Almost Wordless Wednesday: Pictures from Saturday's DAI Pop Art Masquerade Gala

Ann Markusen makes an impression.

Winner and New Champeen of Costume Contest

Marilyn Monroe (aka DAI Chairman Robin Washington)

Stacy Johnston of co-sponsor Audacity HR

The theme for this year's Gala was Pop Art

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Yours truly (R) with Cheng-Khee Chee

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Aerial entertainment, designed to keep us looking up.

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Glenn Swanson with Tom Rauschenfels

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Jasper Johns (L) (Matt Kania) and Jill 

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Director Christina Woods seemed to be in her element.

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REMINDER: TOMORROW IS THE ROUNDABOUT
NORTH CARLTON COUNTY ART TOUR

Fond du Lac Museum & Cultural Center, Scott House, 

Oldenburg House, Pine Knot, Gateway Goods, 

Dragonfire Ceramics, Encore Theater

If you see me, say hello. I won't be in Tangiers.

Throwback Thursday: Themes

When I began this blog in 2007 I decided that one way to set it apart would be to combine my writing with art that I created. As time when on the illustrations and paintings I'd been creating led one of my readers to suggest having an art show featuring the art. I'd not had an art show since college and since a space was offered I took him up on it. I titled the show First Hand Experiences. As it turns out I hung more that 120 pieces in that show, and even sold a few. Here is the blog post I wrote in July 2009 regarding the artwork displayed that month in Duluth's West End.

"A sincere artist is not one who makes a faithful attempt to put on canvas what is in front of him, but one who tries to create something which is, in itself, a living thing." ~William Dobell

A lot of people have asked me if my show has a theme, or what kind of art I do. It was always hard to answer that since my work goes in a lot of directions. Eventually, I came to answer that my paintings and drawings were "in the modernist style." It is not classical, baroque or art nouveau, nor is it realism, landscape or still life. I can't call it abstract because much of it is representational to some extent. Certainly the portraits of Lincoln and Sitting Bull are straight up portraits.

As for themes, we have a friend who does gnomes. And some people do flowers. In American art, the major themes might include scenes from everyday life, historical subjects, abstract art, landscapes. Jackson Pollock did the large splatter paintings which brought him fame and fortune in the modern art world. Warhol did screen printing with images from pop culture, creating iconic reproductions of Marilyn Monroe, electric chairs and soup cans.

Although the styles in this show vary, one can't help but notice upon deeper reflection that certain themes emerge. One of these is the theme of suffering. We live in a broken world. Pieces like Scars Remain and Chase Ends In Suicide show the chaos of our culture, and paintings like Grief and Sad Clown likewise show the personal impact this brokenness has.

Another theme, which may or may not be immediately recognized, is the underlying sense of the comic. I like making funny pictures, and also enjoy toying with people a little. My found art piece Tribute to DuChamp was intended to bring a wry smile to art connoisseurs, though I have now learned that the average person no longer knows who DuChamp was. Nearly everyone gets a kick out of The Great Escape, a small brush and ink drawing of a man crawling on hands and knees, a guilty expression on his face.

The most important thing to me is that people who visit the show take time to engage each piece, which might be an impossibility in light of the quantity. Someone once said that "the holy grail is to spend less time making the picture than it takes people to look at it." I can relate to that. I'm honored when people get drawn in, engage, interact. Too much of life is lived on the surface, and so it is that once in a while we need to get jarred, to be made to pause, to reflect... not only on the piece, but on that which is occurring within our selves.

Maybe I'm just trying to share a little about what I like to do when I get away from it all while others go fishing. Some people might just call it glorified doodling. For me, making art satisfies a need. Sharing what I've created, and seeing other people enjoy it, satisfies a second.

Have a great day! Hopefully the rain will have stopped when you walk from your cars to the show tonight.

Marilyn at 85

The other day I saw a news story that Marilyn Monroe's dress, the one which memorably billowed out over a subway grate in The Seven Year Itch, was going up for auction and would likely fetch two million dollars. I did not know at the time that this news item was designed to coincide with what would have been Marilyn's 85th birthday, had her days not been cut short by an overdose of barbituates in 1962.

To be honest, I was never a big Marilyn Monroe fan so until three weeks ago I don't think I had actually seen a single one of her films in full. But someone at work has a Marilyn calender in her cubicle and after months of seeing various black and white images of the iconic blonde starlet, I actually decided I should go ahead and stop judging her by the bad reviews she garnered for her weaker films, failed marriages and misdeeds. And guess what? I learned something.

The two films I watched were Niagara and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. The former is classic film noir, the latter a musical comedy.

In Niagara, Ms. Monroe plays the role of a scheming wife who conspires with her current lover to bump off her neurotic husband, played by Joseph Cotten. There is only one provocative scene in the film and it's early on where Monroe is lying in bed watching her husband and you can see her bare back, implying she probably does not have any clothes on. In the early fifties this was no doubt risque, even though she was with her own husband in a hotel room at Niagara Falls.

Well, the acting is generally flat throughout, and not just Marilyn, who did her best under the circumstances. There was probably a limit to how much chemistry one could show in those days, though maybe this was lacking, too. The bottom line is, in my opinion she was just another actress playing a role. What's the big deal. Hollywood is full of pretty faces.

But then I saw Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and understood her star power.

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is about a pair of showgirls who grew up on the wrong side of the tracks and are working their way across the Atlantic on a ship. The pair, Jane Russell and Marilyn Monroe, are best buds from small town America who have contrasting agendas. Russell is looking for love and Monroe, as Lorelei Lee, is a gold-digger. Directed by Howard Hawkes, both women appear to be having a great deal of fun.

The script is saturated with sexual innuendo and crisp comic witticisms throughout. Even though this has never been my style of film, one thing you can't help but notice... every time Marilyn shows up she lights up the screen. Both she and Russell must have enjoyed the opportunity to shimmy and shake with abandon. The cameras loved it, and probably their fans enjoyed it to. Some people have it listed as one of their favorite films of all time.

When I read accounts of Marilyn's short life I feel pity for her. But I also think she may have gotten lucky in some ways. Being famous and beautiful creates many difficulties and I can't picture her aging gracefully. On the contrary, it is easy to imagine her aging disgracefully.

She grew up in the glory days when bad behavior was often concealed from an adoring public. The 1950s was an age of innocence still, though Marilyn was bigger than the Hollywood PR machinery could handle, marrying a superstar ballplayer, a famed Broadway playwright and generating rumors of dalliances with a U.S. president and his brother. How well would Norma Jeane have held up over the next five decades had she lived? The Warhol images enshrine her as a pop icon. And Elton John's Candle in the Wind portrays a saintlike martyr of legendary stature. As for me, I can see from her films that she was more than just another pretty face. In the end, her story makes me sad.