OSJ: When did you come to St. John and what brought you to the island?

 CG: I think I moved here in 1998. I moved here with my boyfriend at that time, Allan. He and I had just lost everything in a failed restaurant we opened in St Augustine, Florida. Allan and I had met in Key West, 
where we had both been living for a while. When we lost our shirts in St Augustine we decided we wanted to live either in the Caribbean or in New York City. While Allan was looking through The New York Times jobs listings he found a job in the Caribbean. Since he was looking in the New York Times but found a job in the Caribbean, we took that as a sign to move to the Caribbean. For the first year and a half we lived here Allan managed Pussers restaurant and I waited tables at Paradiso and Chateaux Bordeaux. Then we were given the amazing opportunity to open the Beach Bar, and although Allan and I broke up, I've never looked back. I love it here. Love It.

OSJ: What are some of your accomplishments on St. John?

CG: Once I had a fight with a boyfriend the night before he was taking a morning flight to visit his parents in Delaware. Our fight ended with me going home that night and him going to the airport alone. In the morning I awoke with an overwhelming premonition that he was going to die in a snowmobiling accident. I was devastated that we'd left things badly. Then I realized he was probably still at the airport. I looked at the clock on my nightstand; it was 8:47 am. His flight took off at 11:05 am. I made it from lying in bed, in my house next to Miss Lucy's, not only to the airport – and I was behind a dump truck on Donkey Hill in St. Thomas – but through the terminal right up to him at his gate by 10:53. Out of breath from my mad dash to get there, I looked up into his eyes and gasped "You're going to die, tragically, in a horrible snowmobiling accident and I didn't want the last time I saw you alive to be that fight last night! I still think we should stop seeing each other, but I just had to come say goodbye!" When I finished telling him this he was gazing off into the airport, toward from where I had just come. "Sir, sir, you have to board now." This interruption by the airline employee at the gate returned his gaze from the metal detectors back to me and he said "They only let ticketed passengers out here, how did you get through security?"  Coral Bay to the gate of a departing flight, without a ticket, in under three hours – post 9/11 – behind a dump truck on Donkey Hill?  That's a St. John accomplishment.

OSJ: You’re the artist who did the cover of the new St. John phone book. How did that come about?

CG: I have been bugging Hank Slodden, one of the St John Phonebook's publishers, to let me do a map for his phonebook since they published a map in the 2004 St John phonebook. I love designing maps. Recently, in addition to bugging him about a map, I got ballsy and decided I wanted to do a cover too. "Haaaank.... when are you gonna let me do a map?" "Come on Hank, let me do a map and a cover." " Pleease lemme do a map,  lemme do a cover!" "I wanna do a coveRRRRRR!" I'd whine this at him, like teenager wanting to borrow the family car, whenever I'd see him at a party or wandering the Marketplace parking lot. Originally The 2009 Phonebook was going to feature another work of  art on the cover but there were technical difficulties in getting that artwork ready for print. That left them with a week to go to press and no cover. They called me and asked if I could help them get their original cover art ready to print.  I told them I would absolutely help, but I also asked which would be faster: fix the original art they wanted to use, or go with a cover design I had almost completed over the summer. They said send us your sketch and we'll decide. And that's how I finally got to be on the cover!

OSJ: And tell us a little about the cover art?

 CG: An evolution leading up to this illustration began nine years ago with the first Minimal Regatta at The Beach Bar. For that I chose to do a WPA* inspired graphic to match the  "build something from nothing" spirit of that competition. For that illustration I stuck with the very traditional 2 dimensional, solid color, blocky designs of the WPA genre. Several years later, for Tage, I again wanted to do a WPA inspired illustration this time of the front of the restaurant. The front of that restaurant was so blocky already and Ted's food is so about integrity and craft, that I thought both the look and the ideals behind the WPA genre we're a perfect fit. But, as I worked on the Tage illustration, I tried some shading and really liked it. So out went the authentic look of the WPA, but the "let's roll up our sleeves and do some honest to goodness hard work" idea of the WPA still applied. When Tage closed and my illustrations were no longer in circulation I really missed them. One day I saw a vintage travel poster and I  thought how great it would be to pair this very modernly executed style of illustration with the feeling of those beautiful vintage posters. And what better subject for this illustration than St John. I did this illustration for myself about three years ago. It still has the skeletal remains of the big blocky composition of the WPA era, but that skeleton is now in a bikini slapping on the sunscreen. Gone is the depression era rally cry "Where there's a will, there's a way!"  in it's place: "Where's the beach?" I tried to use this illustration for a promotional piece for Ted's  Supper Club but it is not the right image, style, "vibe" for Ted's Supper Club. So back the illustration went into storage. I pulled it out this summer and re-worked it to size for The St John Phonebook, but by the time I got it ready The Phonebook had already chosen their cover for this year's book. No worries, I'd just have to send it to  them next year and the year after that if necessary. But happenstance happened by, and I finally got my art on The St John Phonebook cover! This style of illustration involves hundreds of shapes with slight color changes to create most of the blending. It is tedious stuff but I really love the outcome, I hope this cover makes people feel happy. Please note, I drew this cover so that the hole in the upper left corner of the phonebook (I love that hole), goes right through the middle of the flower up there. If you get a Phonebook and that hole is not in the middle of the flower, give me a call: 776-0623. I love that hole, I hang my phonebook on the wall behind my computer and it is soooo much easier to grab and put away than if it was in a drawer.

OSJ: Did you get to do your map in the end as well?
       
CG: Yes!  I’m on the cover AND I’m the phonebook centerfold. Does that make me Phonemate of the Year?

 (*The Works Progress Administration (W.P.A.) was part of Roosevelt's New Deal. It was created to help provide economic relief to the citizens of the United States who were suffering through the Great Depression. The WPA had an artists division and artists such as Mark Rothko, Willem deKooning, Diego Rivera, Dorothea Lang and Jackson Pollock are some of artists on the WPA Project who went on to achieve worldwide recognition.)