From Deseret News archives:

It was 40 years ago today ...

Local artist Jann Haworth helped shape the Beatles' iconic 'Sgt. Pepper' cover

Published: Sunday, July 22, 2007 12:05 a.m. MDT
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In 1969, Haworth, Blake and their daughter Liberty (also an artist who today lives in Salt Lake City and participated in "SLC Pepper") moved to the country. Five years later another daughter, Daisy, was born. (An actress, Daisy also lives and works in Salt Lake City.)

"A lot of people at the end of the '60s wanted to get out of London," she said. "The Beatles, everybody. We were tired, and that often happens to art movements — people get enough money that they can buy a place in the country and then they all just disappear."

In this rural setting, Haworth and Blake purchased an old railway station, fixed it up, and began living a pastoral existence. "I created a garden about Alice and Wonderland, you know, a number of things of that sort," she said. "I think children bring that out in you; it's part of mothering."

During this time the family met other artists and would meet together often for picnics, teas and such. One of their continual topics of discussion was how modern art had abandoned some important aspects of the visual experience. "At this time I liked the pre-Raphaelite paintings," Haworth said. "I don't anymore."

She also collected children's books, especially turn-of-the-century-illustrated books. "A lot of hippie stuff kind of went in that direction: hippies wearing beads and long dresses. Fairies were in, that sort of thing."

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In 1975, Haworth was one of the seven founding members of the Brotherhood of the Ruralists, a group that began creating work based on romantic and pastoral traditions. They also created a magazine pregnant with diatribes on the direction of art.

Much of the public loved the Ruralists' work, and they exhibited at several locations throughout the British Isles. But Haworth tired of the movement's pretense and left the group. "It wasn't rigorous art," she said. "It wasn't edgy, create-a-new-path art, which I'm much more committed to."

· · · · ·

Throughout the '80s and '90s, Haworth continued to work and exhibit. However, many of her shows were "looking back at the '60s" and her Pop-art days. However, this doesn't bother her in the least.

"I would be quite content," she said, "without feeling it was a backward glance to say, 'Yes, I'm a Pop artist.' The base of my work is film and time-sequence, therefore the images I was creating in London, which were all American images of Mae West or a cowboy or a surfer or a maid — they were all American images, and they were called Pop. They were what I wanted to do."

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Image

The Beatles' 1967 "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" album cover.

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