Crawl Inside and See What an Artist is Like

Diva took me to Newts for our anniversary. Walking next door to Barnes and Noble, we found ourselves looking at children’s books. With the enthusiasm that only she can muster, she told me I must write a children's book. As we walked to the library, she announced that it would be about a stuffed animal wrangler.

Well, dang... of course I would. After all, plush toy’s have become a obsession with us. Diva at first told me she didn’t want a plush toy for Valentine's day last year -- but later confessed that that was a big fat fib. She wanted one more than anything in the world. She had to have it. You see, that is her addiction. She has been trying to hide it from friends and family. When she saw my place: the dolphin figurines, Godzilla next to a little Mermaid pencil holder and the teddy bears -- yes -- I am a man with teddy bears -- she knew she had found a fellow addict and confessed: she had a plush toy Jones. So do I.

Soon she was at my door with a pink Winnie-the-Pooh hat box. She was so excited as she ripped the lid off -- yanking out plush bear after bear and telling me their stories. Letting me meet them. Reassuring them that I was a nice person and that I would never hurt them. I won’t and we are all friends now. In many ways that is what the book is all about. Who needs a heavy plot -- when you love a woman like Diva and her endless imagination. The bear that I fell in love with the most was her angel bear, “It was back when I was into angels,” she whispered, “ and considering how I was feeling at the time, I don’t know if that was a good or a bad thing.”

She left the camera (a dangerous thing) and all the stuffed animals with me as inspiration. Inspiration? Yesterday I had them climbing all over the place -- they had a party and I made them cookies (chocolate, chocolate chip cookies and orange juice). They smoked odd things, danced, threw open my paint box and crawled inside to see what an artist is like.

What is an artist like? A kid at play -- that is the magic this book will be celebrating more than anything.

Imagination is a powerful thing.

Plush Valentine

Vincent,
Before I met you I was a puzzle, like you abandon by love. But now I found the missing piece to my endless quest. What is love? Now I know -- you.
I love you forever!
Diva

You complete me. Happy plush Valentine’s day.
Here’s a plush dog to remind you how much I love you.


Diva,
I love you so much, you’re my missing piece too!
Vincent

My Next Project

I just sent out an e-mail to my friends, it is my next project that I think will be fun and challenging. I hope my friends don’t mind being stuffed animals! Here is the e-mail:

Diva and I are working on a children’s book about a woman who had to leave college because of mental illness when she was a teenager and goes back to get her degree when she‘s in her thirties. It is called “I Married a Stuffed Animal Wrangler” and is told from the point of view of her stuffed animals. Like Winnie the Pooh or Alice in Wonderland I want to use real people as the basis for my characters -- her stuffed animals:

Jill Squirrel: A singing stuffed animal with A.D.D. who tends to lose things -- but all the squirrels do that -- has a fondness for stripes.

Tippy Cow: Has a safe place to be alone when her anxieties get the better of her.

Nicole Tree Frog: A little broken hearted and can get clinically blue now and then.

Tami Dolphin: a dolphin that can’t swim and wears water wings.

Jeanne Kitten: Loves dolphins and is committed to helping Tami over come her fears.

If you don’t want to be in the book, want me to change the name or just long to be a different stuffed animal, let me know. I am just starting so it won’t be a problem. I think it will be fun to have toys with issues. And if you think it will be too complicated to have a children’s book about mental illness -- don’t worry, I’m sure the kids can sit the adults down and explain it all to them.

Vincent

A Place I Can Go When the World Falls Apart

As I was talking to Diva, she made a tiny comment that floored me. She found an old award she had gotten and was going to put it on her self esteem wall. I don’t know what the normal people of the world do, but me and my posse of the depressed often have really bad days when we get very down on ourselves and can dig a very deep hole. It had never occurred to me to put together a wall or a notebook of the things I have done right or the nice things people have told me.

I really shouldn’t beat myself up -- the world will do that for me. I am starting such a book. In the past I would have looked at it as being too proud of myself. If I put my head up -- someone is bound to take it off. I grew up the youngest kid in a Catholic family and have the bruises to prove it. I also went to public school when they graded on the curve. The other students have a way of hunting in packs and attacking anyone who they thought was ruining the curve. Mediocrity will always protect itself.

That is why I don’t brag -- but that has hurt me ever since. I now realize something: I have depression and on those days when the world falls apart I can haul such a book out and run through my own Bedford Falls realizing that it is a wonderful life.

About That Million Dollar Painting in Your Attic

About That Million Dollar Painting in Your Attic


Martin Johnson Heade. Remember that name, please. He deserves your attention. He is America’s Van Gogh: he was almost unknown in his day (the 1900’s), his flower paintings are luminous and, like Van Gogh, his wonderful, emotional work was once seen as worthless. How worthless? His “Magnolias on Gold Velvet Cloth” was used to cover a hole in the wall of an Indiana residence. Yep, his art had become someone’s weatherproofing. After playing a art-related board game the owner of the painting became curious. Wouldn’t it be funny if that colorful caulking was actually worth something? It was. The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston purchased the work for $1,250,000 in 1999. [1] That worthless painting is now on posters, calendars and toilet seats. Fame is funny. I hope someday to make my essays into a line of toilet paper. “If you give a crap, use Vincent B.”

Only half of Martin Johnson Heade’s work has been discovered. The rest are scattered all over America (probably hundreds of them) stuffed in your Grandma’s attic, sitting in your basement, in second hand stores or waiting at the next garage sale you go to. Hundreds of people have no idea that they have a million dollar treasure being beaten by their angry five-year-old’s baseball bat or pissed on by their cat as the painting sits on the floor in the attic. Yes, fame is funny. Here are more examples of how funny:

1. Magnolia Blossoms on Blue Velvet and Cherokee Roses were purchased at an estate sale in Arizona for $60 in 1996. They sold at Christie's auction house later that year for $937,500 and $134,500 respectively.

2. Two Magnolias on Blue Plush were originally purchased for $29 at a rummage sale by a Wisconsin man in 1989. It sold at Christie's auction house in 1999 for $882,500

3. An un-named Heade salt marsh landscape now titled "River Scene" was discovered in the attic of a Boston-area resident in 2003. It sold at a local auction house to an art dealer for $1,006,250.

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Martin struggled all his life to show the world the beauty he saw everywhere. The world wasn’t interested. Now, a hundred years after his death, he is an over night success. So, please, go to the attic and at least shoo the damn cat away from all your old paintings. Even a black-velvet Elvis deserves more respect than that. Art is someone's dream committed to paper, wood or canvas. Sometimes it takes a while for the world to stop, pick it up and go, “Wow!”

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Johnson_Heade

Valentine

On Jan 19th Diva and I will have our anniversary. About a year ago we were in Macy’s. As we passed a display of Valentine bears, she said, “Never get me one of those -- they are just dust collectors.” Later we were in Wal-Mart passing another display of Valentine bears. (I imagine these displays are put up by single people -- who are very angry.)

Diva muttered, “It wasn’t me who thinks that they are dust collectors -- that was my friend talking. I wish I had one.”

“I get paid tomorrow -- we‘ll come back and get it.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

The next day we sat in the third booth from the front window at CiCi’s Pizza. (I’m just mentioning that in case they wish to put up a plaque.) Diva leaned towards me and said, “I was wondering... do you want to be more than just friends?”

“More than anything.”

Like a stuffed animal, she flopped onto the table and sighed: “Oh, thank God!”

The world had been lifted off her shoulders. I didn’t know that she had been thinking about it for weeks and finally asked a guy at work: “How can I find out if he loves me?”

He said, “Just ask him.” (Thank you, pizza spinning dude -- thank you.)

We got the bear -- he was nearly as big as her but she had no trouble lifting him. As we stood in line, small children smiled and grown women looked jealous. We both began to glow -- we still are.

Last week, I was looking through my stuff and found a tiny book. It said “Love” on the cover. In it were a hundred thoughts of what people imagined love to be. I got it at a time when there was no one in my life and I was one very desperate man. I was trying to discover what it really meant -- you know, that whole “love” thing. I didn’t find it anywhere in that god damn book and flung it at the wall. Now I’m giving that book to Diva. It’s a little battered, but I know what love is. It’s her.

Happy Holidays from the Strange Light Cafe