'll focus on some inanimate object and through the voiceovers give that item a lot of meaning. He really has a creative gift for telling the story. The choice of Ossie Davis as the narrator, with a voice that is elderly and not smooth, took me off-balance at first. No fault of Burns, but unfortunately I kept associating Ossie's speech with his character in Bubba Ho-tep ("I'm thinking with sand here!"). I've done the Jefferson pilgrimage: visited Monticello, Jefferson's grave, Williamsburg, University of Virginia. It wasn't until later I learned Tom and I share (with thousands of others) immigrant ancestors, Christopher and Mary (Addie) Branch who came to Virginia in the 1620s. So this American Renaissance Man is a distant cousin! Neato. Historians will probably never let the dust settle on Jefferson. Since this was filmed in 1997, DNA tests have concluded that slave Sally Hemings' children were fathered by a member of the Jefferson family. Just one of the many continuing controversies surrounding a man who served as President two centuries ago. I was really struck by Jefferson's radical educational vision in establishing the University of Virginia. I think he would've been right at home during the McCann years at The Evergreen State College when that institution had a more libertarian bent.