14 October 2009

malvina's nightmare

Elay Ballet

24" x 18"
watercolor on Arches
9.09








Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky tacky,1
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes all the same.
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.

And the people in the houses
All went to the university,
Where they were put in boxes
And they came out all the same,
And there's doctors and lawyers,
And business executives,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.

And they all play on the golf course
And drink their martinis dry,
And they all have pretty children
And the children go to school,
And the children go to summer camp
And then to the university,
Where they are put in boxes
And they come out all the same.

And the boys go into business
And marry and raise a family
In boxes made of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.

Malvina Reynolds 1962

7 comments:

chickory said...

boy you got those hills just right the color the way the greenery looks on it and then you get to those flat colorful ticky tackies. very well done with an oppressive counter point sky.

i got a job. everytime i make a rule i break it. this one is in cherry log. you know it? about 35 miles north of ballground.

job is garden gnome. starts in january. i will be helping them market. ill do their internet and blog and - TWITter. i will also be running the shop some days and helping with planters and basic garden tasks. 'll be able to score fruit trees and berries and other garden schnizz at a deal. i convinced them to pay me in cash in exchange for no health care or ever applying for unemployment in the lean seasons. i am job sharing with a guy who does the heavy lifting and landscaping. im going to outfit the shop. they want to repurpose junk to be garden ornaments. looks like they found the right chickory.

so. NOW i am off to florida. and i never take 1-75. i take the golden isles parkway to brunswick- drop down to jax and then 301 through cattle country see my brother and on to mom. fading but stable.
i do see the pecan plantations; old grainaries and dying small towns on this drive. i'll take some photos for you. be well. i think of your words often.

nina said...

A dream job if there ever was such a thing. (I get crushes on the men who run nurseries, they are so into the soil. Just wanna hang around and imbibe their vision. So, watch out, beautiful Ande.)

And now you are off on one of the country's most scenic and historical journeys, and for such a great purpose. I would love photos!!!

Jah Guide. It would appear Jah guides you very well. You have wonderful Karma.

brian said...

These seem like very beautiful tickytackies. I think the ones that inspired Malvina were much uglier, like the ones in the hills south of SF that have been densely packed, run together with common walls, and have much more limited, anemic "whitebread" color choices.
I always like looking at house colors in African-American neighborhoods, because people paint their houses sometimes in what must be their favorite color, no matter what color it is.

nina said...

Hi Brian, years ago I had a boyfriend whose Mom lived in Daly City, it reminded me of the film The Pawnbroker.
There should be some kind of Nobel Prize for hideous ubiquity. These places are ghettos no matter what else they are called.

john said...

Hi nina

Flying or falling has always been interesting in art and dreaming. Historically angels float a lot in paintings though Caravaggio's were more earthbound.

The painting I wanted you to see was called Falling Men, painted in 1986 by Evelyn Williams but annoyingly I can't find it anywhere on the internet. It looks a little bit like Hans Memlings 1472 picture of hell but with the colour sucked out of it.

I've always had good dreams of flying, whatever Dr Freud might say about it, it always seemed enjoyable to me and also strangely sensible at the time.

It's good for the figure work too as you get to paint the body in shapes that it doesn't do on the ground.

Lovely painting nina and an interesting song there too.

Thanks

nina said...

Thank you John! I will keep an eye out for Falling Men. It will come as no surprise my inspiration for the bodies was a documentary on Julliard recent dance graduates doing their thesis moves. Ballet as we think of it, it was not. As everything else is cataclysmic now, dance is also.
What is wonderful about it - is it isn't technical at all, it is movement matching how we are collectively feeling - all shook up and spit out upside down.

Jacob Gittes said...

funny - I was just listening to the Amy Goodman interview with Utah Phillips, which made me think of Malvina Reynolds (it helped that he mentioned her...).
Freaky painting. In a good way.