Charity Prints

Charity Prints Description

After hearing that her friend John Prine had been hospitalized in critical condition with Covid-19, Joan sat down with her guitar in her Northern California home and video recorded a heartfelt rendition of Prine’s “Hello In There,” dedicating the song to him.

“John, this song of yours has been one of the most requested in my repertoire for over 40 years,” she said. “So let me sing it to you and send along my best wishes and prayers.”

After the 73-year-old country folk icon died of complications from the coronavirus, which has taken the lives of hundreds of thousands of people worldwide, Joan decided to honor his memory with a portrait of him she titled, appropriately enough, “Hello In There.” Inspired by a 1970s photograph by Tom Hill, she painted a young John Prine – all walrus mustache and long, dark, tousled hair -- as he looked at the beginning of his multiple-Grammy-winning career.

With the blessing of Prine’s widow, Fiona Whelan Prine, who has recovered from her own bout with Covid-19, sales of one hundred 16” x 20” archival pigment prints of the portrait – priced at $500 and signed and numbered by Joan -- will benefit the Pandemic Resource & Response Initiative at Columbia University, a nonprofit directed by Joan’s longtime friend Dr. Irwin Redlener, a pediatrician and public health activist specializing in health care for underserved children.

Respectfully called “the Mark Twain of songwriting,” Prine wrote “Hello In There” – a track on his 1971 eponymous debut -- as a kind of lament over the isolation of many senior citizens, an issue that has been especially critical during the global coronavirus pandemic. Joan sang it on her 1975 album “Diamonds and Rust,” and once performed it with Kris Kristofferson and Prine himself at a Merle Haggard concert.

While she was painting the portrait, she listened to Prine’s original recording of that song along with “Angel from Montgomery,” “Sam Stone” and many other classic tunes that made him one of the most influential songwriters of his generation.

“I know Fiona (Prine’s widow) is happy with the portrait,” Joan says, “and I think John would be happy with it, too.”