Sunday, April 12, 2009

Amazing Night - Part I

By Philip Riley

At First Night in Honolulu, I met a girl named Walter who took me on a journey through art history. Her grey hair frizzled out like hot wires and in her Rubenesque figure she strode with great pomp and I followed her into Hanks Café.

“Nice head of hair,” I said. She scowled darkly like the huddled figure from an Edvard Munch. For all that I stifled a laugh.

“What’s wrong with you?” She asked with the earnestness of Edgar Degas.

“I’m fine,” I said ogling at her with one eye. Her Mona Lisa presence and dark eyes intoxicated me.

“Would you like to go eat pizza?" I asked.
“Why would I want to do that?”

“You mean you won't?” With the intoxicated flourish of a Frans Hals I pretended to pout. She examined my face with a sneer, like a surgeon looking for a disease.

We walked silently up Nuuanu toward Hotel Street bound by an artistic muse. It bound us in spite of the surface animosity for underneath it beat the blood of art history. I saw a man named Roy hovering in a space ship in a Rothko haze above St. Mark’s garage. He launched a beam of blue light from his space bazooka and we found ourselves the same color as the buildings, lamp posts, and traffic signs. Around us people walked in and out of doorways like a Hieronymus Bosch painting except we were walking in a Picasso blue period.

“How do you like this show?” Walter said, and then sprouted a Salvador Dali mustache that resembled rat’s tails.

“It’s an amazing night,” I said.

“We have no control over this,” she said.

Stopping at Hotel and Nuuanu she emptied her pockets of thick sticks of chalks. We moved slowly like Tai chi as we drew.

Roy waved from his spaceship grinning like Toulouse-Lautrec. We waved to him, our chalk scratching the concrete. Cars honked more and more frequently. We blocked the intersection timelessly and though the police station was only a block away no police interrupted us.

“Wow, it’s a regular Caravaggio,” said Walter stopping to survey our drastic chiaroscuro composition.

Then a man named Romeo burst onto the scene with Rosarina’s pizzas decorated in boxes with a Mondrian pattern.

“I’ve got pizza.” He said with a big smile as he gave the frustrated drivers pizza which they ate with faces contorted like German expressionists paintings.

Flirting with Walter, Romeo said, “My old friend Michelangelo painted on my ceiling a long time ago.” Then the two left me alone in the middle of Nuuanu posed like Rodin’s “Thinker.” Roy zoomed away in his spaceship till he was only a point in the Kandinsky sky.

Next: Roy goes to the planet of the Loonies.

HCC Open Show Winners

[Photos courtesy of Roy Okano]



1st Place - “A Special Place” - Maurice Hutchinson



2nd Place - “Washed Up in Horan's Yard” - Sue Roach



3rd Place - “As Evening Falls” - Maurice Hutchinson


Honorable Mention - “The Hula Sister's Free Show” - Ann Corum

An Interesting Collection

[Editor's Note: This piece was originally scheduled for posting on April 1, 2009, but circumstances conspired to delay it until now.]

Your Paint Rag editor recently ran across an interesting website with quite an eclectic collection. There's a real Duchamp-ian quality to the site that prompts a meta-level contemplation of the Artistic Project. I also love the descriptions of the pieces; e.g. "A startling work, and one of the largest crayon on canvas pieces that most people can ever hope to see. The bulging leg muscles, the black shoes, the white socks, the pink toga, all help to make this one of the most popular pieces in the MOBA collection." Here are some others:


"Suicide"
Acrylic on canvas by Unknown
18"x24"

"Bloody cloud bursts in an otherwise clear sky, frothing nostrils as the bovine beast dives, lemming like, and misses the phosphorescent, oily, swimming hole."



"Vortex" Acrylic on canvas by Unknown

"A black road, tangential to a reservoir, a leering disembodied head, its almost solid shadow spewing blood. Don't drink the water."

For more pieces in the collection, click here.

I did mention this was intended for publication on April First didn't I . . . ?