BEST CELL PHONE RINGTONES

Barrett Crumen "Russian Jack"
1878-1968
"Man oh man I vos FREE! Free to have a beer, have a smoke, –happy what you can call all the time, you know. They was free days."
This colorful swagman lived around the Masterton district for many years.

Kenneth Kendall created this statue of Russian Jack for the Library Park in the main street of Masterton.
It is a gift to the Masterton community by the Masterton Licensing Trust to mark its 50th anniversary in 1997.

Russian Jack became a familiar figure on the roadsides, while his bivouacs dotted the countryside.
Picking up work, food and occasional lodgings wherever he could, he was described by some of the farmers he visited as extremely honest, never taking anything without working for it. He traveled equipped with a strong walking stick, a kerosene tin billy and two huge sugar bags crammed with blankets, towels, clothing, food and tins of dripping which he rubbed on his chest and neck against ailments.
To keep out the cold he wore layers of brown paper or newspaper under increasingly patched clothes and even under his hat. He had the odd habit of stuffing his ears with brown paper wads soaked in mutton fat to protect against the cold and to "keep the bugs out".

His most treasured possession was a pipe, which he would briefly puff on, before putting it out by ramming a cork into it. He always carried two stones with him and would place them firmly in the toes of his boots at night to retain their shape. Russian Jack endlessly repaired his boots with nails, cardboard and tyre rubber.

It was frostbite in his toes which finally took the old swagger from the road in 1965, when he was admitted to Pahiatua Hospital. He was transferred to the Buchanan Ward at Greytown Hospital where he spent three years.

Russian Jack died in September 1968, aged 90, and was given a respectful funeral and buried in Greytown Cemetery, paid for with the proceeds of a pension he had never claimed.

Altman was born in Vinnytsia, Imperial Russia. From 1902 to 1907 he studied painting and sculpture at the Art College in Odessa. In 1906 he had his first exhibition in Odessa. In 1910 he went to Paris, where he studied at the Free Russian Academy, working in the studio of Wladimir Baranoff-Rossine, and had contact with Marc Chagall, Alexander Archipenko, and David Shterenberg. In 1910 he became a member of the group Union of Youth. His famous Portrait of Anna Akhmatova, conceived in Cubist style, was painted in 1914. After 1916 he started to work as a stage designer.

In 1918 he was the member of the Board for Artistic Matters within the Department of Fine Arts of the People's Commissariat of Enlightenment together with Malevich, Baranoff-Rossine and Shevchenko. In the same year he had an exhibition with the group Jewish Society for the Furthering of the Arts in Moscow, together with Wladimir Baranoff-Rossine, El Lissitzky and the others. In 1920 he became a member of the Institute for Artistic Culture, together with Kasimir Malevich, Vladimir Tatlin and others. In the same year, he participated in the exhibition From Impressionism to Cubism in the Museum of Painterly Culture in Petrograd. From 1920 to 1928 he worked on stage designs for the Habimah Theatre and the Jewish State Theatre in Moscow. In 1923 a volume of his Jewish graphic art was published in Berlin. In 1925 he participated in Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratifs et Industriels Moderns (Art Deco) in Paris. His first solo exhibition in Leningrad was in 1926.