Waldo Peirce

Good morning, my most favorite princesses!

 

I hope this finds you well!  Things in NJ are moving along – in just three days I’ll be on the road to bring Einstein down to GramEs house.  I’m not sure how he’s going to like Florida, as rabbits tend to prefer things a little chilly and definitely like carpets better than tile floors, but I’m sure he’ll be able to make himself at home.  It makes me giggle a little to think of GramE, who is always so perfectly neat and tidy, living with an animal that tends to track bits of hay around with him.  J  We shall see how they get on!

 

This week I want to tell you about Waldo.  Not Waldo of Where’s Waldo fame (although I do love him), but Walso Pierce, an American painter from the early 1900s.

 

Here’s my favorite Waldo story, and it has nothing to do with his painting: he and his friend were taking a ship from Boston to England. As the ship was leaving, Pierce decided he didn’t like it…so he jumped off the back of the ship and swam several miles back to shore. When Waldo turned up missing, the ship's captain arrested Waldo’s friend – assuming he had murdered him! But when the ship got to England, Waldo was at the dock waiting to greet them — he had taken a faster ship to England.  So Waldo is clearly a bit of both crazy AND stupid, but it sure makes for an interesting story!  

 

Waldo fought in World War I, was friends with Ernest Hemingway, and was married 4 times.  Seems like he must have been an interesting fellow – and probably just about impossible to live with. His last name makes me cringe, because I want to spell it “I before E”, and that’s wrong.  Guess that rule doesn’t apply to last names.

 

Waldo painted lots and lots of pictures, mostly of people, usually with animals in them, and what I like best about the work I’ve seen of his is the consistency of the look – the pictures below are all of very different people doing different things in different kinds of settings, but they all look very much like they go together. His color choices, the way he moved the paintbrush, the textures and shapes are all the same, but they create such different vibes – the woman painting is so serene, but the people in the bar are just full of action! And he wasn’t afraid to reshape things a bit to make them work better in his pictures.  Look at the lamp by the boy – how it bends, and how the tops of the apple pickers ladders get WAY too tiny (unless they were a hundred feet long).  I like that he wasn’t so stuck in making things “real” and made them beautiful and interesting instead.

 

In any case, that’s a bit about Waldo Peirce, and I hope that you’re having a wonderful week. Know that I love you and think that you’re awesome.

Hugs and kisses,

Auntie Paula

XOXOXOXO

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Whistler's Mother

Hello My Lovelies!

 

So, it’s almost 2 exciting things this weekend – Mothers’ Day, AND your Mom & Dad’s anniversary!  What an excellent weekend all around! 

I remember your Mom and Dad’s wedding so very well because it was awesomely beautiful and everyone was so happy, and because of the lilacs.  It was a PERFECT weekend for lilacs.

 

Not many artists have painted paintings about your Mom & Dad’s anniversary (although they should!), but lots and lots of artists have done paintings about Mothers.  So this week, I thought I’d show you one of the most famous Mom paintings of all time, the one titled “Whistler’s Mother”, by an American painter named (shockingly) James McNeill Whistler (it really is a painting of his mom).  He painted it in 1871.

 

Some people say that James had his mom sit in as the model for the painting when his model didn’t show up that day. 

After it became a famous painting, James was annoyed by people who called it a "portrait." He thought it should be valued simply as a good painting, and the identity of the person in it shouldn’t matter.  I would disagree with him on that point – I would like this painting much less if the woman in it wasn’t his mom (I actually don’t really like it as is, but that’s more about the color choice and how severe she looks than about his skill as a painter).

Here’s what’s funny to me; this painting REALLY connected with people.  The post office made a stamp, dedicated to the “Memory and In Honor of the Mothers of America” of it.  A giant statue was made of it during the great depression as a tribute to Moms.  But looking at her, does she make you feel all warm and fuzzy?  Do you look at her, in her black dress, with no children or anything child-like or even joyful around her, and immediately think “Wow, she looks like a great Mom”?  I sure don’t.  but apparently a LOT of people really thought she exemplified what Mom should be!  Fascinating.

I’ve also included 2 of James’ other paintings, and these I like.  Still too neutral for my tastes, but they’ve stylistically quite different from the portrait and have a lovely, ghostlike feeling to them – like something in the mists of a dream, and that’s something I can appreciate a lot more.

In any case, know that I love you and think that you’re awesome.

Hugs and kisses,

Auntie Paula

XOXOXOXOXO

 

 

 

 

 

 

Robert Rauschenberg

Good morning, ladies!!  It is such a pretty day today, and it is almost May, which makes me ever so happy, because it means that I am so very close to moving to Florida!  Yay!  Every time I have a very happy thought, I think of a line from a famous poem, called Jabberwocky – which was written by the guy who wrote about Alice in Wonderland.  It’s a poem made up with a lot of jibberish (fake words), but because of the way they’re said, you can figure out what they’re supposed to mean.  And when the father of the subject of the poem is happy, he says “O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"…and day is the only real word there, but it’s perfect.  Frabjous!  I am totally calloohy today!

 

Today, I chose Robert Rauschenberg to tell you about.  He was an American and is another guy who changed his name – he was born Milton Ernest Rauschenberg.  I do like Robert a bit better than Milton.  But I’ve never understood going to all the trouble of changing your name and not picking something really cool!  I would really like to change my name to Skywalker.  Not because I love Star Wars so much, but because it’s an awesome name.   Your Uncle Patrick does not want to be married to someone named Skywalker, though, so I’m probably going to be stuck with Paula.

 

Anyway, back to Robert.  One time he was in a show where the artists had to submit a portrait of a gallery owner named Iris Clert.  Robert’s submission consisted of a telegram sent to the gallery declaring "This is a portrait of Iris Clert if I say so."  You have to think about that, right? Can 11 words be a portrait just because an artist says so?  It challenges what art means.  It’s also kind of a total cop out…but an interesting one!

 

At one point he made a bunch of pieces out of trash, then took them to Italy and sold most of them…then he threw the ones that didn’t sell into a river.  So I’m not really sure if he was one of those super-artsy people who have to make a dramatic point out of everything, or if he was a jerk who was making fun of the people who buy art (which is the only thing that really allows the art world to keep going)…but again, he was certainly interesting.

 

Below are three of his more famous pieces.  I like them and I don’t like them at the same time (I really, REALLY want to straighten out that wheel in the middle one, and set the clocks to the same time!), but since he seemed to be the kind of artist whose main goal is to agitate people, that’s probably exactly what he would have wanted. J

 

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

Hugs and kisses,

Auntie Paula

XOXOXO

 

 

 

 

 

Peter Young

Good morning, my favorite small humans!  Happy Thursday to you!

 

Today is “Bring your kids to work day” at my office.  The place is over-run with small people!  I suppose if I had kids I might like this.  But as someone who does not have kids, what it really means for me is that all day long people I work with will be interrupting me to introduce me to their kids.  And the kids will be nervous about it, and I will be nervous about it (since I don’t hang out with kids much & am always worried about saying the wrong thing), so we will say hello and shake hands and all look at our shoes for a minute and then their parents will take them off to meet some other person.  It is a very, very strange custom.

 

And speaking of strange…today I picked Peter Young to be the artist I’m going to introduce you to.  He was born in Pittsburgh, which is a city your dad and I (and GramE and GrampE) lived in for part of the time while we were kids.  He’s considered an abstract painter, and although he’s still painting and showing work today, I think he was probably most famous in the 1970’s.

 

You can see a short video of Peter talking about his work at the link below, but I didn’t watch it, so I don’t know for sure what he says.  I mostly dislilke video clips, so I almost never actually watch them.  A long time ago I taught a class for people who wanted to become teachers, and to teach the class, I had to learn about different kinds of learning styles so I could teach the teachers about them, and there are basically 3 main ways people learn – visual learners learn by seeing (like watching a video), auditory learners learn by hearing (like going to a lecture), and what’s called kinesthetic learners are the people who really learn best by doing something themselves.  I am definitely NOT an auditory learner.  People start talking and I start thinking about the circus, or the moon, or whether or not I remembered to put on deodorant this morning.  So videos where you have to watch someone talk about something don’t do much for me – I’d much rather try to make a painting like Peter Young than listen to him talk about his paintings, and if I can’t do that, I’d still prefer to read about him than to listen to him.  Anyway, here it is, in case YOU are an auditory learner and prefer information that way!

 

http://peteryoung.detritus.net/?q=taxonomy/term/1

 

Some of Peter’s work reminds me of Jackson Pollock (who I will tell you about another week!) – like this one (Peter Young first, then a Jackson Pollock after it)

 

 

But a lot Peter’s work is abstract but very specifically patterned, like these:

They almost look like illusions, don’t they?  Like another picture is going to form itself out of the patterns?  They are strange and very beautiful to me, even as they kind of make my brain hurt, because I really want to find something else hiding in there.

 

So that is some of the work of Peter Young, and I hope you have a fabulous, wonderful weekend!

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

Hugs and Kisses,

Auntie Paula

 

 

 

Sally Sheinman's Wishing Booth

Hello lovely ladies!

 

Happy Mid-April!  J  I hope that your world is full of sunshine and happy today!

 

This week I thought I’d chose to introduce you to an artist who has done some interactive work.  I like art that involves the viewer!

 

Sally Sheinman who was born in the US but I think she’s living in the UK now.  She’s a painter and a paper artist, and she does a lot of projects made up of many pieces – so instead of one big painting, she might make hundreds of small ones that relate to each other.  Very fun!

 

One of her major recent projects was a series of 6 “wishing booths” – these happy, bright colored boxes that people could step inside, and they were full of little nooks and crannies that had pretty little objects in them, and you could leave a wish inside by writing it on a sticky note (or sometimes even on the booth itself)…and then as other people came in, they could read the wishes that the people who were there before them had left behind…which made these lovely little boxes a very special place full of shared dreams; I love that so much.

 

Some of the wishes were things like “I wish my mom would let me have a dog.”, some were about changing the world by ending cancer or racism, some were wishes to be different…everyone that came into the booth got to leave a wish that meant something special to them, and when the project was over, all the wishes were put on-line. 

 

She also did a lovely project called “days”, where she made 365 little boxes, each one different, to represent the things that happened on each day over a year of her life.  Visually I think this is especially amazing, because it shows how different one day can be from the next – you could be shiny pink polka dots with frilly strings today and so-blue-it’s-almost-black tomorrow, and they’re both lovely and interesting bits of who you are.

 

There’s a quote from Sally that I appreciate a lot – she said “I really dislike the belief that every piece of art work requires an explanation. If most people do not get it, then I believe you have failed as a visual artist.”  And that’s very cool – it tires me out sometimes how people are so focused on meaning behind art.  Sometimes art is about the emotion that you get from seeing something that’s beautiful to you, and what it means to you might be something completely different than what it means to me, and I’ve always thought that was a really good thing.  So I think Sally is pretty cool.

 

And that’s it for this week – I am hoping that today is full of beautiful wishes for you.

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

Hugs and Kisses,

Auntie Paula

 

Cupcake Awesomeness

https://www.youtube.com/user/MyCupcakeaddiction

A little bonus link for my lovely niece who is humoring her Auntie Paula with the art stuff...this lady is an artist with cupcakes! She posts 2 new awesome videos every week.

Edna Hibel

Morning ladies!

 

Happy Wednesday to you! J  All is well in the wilds of New Jersey today, and this week Wednesday is a tiny bit less crazy than Thursday, so I thought I’d do our artist of the week now while I have the time.  And this week I’ve chosen one of your GramE’s favorites, Edna Hibel.  GramE has a few Hibel original pieces in her house – next time you visit, ask her to show them to you and tell you what she loves about them!

 

When I was younger, I didn’t really like Edna’s work – mostly because I’d only seen some of her softer, more pastel toned things… it’s grown on me as I’ve gotten older, and I do think she did some truly beautiful things. 

 

Edna lived in the United States and was a working artist right up until she passed away in December of last year at the age of 97.  She was very involved in charity work for women and children, and a lot of her pieces were of mothers and their babies.

 

Her most famous pieces were created using stone lithography, where giant pieces of stone are used like stamps, one for each color, and then layered on top of each other to create pieces of art.  For her more complex pieces, she would use up to 32 different stones, and then sometimes she would hand paint gold leaf on top of them – very pretty! And all the layering of colors creates a feeling of translucence – like you can see light passing through the colors – which I do just love, especially in her bolder colored pieces.   She was considered to be an innovator in her techniques, some of which are still closely guarded secrets.

To me, a  lot of her images make me think of Leonardo DaVinci’s sketchbooks (one of his sketches is below) – something about the lines, and the softness of the expressions.  I had an art teacher once that hated when the line wasn’t one bold, graphic, strong line – she would yell at us “No hairy lines!!  No hairy lines!!” and we would all giggle.  But I always thought things looked more alive, more like they could move when they’re “hairy”.

 

 

Anyway, that’s this weeks’ artist – I hope you enjoyed her, and you can enjoy seeing some of her real, original work at GramEs!

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

Hugs and kisses,

Auntie Paula

XOXOXOXO

 

 

 

 

 

Birthday!! Birthday!! Birthday!!

(added note: Dang it!  This got stuck in my in-box, so now it’s a late happy birthday, but HAPPY BIRTHDAY all the same!)

 

PRINCESS SHANNON!

 

Can’t believe you’re ELEVEN!!  Crazy.  Totally CRAZY!  J

Miss you and love you and sending you tons of fabulous birthday wishes.

 

Easter Eggs

And as an added bonus, check out these AWESOME Easter Eggs your GramE and I made when she visited me in New Jersey last month!

We knew we wouldn’t see each other ON Easter, so we went ahead and had fun ahead of time.  How cool are they?  Much fun!

Animation Cels

Hello lovely princesses Shannon and Eva!

 

Happy Thursday from New Jersey!  Guess what?  THE SUN IS SHINING HERE TODAY!  woo-hoo! 

 

I am still madly busy with finance things, but this week I thought I'd show you the world's most expensive animation cell.  Now, I should note, that expensive art isn't always GOOD art.  Matter of fact, a lot of REALLY expensive art is pretty crappy.  But in this case, at least there's a reason for the expense.

 

Back in the days before computers, Animation cels (short for celluloid, even though by the time this piece came around they were made out of cellulose acetate …because celluloid had a nasty habit of catching on fire!) were these transparent sheets that cartoons were painted on. Then the see through sheet (or sheets) was laid on top of a painting of a background scene.  That way they could keep the background the same and not have to repaint it in each frame, but keep the characters on the scene moving around.  It takes thousands and thousands of cels to create even a very short cartoon; in most animation there are 24 frames in every second of film!

 

As an example, here are six frames of a red ball – see how it's in a slightly different position in each one?  You could create a cel of each of those balls, and then put one background behind it, and if you repeated them over and over very fast, you'd see the red ball bouncing up and down in front of your background!

 

 

(Before cel animation existed, you had to use a flip book to make things move – remind me next time I see you to show you how to make one – they're fun!! Your dad and I used to take little notepads that Grampie would bring home from work and turn them into flipbooks of little stick figure people doing things.)

 

Fun fact!  The Little Mermaid was the last movie made using cel animation process!

 

So the most expensive cel that I could find is a handpainted one  from a Disney cartoon, 1935′s "The Band Concert" in which Mickey attempts to conduct Goofy and other characters in a rousing performance of "The William Tell Overture." There's a wind storm, a crazy bee, & Donald Duck keeps playing the wrong song, so it's a funny cartoon. This cel is the only production cel in existence to feature Mickey and the full band, and this cartoon was the very first one done in color, so it's pretty special!  It sold in 1999 for $420,000.  That's a lot of money!

 

What's interesting to me is that although this is one of the most famous animation cels ever, and even though I tried really hard to find out, no one knows who actually painted it – I guess because teams of animators would work on each project.

 

In any case, here it is, I hope I didn't bore you too much with all the info!

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

Hugs and kisses,

Auntie Paula

XOXOXOXOXO

 

 

 

Pennies!

Hey ladies!  I am neck deep in the first forecast of the year, as well as prepping for a quarter close (things that I’m sure are irrelevant to you, but trust me, they’re HUGE in the life of a corporate finance person), so I thought I’d give you a quick video of some interesting work this week!

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXlpLkH3kZo

 

This is a video of a portrait of President Obama, made out of pennies – I love how it’s all just pennies, but because some of them are older / dirtier / less shiny, they were able to create so many different shades!  I think this is very cool.  When I was in middle school, I made a portrait of a cowboy made out of M&Ms.  It had a lever attached to the back that you could turn and M&Ms would fall out, too.   I’m pretty sure it attracted bugs & we had to throw it away.  But it was cool while it lasted!  Pennies would make a much more durable medium!  If Uncle Patrick and I are able to move down to Florida, maybe we can try to make something like this together – it would be fun!

 

I also found a picture of a portrait of President Lincoln in pennies – appropriate, yes?  And my favorite, Steve Baker’s awesome art van, completely covered in pennies (pic below)…not only is it pretty, I particularly love that he found a matching outfit to wear in the picture with it!  I bet that thing looks AMAZING when the sun flashes off it!

 

Shannon, I can’t believe next week you’ll already be 11!  I hear that you’ll be attending your first concert this weekend too – much awesomeness.  I will try to think of something extra cool to talk with you about next week in honor of your birthday.

 

Know that I love you both and think that you’re awesome!

Hugs and Kisses,

Auntie Paula

XOXOXOXOXO

 

 

 

Leprechaun 4

Leprechaun 5 - last one!

Leprechaun 3

Leprechaun 2

Leprechaun 1

Find the Leprechaun!

Hello Ladies!

 

I was putting something together for my team at work, so thought I’d send it your way,too…just for fun.

 

There will be 5 posts that come after this one. 

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to find the leprechaun that looks like this:

Kind of like “Where’s Waldo”! 

 

There’s one Leprechaun on each picture.

 

Love you tons!

Auntie Paula

Eric Hebborn

Hello My Favorite Princesses!

 

I hope this finds you well!  Auntie Paula is not amused today, as it is almost her birthday – and springtime! – and they are predicting ANOTHER six inches of snow tomorrow.  I am thinking about convincing your uncle to take me for one last snow tubing trip this Saturday, though, so at least that’s something good to come out of more snow!

 

Regardless, in honor of my birthday (I LOVE birthdays – YAY CAKE!), I decided I would look today for an artist who was also born on March 20…and as I looked, I saw a note that said “Eric Hebborn – artist/faker” was born on March 20, 1934.  And that seemed interesting enough to be worth taking a look –after all, we’re all fakers about something or another at some point in our lives, so I wanted to see what he faked that was significant enough that it got permanently attached to his name!

 

So Eric had a pretty tough childhood (that’s a bit of an understatement), but was lucky enough to realize he had some talent for art.  He actually started exhibiting art seriously when he was just 15 years old!  He was getting to be a bit known for his work when he went to work for an art restorer…someone who fixes old paintings that had faded or gotten dirty to make them look again how they looked in the first place…but this art restorer told Eric to maybe “improve” them a bit…and then eventually he would give him blank canvases and have him “restore” pieces that weren’t there at all!   And that was really what Eric did best – he didn’t just copy old art like most forgers, he made new pieces of art that were in the same style as someone famous, and then the experts would say it was the other person that created them!

 

After a bit, Eric started working on his own, and would buy pieces of really old paper to create forgeries on (because if he did it on new paper, you’d be able to tell!)…and that was actually how he got caught – someone noticed the paper was the same on two works from supposedly different old masters who lived in different places!

 

It might have worked out ok for Eric if he hadn’t been such a jerk about things.  He started telling everyone how great he was and identifying all kinds of things that were maybe his, maybe not, as his work, and challenging the “experts” to identify which things he had done (basically calling them idiots); he even wrote two books called “The Art Forgers Handbook” and “Drawn to Trouble” (love that title!)…and then, he was MURDERED! So maybe it was not such a good plan to brag about being the worlds best faker.

 

But all that makes him a fairly interesting man!  Plus he was born on my birthday, so he rules. J

Below is a picture of him working, and the cover of his book, which I think is a hoot.

 

In any case, know that I love you and think that you’re awesome!

Hugs and kisses,

Auntie Paula

XOXOXOXOXO

 

 

Nelson Shanks

Happy Thursday, lovely ladies!

 

Today it is almost 45 degrees in New Jersey!  Your auntie is happy, happy, happy.  It’s beginning to seem possible that spring might actually get here this year!

 

I thought this week I’d tell you a bit about an artist who has been in the news quite a lot right now.  His name is Nelson Shanks, and he’s a portrait artist who specializes in realism (making things technically very accurate to what we see in the real world).  He was born in Rochester, NY (you know someone from there, don’t you?), so that’s kind of cool.

 

Here’s a self-portrait from Mr. Shanks (on the left) – I think he looks a little like Vincent Van Gogh (his self-portrait is on the right)!

 

Up until recently, his most famous painting was from 2006, a portrait of Princess Diana, who was the Princess of Wales.  I’ve put a real picture of her next to it so you can see how much it really looked like her.  I can’t imagine painting all those little tiny ruffles on her shirt!  That must have taken forever!

 

But he also painted the picture below in 2006, of former US President Bill Clinton …it wasn’t maybe such a big deal at first (although it is an excellent likeness of the president – see his photo at right), but recently he announced that the shadow you can see on the left side of the painting (the one coming up over the fireplace pokers) was a secret reference to something that happened while Mr. Clinton was president, something that “cast a shadow” over his presidency, and that has suddenly made it a very interesting painting to the news people!  I won’t get into the details of it all, but what I find most interesting is that years later, something as simple as a shadow can make people start talking about a piece of art all over again – I’ve never really been deep into symbolism in art, but this case makes it really clear how important it can be!

 

 

 

In any case, know that I love you and think that you’re awesome.

Hugs and kisses,

Auntie Paula

xoxoxoxoxo