I named the date
I stated my case
I sprinkled falsehoods
All over the place—
I tried to be honest
I tried to be true
But the actual facts
Never do, never do—
I told them whoppers
I gave them chase
But the truth is plain
As the nose on my face—
I just couldn’t help it
I let myself go
Let my epitaph read: Here
Lies Pinocchio
Is it my imagination, or is it a little bit hot in here???
Femme Fatale
Barbara is standing by to cut my scruffy hair:
but, say–doesn’t that look a bit like an electric chair?
Look at that pair of scissors–oh, boy howdy, are they sharp!
Will my coiffure just leave me playing sad songs on the harp?
I’d say it’s mighty hot in here–a preview glimpse of Hell,
Or maybe just a purgatory-hint, that hairspray smell–
I’m not so absolutely sure that something here is wrong;
and yet, what’s so darned horrible in leaving hair this long?
Is it sheer paranoia and delusion of myself–
Hey! What’s that creepy science stuff in tubes up on the shelf?
I’m getting awfully shaggy, yes, it’s true–but not a Nut!
(I merely hope it’s nothing but my hair that will get cut!)
Oh, Barbara, I am nervous, so please, kindly, Dear, refrain
from trimming quite so near my throbbing jugular, poor vein.
And if you have to croak me (does this happen very often?),
at least make sure I’m wearing stylish hair there in my coffin.
One way or another, I’ll be a hot number when I come out of here.
Inquisition
Her lipstick was of fiery red,
Her mane wild copper, and her nails
Lacquered in scarlet by which pales
The rouge of which the pious said
Was made civilization’s end,
And surely, in her crimson silk
Cut down to there, she and her ilk
Wore carmine on that downward trend
That would someday blood’s red require
As she and they leapt in that fire
In meantime, sanguine all were those,
This ruby dame and all her kin,
And painted red from cloak to skin,
Until the bloom wore off the rose
And in wine-tinged despair, demise,
They fell in desperate gasps for breath,
Plagued by their past like some Red Death
Infected them; to their surprise,
This day their bad blood did require
They leap in that eternal fire
Desolation
Way out west of Petaluma,
Where the streetlights cease to go,
Only weeds and broken concrete
And barbed wire in one hard row
Braiding up the roadside grasses
In a knotted wind-strung quirt
To whip out and give ten lashes
To the devils in the dirt
There are houses still beyond here,
Long abandoned, though, and shot
Through with rust and melancholy
And dead dreams long since forgot,
And one tough and stringy lady
Hanging on by fingernails
To a past she can’t remember,
Out here where the flat wind sails
* Today’s post is brought to you by: Zombies! Now 100% Recycled!
I think of myself, as many people do I suppose, as a Work in Progress. What started out as a small, wiggly, colicky mass of spittle-covered humanity just over a half century ago is progressing, ever so gradually, into something like Iteration No. 10,000,022 or so, and will (if all goes as hoped) continue in the same unpredictable path until death do me part. I like it like that, if you want to know. I have no idea where I’ll be, what I’ll be doing, who I’ll be, a mere matter of months from now let alone in years yet to come, and that seems perfectly okay with me. Life continues to be a big adventure, and I’ll take it as it happens.
As a visual artist, I can say pretty much the same thing. Some works take their own sweet time to develop. Some take their own tangents and I just hang on for dear life and hope I can keep up with where they’re headed. I don’t always know what I intend to make when I begin a project, and I almost never know what I will make, given that art things sometimes cooperate and turn out similar to my imaginings and more often than not, they assuredly don’t. Sometimes the uncooperative piece ends up being much better than I could have conceived of it or even than I thought I could accomplish. A lot of the time, the end result of my artistic machinations ends in my being pretty surprised. Whatever happens in my life and my world, I’m pretty sure I’ll die surprised. Not a bad way to go, eh!
Just as an illustration, I thought I’d share a glimpse of ‘process’ that spans a fair amount of time and a couple of widely separated playtime brainstorms. Thanks to my exceedingly slow-simmering artistic processes, this piece incorporates a color background I scribbled a few days ago in colored pencil on paper and digitally melds it with an organ pipeshade design I did a few years ago (designed for Martin Pasi‘s pipe organ, an instrument made for Winnetka Congregational Church in Illinois, 2007), photographed as it was executed on wood panel in graphite and markers to prepare it for cutting and carving. Bit by bit and frame by frame, two rather disparate art projects merged into one, and that’s how it all went. This time.
A simple abstraction in colored pencil, scanned from the sketch paper.
Taking the original colored pencil drawing through a few painterly paces via Photoshop, I got a more cohesive background ‘starter’.
Rearranging the proportions of the digital artwork makes it a better fit for the mash-up I now have in mind.
The cartoon on wood panel, waiting for cutting and carving, was done in graphite and marker on the raw wood, crisp but not the look I had in mind for this use–more of a pen-and-ink appearance for now.
Photoshop to the rescue! Now we’ve gone back to black and white version and it looks more inked–almost tattooed, perhaps.
So now, I can smash together the two images–the pipeshade design and the colored backdrop. I think I’m almost there . . .
. . . ahhh, that’s better. Now instead of looking like the sun is underwater, I have a sense of sunrise or sunset. Now we’ll see if I can think of a *reason* for this image. Oh, who cares. I just like to Make Stuff when I get in the mood for it. So sue me. But if you can think of any reason for it besides personal entertainment, feel free to enjoy that concept!
Art-Colored Glasses 