Friends Plan Show/Sale to Help Artist Jean Horn Pay Her Treatment Bills

Every wall in Jean Horn’s condominium in Buena Park is covered with her own paintings and monoprints, mingled with a few canvases by friends. Stacks of her framed and unframed prints and watercolors are heaped against walls and on beds and tables in back rooms.

Dust lies thickly over a collection of ceramic, brass, glass and wooden pigs on a bureau in the living room; a carved lion, a stuffed alligator and a pink, spotted, wooden hound guard the front window. So does Hidey, Horn’s Australian shepherd who, when a stranger rings the doorbell, barks long and loud, then skitters toward the back.

The condo looks like a home that is not quite settled. “I’ve lived here since 1980. It should be clean by now, but it’s not,” said Horn, a vivacious woman with bright hazel eyes. Her art, her part-time job as a travel agent and her management of a bed-and-breakfast referral service long have taken precedence over housework for Horn, who is 55.

These days Horn’s attention is also turned toward a familiar but unwelcome visitor: Cancer, which she hoped she had seen the last of five years ago, has recurred on her neck and in her lungs. Divorced, with modest income, no health insurance and big bills still to be paid from her first bout with the illness, she is frightened by the prospect of further treatment.

A tumor appeared on her neck last December, but she did not seek medical attention until April, largely because she knew she couldn’t afford treatment. “I owe everybody money” from her first treatment and operation, “and I’m not a deadbeat, I’m paying it,” she said, “but it’s going to take a long time. And knowing I have this (treatment) coming up, it’s sort of a double whammy.”

Because she owns her own house and car and has a small individual retirement account, she said, she has found that she is not eligible for public assistance.

But Horn will not face the cancer alone. A group of artist friends, led by painter Elaine Kennedy of Anaheim, is plotting ways to raise money. This Sunday, the network will sponsor “an afternoon of friendship and art with Jean Horn” at the Fullerton Museum Center, from 1 to 5 p.m.

Much of Horn’s art will be exhibited for sale, and 20 to 40 artworks donated by other artists will be displayed and raffled off (tickets will go on sale next Sunday; the actual drawing will take place Sept. 16). Proceeds will go into a trust fund, to be administered through the nonprofit Torana Art League to help pay Horn’s health expenses.

“My mom and dad are gone, I have no brothers and sisters, I have no kids--but I have lovely friends,” Horn said.

Kennedy said that Horn, whom she has known for 24 years, is “my dearest friend, and I just wish I could do more.

“I used to go over and clean her house for her, and give her surprise birthday parties. My family loves her as if she’s part of our family. My kids are her kids. We went to Spain together in 1973, the first time I’d ever done anything adventurous without my husband and children, and we repeated that trip two years ago. It’s special.

“We all collect people along the way, we have acquaintances, but very few friends. They do cast a big shadow.”

This isn’t the first time a benefit of this kind has been held for a county artist. In June, 1983, a similar event was arranged for Andy Wing, a painter in Laguna Beach who also had no health insurance. Through a highly publicized reception and three-day exhibit and sale of Wing’s work at the Vorpal Gallery, and a raffle of one of Wing’s best paintings, about $30,000 was raised--just enough to cover the costs of his heart valve surgery and 10-day hospital stay.

Wing, who has recovered from his congestive heart failure and returned to painting, said he wanted to create an “ongoing emergency care for artists” fund but was unable to interest others.

Now, Kennedy said, the Torana Art League--inspired by what is happening with Horn--is discussing ways to set up such a fund. Still, Kennedy notes, benefits for artists in trouble don’t happen often.

“I think people now are so busy trying to make money, they’re not as involved in groups as they used to be,” Kennedy said. “People lose touch with each other.

“I feel very strongly that the medical system as it exists in our country doesn’t cover all its bases. Health insurance should be part of everyone’s life.”

Vicki Feldon, an Irvine artist who, with Horn, is a member of the Bowers Galleria artists cooperative in Santa Ana, is donating a small acrylic painting for the Horn benefit “just (because) I’m a fellow artist. When something like this happens, we just rally.

“I’m fortunate in that I’m married and my husband has insurance,” Feldon said, but she knows that many artists are more vulnerable.

Painter/printmaker Sueo Serisawa, printmakers Nick Capaci and Jonde Northcutt and painter Roger Armstrong are among the other artists contributing work.

Horn, meanwhile, describes herself as “a real ‘up’ person” who is “trying to be positive. . . . Attitude is a lot of it. And I really think cancer can be beat. I don’t think, just because you have it, you’re going to be dead tomorrow.

“Physically, I feel wonderful right now.” And, she reported, her doctors are pleased with the way medication already has reduced her neck tumor.

When Kennedy told her of the benefit plans, “I was really touched,” Horn said. “Whether they raise money or not, this is a really nice thing to do for another.”

Yet, she is also a little uncomfortable about the benefit: “It’s charity, after all. . . . I know the people who are doing this are doing it out of love and caring and all the good things. But it does put the recipient in an interesting emotional spot.

“You also feel if somebody buys something, they’re doing it to help you out, rather than (from) liking the work. But I’m trying not to look at it that way.”

Kennedy realizes that Horn “really is a very private person, and for her to express her needs or her wants is really very hard for her.” Still, Kennedy said, “all you can do with someone you love is support them.”

Kennedy thinks that Horn is “a really fine artist. She’s free and expressive and childlike. I think there is a zest for living in her art, and a playfulness.”

Horn has been interested in art since she was 9. For years she “noodled around” on her own with painting, occasionally taking a college or private art class. From 1965 to 1975, during part of her marriage, she was able to paint full time, and she also learned printmaking.

Nowadays, she said, “I work at it when I can, on weekends or in the middle of the night, if I have the energy left” after her job as a travel agent. Many of her works, which include both representational and abstract images, are based on memories of her own travels.

A native of Los Angeles, Horn moved to Anaheim in 1963. She was included in Orange County’s first all-woman show, “Weekends,” at the Muckenthaler Cultural Center in Fullerton in 1971. She has had work exhibited in 21 one-woman shows and 12 group shows since then. She is a member of the Torana Art League as well as the Bowers Galleria, and she has taught a few adult education painting classes around the county.

With her art, she said, “I’m not out to protest the world, I’m not out making big social statements. I’m into structure and design. I like to affirm the positive, and I think my work generally reflects that. I basically am very happy when I’m working in my art.

“Anybody involved with art and dance and music is a healthier, happier, human being--without getting too highfalutin about it,” Horn said. “There are too many people who don’t get any enjoyment out of life. If you can create art, you don’t need a psychiatrist.”

“A clean house doesn’t say it all, that’s what I’m trying to say,” she adds, laughing.

“I’ve always said I’d like to be a really wild old lady who says what I think. We’ll see.”

“An afternoon of friendship and art with Jean Horn” will take place Sunday from 1 to 5 p.m. at the Fullerton Museum Center, 301 N. Pomona Ave., Fullerton. Admission is free, and food and drinks will be served.