I hope you’ll get a chance to check out an exhibit of about three dozen new works on paper. The solo exhibit (my third in three years) is called Primordial Hybrids. If perchance  The Old Stone House (theoldstonehouse.org ) in Park Slope Brooklyn is a little out of your way check out a selection of pictures by clicking on that framed picture to the right of this post—the one with the lizard who has a human face.  You can send me an email telling me what you think by pressing that button to the right–the one that looks like a real button.

33 1/4 by 47 1/4 inches

banner proclaiming Primoridal Hybrids at OSH

The collective unconscious is at it again. I was at my son Dexter’s graduation at Emory University in Atlanta and what should be the exhibit at the museum right there in the middle of campus? Well it was this

The Lascaux caves used to define prehistoric—you just couldn’t get any older than that. Then in the early nineties the Chauvet caves were discovered, also in France, and turned out to have paintings that were about twice as old. Fortunately audiences of Werner Herzog’s Cave of Forgotten Dreams don’t have to switch off their cell phones, put on 3-D glasses and begin to grasp what a leap of sixteen thousand years might mean to enjoy the movie— there is so much else to wonder at. Besides so little changed during all that time. On the cathedral-like walls of Chauvet as at Lascaux we inhabit certain animals as though we become then, rarely glimpsing any mundane details of life like actual people or plants or even planets. These fevered escapist dramas, (some scholars believe drug-fueled) often star hybrid creatures. At Chauvet for example there’s a lion with a man’s feet, at Lascaux a man has the head of a bird.

In later civilizations these half and half creatures went on to populate nearly every myth and fairy tale. They became the Disney cartoon characters, the Hindu gods, the angels of the Catholic church, and the monsters lurking in the depths of the ocean that people stubbornly insisted they had seen. So it should come as no surprise that the earliest people, when they had a choice, chose hybrid creatures to stare at. After all, as the French like to say,
the more things change the more they stay the same.

Cave of Forgotten Dreams Movie Poster

The steal my baby tomatoes. They come into my house uninvited.  Don’t get me started. This picture is to taunt them as they for so long have taunted me.

Thank you  Ms Knowlton for this most lovely note:

I just wanted to let you know that my daughter and I are big fans of your books. I run a book club for girls and we have read both Cinderella and Thumbelina. They are so smartly written and “girl power” – such gems! Thank you, and please – write more!

You make me feel like the definition of Cinderella which turns out to be:
• [as n. ] a person or thing of unrecognized or disregarded merit or beauty.

Well because she owns this piece of art under which she is languishing in the comfort of her own home. Jenny Douglas  first saw the piece at my exhibit at THE OLD STONE HOUSE . My second exhibit PRIMORDIAL HYBRIDS,  at the same OLD STONE HOUSE  (located in Park Slope Brooklyn, right near the happening intersection of Fifth Avenue  and Third Street)  opens April 22nd

Come back  soon for details about the PARTY ON JUNE 7th. Whoopee

Isn’t she lovely?

if you want to know one reason why it is very rewarding to write books for children (especially ones that are old enough to write), just one. It is letters that end like this.

I read a good book called ” The Secret Garden” but it was not as good as yours.

aaaah. Thank you smart girl from outside of Chicago whose name starts with a P!

At that certain street corner where truth and fantasy intersect there are quite a few people who make clothing and footwear out of, well  paper. Sometimes these are meant to be worn (I think) . Such as these marvelous outfits by Japanese Brazilian visionary Jum Nakao—where you finally get hair like a lego girl.

watch

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and then there are others equally wonderful that would seem to be hard to actually put on like well these shoes by Violise Lunn who does make wearable clothes out of paper, but I don’t know these don’t seem all that practical This one by Susan Stockwell which is paper and wire seems a little iffy, I’m just not sure whether you could or you couldn’t

Any minute now the winner of this year’s toilet paper wedding dress will be announced. And these are for wearing. No, I’m serious and you would be proud to be seen in one. By next April perhaps you will have concocted an entry. The winner gets a thousand dollars. Here’s what you need to know  wedding-contest-2010.html .  But let’s consider some options. There’s pretending you aren’t making it out of toilet paper for example like this But if you start to show off too much like here with the basketweave top you begin to give it away. Or maybe you don’t care in which case you might as well really get into the medium, really run with the possibilities such as for example something like this where it looks like some chunks have been suggestively pulled off. This one even has the flowers as well. Not too shabby–right? So anyway now you can begin to consider your options. As a paper cutter I will be in the front row applauding when you win. Bravo.