Polidore

About the Book

About the Author

Johnny Meah is a third-generation artist. His great-grandfather emigrated form Ireland to make his mark in the New World as a designer of silverware patterns. His father was an editorial cartoonist and portrait artist. Johnny is best known for his huge vivid canvases portraying the bizarre and flamboyant world of the side show curiosities. He is, in fact, a side show performer, one of those individuals who swallows swords and eats fire, Johnny is, to say the least, unique.

Born in Bristol, CT in 1937, Johnny began his art career at an age when most youngsters are still happily at play in their back yards. At age 9, billed as the "World's Youngest Portrait Artist," he traveled the fair and exposition circuit with his father, Harold. Meah's fascination and admiration for circus entertainers grew with each year of exposure to the outdoor amusement industry. When he was 14, with the blessings and encouragement of his family, he spent his school vacation with the celebrated Zachinni Family, traveling with the King Brothers and Cristiani Circus. Hugo Zachinni, the original "Human Cannonball" was also a fine artist and Johnny benefited greatly from the association.

Meah said, "My formal art training came via the Horace Wilcox Technical Institute and a brief period at the Rhode Island School of Design. My practical art training came via my dad and Hugo Zachinni, I learned the basics from my father. Hugo charted a path connecting the mind, eyes and heart that would eventually allow me to paint dreams."

Johnny's first full year of circus trouping began in 1954, when he joined the Hunt Bros. Circus as a clown, an occupation that he still pursues on an occasional basis. "Clowns and art are almost synonymous. Good clowns, like good art work, touch all the senses and emotions," he said.

Through all the many years touring with traveling shows, in positions that run the spectrum from performing to management, Meah always painted. In the heyday of big circuses and carnivals, each carried a "show painter," usually a journeyman artist who would do everything from lettering the trucks and wagons, to pictorializing the curvaceous ladies who appeared in the lavish burlesque reviews.

In reading reviews of the of" Billboard," the legendary "bible" of traveling shows, and "Amusement Business," its contemporary counterpart. One finds Meah popping up in such dual roles as "Johnny Meah---Producing Clown and Showpainter," "Johnny Meah----Sword Swallower and Showpainter," "Johnny Meah---Public Relations and Showpainter" - always "and Showpainter."

Relatively few of Meah's fellow show artisans painted canvas banners. A large percentage of the traveling shows which had resident painters did not own the shows upon which banners were displayed. "My first 'shop' was a pretty spartan operation," Meah said, "a stand of pine trees with boards nailed to them, where I would size, prime, and paint up to three banners at a time.

In a period spanning the late 1950's to the present, Meah painted approximately 2,000 canvases. "Amazingly," he said, "very few of the old banners survived the indifference of time. Those that have, are revered by collectors as being representative of a truly unique art form. They were generally regarded as disposable advertising in the 1940s & 1950s," Meah said, adding. "It was not uncommon to see old banners used to catch oil leaks from trucks or to cover equipment deemed far more important that the banner itself 'We'll buy more," seemed to be the attitude."

Although pictorial banners are considered by today's collectors as advertisements for exhibitions of human oddities, there were many other attractions that used them, as well. The artists who painted banners were scattered around the United States, some working out of their own shops.

In the 1970s, a few people who recognized banners as a true slice of Americana started collecting them. By the mid-1980s, it became disturbingly evident that very few of these wondrous items remained. As banners became scarcer, private collectors bartered their treasures back and forth, driving the value of the canvasses higher and higher Some sold at auction for as much as $10,000.

Paradoxically, while the road-worn banners, many of them Meah's, were enjoying a resurgence of interest, the traveling side shows had dwindled to a mere handful. Meah's banner clientele was at an all-time low and the frameworks in his yard, once filled with works in progress, were draped in Spanish moss.

Not wishing to become an arbor thru the encroaching moss himself, Meah, A true show business survivor, returned to performing. In the fall of 1988, while clowning with a small circus in Texas, Meah was contacted by a Chicago gallery owner whom he had met earlier in the 1980s when the owner was searching for banners, an item with which his gallery had a modest amount of success in purveying to the growing number of enthusiasts. He suggested that a market was emerging for new work by Meah, one of the last living American banners artists.

Although skeptical, Meah struck a deal with the gallery owner and produced 10 new banners, nearly all of which sold via the gallery showing for appreciably more than had ever been commanded from show operators. Thus began a renaissance of banner painting for Johnny Meah and an entire new generation of fans for his painted fantasies.

At age 65, Meah continues to stay busy with his painting, writing and performing. Once described as a cultural anthropologist by writer Mike McCable, his stories take you on an endless roller coaster ride, reflecting the highest and lowest points of his own life.