Art In The Family

Books By Patti Liszkay
​Available On Amazon

​"Equal and Opposite Reactions" http://amzn.to/2xvcgRa
and the sequel, "Hail Mary" https://www.amzn.com/1684334888
​Available on Amazon.

​
​ART IN THE FAMILY

       Recently one of my children mentioned that she'd like to have this collage (or whatever you call it) that I made when I was teen ager,

...after I'm, you know, dead.
     This collage-thingy that my daughter would like was my attempt at copying a Paul Klee painting called "Death and the Fire,"

...using a papier-maché technique used by my mom (who liked to dabble in art) that involved dying sheets of newspaper then ripping the dyed newspaper into small pieces fashioned into spit-ball shapes. My mom would dip each spit-ball into a mix of glue and water and then glue the pieces onto a section of painted wood.     
     Here's one of my mom's papier-maché-on-wood collage thingies, her interpretation of the dancing gypsy from the opera "Carmen," which she and we subsequently referred to as "Carmen."

       Here's a shot of one of my brothers standing in the  dining room of our childhood home in front of the spot where my mom hung my "Death and the Fire." I also made the fabric-on-burlap "Shalom" hanging that graced the door to our basement.

      My "Death and the Fire" has, alas, faded over the decades, though years ago the colors were closer to Paul Klee's and definitely brighter. 
       It also hasn't helped the preservation of my oeuvre that years ago, back when we had a beautiful angora house bunny named Daisy,    

...who lived in our family room, ​

...I once carelessly set "Death and the Fire," which usually sits on the fireplace mantle, 

...onto the floor, where Daisy proceeded to chew a couple of chunks from it.

      But anyway, when my daughter asked if she could someday have my  papier-maché "Death and the Fire" I said, "Sure, you can have it,"  and I stuck a post-it note on the back of this objet d'art indicating to whom it goes.
​      Not that any of my other children have expressed any interest in inheriting it. In fact, none of our offspring have indicated any particular interest in inheriting any of the other objets my mate and I are  likely to leave behind, d'art or otherwise.
         There is one worldly possession of mine that I do wish one of my children wanted to have:

​...this painting of Rigoletto, the mad jester from the opera of the same name. It was painted many years ago by an artist friend of my father who knew that my father loved opera. She worked on the painting for a year then surprised my father with it on his birthday.

       I always loved and was fascinated by "Rigoletto," as we referred to this painting that hung in our hallway and was the first thing one saw when one stepped through our front door. My mother told me that it was painted on Chinese silk, which, though I didn't know exactly what Chinese silk was or why someone would opt to paint upon it,  made it seem all the more special to me.

      My father, in fact, was an art-lover and hung with a fairly arty crowd, some of whom now and then gifted him with one of their creations.    
      There's this cityscape of Girard Avenue in Philadelphia, a gift to my father painted by one of his friends, Dr. Goddard (I never knew what his first name was, only that he was Dr. Goddard, pronounced Guh-dar). The painting was the view from Dr. Goddard's window.

​         Now it hangs in my kitchen.

      And then there's "Goiter Guy," as my siblings and I used to call him when we were young,  who currently lives in my upstairs closet, as I've not yet found a more suitable place for him. 

        "Goiter Guy" is a piece one of my father's friends created from ceramic pieces that he fired and painted and glued onto wood. The artist copied a picture he found in a medical book depicting someone named Juvenal who apparently lived in the Alps in Roman times and had a strange swelling on his neck thought to be a goiter.

      The friend made this piece for my father because he, my father, was an endocrinologist whose specialty was the thyroid, and because my father loved all things classical.
        Oh, and then there was this picture, which my sister now has, which we called "The Siamese Fighting Fish."

​         Family lore, as I recall it, was that this picture, some sort of glass art, was made by the royal artist of the king of Siam and given to my father by the king in gratitude for my father’s treatment of a member of the royal family.
      But what neither I nor probably my siblings knew back then was that Siam threw off the monarchy and became Thailand in1939. So, while it’s not unlikely that this picture, which hung among the other art on the walls of my childhood home and is now in my sister’s home – for she loved the Siamese Fighting Fish the way I loved Rigoletto – was given to my father by a friend or grateful patient, the donor was indubitably not the King of Siam.
         But back to “Rigoletto,” which now sits at the foot of the stairs because I never could find another place where it fit, nor can I hang it because it would cause problems with the electrical wiring behind the wall, or some such reason.

​     I would like for one of my children to be the inheritor and curator of "Rigoletto."
     But, alas, not one of my children wants it. They say the picture frightened them when they were young and they no more like looking at it now than they did then. They say it's those crazy eyes.

      Come to think of it, when I mentioned to my mother decades ago that, if none of my siblings were opposed, I would like to inherit "Rigoletto," my mother bequeathed it to me on the spot and urged me to take it away immediately, as soon as possible.
            (Sigh). Sorry, about that, Rigoletto.