"The Gift"

One of our favorite contemporary artists is Josh Agle, better known as SHAG. The name Shag is a contraction of Josh’s last two letters of his first name and the first two letters of his last name. Shag is a painter, illustrator and designer from Orange County. His paintings are bright, fun and often narrative. Many of his pieces are part of themed collections, such as “California Sun,” “L.A. By Day and by Night,” “Heroes and Monsters,” etc.
Shag is really popular. I’m sure you’ve seen his work. Many of his images have been marketed on cocktail napkins, greeting cards, tiki mugs, cocktail recipe books, t-shirts, vinyl figures, pins, stickers, watches….you name it, Shag’s art is on it….in a very hip and cool way, of course!
My husband, Larry Underhill is a photographer. One of his assignments is to work for various galleries around town photographing art shows and copying pieces for publication. He has worked quite a bit for Copro-Nason Gallery in Santa Monica. Shag has had numerous shows here. That’s how Larry met Shag.
Shag has hired Larry to photograph his latest paintings for almost a year now. Shag has been to our house!!!!! I cringe to think about him walking through our raggedy back yard into Larry’s studio. Oh well…if Shag hires Larry all the time, maybe we can afford to finish our backyard!
Shag lives in a perfect mid-century modern home….Larry has been there to deliver transparencies. One day, Larry noticed that Shag’s doorbell button wasn’t exactly authentic for that era house. In Larry’s hardware stash was a perfect 1960’s doorbell button that he inherited from my Dad’s woodshop. Aha! He brought it to Shag the next time he went there. Shag was kind enough to give us a print of our choosing from his collection….hence, “The Gift” is now part of our permanent collection. Thank you, Shag!