Bridesmaid kharma & Facebook whale tagging

Oh that this too, too solid flesh:


A year ago I stood on a busy Cincinnati street and took photos of a violent altercation while a son tried to reach police. This year I stood in a public place in Chicago and took photos of a different crime, gross aesthetic bad judgment and cruelty to friends. A bride with an enormous party of wedding attendants was having a photo shoot in Millennium Park.

Holy Rubenesque Renoirs, Batman! Why does the bride want her best friends and closest relations to look like boiled hot dogs? Just a few blocks away the Chicago Art Institute has an exhibit of Matisse's "Radical Invention" centered on the artist's World War I-era monumental nudes.

Back in the Wonder Bread all-white Sixties we had "flesh" Crayola crayons in our box of 128. Never, ever would any third-grader choose "flesh" for a paper doll's fashions. In 1970, Lefler junior high girls shunned flesh-colored pantyhose, aka "nude", preferring the fake "suntan" sandal-foot shade.

Today I learned that young persons tag photos when they want their Facebook friends to view uploads. "If you want a friend to see your picture of a whale, you tag it with that friend's name." It's clever, certainly, but wide open to misinterpretation. Please, please don't tag blubbery photos with my name! And please, please don't ask me to wear a flesh-tone satin bridesmaid outfit.

© 2010 Nancy L. Ruder

Making a list and checking it twice

Since I was first old enough to read a newspaper (we are talking about over forty years ago here), I've been pondering what four famous people I would invite to my fantasy dinner party. You know those kind of newspaper columns about some local person-of-the-hour: What kind of car do you drive? A rusted-out puke-yellow Chevy Nova with a defective air intake ...What kind of car do you wish you drove? The Rhinemaiden always wishes to drive the 1961 Plymouth Sport Fury...What would you choose to eat at your last meal? A Nebraska corn-fed beef T-Bone, of course, and a baked potato with sour cream...Your all-time favorite TV show? If you were stranded on a desert island for the rest of your life, what four books, four movies, and four LPs would you want to have with you? (Ignore the absurd premise of the question).

For much of my life of worrying about these major philosophical questions, I've been inviting Dr. Seuss, Alexander Calder, Jerry Garcia, and Henri Matisse to my fantasy dinner party. Sometimes I decide that I have to invite at least one woman, and that leads to lots of guilt and anxiety. Henri Matisse gets dumped, and I feel just horrible about that. The women I've considered inviting over the years include children's author Margaret Wise Brown, quilt artist Nancy Crow, novelist Louise Erdich, NPR contributor Bailey White, Bonnie Raitt, Hillary Clinton (when I thought she was going to change the health care system), and writer Nora Ephron. I can't ever seem to find a woman with the playfulness, creativity, humor, and impact to fit in with the guys. And who is supposed to cook and clean up at this fantasy dinner, I ask you that. It better not be me. I was planning to retire to the study for port and cigars with the men.

The desert island LP list has two constants; Derek & the Dominoes, and Dave Brubeck's "Take Five". A recording of Mozart's clarinet, bassoon, and oboe concertos is usually on the list. I used to sit out in the front yard digging dandelions and listening to the Top Forty countdown on my AM transistor radio with the earphone on Saturdays in the mid-Sixties. A 45 rpm recording of Petula Clark singing "Downtown" cost 88 cents, and a vinyl LP of Peter, Paul, and Mary cost $3.98 plus sales tax. I made between thirty-five and fifty cents per hour babysitting. Even then I worried about the fantasy dinner guests and the desert island.

"Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" always leads the movie list. I would be quite willing to trade places with Katharine Ross/Etta Place even if I had to stay forever on the desert isle (or in Bolivia) with Paul Newman and Robert Redford. Let me ride just once on Butch's handlebars! I often list "Dr. Strangelove" and "What's Up Doc?" They have mysterious curative powers.

Desperadoes, by Ron Hansen, is always the first book. I know, I know. It's some kind of outlaw attraction that goes along with Butch and Sundance. The outlaw attraction is powerful, and can lead a good woman to marry a no-good gunfighter or a bankruptcy attorney... Pussywillow, by Margaret Wise Brown is next. After that I always decide I should get to choose at least ten books for the island.

I do have my heroes, despite my fondness for outlaws. "The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle" is my favorite TV show of all time. Mr. Peabody is sooooo my type!


I am hoping if I confess all this I will be relieved of my life-long obsession. Maybe I'll just be too embarrassed to ever mention it again.

Egg Head and the Green Stripe

One hundred years ago Henri Matisse painted a portrait of his wife with a green stripe down middle of her nose. In the last month I've been chatting with students age 3-11 about this portrait. I used the portrait as a starting point for drawing heads, and as an asymmetrical conclusion after our symmetrical butterfly projects. Since the students are also in drama class and use face paints, they assume Madame Matisse is wearing face paint to act out a story. They think she is wearing a strange blue hat, or at least a wig, and also that she is probably a boy. We visit a little about Fauvism. Matisse was one of the artists dubbed a fauve, or wild animal, because he used wild colors. Madame Matisse's face is a different color on the left side than the right, and so is the wall behind her.I let a plastic Easter egg teach the rest of the lesson. "Egg Head" tells the kids that heads are ovals, not circles, and the heads are taller than they are wide. Egg Head can demonstrate this easily, and the kids also see the top is rounded, but the chinny-chin-chin is a little pointed. Even though he is brainless, Egg Head can pop his top to remind kids that our skulls are structured to protect our brains. That is a good thing for all of us to remember!Egg Head can also show students that when he pops his top, his facial features all appear on the bottom part of the egg. In fact, where the plastic egg separates is where the top of your ears and your eyebrows should be to make a face look right. We practice drawing some egg heads of our own, putting in the line where the egg opens, then we are ready to paint.I have lots of 18x24" paper left at the end of this year, so we are going to paint Giant Egg Heads With Green Stripes!

The kids all want to play Pass the Paint* one last time, so I fix up 14 cups of "wild animal" Fauve temperas. We review the "rules" to Pass the Paint, and emphasize that when we get the green paint we will paint the green stripe down the nose of our Giant Egg Head. We are all ready to create some of the most exciting paintings of the whole year!Displaying these portraits has been great fun. They are not copies of Matisse's portrait, but it's easy to see how the kids applied the lesson to their own creations. I just returned from a trip to the McNay Museum in San Antonio where I saw two portraits by the Russian artist von Jawlensky. They looked so much like the students' Giant Egg Heads with Green Stripes that I had to smile. Two places to find the Portrait of Mde. Matisse are over there in the links.