Giuseppe Arcimboldo

Oh my gosh, how did another week go by already?  Wow, that last one just FLEW!!!  This week your Auntie is taking training at work on cash flow.  Which is actually kind of fun, but takes up a whole lot of time…and I’m due there in just a few minutes again this morning, so I’d better type really fast if I want to get a message out to you this week!  We’re talking about the difference between cash and profits in a company – which is interesting stuff, because you can have lots of profits and it SEEMS like when that happens your business is probably doing really well, but if you don’t also have cash, it’s really hard to keep a business running!   But I’m thinking that the nuance of accounting probably isn’t the most interesting thing to you guys, so that’s all I’ll say about that.

 

We’re just one week from Thanksgiving, so that’s super fun, too.  Your Uncle Patrick’s brother, Johnny, and our two newphews, John Jr and Joseph are coming to our house for Thanksgiving dinner.  So it’s going to be me and a bunch of big, hungry boys!  They will probably talk about football a lot.  But then again, they will probably also give me lots of compliments on my chocolate-pecan pie (and not one of them is going to think they’re a better cook than I am or be jealous because I got to make the dessert), so it’s not always the worst thing to feed dinner a pack of men.  J  I’ll try to take some pictures to show you.  You guys take some at your Thanksgiving, too!

 

This week I’ve picked Guiseppe Arcimboldo as my artist to introduce you to.  Big G (as I’ve decided to call him, because his name is too hard for me to type over and over) lived in the late 1500s, and he’s famous for painting people made of vegetables and fruit.  Which I’d guess would have made him a big-time weirdo back in the day, because back then everybody else who was famous for painting was mostly doing very serious religious type things, or maybe bowls of fruit…but certainly not people made of fruit!!  Then again, people in this time-frame were a little obsessed with strange and ugly things (someday I’ll show you Leonardo Da Vinci’s creepy head sketches), so maybe he fit right in.  But Big G was certainly doing something that was unique, and I like him a lot for that.  I’m also really impressed with the crazy level of detail he worked into each piece.

 

His man made of books makes me think of the cubist movement, which wouldn’t happen for a very long time after Big G was a painter.  I love the round onion cheeks in the second one, but my favorite one of his is the guy with branches in his head that  look like antlers – because the face is SO SO SO ugly, but the flowers are so bright and perfect and beautiful…and he has antlers.  Who doesn’t want antlers? J

 

In any case, have a wonderful week, and know that I love you and think that you’re awesome.

Hugs and Kisses,

Auntie Paula

XOXOXO

 

 

 

 

John Seward Johnson II

Hello and happy Thursday, lovely ladies!

GramE is here with me in New Jersey this week!  We've been having lots of fun. 

GramE and her friend Andi went to a wonderful art place this week, so we're going to use him as the artist this week.  It was a beautiful place with gardens and hundreds of sculptures and they got to walk around and look at all the art and she wishes you could have seen it with her!

The sculptors name is John Seward Johnson II, but he's mostly known as just Seward Johnson.  His family is the same one as Johnson & Johnson - like the people who make band aids and baby shampoo, and he's also a cousin to an actor named Michael Douglas.

Seward was born in 1930, and I'm pretty sure he's still alive today.  He started out as a painter, but I can't find any of his work and GramE says that what she saw in the museum didn't impress her too much - she's glad he switched over to sculpture!

Some of his sculptures are HUGE, and some are people sized, but most of them are of people, no matter how gigantic they might be.  Most of them are cast in bronze, and then he has people who help him finish it...which some art people have a problem with.  Some of his sculptures are inspired from famous paintings, and he makes life sized people that look like they stepped out of the painting - which I think is pretty cool, but is another thing the snooty art people don't like....so maybe what I like best about Seward is that even though throughout his art career a whole lot of people gave him heck about his work, he didn't let it get him down, and he kept creating beautiful, fun things, and he built this wonderful park that people can go and interact with and enjoy!  I love art that people can touch.

I'm going to show you three of his sculptures, and the famous thing that inspired them - two were from paintings and one is from a photograph; I'm very impressed that he could take something two dimensional and turn it into a sculpture!

That's all for now - I have to go spend time with GramE before she leaves!

Know that I love you and think that you're awesome.

Hugs and kisses,

Auntie Paula

xoxoxoxo

Gene Davis

Hello wonderful Misses Shannon and Eva!

 

How are you today?  It was cold this morning, so of course, as I shivered on my way to work I thought of my lovely Florida nieces, all warm and happy down there in the sunshine state.  I’m looking forward to seeing you at Christmas, but of course, first we need to have Thanksgiving.  J

 

So last weekend your uncle and I, and some very fun friends of ours went to a thing called the “Pumpkin Blaze” where there are THOUSANDS of carved pumpkins, made into amazing things – it was AWESOME. Check out some of the things we saw there!

 

  

 

So that was my artistic adventure for the week.  I totally want to make pumpkin sculptures now.

 

But I also want to introduce you to a new artist, and this guy is pretty cool. Gene Davis at one time had the record for the world’s largest artwork (most of his work happened in the 1960s and 70s).  It was called Franklin’s Footpath, and was happy colored painted lines in a street in Philadelphia.  How pretty would it be if all streets looked like that?

 

He also did work with light and color in other mediums, like this awesome piece called “Sun Sonata”, made of tubes of liquid lit from behind.  Isn’t it beautiful?

 

A lot of his work was kind of stripey, and colorful, but some was black and white, and he used a lot of different stuff to make it.  I like that it’s not matchy stripes, but there’s a rhythm to it so it almost pulsates – like music made in colors.  Sun Sonata reminds me of the UFOs in a movie called “Close Encounters” that was way before your time, but was pretty cool when I was a kid.  The aliens communicated for the first time with people through patterns in light and music.

 

So that is a bit about Gene Davis!

Know that I love you and think that you’re awesome.

Hugs and kisses,

Auntie Paula

xoxoxoxo