Some chicken, some neck: Arthur Szyk caricature (found)

An older lady in my Yiddish book club passed along to me four boxes of her father's music. This was no ordinary collection of piano sheet music - he was a composer and orchestra leader in Russia and the boxes are full of his hand-written manuscript arrangements of everything from Glinka to "Khasene in dem yidishn geto" by David Beigelman. And on the back of a picture of an English setter, this:


Of course my son got out his smart phone and asked it about Arthur Szyk. He found the Arthur Szyk website and ordered Szyk's illuminated haggadah...

Then we wondered what "Some Necks" meant. A Facebook friend enlightened me: it's from a famous speech by Winston Churchill to the Canadian Parliament December 31, 1941.

"But [the French] generals misled [the French nation]. When I warned them that Britain would fight on alone whatever they did, their generals told their Prime Minister and his divided Cabinet, 'In three weeks England will have her neck wrung like a chicken.' Some chicken; some neck."

Interesting find in a dusty box.

I started this one before going to visit Hannah, who has sunk up to her uppermost hair follicles in History as her PhD orals approach. I knew she was trying to finish a book (or two) every day so I took my hand-stitching with me. Finished piecing on the plane coming home, pretty much; finished hand-quilting last night at the dinner table. I don't love the border at all but I like the interior portion. Thanks to Ezra for climbing on a chair and holding this up for me.

Two favorite cards by Mary Engelbreit

I don't believe these cards by Engelbreit are still available - one has been in my possession since the 1980s and reminds me of my own gift-giving technique...


The other just came to my housemate Mitzi from a friend sympathizing with the unexpected turn her life has taken...

Aviva Enoch and Jane Peppler cd release and Hannukah party - concert November 21 at Temple Beth El in Durham

Jeez, I've been very busy lately and I want to write about it, but first I wanted to say, if you're around here please come to our concert. Hanukkah is very early this year. We'll have cds for sale, and also songbooks of various kinds, and a klezmer tunebook.

Freylach Time, a local klezmer band, will be joining us, and also Bob Vasile of the Pratie Heads.

Call 383-8952 for more info.

New Yiddish cd "I Can't Complain..."

"... but sometimes, I still do." It was lots of fun working with pianist Aviva Enoch. We recorded her piano tracks at Jerry Brown's Rubber Room, then I took the tracks home and edited them and sang my parts at home and then stuck everything on a flash drive and went back to the Rubber Room for mastering. (I am also entering this picture in Illustration Friday for this week's prompt, "Old Fashioned.") Click the picture to order or here: Yiddish songs cd I Can't Complain but sometimes I still do

Muzak's Top Ten (Roz Chast)

Cleaning up my desk I found this oldie from the New Yorker. "Let's wait in this room forever!"

Finally finished: my "Storm at Sea" quilt is quilted

This is the second of the two quilts I hand-pieced while my son was getting graduated from Wesleyan University and my daughter was getting married.

It took way longer to hand-quilt them than it did to sew them in the first place, and I finally gave up and used the machine to put the borders on. But in the middle, every single stitch was by hand - there were many hours of watching Univision telenovelas while stitching up and down and up and down...

Now I can get back to some of my other enthusiasms (like today's workshop on giant puppet making at the Hillsborough Arts Council).

Giant puppet workshop tomorrow!

It's time for giant puppet workshops again, leading up to the Homemade Parade in Hillsborough. They are working on a Peter Minshall theme this time. I want to make these:

Two sculptures featured at the Festival for the Eno

The Pratie Heads played at the Festival for the Eno yesterday and I saw these two excellent sculptures.

Whirligig quilt finished

I asked Ezra to hold the quilt up outside so I could get a picture of it but he said "I have to see if it works first," and this was the result.

UPDATE: Three hours later he got back on his feet and I was able to take this picture. It was all hand-pieced (needle and thread) and hand-quilted.

Coming down from Shangri-La: my stress quilt

I planned this project before my crazy month began, as a sort of meditation, but it has become much more than that. I cut up hundreds of tiny pieces of fabric before I went up to Wesleyan to help Ez finish up his last semester and sewed on his bed, in numerous hotel rooms, on the plane, in the waiting room, after I got home, during spare moments on graduation weekend, then in libraries and more hotels as I killed time waiting for my Yale reunion to start, then when I got home before Hannah arrived to do wedding errands. By then I had finished this top and started another - and the second one is done now, too.

I did them both by hand, one stitch at a time, and now I'm hand-quilting them. I have this excellent hoop I got at the Goodwill for $2.98 and am slowly, slowly stitching my way across the "flimsy." My stitches are not neat or small, but I start each one with the intention of making it as well as I can. The project makes a fine companion to silence.

Mark does Illustration Friday: "Cocoon."

LADY WITH MOTH

Acrylic on canvas 8 x 12

color color color

Mark

In which my Sarah Palin "Drill Baby Drill!" painting becomes famous!

I was amused to get an email from Ron Gompertz, creator of the Send Sarah Palin to the Louisiana wetlands to help clean-up the oil Facebook page, retroactively asking permission to use my painting on his site. He also said I should make a Drill Baby Drill Sarah Palin t-shirt. It's customizable (change colors, styles, sizes, add text of your choice) and you can actually stick the picture on any Zazzle product you like.

See Sarah and my other paintings at my Uncle Shlomo's Pushcart Zazzle Store.

Mark does Illustration Friday: "Ahead."

Sorry, but A HEAD is all I've got. I did it as if the head was captured in infrared.

8 x 12 acrylic on canvas

Mark

Quilt examples

The next couple months are pretty supercharged around here with Ezra graduating from college and Hannah getting married. I'm afraid I'll suffer overstimulation and/or exhilaration-withdrawal afterwards, so I thought maybe I'd try a quilt to sooth my nerves.

Turns out Hannah had the same idea independently! So I'm posting my cache of quilt examples for her to enjoy - and everybody else too.

Melinama does Illustration Friday: "Detective."

When I was in quite an exhausted mood in 2005, after Ezra went off to college, I decided to start painting, and my first painting, I think, was a rather severe self-portrait. I repainted that picture today with a magnifying glass for today's prompt.

Mark does Illustration Friday: "Detective."

"PRIVATE EYE"
(Men in Hats series)

Acrylic on canvas 8 x 12

My friend says, "Paint in another eye." "No, that one is private." "It's like a person with no belly button." "I leave that to your imagination."

Mark does Illustration Friday: "Linked."

Strange Chicken

This is my first oil painting. I'm trying to find connection or links between the techniques I've grown comfortable with using acrylic paint to make the jump to oil.

Mark

4 x 6

The ketubah is finally finished.

I finally finished it! As I got closer and closer, I stayed away for longer and longer, afraid to wreck what I'd done already. Finally yesterday I bit the bullet and put the paintbrush on this for the last time. The original is 22 x 30.

By the way, around here there aren't many places to go to get such a large piece scanned. I recommend Pam-Or Fine Print in Raleigh - the owner is mighty nice and he did this right on the spot (I did get a couple pages of Yiddish translated while I waited, it's not so quick).

Mark does Illustration Friday: "Dip."

DIPPER BIRD

Acrylic on canvas 8 x 12
Mark