Thursday, January 31, 2008

Chloe and Picasso

Painting by Picasso
Chloe's wall of drawings

I "met" this lovely, intellectual British artist last year named Chloe Cumming. She's erumpent, you know, and she has been making some "sugar walls". She blogged this wall of drawings and she blogged this Picasso. Yes, I can definitely see a connection.
She draws wrestler men and they are as fascinating and wiggly as this Picasso. And she is right, Picasso drew cartoons. We all do.
See for yourself and enjoy:
Chloe's blog

The Art of Amy Crehore

Town of Luthiers

There is a town in Mexico called
with a statue of a luthier in the main plaza. "Paracho is the home of some of the best luthiers in Mexico, if not the world. Guitar shops line the main street entering town. But, the best guitars are made by luthiers working out of their homes on the back streets of the town." link
There is even a giant guitar on the main road.
Read more about luthiers at wikipedia:

The Classic Vintage Appeal of Brian Taylor's Toys

Trexi series 3 figure Astrocat in designer toy stores
Coney Plush Figure due out Spring 2008

Brian Taylor has a knack for drawing up classic-looking toy designs. That's what I like to see. The upcoming Coney Plush figure is hilarious and well-presented in this promo. It will even have an embroidered version.
More about his creations at:
He'll be in an upcoming group show at MerryKarnowsky opening Feb 9, 2008 and he has a new letterpress print out.

Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Tickler T-shirt Design

Tickler T-shirt art copyright Amy Crehore 2008
CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE
Here's the art that I did for my new Tickler Ukulele T-shirts. This is an ink drawing of "Bubble Gum Music", one of my "Little Pierrot" paintings. (They are for sale here on my website, plus free postcards.) The number two Tickler Ukulele will be unveiled in February! Brand new design with a genuine mother-of-toilet seat fingerboard.
P.S.The shirts have been selling fast! I've been very busy packing and shipping for the last week.

Tickler Ukulele Artist T-shirts by Amy Crehore

click to enlarge image
My new t-shirts are now available on my new website. They look really great in person. Beautiful colors. Nice print job. Just right. Unisex sizes. Pre-shrunk, heavy 100% cotton.
P.S. For those of you who haven't been following, I started the "Tickler" ukulele brand in 2007. The first Tickler Ukulele appeared back in July. It was a hand-painted fine art model, designed by me and built by a luthier. The Number Two Tickler Uke will be a completely different design (including a mother-of-toilet-seat fingerboard). It is due out in February, 2008. I had these t-shirts printed up for fun, combining my Tickler logo and an ink drawing I did based on a painting from my "Little Pierrot Series".

Doll Cake



Doll Cake by Amber Spiegel

Yes, it's a cake! This cake was made by my friend's daughter. Have a look at some of the other beautiful cakes she has decorated. Cake art at:

Sweet Ambs

The Comic Art of Evan Evans

The Ice Skate 2006 by Evan Evans
Okay. I found this comic artist talking favorably about my new t-shirt on the Ukulele Forum at King David Ukulele Station , a French Uke blog.
Evan Evans has a handful of great comics on his blog - like the one above.
He needs to update his blog or he will never be able to compete at the blogger festival, but as far as his comics go, they are very clever and well-drawn!
So, have a look at the Comic Art of Evan Evans

Tuesday, January 29, 2008

"Laugh-Out-Loud-Cats" Book

"Adam 'Ape Lad' Koford's Laugh-Out-Loud Cats are now available in book form. 'I'm selling signed and drawn in copies on my blog, or unsigned and undrawn in copies via Lulu,' says the author/illustrator." Link. (via boingboing)
I can't wait for my copy to arrive. And neither can my cat. It will be a treat.

Monday, January 28, 2008

Vintage Cartoons

Young Cab Calloway
Betty Boop- Minnie the Moocher 1932 produced by Max Fleischer
You can watch vintage cartoons like "Minnie the Moocher" featuring Cab Calloway here:

Sunday, January 27, 2008

The Royal Collection

1725, Great Hogfish, Mark Catesby , Purchased by George III
If you have some free time on your hands, it's worth taking a tour through Watercolors and Drawings from the
Royal Collection
And then when you are done with that, you can look through the rest of their e-gallery.
Amazing amount of good stuff.

The Art of Amy Crehore

Saturday, January 26, 2008

Kitty Ticklers




Popular Cat Toys
has these 3 wonderful Kitty Ticklers for sale on their site.
Also, have a look at their other cat toys.

The Art of Amy Crehore

John Webber, Artist of Pacific Culture (b.1751-d.1793)


"John Webber, the officially appointed artist for Captain James Cook’s third voyage of discovery around the Pacific (1776-1780), along with William Ellis, surgeon’s second mate on the Discovery, provided perhaps the most comprehensive and unprecedented visual record of any of Cook’s voyages. After leaving England, Webber and Ellis drew and painted the Kerguelen Islands in the far southern Indian Ocean, and Adventure Bay in Van Diemen’s Land (renamed Tasmania in 1855), before moving on to Tonga and Tahiti, then the northwest coast of America, the Unalaska Islands and Siberia’s Kamchatka Peninsula, before returning along the coasts of Southeast Asia. The two artists made drawings and watercolour paintings of everything that came within their ambit, creating the first accurate ethnographic record of Pacific culture. Captain Cook's voyage" -
from Femme Femme Femme
The Art of Amy Crehore

Painted Uke by Tiny Tim

Tiny Tim painted this Uke

Friday, January 25, 2008

Mark Frauenfelder T-Shirt

Speaking of T-shirts, here is a GREAT design by artist Mark Frauenfelder. It features his character Poppy of Lollypopland (a series of illustrations that Mark created for google). She is travelling inside the heart of a friendly star.
You can buy one of these lovely shirts in any size you want at

Monday, January 21, 2008

Wacky Wurzletod

Max Kinger art
Karen LaMonte art
Suzanne G. keeps us informed about unusual, fragile, decadent, beautiful, historical, intellectual and freaky happenings around the globe. Thanks, Suzanne.
For someone with BAD taste she has an awfully nice nose for sniffing the good things out.

Waterfall under the Bridge

There will be a "cool" public arts project in NYC for three months this summer -giant waterfalls, including one that will fall from the Brooklyn Bridge - a design of Danish artist Olafur Eliasson. This could be refreshing in the heat of the summer. I will be showing my paintings at Ad Hoc Art in July/August, so it will be fun to see this when I travel there for the show. (Thanks, boingboing )

Saturday, January 19, 2008

Amy Crehore in Deep Pop Exhibit, NY

"Feed the Bear Blues", an oil painting on linen panel by Amy Crehore.
This painting will be in the Deep Pop Exhibit.(From my "Blues Gal" series)
On Sunday, January 27th, 2008, the long-awaited Deep Pop exhibit, curated by Andrew Michael Ford (Ad Hoc Gallery) will open at the Kenneth Chapman Gallery, Iona College, 715 North Avenue, New Rochelle NY. This historic exhibit will feature 63 incredible artists:
Scott Altmann, Anthony Ausgang, Carrie Anne Baade, Wayne Coe, Christopher Conte, Molly Crabapple, Amy Crehore, Jason D'Aquino, Inky Dreadfuls, Bonnie Durham, Lori Earley, Mark Elliot, Austin English, Ron English, Matt Feazell, Lori Field, GiL, Kelly Haigh, Matt Hansel, Julia Sonmi Heglund, Hiromi Iuchi, Sarah Joncas, Aya Kakeda, Ben Kehoe, Joshua Krause, Danielle Lamberti, Daniel Hyun Lim, Tommii Lim, Laurie Lipton, Francesco LoCastro, D. Dominick Lombardi, Travis Louie, David MacDowell, Angie Mason, Jeff McMillan, MIHA, Heiko Muller, Ryan Myers, Naomi Namba, Lilly Piri, Anthony Pontius, Jenn Porreca, Mario Rivera, Jonathan Rodriguez, Martina Secondo Russo, Frank Russo, Sean Samohey, Marcus Schafer, David Stoupakis, Kevin E, Taylor, Elisabeth Timpone, Jon Todd, Fuco Ueda, Edwin Ushiro, Mark Dean Veca, Keith Weesner, Martin Wittfooth, Jaeran Won, Nancie Yang, Genevive Zacconi, and Chet Zar.
This once-in-a-lifetime show will be an unforgettable experience for those who can make it up to New Rochelle, NY between Jan 27 and Feb 21, 2008.
"Fine art inspired by the world of pop imagery".
DEEP POP Exhibit
Iona College Council on the Arts
The Art of Amy Crehore

Chris Anthony at Corey Helford Gallery


Photos copyright Chris Anthony 2008

Opening on January 26, 2008, from 9-11 pm, at the Corey Helford Gallery in Culver City, CA is a solo exhibit of fine art photographs by Chris Anthony. I blogged about his Victims and Avengers show last year around this time. Who could forget his haunted, surrealistic narratives in browns, reds and black? He won the American Photo Grand Prize 2007 for them. His works are stunningly beautiful, highly imaginative, thought-provoking and mysterious. Go see "I'm the Most Normal Person I know" if you are in the L.A. area.


What is Genuine Mother-of-Toilet-Seat?

Gibson 1938 fingerboard
Gibson 1938 Headstock or Peghead
Stewart-MacDonald's fancy pearloid - laminated
When I revealed that the second Tickler Ukulele would have a fingerboard made of genuine mother-of-toilet-seat, I realized that some people might not know what that is. It's a plastic that looks like mother of pearl and it's also known as pearloid. On certain vintage models of guitars, banjos and ukes, it was used for pickguards and fingerboards. It was also used to decorate banjo resonators and headstocks. Lou Reimuller (luthier of Tickler Ukes) bought his pearloid at Warmoth where they have all colors and patterns. They also have supplies at Stewart-MacDonald.
Here is a Gibson 1938 from the
National Music Museum Collection
at the University of South Dakota.

The Art of Amy Crehore


Thursday, January 17, 2008

JM's World War One Sketchbooks








I found out about JM's World War I sketchbooks
from the fantastic and beautiful blog, BibliOdyssey . Please follow the link for more of this amazing visual diary (University of Victoria’s Special Collections Library).

HOBOTOPIA

Laugh Out Loud Cats Comics
Speaking of hokum, hokum music, humor, comics...and cats!
Please check out this wonderful little film at the Ape Lad (Adam Koford) blog:
HOBOTOPIA
And...this giant morsel: Laugh Out Loud Cats ARCHIVE (buy the new book at Hobotopia)
for more wonderful CAT humor. Yas, yas, we love dem cats!
And a most recent and hilarious little film on boingboing TV.
Official Website: Adam Koford (Ape Lad)
And last, but not least, The New Yorker's current EustaceTilley competition with Ape Lad's contributions.


The Art of Amy Crehore

Hokum Music & Comic Art

Comic book cover by Amy Crehore 1984

The link wasn't working this morning so I deleted my blog post from yesterday. But, it seems to be working now, so here it is again -a link to thumbnails of Yazoo album covers and comic covers mostly by Robert Armstrong and R. Crumb. It's a picture search for Hokum Boy's music. You will see a little thumbnail of "Boys and Girls Grow Up" comic book cover, also, with a little blurb about my Hokum Scorchers band if you mouse over it. (refresh the page if link page doesn't show thumbnails right away)
Here's another link about HOKUM BOYS . Musictonic looks like a very nice website.
Read also wikipedia's article on Hokum .
The Hokum Scorchers (and Lou Reimuller's earlier band,The Fabulous Daturas) did play some Hokum Boy's music. Wikipedia mentions the Hokum Boys in this article. Here's a link to a pre-war hokum-style tune played by the Hokum Scorchers (this one is by Papa Charlie Jackson, however).

Monday, January 14, 2008

See Saw Blog

Anonymous Photobooth photo from American Photobooth by Nakki Goranin
via the SEE SAW blog.
If this isn't a captivating image, I don't know what is! And it's not even a young, naked chick. It's grannny with her dressed-up little doggie in a photobooth portrait. That's as classic and as sweet as it gets.
"Nakki Goranin's American Photobooth -The Exhibit will be making its world debut in February at Pine Street Art Works to coincide with the publication of Nakki's book, American Photobooth. Forthcoming from W.W. Norton & Co., the book has already been cited in The New Yorker and The New York Times."
Burlington, Vermont
"Blogging is like a hall of mirrors".

The Art of Amy Crehore


Intricate Tapestry Designs

Design based on Jan Snellinck the Elder, Michiel Coxie, Netherlands 1652
Hans Kneiper Design Denmark 1585
click to enlarge
The Metropolitan Art Museum recently had a special exhibition of baroque tapestries. Here are two amazingly intricate examples from long ago. To view more of the exhibit click here : Threads of Splendor
Thanks to Marshall Sponder for hiking all over NYC to art galleries and museums to blog about these shows for the rest of us who don't happen to live there :
Art New York City .

The Art of Amy Crehore

Bloody & Beautiful Vintage Theater Posters from Paris



Grand Guignol means "big puppet show". Here are some posters from the Theatre of Grand Guignol. They are gory, but graphically interesting! "In 1897, the French playwright, Oscar Metenier, bought a theater at the end of the impasse Chaptal, a cul-de-sac in Paris' Pigalle district, in which to produce his controversial naturalist plays." read more history here.
View more posters here:
Thanks boingboing via

Paintalicious!

Bee by Trevor Brown (Check out his wacky blog)
Blackbird & Blackbird Detail - Giclee print on paper by Ray Caesar (buy his upcoming book )
La Robe Rouge by Mike Worral ( Beinart surreal collective)

If you like these, and I do, do, do, you must check out:
Paintalicious

The Art of Amy Crehore

P.S." Vote for me " if you like this blog