That's an Elephant Joke...

"Teamwork" or "What has four legs and is always ready to travel?"

Summer 2009, Acrylic

Die Hard with a Vengeance, the third in the series, is one of the most viewed movies among my sister Amy and I. I would never sell short the first Die Hard, with its classic unwilling and unlikely hero story that develops in that a perfect blend of action, humor and tension. It’s got tremendous rewatchability, with a wide variety of lines that can be repeated – almost everyone I know has a different favorite. I am always torn between Hans Gruber’s reading of the special message on Tony’s sweat shirt (Now I have a machine gun, Ho Ho Ho) and Ellis’ horrible attempt to negotiate with the terrorists. (Sprechen ze talk? Hans, bubie, I’m your white knight).

I don’t know why we gravitated so heavily to the third movie. Maybe it was Samuel L. Jackson’s involvement or the great cat and mouse game that keeps the movies middle section moving at such a rapid pace. It’s been rerun on various networks more and more over the years, and every time it is on, Amy and I are on the phone reciting our favorite lines before they happen.

This brings me to the scene in question – the riddle involving a three gallon jug, a five gallon jug and trying to fit exactly four gallons into one of them. It’s a great riddle and every time this scene comes on I like to remind myself how to solve it before it occurs. This happened one time in college where we documented the step by step details by drawing the steps on a piece of poster board. After years of going back and forth with my sister about this movie, it seemed like an obvious painting choice for her birthday present.

Cardboard and Tape

As I have mentioned previously about my arts high school, there were specific requirements for each year – two dimensional, three dimensional and media. The year before the nude art class and the battle with the dance department I again found myself stuck with the three dimensional class for my last semester. I had little to no interest in sculpture and did not particularly care for the teacher. She was the young daughter of the head of the arts department, fairly fresh out of art school herself.

In my own way I felt like rebelling by making every single one of my sculptures using cardboard, masking tape and various paint. I was using a theme based on Claes Oldenburg – a Swedish sculptor who played with sizes, making large things small and small things large. I made a tiny sofa and created a large scale salami, to name a few. Cardboard and tape all around – nothing more, nothing less.

After about eight of these small scale projects I was approached by the teacher. She hadn’t really given me any guidance during the term, but now she was ready to voice her concerns. She wanted me to expand my materials – not so much in those words, but saying that if I didn’t use something other than cardboard and tape she’d have difficulty passing me for the course.

Failing one of those classes was a ridiculous thought – it never happened unless you missed several weeks of class or didn’t complete the required assignment. I took her words to heart and began working on something big.

I grabbed materials – a large wood panel, a hot glue gun, lightbulbs, yarn, a big block of Styrofoam and of course, just to stick it back at her, some cardboard and tape. I cut the panel into four strips, two thin and two slightly wider and nailed them together. It created a five foot tall, thin box. From there I used a hand saw to cut a set of feet to attach to the bottom and scissors to cut out some letters. I painted it all red and it was clear to everyone I was making a six foot tall Pez dispenser.

The hardest part was the head, carving it from the Styrofoam block. I carved deep eye sockets and stuck in the lightbulbs, but didn’t have enough time or know how to make them light up. Instead I painted pupils on the bulbs and continued to carve. It wasn’t the most artistic face, but you could tell what it was. In the end I said it was a caveman to cover for the crudeness of the work. The face was painted and covered with a 99 cent store wig to complete the sculpture. I installed a pivot on the neck so it actually opened as a real dispenser would, but did not make the candy inside. The work was proudly displayed at the senior showcase and garnered some attention, mostly because it was so recognizable.

At the end of year, Hamden announced several participants to it’s annual “Salute to Young Artists” and I was named to the list. Along with receiving a certificate and being a part of a big ceremony, I got to select three pieces to be displayed at the town library for the summer, one of which was the six foot Caveman Pez dispenser. At the opening a man asked me to make one for him, only blue and with Batman’s head, but he never followed through. The dispenser is still proudly on display in my parents attic.

*Editors Note: I am looking for a old photo to scan. If not I'll take a new one in the attic, where the dispenser is laying on an old twin mattress.

Art Wars

Each year at ECA, the visual arts department students were required to complete one two dimensional class, one three dimensional class and one media class. For one of the quarters, you could do any of those a second time.


The problem here was that if you took two media classes and a two dimensional class then only one three dimensional class was offered, then you were stuck. My senior year that's precisely what happened in the third quarter.

Almost all of the seniors had taken the nude art class. Many of my friends and I took a video class after that. Since we couldn't do video twice, a lot of us got stuck with a mixed media design class in which we all work with the dance department for their upcoming recital. For some reason, the visual artists and dancers did not get along. It was just two different kinds of kids. Smiling, outgoing dancers and moody, cynical artists were not meant to befriend each other.

One time I was carrying a bucket of paint down the hall and a dancer, who happened to be flamboyantly swinging his arms, knocked into my bucket. He saw the tiny amount of paint that had gotten on his hand and began snapping at me that I better watch where I'm going and continued skipping down the hall. I just stared and waited for him to leave so I could laugh.

The goal of the class was for the dancers to create the choreography while we, the visual artists made costumes, set pieces and props. There were no real rules - the dancers would work with what we gave them. The paint bucket guy was in the class and I could not wait to make him look stupid.

The first costume idea was to have them look like flying squirrels. Full arm to leg leotards were equipped with excess spandex that was attached at the wrists and ankles. When the performer lifted their arms or kicked out their legs, the fabric would created a winged appearance.

One set piece involved giant plastic rectangles. Large wood frames were made with clear plastic wrap surrounding them. A performer would enter through a slit in the narrow side and push around the giant box from one end of the stage to the other.

For set design, I took large sheets of cardboard and cut them out free hand to create random animal shapes. Once they were done, I outlined them and painted them in a color that was not exactly spot on. There was a maroon monkey and a teal armadillo with a silver head. These were tied on strings and hung from the catwalks above the stage.

On the subject of the catwalks, the biggest and most outrageous piece dealt with that as well. My friend Trevor sketched an 10 foot robot that was hung from the grid above the stage. I'd say that 75% of it was the robot torso. The dancer would put on these wire framed pants and climb into the bottom of the robot, making the legs tiny in comparison. The robot had two 6 foot long arms that swung on pulleys which were also controlled by us from above.

I'm sure there was more to the class than that, but I remember this as the culmination of the departmental rivalry. The recital actually got canceled because of a blizzard and when it was rescheduled for a Sunday afternoon and I didn't even go. From what I heard, almost nobody did.

The 18+ Art Class

During my first two years of ECA my classmates and I were all aware of the "Seniors Only" drawing class that involved nude models, but I don't think anything could have actually prepared us for it. To say it was awkward was a collosal understatement. On the first day there was a very uneasy feeling in the classroom. There were fifteen easels set up facing a wooden platform in the center of the room. Our teacher was covering the window of the door with some old newspaper as we awaited the model's arrival. As a class, we were usually loud and sarcastic, but today nobody was saying a word.

There was no extra budget from the school to pay models. The models who came were exactly the kind of people who would sit naked for free - the kind of people who you would not want to look at unless you had to. Some of them were friends of the teachers, others were just random people who probably replied to a flyer around town. It was an exercise in extremes. One man had a large gut, another woman was oddly tall and had very long arms and legs, the third model was a man with hair that went down to his waist. Every class consisted of a big, blank pad of paper and the models changing positions their position after about ten minutes. You could spend that time on one drawing or one hundred, there was no real structure. Each year was divided into four quarters, giving us ten straight weeks of these people.

The tall woman was affectionately known as the bird lady, because every time she moved her arms in a pose her shoulder blades would stick out very far. She also had a large, beak-like nose. My friend Kevin coined the name and drew a couple of sketches drawing out her bird features. Occasionally the models posed with objects and we all nearly lost it when she held a large feather for one class.

The man with the long hair had two large tattoos. He had a dove on his left shoulder and a large cattle skull on his chest. There were times where I would focus on drawing one of those instead of the body because it was frustrating staring at this man's ass all day long. Occasionally I would make the tattoos more cartoony, giving the cattle skull a voice bubble or making the dove into a drawing of Big Bird's head.

The only real freedom we had in class was that we could listen to our own music. Everyone would come in and put on their various CD or cassette player headphones. Nobody ever spoke during the class. Even though we were seniors, we were only seventeen or eighteen years old, and this was still kind of an uncomfortable situation.

There was one specific day with the Bird Lady posing on an old wooden chair. She would sit on the chair or stand with one leg on it. At one point, she put her hands on the seat of the chair and bent all the way over, practically touching her toes, with her long, flat ass aimed square in my direction. With Stone Temple Pilots blaring in my ears, I muttered "Oh, great" under my breath. Or so I thought. As it turns out my comment was more than audible to everyone in the class, including the Bird Lady. My outburst drew her ire, as she spent the next hour of class giving me poses that were either difficult to draw or look at. The bottom of her foot, the top of her head, and once she just pointed her finger at me and looked away.

When the ten weeks were up, our group moved on to a video production class and were back to our normal cynical selves. We never spoke of the nude models again.