I am a little busy this Monday morning but I wanted to run something to replace yesterday’s post at the top of this blog. Something a little lighter in feel I came across this entry from back in 2011 and it made me stop. It’s about an old experiment from my formative years along with a great little piece pf music. Enjoy!
Looking through some old work, most of which was done early on while I was still forming my technique and style and before I showed my work publicly, I came across this oddity that I noted as Hogback Heaven. It’s a goofy little scene of a rough hewn home and yard somewhere out on a back country road, the kind of place that I often passed years ago in my treks on the backroads around my home area. All that is missing here from my memories of those places are a barking hound and a toddler in a sagging diaper playing in the gravel of the driveway.
Whenever I come across this piece, I have to smile. I don’t know if it’s the subject or the crazy electric feel of the cobalt blue sky and hills and the red neon outlines of the house and ground. I’m still trying to figure out where that color came from. Maybe it’s a smile of embarassment that this little painting is hovering in my past. But there’s something in it that makes me not want to destroy it.
I wanted to set this post to some fitting music and in my search came across this other sort of oddity. Called Yiddish Hillbillies, it’s a vintage 40’s era cartoon that has had the soundtrack replaced ( in a very clever and coordinated way) with a song from Mickey Katz. Katz was a comedian who specialized in Jewish humor, with Yiddish-tinged song parodies of contemporary songs of the time being his specialty. Think Borscht Riders in the Sky or Sixteen Tons (of Latkes). While much of the Yiddish-tinged wording goes over my head I do enjoy the klezmer feel here. A note on Mickey Katz: His son is actor Joel Grey which makes him the grandfather of actress Jennifer Grey.
Redtree Times 