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.
One Response to “Distilled Essence of Halloween”
so, maybe I have TERRIBLE taste in art (highly likely), but I actually like this? :D