One day in the nineteen seventies, John Abel, an art student at Southwestern College in Chula Vista, California, was thrown-out of the art gallery on the campus by Bob Matheny, the gallery director and bonafide art official, for making paintings in the styles of Van Eyck, Bosch and Durer. The Southwestern College Art Department had little tolerance in those days for academic art philosophies not related to the modern, contemporary or avant-guard.

2007

December 9, 2007, during the reception for John Abel's show at the Pacific Beach Library titled "Paintings, Drawings, and Graphics, 1977-2007, Bob Matheny* was thrown out of the library's art gallery by John Abel for his past behavior as, and I quote John Abel, "a former artofficial and bourgeois elitist representative of the museum/university establishment."

John went on to say, "And let that be a life lesson to you Bob! I'm certain there's some kind of dull, Calvinist, Mc Guffy reader type moral in all that, the cruel wheel of fortune, the fall of the mighty, every dog has his catered reception.... You will note however, in the bottom right portion of the photo, the still morally suspect former artofficial and bourgeois elitist representative of the museum/university establishment clutching a no doubt purloined catalogue! You wrote a check you say? Ha! We'll see if it clears!"

* Mr. Matheny is seen wearing the same dacron and cotton ivy league suit he purchased for forty bucks from the Oxford Shop in downtown San Diego in the sixties, the same wing tip shoes and the same one inch wide tie (with a windsor knot) his mother made. The silver tie clasp Bob Gronendyke made in Ray Hein's jewelry class at Long Beach State College and given to Matheny could not, at the time, be located. Later, it was discovered in the pocket of another ivy league suit from the sixties.The pink button down shirt, the shorts, v-neck t-shirt and socks are newer.