Books by Barry Johnson

Mel Katz is a highly regarded Portland sculptor and teacher whose work is firmly rooted in the principles of geometric abstraction. He moved to Portland, Oregon, in 1964 to teach at Portland State University, where he taught for the next thirty-two years. He helped found the Portland Center for the Visual Arts in 1971, one of the first alternative artist spaces in the country. Originally trained as a painter, Katz has produced a remarkable body of work over the past fifty years that reflects his unique journey from painter to sculptor, working in many different media, including polyurethane, fiberglass, wood, formica, steel, and aluminum.Katz has been featured in numerous one-person and group exhibitions throughout the United States, including the First Western States Biennial. He was the subject of a major retrospective exhibition at the Portland Art Museum in 1988 and was included in the traveling exhibition, Still Working, in 1994. His work is included in the collections of the Hallie Ford Museum of Art, Portland Art Museum, the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, the Seattle Art Museum, the Tacoma Art Museum, the Oregon Arts Commission, the City of Seattle, and many national corporations.

The Hunt for Helen and Paris is the third novel in a series of seven novels tracking the adventures of Petraeus from slave to king. Each novel has a different focus. Helen, Queen of Sparta, one of histories mythical character has absconded with Paris, a handsome Prince of Troy. Agamemnon, the most powerful king in Ancient Greece, has commissioned Petraeus to pursue the pair and bring them back. Petraeus, the Captain General of the fleet, tells the story of the hunt and the adventures of the fleet as they travel around the Great Sea. The adventures include solving a murder, discovering that there is a reward for his head and fighting off the bounty hunters, surviving a storm at sea, arriving in a land where Amazons keep the men drugged and here he meets the child Harmothoe, the daughter of Penthesilea the great Amazon General. In the port of Rhakotis Petraeus has a confrontation with Jarha and he learns about trade and commerce and the idea that it will dominate the world. Petraeus sails up the Nile and meets the great Pharaoh, Ramasses, who gives him a present of a sword made by Hephaestus. The fleet sails from Egypt only to run into a battle fleet that they defeat. They have adventures in Tyre where Petraeus confronts Ba'al. Petraeus is washed overboard from his ship and is enslaved to work in a quarry, escapes and is rescued. He makes it back to Greece but Ba'al has sent an assassin to kill him. Petraeus is included in the negotiating team of Odysseus, Menelaus and Palamedes to gain the return of Helen from Troy but the negotiations fail and war is declared.