Unearthed Artistic Treasure

My sister found a piece of my “artwork” while going through her old stuff and texted me photos. I really can’t stand how fantastic it is.

Why does she have this? I have no idea. Did she save it out of amusement, or was she enthralled by my talent? I’m not sure. We were on the phone together as I opened the photos, and it was hard to understand her through the rip-snorting belly laughs we were both emitting.

Let’s take a deep dive into the components of this masterpiece.

The Berryhill Dollhouse

The framework is provided by a stylized representation of the Victorian-style dollhouse that was key to the marketing and branding of my parents’ miniatures business, Berryhill. Berryhill was a very big deal in the world of miniatures for a while. No, seriously.

There was Berryhill furniture made by my parents and whichever child they could rope into furniture construction. There was a Berryhill mail order catalog that featured the furniture de famille, plus many other items of a miniature nature. There was even the Berryhill News, a charming newsletter that I had a serious hand in creating. I wrote, I reviewed, I drew exceptionally charming artwork like you see in this post!

A note here on the Berryhill dollhouse. When my parents started Berryhill, they took a dollhouse image from a notecard, redrew it, and incorporated that image into the business logo and letterhead (you can see it at the link above). Yes, that’s right, my parents didn’t actually own a dollhouse when they started their dollhouse business. This should surprise NO ONE who knew my parents.

But eventually Dad did build one that looked a great deal like the drawing. He never finished it. It spent most of its 40+ years of existence in garages and closets, lugged from house to house, town to town, state to state, more bits falling away with every move. At Dad’s estate sale, we successfully begged someone to take it away (we may have offered to pay her).

So a stylized and elongated version of the Berryhill Dollhouse forms the structure for this artistic endeavor. And rest assured, no rulers were harmed (or used) in the construction of this masterpiece. There isn’t a straight line on the page.

Let’s start with the attic, shall we?

The Genie in the attic was inspired by a popular advertisement of the day in which a genie rose out of some carpet. But it was NOT Carpeteria. I’m sure I only used the advertising genie as a reference point, rather than copying it wholesale (I copied it wholesale). But here’s the good news. Even if I did, the result is so awful that I don’t think I’m committing copyright infringement (I hope).

On to Santa.

Why Santa? I have no idea why Santa. I mean, why not Santa?

In general I do love a nice representation of Santa. I’m certain I drew this purely from my own imagination, insofar as one can ever draw a Santa in a red suit that’s been used to sell stuff in December for a hundred years and call it a work of imagination. I like how his expression is a little harder to read than most Santa faces. He looks startled. Or maybe he’s lost his glasses.

Is the sleigh upholstered? With red starfish? I’m not sure, but the gigantic candy cane is a nice touch. I’m not sure why I put it there. Maybe to give Santa something to eat while waiting for his reindeer to show up? I didn’t know how to draw reindeer back then (still don’t), so Santa was in for a long wait. He’d no doubt need a snack. Or maybe Santa was inebriated, so someone took away the reindeer reins and gave him this giant candy cane to hold, and he thinks he’s driving the reindeer, so he’s happy.

Ho! Ho! Ho!

The floating mirror is obviously a statement on, I don’t know, floating mirrors? I don’t have an isolated closeup of it because my sister didn’t send one, but you can see it in the shot below. I did a great job of coloring in the inky darkness of the glass, imbuing it with deep mystery and all the graphite from one No.2 pencil.

Let’s move onto the Golden Archway of Descending Cats.

Clearly the cats are coming from Somewhere Special. Because behind the curtain, it’s a very special glowing yellow. Like the sun, or maybe molten gold. A magnificent golden portal of some kind.

And wow, would you look at that magnificent textural work on those tubular curtains? Don’t they look real? Isn’t it just like when you stand in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the gallery of the European Masters and look at the gowns on the ladies, and you’re awed by how those masters painted textiles to the point where they look absolutely real? Like that? Right?

And then we have the random geometric shapes on the stairs, which also seem Special and Artistic. Please enjoy the shading, which seems to defy all laws of light and shadow.

You can get the full gist of the magical shading in this extended view of the staircase.

Where is the light coming from? A good question, but an even better question is, where is the light going? And what kind of particle bending did it do on its way there?

Physics, my art defies you.

Once again, my mastery with textiles shows in the pinkish-reddish-scarf-or-carpet-like thing that dangles down to a fringed terminus. I think the fringe is nicely done. The cats are nicely done as well. This means I copied them from somewhere. If you asked me to draw a cat freehand, it would look more like some circles with pointy ears and whiskers (see the featured image on this post, which is an example of my more recent artwork circa 2011).

But back to the cats. To achieve these results I must have had a few cats at hand as models. Not my own cats, Shasta and Casey, a dilute calico and a black longhair. No, these are some other cats from an ad or a book, or perhaps they are a menage of pirated cat images, I don’t remember. Their origins are as mysterious as the Glowing Yellow Archway above them.

So what does it all mean?

It all means something, yes? Something more than I liked these things when I was seventeen and stuck them all in one drawing. There must be more to it. I must have been making an artistic statement, and I have theories. Like:

• rampant commercialism contained within symbol of a closed business
• blackened floating mirror as statement on blind consumerism
• desire for magical wish fulfillment locked in eaves
• broken laws of light and shadow = determination to escape mortality
• cats as evanescent navigators of liminal spaces
• cats as angels descending from heaven (not likely since artist is not religious but it’s possible so including it)
• geometric shapes definitely not copied from younger brother’s wooden shape sorter toy

So many possibilities for interpretation, here. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

And Heather Hogan, if you happen to be reading this, I’m sorry but my sister folded this back up and kept it. I can’t frame this one and send it to you. Besides, you got the dragon.

One of my teen masterpieces should be enough for anyone.