It’s the darkish lady of 50% gray saturation, risen from the dead to drain all the toner from your photocopier! For the love of god, save the gem tones! SAVE THE GEMTONES!

There’s an old legend about how the patron saint of bakers got her patronage. Apparently, she was engaged to be married to a pagan king, and decided she would rather be Christian than be married to a pagan king. So, as is was done in the days of martyrs and pagan kings, he gave her an informal, untutored round of breast reduction therapy. Miraculously her breasts grew back (which is, actually, an amazing little miracle, if touched with whimsey). Ultimately she died anyway of a bad case of pagan betrothal, but her icon showed her holding a platter of two pale, doughy lumps that were NOT steamed buns. But neither here nor there. And I really have no idea why I’m rambling about this, except that she could easily be the patron saint of leeks or other pale root veggies, if she had half a mind to go down that road. And weren’t undead, because there are no vampire saints.

Except of course for Saint Mareaux the Exsanguinated. But he was decanonized in 1836 for excessive eyeshadow.

Anyway.

I’m not sure why I thought this was funny. I did, it was REALLY funny at the time–something about weird trust-building exercises like “don’t fall backward and spike yourself!” that ghosts play. But it was 2008, and I was a different person then.

A bit like a ghost, a bit more like a cartoon sea lion. Or a mascot from a shaving cream commercial. A Spooooooky shaving cream commercial.

Happy Halloween! Now off to scare the trick-or-treaters with ceramic clowns. The neighborhood loves me, I’m sure of it.

Pale and Deathy from Savers on Burnet near North Loop, ghostly candle holder from Goodwill on 2222 and Lamar, Austin

Our team of crack scientists has reduced Halloween to this essential form.

We believe that this image has all the essential vitamins and minerals that make up a well-balanced Halloween experience, and will share them with you now.

First, add one witch. This is really your primary ingredient, so of course we’ll start with her. Now, a genuine Halloween witch will have at least one wart, mole, or other blemish. However, let’s just go crazy on this one, really, if a bump is good, we can just assume an entire head that’s a fungal grey mass is at least 20 times better.

Yes! Now we’re cooking with yeast! Granted, she does have all the pathos and scare factor of a Jim Henson muppet, but she’s definitely lumpy and really that’s what’s important.

It’d probably be good to include ghosts, too. Or ewoks, they really screwed me up as a kid. We’ll split the difference and throw in some ewok ghosts. You can hear their plaintive call of “Yubnub!” in the night. It’s very mournful, trust me.

Insert bats liberally. We liberallated these particular bats from an Edward Gorey retrospective. Wheee!

This one has been a bad bat. It is not allowed to leave its cage. But, it’s Halloween, so it’s a flying cage, which is engagingly supernatural and makes a whacking great clanging noise when it’s hunting bugs.

Some sort of mutant snake thing, or maybe a pretzel. Oooh! And put the WITCH in a WEREWOLF costume! Or maybe something leftover from the recent Spike Jonze “Wild Things” movie. I’m scared now. At least I’m concerned. And hiding the good silverware.

The part that I don’t really understand–but can kind of contextualize because of the weird, post-ironic collage art that surrounded this piece and really highlights the artist’s skills in sheer mixed-media weirdness, is why the piece is called (and don’t click this link at work, or indeed, at all) “Marie Blanchard“, who seems to be a nice lady who’s going to catch cold if she doesn’t put on some more clothing right this very minute. Maybe it’s warmer on a Haitian beach, I don’t know. I will allow that the real life Marie Blanchard’s hair is just about as stringy as this witch’s, but beyond that, no clue. The artist’s mind works in mysterious, or perhaps simply absurd, ways. Happy post-Halloween!

Savers on 2222 and Burnet, Austin.