A Hard-Boiled Man
This is notorious 1920s and 30s New York gangster Arthur Flegenheimer, aka “Dutch Schultz.” When his own men decided he was too much of a liability, they order a hit on him and his gang, and shot him in the heart, in the restroom room of a local restaurant. He dragged himself to the nearest table and asked for an ambulance. While he waited for medical help, surrounded by policemen, Schultz remained alive for 22 hours….and spoke the most random, stream-of-consciousness medley of strangeness I have ever read. And luckily for us, they documented the entire thing.
As only a small example, here is a bit of the documented questioning…
- Police: Who shot you?
- Schultz: I don’t know. I didn’t even get a look. I don’t know who can have done it. Anybody. Kindly take my shoes off. (He was told that they were off.) No. There is a handcuff on them. The Baron says these things. I know what I am doing here with my collection of papers. It isn’t worth a nickel to two guys like you or me but to a collector it is worth a fortune. It is priceless. I am going to turn it over to… Turn you back to me, please Henry. I am so sick now. The police are getting many complaints. Look out. I want that G-note. Look out for Jimmy Valentine for he is an old pal of mine. Come on, come on, Jim. Ok, ok, I am all through. Can’t do another thing. Look out mamma, look out for her. You can’t beat him. Police, mamma, Helen, mother, please take me out. I will settle the indictment. Come on, open the soap duckets. The chimney sweeps. Talk to the sword. Shut up, you got a big mouth! Please help me up, Henry. Max, come over here. French-Canadian bean soup. I want to pay. Let them leave me alone.
Annnnnd, that’s only the very LAST words he said.
So, for some reason, I was fascinated by his lunatic rantings. As are many people, apparently. Dustin Hoffman played him in Billy Bathgate, Tim Roth played him in Hoodlum. William S. Burroughs wrote a novel about his last words. And not that I’d like to glorify mobsters, but I think that lifestyle is so…unusual. I won’t wax philosophic about peoples’ fascination (myself included) with movies like Scarface and Goodfellas and shows like The Sopranos. I’m not so much fascinated in glorifying grisly gangsters. But my interest in gangster movies–It’s sort of a guilty pleasure.
And I DO find insanity a bit fascinating! And the fact that it was documented is even more impressive…
So, this is my portrait of Dutch Schultz, for what it’s worth. Because nobody’d be afraid of a gangster named “Arthur Flegenheimer.”
Painting The Pipes
Just before last winter, when we lived in Alaska, I was lucky enough to be chosen as one of the artists in Fairbanks’ Paint the Pipes project that my friend from Chartreuse told me about. Essentially, in the hopes of beautifying Fairbanks, artists were selected to paint designs on the vent pipes downtown. I did two designs, but my design called “Dreaming” was the one that was selected. (Personally, I think the tangled ravens could’ve looked pretty cool, but I get why it might be a little…less upbeat.)
When I first moved to Alaska, I was overwhelmed by a sense of isolation. I didn’t know many people, I had a young child, and my husband was scheduled to deploy. A counselor once told me about an artist, a woman who moved to Alaska during the Gold Rush, and painted to comfort herself, and had written a book about it. The book didn’t necessarily comfort me, as much as remind me that this “adjustment period” in Alaska will pass. And it did! Soon I met some of the very best friends I’ve ever had at a duty station. But I thought of the native babies that grew up in those harsh conditions, and how they not only survived, but thrived. Being relegated to the indoors for a good chunk of the year, I often wondered what they dreamt about, or what they did to pass the time. I thought of however rough the conditions, you always have your mind, your creativity, to take you other places.
So “Dreaming” it was. I was very very sick when I began painting my steam pipe, and winter was coming….so I had very little time to work on it. On top of that, one of the developers of the program set up a time-lapse camera to document my progress on the pipe, which I didn’t mind, but it sure was intimidating. I often thought, “I’d better move around and finish this up quickly, or it’s going to be one heck of a boring time-lapse.”
I did the majority of the painting the first day, probably in about 3 or 4 hours.
Then I was able to come back another day (still sick, sadly) and paint some more detail. Probably another 4 hours or so.
And finally: COMPLETE!
I was so excited to see it in the wintertime, that I drove out to take a picture after the snow had fallen. But to my surprise, CHUNKS HAD FALLEN OFF. The city had primed the pipes, but since mine was a steam outtake pipe, it was warm, so mine was the only one that cracked. They had never tested the primer in winter, I guess.
If you’ve ever read Vonnegut’s “Bluebeard,” (one of my favorites), you can appreciate the irony.
Luckily, the bottom part seems to have kept fairly stable. They asked if I’d be willing to come back & repair it, but sadly, we moved just before summer. I hope it stays together for awhile, or at least until someone can repair it. I won’t even speculate as to the symbolism….and I hope passing tourists do the same!
i dreamed a dream
Who doesn’t want to cry all through a movie while people sing beautiful songs? I’ve loved Les Mis since I saw a community theater (and I’m sure tamed-down) version as a kid. I love drawing faces. I like stretching them and playing with them–not to the point of ridicule, but just to slightly alter what’s there, and have fun with the shapes. I love the style of Eric White, and when I first saw his work, I thought, “Well, dang–that’s exactly the direction I was going in!” He has such EXTREME detail in his work (“hyperrealistic,” they call it), that I can’t even come close. Still, I love a good face, especially in movie stills.
My agent once asked for a few caricature samples, and since I hadn’t drawn a famous WOMAN in a while, I thought I’d give Anne Hathaway a whirl. It takes several reference shots sometimes to get the right feel for a face, and it’s helpful to combine things from different photos to make up the look you’re going for. In the end, I thought that a pic of Fontaine at her deepest, darkest moment was maybe not such an “upper” for a promo piece.
Perhaps with all the “Hatha-hatred,” I should’ve had a newspaper tabloid in her hand…
finger monsters
Remember finger puppets? We were looking for a kid-friendly project one day, and I remembered these. I got some white card stock, doodled a few monsters (with no legs, of course), and cut holes out for little fingers. The fun part was letting her decorate them. I put a variety of sparkles, sequins, plastic jewels and puffs in a muffin tin and let her go wild!
(PS: The little walrus-toothed guy came from a drawing from a college buddy, James Stowe, who runs a website called Sidekick Quests. He has a thing called “Fiendish Fan-Made Fridays,” where he takes kids’ doodle monsters and makes fancy grown-up versions of them. This one was a “Toelizer,” a monster my girl made up…)
more sharpie goodness
Sharpies are super cool. I got this plain $4 t-shirt at the store, and wanted to jazz it up. My daughter loves dragons & dinosaurs, but I wanted something softer than plain ol’ black. Gray sharpie to the rescue! I wrapped him over her shoulder so she’d feel like she was carrying her around all day like a pet.
Sharpies on shirts seem to hold up pretty well–one key is to heat it up to set it once you’re done drawing. You can throw a quick iron over it (the easiest for me) or throw it on a hotter setting in the dryer. While there’s always a little fading, the stretchier shirts seem to fade and look worn more quickly. I’m pretty sure the gray should hold up pretty well.
So try it yourself! Grab a sharpie, try the color varieties, and start doodling!
sharpie footstool
Sharpies are awesome. Our kid needed a footstool to reach the bathroom sink, but I can’t stand those boring plastic ones. Instead, I got a simple, plain wooden stepstool from The craft store, doodled on it with sharpies, and BAM–magical awesome stepstool. Ya know, like ya do. I think I sprayed a layer of acrylic varnish over it to seal it, but mainly only for kid-messes.
busy mockingbird 