My cousin Kerry O’Malley is amazing. A gift arrived in the mail yesterday: a piece of artwork commissioned for me by Kerry!
The artist is Sari Lennick, whose work is fascinating and thought-provoking in re: collage of words/pictures/art. Lennick takes pictures of popular artists, hip hop artists, actors, Dolly Parton, and places them around written text, from books, books which don’t have anything to do with Dolly Parton, but the combination means these things “talk to” each other when placed in proximity.
The piece Sari made for me is called “Focus on the King” and features two pictures of Elvis (one of the only pics of Elvis with his shirt off), perched on the side of two pages from Stephen King’s wonderful book ON WRITING.
The effect makes Elvis look like a Renaissance putto, those little fat babies clustered on the edges of statues and paintings. This is then overlaid with lyrics from “A Little Less Conversation.” In the song, these lyrics basically mean “Enough talking. Let’s go to bed immediately”. But here, they somehow completely change their meaning in juxtaposition with Stephen King’s text! It becomes a call to artistic action, to stop talking about what you want to create and just create it.
“Focus on the King” features TWO Kings! I am so moved by this gift from my unbelievable cousin who – in the middle of this pandemic, in the middle of our horrible political situation – was thoughtful enough to ask Sari to create this work for me, to spur me on in the big project I need to get cracking on.
I can’t wait to hang it up, where i can look at it from my writing desk.
Here I am posing with it wearing my Elvis Mask. Of course. Check out Sari’s work here.
Wow, that is so cool.
Kerry rocks!
And so does Sari. I visited her site and I see she has a big abstract piece called Yes, And . You talk about that attitude so often. I also liked the Aesthetic Concepts piece with Barbra.
What a great confluence of gift, giver, and recipient.
And another big piece, you say? Can’t wait.
Turns out – I didn’t even realize this – but she was in the movie CHAINED FOR LIFE, which I loved so much and gave 4 stars in my review last year!!
I didn’t even put it together it was the same person! I feel silly about that but now I know!
and I recommend the movie – can’t remember if you’ve seen it or not – sometimes we discuss things here and I can’t remember. It’s fascinating – and really ABOUT something without ever being didactic. I loved it!
and now her artwork is on my wall and it’s all so cool. :)