1962 Rambler American Parts

REMEMBERING THE REMBRANDT OF RED BANK

Encompassing some 60 oil paintings — all of them work-for-hire projects commissioned for published paperbacks — the exhibit is drawn from a collection of more than 300 Avati originals that were painstakingly acquired and assembled by the artist with his friend, agent and fellow illustrator, the late Fair Haven resident Stanley Meltzoff .

“My father lived every minute of every day as an artist — but he wasn’t a businessman,” says Sally Avati, one of three children from James Avati’s second marriage, and the conservator of the paintings in the Avati estate.

“Stanley was the brains of the operation, as far as collecting and preserving the original paintings…in the 1980s, he would tell my father ‘Jim, you’re starting to get famous; you could make some money off that old stuff’.”

When James Avati died in 2005 at the Petaluma, CA home of his son Tim, the collection of oil paintings on Masonite made its way to a barn on the Meltzoff property — and, after the passing of Stanley Meltzoff’s widow, to the Red Bank home of Sally Avati, who supervised the cleaning of the originals (many of which had moldered away in warehouses for decades) and had a number of them newly framed for the Monmouth Museum retrospective.

As an Avati family member, young Sally was occasionally called to action as a cover model — as was her older half-sister Alexandra “Zan” Avati, who frequently represented female protagonists of these often edgy literary works. A convert to the Mormon faith and a resident of Maine, “ Zan ” is, according to Sally, “not crazy about a lot of the things she posed for back then…some of them were kind of provocative.

1962 Rambler American Custom Two-Door Wagon - Street Rodder Magazine

Brian Gannon of Floral Park, New York, managed one of these magical transformations. Starting at an early age working out of his grandmother’s garage in Astoria, it was his uncle, John Cassar, who lit his fire by getting him involved in auto restoration. While he enjoyed working on vintage cars he figured there was something more of a challenge out there.

Inspired by what he was seeing in the monthly magazines he was reading, he took off for the West Coast to get an up close and personal look at what was happening. After an initial trip to Pomona, California, he came back energized and ready to take on new ideas and projects. Drawn to manufacturers that marched to their own beat, Brian began his first project with a ’69 Hurst S/C Rambler, which he heavily modified with numerous performance upgrades.

To get started, Brian tore the car down, preparing it for a full buildup that would take him close to one-and-a-half years to complete. He began by constructing a complete custom chassis fashioned from rectangular steel, which was hidden within the car’s unibody structure. To give it slot car–like handling a Heidts IFS was incorporated, combined with Aldan coilovers and QA1 springs. Out back a Ford 9-inch rear filled with 3.73:1 cogs got the nod matched to an S&W Race Cars four-link with Aldan coilovers and QA1 springs. Fluid pushed through a Corvette master to GM discs at each corner brings plenty of stopping power to the mix when called for. For a really cranked-into-the-pavement look, P.S. Engineering wheels capped with low-profile Falken rubber enhanced handling while infusing a unique vintage race look.

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