Pig Out

Origami - know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em.

Bills!  Bills!  Bills!  What else is there to be said about your bills?  They’ve had their day of reckoning in popular culture with references from Destiny’s Child, Beastie Boys, and people with the last name - Nye the Science Guy.  I admit it would be a fun challenge to crumple up my bills, throw them in the trash, hop on the first train to Flint, MI., and outrun my debts, but I recommend finding a use for that piece of paper before throwing it away. 

Are you thinking of ideas for how to use a piece paper covered in your personal information?  Well, I imagine you have by now come to the only logical conclusion – burning the paper to lower next months heating bill.  But, with all due respect to Spock, the logical conclusion is boring, and the correct answer is origami.  Encyclopedias and know-it-alls around the world describe origami as “the ancient art of making paper into slightly more interesting pieces of paper.”  But making a typical flower just won't get across my artistic expression anger about bills.  So, I turned to pigs.  

Aside from being extremely tasty and sending their little ones to the market, pigs are known as a symbol for greed.  So transforming folding a recent utility bill into the shape of a pig was the best statement I could make. 

Step one: Use electricity.  This will result in your mailbox blossoming with an exciting letter asking you to send your money to keep the lights on.

Step two: Pay bill.  Now that you’ve become accustomed to living in the light, you have realized it would be a difficult thing to live without.

Step three: Follow the directions here to create this little utility bill piggy.

With a background in working retail that sometimes involved entire shifts spent folding t-shirts, I am secure in my self-appointed categorization as a natural born folder.  Naturally I assumed my clothes-folding skills would translate seamlessly into decoratively folding paper into animals.  Here’s my ego-defeating final result. 

All my hard work, after unsuccessfully trying to re-fold into a pig-ish shape twice.

I clearly overestimated my folding abilities.  I should have lied in the outset of this post and written about making paper airplanes that have had their wings clipped.  Or just simply posted the lyrics to “Bills, Bills, Bills.” 

My first couple folds were on track with the directions, but that fell apart quickly.  In my defense, I think the use of a pre-folded piece of paper like the bill I chose (which was folded to fit in the envelope) was my downfall.  That or my frustration with how quickly my work distanced itself in the wrong direction from the pictures with the instructions.

After the crushing embarrassment of comparing my origami pig to the other google images of origami pigs and even just comparing my final product to the more beautiful blank piece of paper it began as, I thought maybe changing the environment of my creation would enhance the image.  So I decided to give Huey the pig (because Huey Lewis is as misunderstood as my grasp on origami) some farm friends.

Quite the barnyard party.  Who brought the e....i-e-i-ooo?

The closest thing I had to farm animals were a rubber ducky, a caped monkey (classic farm animal), and an elf.  This didn't help.  In fact it made for a more depressing photograph, when admitting that all of these props were surprisingly close at hand.  Speaking of surprisingly close at hand props, my final hope of saving this project involved a cassette tape and showing Huey having a blast. 

Probably the only compilation to ever feature Dream Weaver and Feed My Frankenstein.

There's no wrong way to eat a Snickers, or have a blast.  Even if that means putting the Wayne's World cassette tape on the cans and letting Huey tear the place up.

Domo Origami Mr. Roboto Songs
- "The Gambler" - Kenny Rogers
- "The Bends" - Radiohead
- "Bills, Bills, Bills" - Destiny's Child

The Art of Letter Writing

What follows below is an open email letter that I sent out to New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art.  I also sent this correspondence to NYC's New Museum, the Modern Museum of Art, and the Guggenheim museums (with slightly altered copy) with the attachment of my previous work of "Scrooge McPowers".  My goal in sending this heinous piece of "artwork" was to see if it can elicit an actual art critique or at the very least a terse response of rejection.

 

Hello,

You don’t know me, but I’m your brother.  Michael McDonald sure knew how to sing ‘em.  Am I right?  There I go again boring people with Doobie Brothers trivia.  Anyways, the reason I am contacting you today is because you, as an employee of the esteemed Metropolitan Museum of Art, have a skilled eye for art.  And I recently finished a piece that I think you will be very interested in.

Pop art highlighted the impact of the mass production and consumption of popular culture.  The public self-pimping of celebrities today (i.e. Kardashians) makes Marilyn Monroe;s public image look like Haley Joel Osmont’s.  Commentary on greed in the digital, popular culture age is what I tried to touch on in the piece I am submitting to you.  Which reminds me what’s your favorite color?  Also what color do you think the Smurfs should have been?  Also was it copyright infringement when the Blue Man Group painted themselves blue like Smurfs or was it legally considered homage?

Questions like these are what led me to create “Scrooge McPowers”.   This is my mash-up of renowned greed-hound Scrooge McDuck and self-described poon-hound Kenny Powers.  Since we are on the topic of mash-ups, do you think Girl Talk would make for a good Freemason?  I’m trying to decide if I should recommend him or not, and am looking for guidance anywhere I can find it. 

You seem like someone who likes the painter Seurat, and did I mention that my painting uses pointillism?  So, there’s that.  And really I think your museum could use something like my piece to get the young people dancing again. 

As a New Yorker, have you ever seen anyone dancing in the streets?  Mick and David were singing about it, and the Jets and Sharks sure liked to snap and knife dance in those streets.  In conclusion, I would like you to consider my attached painting for inclusion in your museum, or I would like you to consider dancing in the streets more often.  Either way do whatever you want, unless you want to poison a children's hospital or not respond to my correspondence.  Those would not be cool things to do. 

I look forward to your response.

Yours Truly,

pH

Songs (not yet referenced) for Writing a Soul-Bearing Letter: 

- "The Letter" - Joe Cocker's version

- "Box Full of Letters" - Wilco

- "Hello" - Lionel Ritchie

- "Modern Art" - Black Lips  

Duck Dynasty

Georges-Pierre Seurat's pointillism masterpiece - 1884

The painting technique of pointillism uses small dots to create a larger image.  The incorporation of small individual points serving a greater pattern can be seen in the works of Vincent Van Gogh to somebody alleged on Wikipedia to be named John Roy (who sounds more like an old-timey drink than an artist to me).  These small points can be seen in famous works like A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (pictured above) to Vincent van Gogh's Self Portrait to Necco's Candy Buttons.

Necco's Candy Buttons - delicious.

While many works featuring pointillism techniques now line the walls of museums, the style was originally considered an insult.  Art critics with a lack of imaginative insults penned the term to mock this form of art.  They probably could have completely curbed the technique with a more cutting moniker.  For example, "Circle-cism" and "Dot-tingham Hill" might have been just cheesy enough to stop the movement at it's beginning.

Alas the movement had it's run, and in all honesty makes painting far easier than the usual smoothness of typically painting.  If you make a mistake with your dots, no need to erase.  Just add more dots and leave some blank spots between them to even your painting out.  I really should quit using the term "paint" since I was too lazy cheap hopeless to use an actual canvass and paint.  But the supplies needed to create a pointillism-inspired masterpiece scribbling can be found at any arts supply store.  A couple colors of fine-point ink pens to keep your colors from bleeding are cheap, and easy to use.  By "easy to use" I mean the process of dotting the paper for individual dots is easy.  I can't say that making a beautiful image that stirs thought or emotion like actual art is easy for me by any stretch of that word.

With the culmination of Breaking Bad this week, we saw the pinnacle of the antihero saga play out.  You could probably trace our culture's fascination with stories of amoral protagonists that blur the hero/villain line back to the jurassic age...of audiences wildly cheering for those velociraptors to eat Laurn Dern.  For myself though, the real antihero begins with the greedy businessduck who enjoys a nice dip in his money pool.  I, of course, am referencing Scrooge McDuck.

McDuck is a character that was begging to be drawn.  But how does one capture the essence of a miserly narcissist?  After racking my brain for an eternal 5 minutes, the only logical choice was to mash him up with fellow antihero Kenny Powers.  Warning: In an attempt to channel Van Gogh, I suggest employing the help of a cheap bottle of wine, if there is no Absynthe handy.  Choose a wine that can add a splash of needed color to your work.  As seen below spills are a certainty, if you do not enjoy your $5 wine in a safely locked sippy cup.

And now I present to you Scrooge McPowers...

Scrooge McPowers taking a leisurely ride through his gold-strewn pool.

The most glaring observation from this piece is the uncompleted gold pool.  Sure, I could have spent some more time making dots to make his gold pool look grander, but hand cramps set in.  And I had to put myself on the disabled list (bad news if you took me in your ill-advised fantasy artists league).  The more I think on it, the more I believe Eastbound and Down only has one direction to head, and that direction is toward Duckburg and a partnership with Scrooge McDuck himself.  They truly are two peas in one racistly and homophobically greedy pod.

The accent from the discount shelf wine steals the show here.

You also should notice my faulty knowledge of duck anatomy.  This is on display with my attempts two of his duck appendages.  His middle finger has ballooned to more than triple the width of the rest of his fingers.  I'd like to also take a moment here and ask, does Scrooge McDuck have knuckles?  All of my minute of research was inconclusive.  At least the spilled wine to the left made an appearance on my final draft, and distracts slightly from the mutant finger.

I'm no vet but that duck's toes look severely broken.

  Yes, that is a close-up of McDuck's left leg atop a jet ski, and yes it's difficult to decipher where McDuck stops and the jet-ski begins, and no I didn't mean for McDuck to be a half-duck, half-scrooge, half-jet-ski cyborg, but sometimes your fractions just don't add up you know?  The broken toes aren't one of the more aesthetically pleasing parts of this drawing, but Web(bed Feet) MD cites this as a common side effect of swimming in pools made of gold coins.


Where did McDuck get all these gold coins?  They don't have an easier paper currency or reliable banking system in Duckburg to safeguard his large amount of cash.  Duckburg is in serious need of a few banking overhauls.

In summation, are there bad mistakes in here?  Sure, I've made a few.  And I've had my share of sand kicked in my face, but I'm pretty sure I've come through on this one.  And sure I could go on and on and on and on, but this is honestly the best thing I've ever "painted."  Or as Vonn Mexico (my house elf roommate) wrote in his column in Elf Quarterly, "It reminds one of looking into the face of God and spitting in his face.  Only to then wipe away his tears onto a canvass to edify the souls of man (and elf)."


Recommended Songs for Making Ducks Out of Dots: 
-"Goin' Down" - Freddie King
-"Johnny B. Goode" - Chuck Berry
-"Money" - Pink Floyd
-And whatever this "Disco Duck" is...