Buzz-worthy

“I am the writing on the walls;
I am the sweet smell of blood. 
The buzz that echoes in the alleyways.”

It can be argued that a strong indicator of a successful film is its lingering presence in your thoughts —be it days, if not years, after the final credits fade. I did not expect to be particularly impacted, and certainly not deeply moved, by 1992’s CANDYMAN but it bore itself inside me, striking a buried reserve of sorrow. As in the best of horror cinema, it serves as an entertaining, artful, and (above all) frightening gateway into honest discussions of topical societal issues, if not humankind’s most terrible crimes. In this case, the focus is urban housing development and the mismanaged ghettos of communities of color that go overlooked until more privileged (typically white) buyers descend, encouraging gentrification. 

Further, the story is in itself a captivating, achingly poignant generations-spanning fairytale for the unjustly downtrodden communities within Chicago’s Cabrini-Green public housing development. It is delivered via an ambitious female protagonist (as is often the case in this genre) who I immediately sympathized with and easily rooted for. Much like a bee sting —a recurring motif frequently referenced and emphasized, along with the analogy of apartments as an expansive “hive” with faceless, disposable worker-bee tenants— it drove itself under my skin. Enough so, in fact, that I feel weirdly embarrassed by how much I was moved, from the art direction and cinematography (think eerie expanses of insect-size cars moving on highways from far above, similar to “The Shining”) to the arresting Philip Glass score that, in its repeating theme suggests the ritual experience of brazenly summoning the vengeful spirit of murdered slave Daniel Robitaille.

In terms of further topicality and relevance, 2022 marks the film’s 30th anniversary; only just last year heralded genre master and A24 headliner Jordon Peele (GET OUT) produced a meditative, well-intentioned follow-up installment replete with free online educational videos, essays, writing prompts & scholarly discussions on black trauma and other pertinent themes through The Candyman Social Impact Initiative. Then, in the current “tv weekly” scheduling guide I chanced upon the Black History Month documentary series Horror Noire from Shudder and AMC TV, premiering Friday. Weirder still, I just now learn TODAY is (no joke) the birthday of aforementioned Philip Glass —and at 85, that’s a name worth repeating. (Just not into any mirrors.)

—Slated to air this week on cable network AMC—

“Cloudy With A Chance of Wheat Bales”

*altnernate title:  "I Scream, Ewe Scream (For Ice Cream"

Small abstract collage using paper, acrylic paint, and Mod Podge on spray-painted 8 in. x 10 in. mounted canvas framed by steel blue sparkle washi tape

Re-bleat the Bounding Joy!

Baa-reaking into 2022 like so many unleashed prancing ovine. Last year was ruled by the Goat/Sheep in Chinese Zodiac terms, and these happy lambs were carried over an additional month and a half into mid-January. See them eagerly clear hurdles amidst the milky froth of fresh possibilities...

I Work Hard So My Cat Can Have A Better Life

My diminutive skeleton-boy stuffed toy, whose cap is signed:

To Lorena / Love, Tim Burton

(From his 2006 meet ‘n greet event in promotion of the DVD release of Corpse Bride at the Union Square Virgin Records store. Shown next to a favorite cat mug for scale, as well as a reference to my previous post, the short essay Hello, Kitty: Appreciating the Catwoman of Tim Burton’s Batman Returns.)

Fun fact:  Tim Burton and I share a birthday -- August 25th!

Hello, Kitty

Appreciating the Catwoman of Tim Burton's "Batman Returns"

Among the many memorable screen entrances of Hollywood enchantresses, Gilda and Jessica Rabbit made two of the sultriest introductions I can recall as an impressionable girl growing up with a VCR and liberally-appointed movie library in the early 1990s. Yet even these two legends of celluloid barely hold a (Roman) candle to the explosive cartwheeling that Catwoman brings to Tim Burton’s Batman Returns.

Licking my wounds and still seething from recent (and long-past) male sexual infractions, I was inspired this weekend to revisit that 1992 fantasy tour-de-force. And you can sure bet your popcorn it delivered, providing a bizarrely satisfying, unapologetically confident symbolic avatar for my pent-up poisons. In a tight and tense two hours Michelle Pfeiffer’s Selina Kyle more than reclaims power over her personal narrative. Hers is a supporting, supplicant, cowering “corn dog” character (as she herself self-berates) that quickly gets rewritten as a modern, self-actualized black-widow-type temptress. It’s a jaw-dropping, almost absurdly provocative transformation from doormat-dormouse to vixen-vigilante, punisher-panther, amazon-avenger. No longer is she a sad sack trembling wallflower and acquiescing (literal) pushover stammering through mundane secretarial duties for Gotham’s multi-millionaire business tycoon Max Shreck (a sneering, staccato-voiced Christopher Walken in guy-liner and Amadeus hair). Instead, Pfeiffer’s iconic antihero is hellbent on strictly serving her *own* soured-milk vendetta — however twisted, cynical, and misguided it may be. She is steered by a furious thirst for undiluted, ice-cold retribution, ultimately sacrificing all but one of her nine lives to seeing through with her deadly reprisals. “A kill for a kill” she insists to Max, he himself having casually thrust her out of a skyscraper office window when she unearthed his schemes while obediently toiling after hours on the company payroll.

But what in all this cascade of chaos does she want? Whatever she toyingly conveys with the erotic black-latex jumpsuit it’s certainly not to be wooed nor to settle-down — Selina won’t even let Danny DeVito’s circus-freak Penguin (née Oswald Cobblepot) lay a deformed finger-flipper on her person. “Money. - Jewels. - A *very* big ball of string,” suggests the foppish Walken, aiming to negotiate before his inevitable demise. No, she can’t be bought. Or had. “Bruce, I would… I would love to live with you in your castle forever just like in a fairytale. I just couldn’t live with myself,” she flatly informs Michael Keaton’s Batman as he watches, aghast and horrified, by the subsequent electrocution of her former employer, delivered with what proves to be a high-wattage smile in the truest sense. In my mind, her words summon comparison to Breakfast at Tiffany’s, a certainly less violent romantic soufflé —but a film classic also threaded with an unmistakable female/feline metaphor. While frantically searching for her escaped ginger tabby, Holly Golightly (Audrey Hepburn) responds to a man’s proposal of love with: “People don’t belong to people. …I’ll never let ANYONE put me in a cage.” Thirty-one years later, as Madonna’s Express Yourself was championing girl-power over the airwaves, Catwoman offered males everywhere the same sentiment, albeit in a more deranged delivery. “As a woman, I can’t be taken for granted,” Pfeiffer’s shock-red lips famously purr. “Life’s a bitch — now so am I.”

This cat’s out of the bag, and fellas, 

she’s not going back in.

Meowvelous.

“I Egg Your Parton (I Never Promised You A Rose Garden)”

Surreal collage on 11 in. x 14 in. black canvas with metallic polka-dot washi tape edging (incorporating magazine AND flower catalog paper imagery, spray paint, acrylic paint, and glossy Mod Podge sealant)

"Rose Garden" performed by Lynn Anderson (and later, I believe, Dolly Parton) is found on YouTube

Parton's comments, quoted below, bring to mind my favorite word, petrichor, defined by Oxford Languages as a pleasant smell that frequently accompanies the first rain after a long period of warm, dry weather:

"I make a point to appreciate all the little things in life.  I go out and smell the air after a good, hard rain.  These small actions help remind me that there are so many great, glorious pieces of good in the world."  - D. P.

#backwoodsbarbie

"Meat Dreams (Are Made of Leaves)"

Abstract collage using paper and Mod Podge on spray-painted 11 in. x 14 in. black mounted canvas framed by peridot green sparkle washi tape

Pencil Portraits of People's Progeny

Once a year or two I spend an afternoon on a pencil sketch, having honestly never attempted anything but dorky collages or amateurish abstract paintings in the interim. The only reason I’ve even bothered at all has been to continue with a once-in-a-blue-moon series of baby portraits for those in my life, however distantly, kicking off with my sister’s two boys and then a few others as more and more of my favorite people seem to be embracing parenthood.

My choice of tools are always the same: a mechanical #2 grade Pencil-Mate “Sharpwriter”, a tortillon or blending stump, tinted Strathmore charcoal paper, and a large printed photograph for reference. (The only alteration was the addition of white watercolor paint for minor highlights in the piece from late 2021.)

Elias William at 6 mo. (June 2017)

Marvel Monroe at 6 mo. (May 2019)

Noa Mae at 6 mo. (February 2020)

Asa Alexander at 4 mo. (February 2020)

Sabastienne Savage (“Baz”) at 3 mo. (July 2021)

Nellie Ault at 3 mo. (December 2021)