Artist Fred Stone to Exhibit April 27 & 28

Partners

Equine artist, Fred Stone of Agoura Hills, has a rare solo exhibit scheduled for April 27 and 28 at the Thousand Oaks Community Gallery in Newbury Park. Stone is world famous for his paintings of horses and horse racing themes. Among his credits is the world's largest equine mural in the Paris Hotel in Las Vegas. But Fred Stone's best known work does not include any horses. It is a poster done to commemorate the heroism of the New York City Firefighters who died on 9/11. The poster, titled "Partners," has raised more than a half million dollars for charity and the families of 9/11 firefighters. In the words of local artist, Kathi Colman, the poster depicts a "weary and heartsick firefighter finding solace in the embrace of his loyal search partner -who has already experienced far too much for any one soul to hold." It is a superbly accurate description of the work, but, of course, the image conveys so much more. It is evocative of a moment in our history when all Americans felt a sense of loss, a sense of empathy and gratitude toward the selfless men and women who serve as our protectors, and, most of all, a deep sense of our connection to one another.

I encourage you to go see the exhibit on April 27 or 28. You will have a chance to meet Fred Stone and to see some of his remarkable work.

Statesmen and Scalawags

The printing industry has had more than its share of civic leaders, patriots and statesmen. Many of us in the industry like to feel that we are following in the footsteps of notable Americans like John Peter Zenger, William Bradford, Isaiah Thomas and, of course, Benjamin Franklin. We take pride in having chosen a profession with a rich history of community service and advocacy for justice and freedom.

Unfortunately, not everyone in our industry is a source of pride. Many of the nation's most notorious counterfeiters, Charles Ulrich for example, were printers. Recently another printer has managed to besmirch the profession with a seedy story of self-indulgence at the expense of the public. Mississippi State Representative Kevin McGee, from Brandon, has been fined $50,000 by the Mississippi Ethics Commission and ordered to repay $346,554.06 to the state for violations of state ethics laws.

The Commission found that since taking office in January 2008, Rep. McGee entered into 259 illegal service contracts with various agencies of the State of Mississippi. McGee is in the printing business and is an owner, along with other members of his family, of Service Printers of Flowood. To be fair here, McGee is appealing the ruling, and in a state as small as Mississippi, a printing company the size of Flowood is bound to secure some government printing orders with no knowledge or involvement on his part. Nevertheless, being in a position of public trust holds him to a higher standard. The Ethics Commission apparently felt that the evidence indicated clear violations of state rules. We hope there is a reasonable explanation, but it is difficult to imagine that a  potential, glaring conflict of interest was not clear to him from the beginning.