What to Expect When You’re Expectorating

It all began with a commission request from my mother to create a “tea themed” print for a present. I began doodling well-endowed tea pots, of course, because what other kind is desirable? In my usual fashion, my interest in the work clung to a single punny phrase. In this case, it was: “Tea & A.”

This, of course, (need I say it?) is a pun on the phrase “T & A” or the lovely “Tits and Ass.” Ahem.

Over-explain it, I will. For that is what I do best. A picture may be worth 1,000 words, but I need at least 5,000 to drive a point 6′ under the earth and dig it up again.

So, among my other activities and thoughts and doodles these past few weeks, I’ve been sketching out a variety of shapes and sizes of breasty tea pots and cleft tea bowls.

And, of course, thinking on our recent week in New Orleans, which made me homesick.

This week I finished setting up our apartment, and we had  a wonderful dinner with the printmakers at BGSU and visiting artist Sean Cauflied. I also read a couple of new graphic novels including The Crackle the Frost by Lorenzo Mattotti, Jorge Zetner & Kim Thompson (translator) and Pinocchio  by Winshluss. The latter inspired a series of sketches spiraling off my well-endowed tea pots that I will now share with you.

I began in my usual fashion, by combining my own sketches and compositional studies with snippets from the imagery of Pinocchio and studies of the layouts within.

I then created the above sketch by combining three scenes from Pinocchio with a few of my own additions.

And then my mind began to wander on its own. I’d love to make this boob cloud as a free floating sculpture….

And it kept wandering…

A bit far: post-nasal drip. The trip to New Orleans set off an allergy fit.

And then fixating on the idea of following a blood sausage the way Max Klinger followed a glove in his 1881 series of etchings.

But these are just sketches, that may one day be drawings. That may one day be prints.

Or not…. and they continue on. A centaur woman with frog hands making a list with an over-sized pencil? Just things that popped into my mind.

And the not quite complete sketch-thoughts:

What to Expect when You’re Expectorating….

All threads started by Pinocchio and combined with my own recent musing of pelicans carrying stork-like bundles-o-joy (gas pumps.) I’m also always thinking of the fabulous Goya etchings, The Disasters of War and R. Crumb and Heinrich Kley, of course.

We’ll see later if this ends up going somewhere. It was fun letting my mind wander. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my process and the subject matter my work deals with. We’re headed to SGCI in Milwaukee in a few days. It should be an interesting adventure.

In the meantime, I’ll leave you with this inspiring diatribe by Dave Grohl, the keynote at this year’s SXSW: http://www.npr.org/event/music/173331505/dave-grohls-sxsw-2013-keynote-speech, which I listened to with Blake while laboriously embroidering T-Shirts to sell at SGCI.