"Pondering That Old Matchbox Hole..."

My friend, "Paula and the Big Belgian!"

Good morning, all bodies. I'm sitting with the old matchbox hole watching the morning sun bun off the fog that's settled over our back paddock pond... and pondering.

Yesterday, I went to Giddy-Up to talk to the owner about his placement of a painting... on a wall mounted coat rack. I envisioned all kinds of scenarios about his reaction to my asking him about it.

Giddy-Up is a local coffeeshop that has become THE signature place to just relax with a book, a cup of coffee and a nosh. It was beautifully designed and built by the owner, who Tee and I have become great friends of, but the painting of a friend of mine on horseback just can't be hanging where it is and I wasn't sure how to express my displeasure about it being there. 

I remember how some AFAPO and Society of Illusrators members used to complain about the Air Forces placement of their art at the semi annual galas. I always found it to be a bit rude and presumptuous of an artist to make such a fuss. Some demanded moving someone else's art for theirs stating their tenured statue in
the program. Some used being a board member as a way of manipulating the scene.

So, it was with some trepidation that I went for some coffee wearing my blue "Giddy-Up" tee shirt... just in case. I actually hoped that the owner was not going to be there to avoid any awkward moments. I'd just steathfully grab the painting and tell the barista that I was taking it home for an upcoming show... that wouldn't have been a lie.

Instead, Frank, the owner was there, came by to greet me and some other guests and inquired about my recent epidural. Well, I thought, now's the time if there ever was one.

"Hey Frank, I know you take great pride in this place and I know that the walls are well ADORNED with art work and western stuff, but I can''t have my painting hanging where you have it. Ya know?"

"As it gets colder, people are gonna want to," I started to say.

"Yeh Ben, I apologize." I have a handyman that was supposed to come over the weekend and fix a few things. I was gonna have him hang your painting somewhere nicer where it can be seen, but he never showed up."

"I love the painting. I want it here, but I just haven't gotten to it yet."

"Okay, man, thanks, that' cool. I'm glad you understand my concern," I said.

"So, slightly moving on, Frank said, "it is a great morning. How come y'all aren't sitting outside?"

Satisfied that negotiations went better than expected, I sank deeper into the big comfy leather chairs and replied,"The chairs are incredible and great for my back!"

I've read that the Milennial generation doesn't know how to socially be with people and address situations that might not be to their advantage. Socialologists blame it on the iPhone and texting. They might have a point, but I can't say I'm all that great at it either.

Copyright 2016/ Ben Bensen III

"I've Suddenly Become The Victor Borg Of The Art World"...

Comedian Pianist, Victor Borge

Good Throwback Thursday, y'all.

Gonna throw it back all the way to last night... that's right!
I had a great time with the Jefferson Art Guild demoing at Lafrieniere Park. As part of my color theory, I mentioned the inimitable Keith Ferris, the aviation illustrator well known for his Smithsonian Air and Space murals, and for his penchant of only using the primaries and black and white.

When I realized that I only had two of those primaries to demo with, well, let's just say that's when the fun began. 

"So, I guess I'll just have to one up good, ole Keith," I said, "and do this with one hand tied behind my back."

I did not realize I was but one aspect of the guild's monthly meetings. I arrived twenty minutes ahead of schedule in order to prepare, but the spotlight didn't shine on me until well into the second hour. I had about 40 minutes to "explain myself" and convince the raucous crowd that I actually can paint. It was not going so well, so I pulled out my iPad to show a picture of the sailboat I had painted a few weeks earlier. 

Lucky for me, the group was impressed with the exception of one woman who thought the piece I was working on was better than the completed version I passed around... with a few minor adjustments. 

With my iPad in her possession, she pointed to a section that she felt needed to be changed. I turned to the audience smiling incredulously and mumbled...

"Art Directors. Everyone wants to be an art director!"

As the laughter died down, I attempted to mix a bit of golden tan with copious amounts of white to match the tone on the canvas that the diminutive art analyst decided needed to be changed.

Once again, laughter exploded when she said,"No, that's not it!" 

I turned to the audience and as I feigned my disgust, I handed the paint brush to her as to invite her with the continuation of my demo. With ten minutes left and cognizant that I've suddenly become the Victor Borg of the art world, I decided to just give it all up and have some fun. I dutifully corrected the tone, appled it on the canvas, and Mrs. A.D. was elated... as well as vindicated!

As I was cleaning and packing up, many came over to introduce themselves and thank me for an informative and entertaining evening. One woman told me that she was the featured artist to demo next month and asked if I could offer some suggestions for her presentation.

"Well, I said, I'm a pretty hard act to follow. Just don't forget to bring your yellow!"

Copyright 2016/ Ben Bensen III

"It Was Big Enough To Nab A Horse"...

Bananas Not Included...

About a year ago, I spent the summer at a plantation home in St. Francisville working on a film as a storyboard artist. I had a up stairs bedroom with my own bathroom and a door leading out to the back porch. For a while, it was great to go out to the porch and have a lunch overlooking a bevy of trees and a small lake to forget the deadlines and changes that always seem to make this job more difficult.

I say, for a while, because one morning, out of nowhere parked in the middle of the porch doorway this humongous spider. For the next four or five weeks this animal, which with legs and all was about as large as a long shoreman's hand. It seemed every morning there was some new insect or farm animal stuck in the web of this yellow monster with a head full of cold, emotionless black eyes.

Well, three weeks after cutting a bunch of tree branches that were hanging on top of the roof, I finally decided to clean up the mess I created. I casually walked between two large pin oak trees that are about ten feet apart from each other and found myself caught up in what seemed to be monafilament fishing line. In the blink of an eye, I was being sized up by a half dozen little black eyes.

The underside of the female...

I swatted at it as I untangled myself from the spider's web and ran to the protection of one of the trees. I noticed the badass spider also took off the shelter of the opposite tree. We both looked around the trees from afar, sized each other up and decided to leave well enough alone.

I came out later to take a few pictures in order to find out exactly who the visitor was and investigate its "modus operandi". I found it's commonly called a banana spider and to be a native. This particular spider is the only species of the genus Nephila to be found in the Western Hemisphere. They live in warm regions, from North Carolina and across the Gulf States through Central America, as far south as Argentina, and in the West Indies (found extensively throughout Puerto Rico).

Well, the good news is that the spider is a beneficial predator and it doesn't eat people. And, oh yeh, it's silk is being investigated as a component of bullet proof vests. That should say something!

Copyright 2016/ Ben Bensen III

"It Was Big Enough To Nab A Horse"...

Bananas Not Included...

About a year ago, I spent the summer at a platation home in St. Francisville working on a film as a storyboard artist. I had a up stairs bedroom with my own bathroom and a door leading out to the back porch. For a while, it was great to go out to the porch and have a lunch overlooking a bevy of trees and a small lake to forget the deadlines and changes that always seem to make this job more difficult.

I say, for a while, because one morning, out of nowhere parked in the middle of the porch doorway this humongous spider. For the next four or five weeks this animal, which with legs and all was about as large as a long shoreman's hand. It seemed every morning there was some new insect or farm animal stuck in the web of this yellow monster with a head full of cold, emotionless black eyes.

Well, three weeks after cutting a bunch of tree branches that were hanging on top of the roof, I finally decided to clean up the mess I created. I casually walked between two large pin oak trees that are about ten feet apart from each other and found myself caught up in what seemed to be monafilament fishing line. In the blink of an eye, I was being sized up by a half dozen little black eyes.

The underside of the female...

I swatted at it as I untangled myself from the spider's web and ran to the protection of one of the trees. I noticed the badass spider also took off for the shelter of the opposite tree. We both looked around the trees from afar, sized each other up and decided to leave well enough alone.

I came out later to take a few pictures in order to find out exactly who the visitor was and investigate its "modus operandi". I found it's commonly called a banana spider and to be a native. This particular spider is the only species of the genus Nephila to be found in the Western Hemisphere. They live in warm regions, from North Carolina and across the Gulf States through Central America, as far south as Argentina, and in the West Indies (found extensively throughout Puerto Rico).

Well, the good news is that the spider is a beneficial predator and it doesn't eat people. And, oh yeh, it's silk is being investigated as a component of bullet proof vests. That should tell you something!

Copyright 2016/ Ben Bensen III

"Hey Pete, Your Walk Can't Get Much Closer!"

Well, here in New Orleans, it is a sad Saturday, day. 

Pete Fountain passed away this morning at 86 years of age. No one, except Louis Armstrong, represented all the facets that is this crazy town like Pete!

"Hey Pete, your walk can't get much closer!"

https://youtu.be/YbJgLmUGSS0

Copyright Ben Bensen III/2016

"Aches and Pains Of Those Glory Days!"...

Five of the eighteen frames for Western Airlines that is currently my Facebook cover piece.

I don't believe this concept ever got sold and aired on TV. I thought the concept was a great way to introduce the new and improved Western Airlines. I could never tell, in the older commercials, if that spokesperson, sipping champagne while leaning against the vertical stabilizer in the tail section of the aircraft, was an eagle or a parrot! But, as the plane zoomed across the screen from left to right, the bird ( I'm told the voiceover was performed by the long time actor, Jim Backus ) looked toward the camera and with an rather deep and sophisticated voice garbled...

"Western Airlines, The Only Way To Fly"

I'm mentioning all of this because my back problems aren't going away, but there is a good story here. Once upon a time, while playing flag football at Santa Monica City College, I injured my back intercepting a pass. It wasn't a monumental, game winning feat. It was just another one of those weekend warrior interceptions of the mid air variety. Though I came down with ball in hand, I spent the rest of the game crumpled up on the bench. I really didn't think that much about it, but I apparently hurt it more than I thought I did. I never went to see a doctor about it. Eventually in time, it healed, but it healed wrong.

Well over the years my back would, every now and then, act up. One year it went BOING while I was peeling potatoes. Another time it TWANGED while I was up in our tree picking oranges. Seldom was there a rhyme or reason but it had never gave me a problem as I sat at the drawing board.

One day I got called to a meeting with an art director at NW Ayer/Los Angeles, I think. I got briefed on a presentation designed to changed the aircraft "branding" of Western Airlines and the creative team picked me to orchestrate this "floating ribbon" idea. I am sure that there were many other creative teams hashing out other ideas, but this idea was important enough to the agency for me to receive a large scale model of the McDonnell/ Douglas DC-10 to take home as reference. Over the years, being given what amounts to poor quality xeroxes to work from, having Ayer loan me this model as reference said more than enough to me about the seriousness of the presentation.

I brought the model home and proceeded to hang it from clothesline with monofilament line. I took lots of pictures of the plane from all kinds of angles because I needed eighteen frames to depict in the storyboard how the newly designed ribbon caresses and wraps itself, midair, all around the aircraft. A few days later, I returned the model and showed the AD my pencils. As it always seems, there were some changes to the sketches, but nothing too complicated.The complicated part came when I arrived home and got out of the car... DOIING!

When I finally got myself to bed, I stayed there for the next two days. When I could get out of the bed, I really couldn't sit for very long. The deadline loomed as I was being hounded to bring in the changes for the account people to make more changes and kick it around some more before going to the finals. This, naturally, was before the computer was in vogue. I couldn't get up, much less, drive over to the agency. So the AD and the writer suggested to visit me at my home "studio" to work with me on the details of the board. Although I gobbled up some pain pills, when they arrived, my wife had to lead them to my "sick bed."

"Man, you look bad. Are you okay to finish the job?" the writer asked.

Then, the art director chimed in, "Ben, you're the right guy for this job, but...uh"

I assured them that I was still excited about the job and that I'd be okay to finish the board in due time AND... that it would look great. In the back of my mind, I really wasn't sure at all if I was gonna be flexible enough to finish the project. But I wanted the money and the idea of me backing out of the job to hassle the account people for a kill fee was not something I really wanted to do. So, with me sitting up, kinda, in the bed with pencil in hand, we worked out the details of what I considered to be minor changes.

With the deadline looming larger, and the approval cycle complete, I was able to finish the artwork in a few days with the help of muscle relaxants, coffee and a couple of blocks of ice. The art director came by the "home studio" to pick up all eighteen frames and seemed pretty happy with the results. I suppose, though, he was mostly relieved that the work actually got done.

As I mentioned, I don't believe the concept was ever bought. I certainly never ever saw it run on local TV. It wasn't too much longer, maybe a year or so later, that Western Airlines along with PSA were no longer in the flying business.

For the longest time, I searched for the entire storyboard of eighteen frames, but never finding it. I'm not sure why. I'm not sure why I didn't photographed the entire set. I'm not sure why it was important to me to have the complete set. I was proud of my tenacity and that my patience and persistence had won out. Maybe, getting the job over with was my main motive. But every time I ran across these few frames in one of my many slide trays in hopes of using them in a promo piece, I would relive the past and all the hassle I went through to get the job done.

Then, I would think about my father.

How important should it be to me to show this work fifteen, twenty and even now thirty years later? How coincidental that my back is again showing it's age as I have once again attempted to find all of the slides. Why should it matter? What difference does it make? What story am I trying to convey by displaying art that is, while competently and painfully done, certainly way past it's prime?

Suffice it to say, that board, my back problems then and my back problems now are a constant reminder of something my dad always complained about whenever he would attend social gatherings like the ones the Diamond Club put on annually. The Diamond Club was a local organization comprised of living baseball heroes, officials, scorekeepers, sportswriters and such.

"All these guys want to do is gripe about their aches and pains and expound on their glory days... I'm tired of dwelling on the past. I'm about right now," he'd say.

And, as I now moan and groan to myself about my aches and pains, and shuffle through irony of my artistic past, his words continue to haunt me.

"Yeh Dad, I know, I got it, okay... I got it!

Copyright 2016/ Ben Bensen III

The 50th Anniversary of "Pet Sounds"...

Well, I can't think of a better place to see Brian Wilson than in Southern California. He had the audience the moment he, rather gingerly, walked on stage.

Good overcast and cool Friday morning, y'all.

The concert last night was wonderful. The catalogue of songs that man has contributed to rock n' roll is truly astounding. He repeatedly apologized, I thought, for not playing the hits. It must still be stuck in his mind that the second best album in rock history, ( by those who list such things! ) was a complete debacle in the mid sixties... even in the mind of his own band. But, everyone in the reserved level, where I sat, kept reassuring him that the 50th Anniversary of Pet Sounds was the main reason for attending.

He ended the concert with some of his hit records and received a standing "O" with "Good Vibrations!"