BEST RESEARCH EVER!!!

Over the week-end, I traveled to sunny (WARM) Los Angeles to see The Pee Wee Herman Show!!! It was a limited engagement over the course of 4 weeks at Club Nokia. My source presentations have always included a picture of the of Pee-Wee's Playhouse set, and it was interesting to see how they re-envisioned it in 1/8 scale on a budget. Parts were re-created exactly, some were condensed, and many elements were completely new; however, it was still cohesive. The style of the Playhouse is basically a hodgepodge of contrasting patterns... yet still in a particular style.

BUT, this was not the first time the Playhouse has been redone. It originally debuted in a stage show called The Pee-Wee Herman Show in 1981, then in the movie Pee-Wee's Big Adventure in 1985, then on television on Pee-Wee's Playhouse from 1986-1991, then in miniature as an action figure playset in 1988, then -again- in 2010's stage show: The Pee-Wee Herman Show. Each incarnation has been skewed from the last, yet instantly recognizable.

A VISUAL HISTORY OF PEE-WEE'S PLAYHOUSE:


Today's secret word is: COLLABORATION. The Playhouse has always been a symbol of artistic diversity; it is a monument to art for arts sake, a true playhouse. I would like to create an artist collective called PLAYHAUS (in lieu of BAUHAUS): we would take a house (in Detroit, per se) and build on to it and paint it all crazy just for kicks. I'll mark this as artistic delusion # 5,990,877,866,23678,458,113,790,531,3872,613. However, I do need to engage Detroit in some way for my seminar...

SELF-PORTRAIT PROJECT UPDATE:

I finished priming my latest figure and will begin oil painting it in full color, shortly. I am the most confident about coloring this figure- as opposed to the other 3- because it so obviously needs the blending and muted color pallet that oils provide. The other 3 might be hybrids of spray paint, acrylic, gouache, and/or oils; and generally, use more bright, primary colors.

I think there might be some correlation between my interest in the various incarnations of Pee-Wee's Playhouse and this project -which deals with various expressionistic incarnations of myself. Hmm...

Maybe I'll present these at PLAYHAUS under the title: "...But What Am I?"