American Gothic--23rd Str Style

There are two characters on my block that needed to be immortalized in the mural. No not Phillip aka Stoop Boy or any of the crazies that hang out here. Suki and Oreo, the out-front cats as I call them. These two cats know they have it good around my house a) because I feed them and b) because my neighbor Veronica feeds them. Well, I had a little space next to the main mural whic just called out for some interesting scene with Oreo and Suki. I wanted a portrait look for them which incorporated the green parrots of the neighborhood as well. So in sort of an homage to "American Gothic" combined with the earthiness of a Frida Kahlo painting I got the look I wanted. Suki and Oreo staring out officially in front of row houses, typical architecture for their environment, above them a giant tree full of the famed green parrots which fly around squawking throughout the year. Beyond them is NY harbour which can be in the distance down the street.
As I was painting it last Friday, Suki and Oreo came by to check its progress and give a look or meow of approval (or was that disapproval). Well they should be thankful. Not only do they get fed on a daily basis but they are now permanently on my wall--a fixture on the block.
The mural will continue to grow, depicting neighborhood scenes and history so keep reading. Work and weather have made me slow down a bit on the progress of the mural but week by week, it will grow.

Details, details

So this mural isn't ever really finished until I think it is and I put my signature to it. A few important details had to be added to the 3 Cats mural. I don't know if I told about the second daughter of Suly, also a black cat, named Eddy who owund up somewhere in the Bronx. Well she's somewhere floating around so we put her ala Chagal flying next to the moon. She looks more like she's walking, I tried to get her to look more floating but that's how she turned out. I wonder where that Eddy is? If she's still alive? Hmm I'll have to try and contact her owner, Maria. Thank God for Facebook.
Of course as homage to one of my favorite paintings, "Starry Night", we made the New York sky aglow with stars and swirls. This idea spilled over in the Moscow side with snow and white swirls. Another addition on the Moscow side was Lenin's Tomb, oh so subtley sticking out behind a rather grand Felix. Non-Russophiles may miss this detail since it is a small 3-tiered outcrop with just the "L" and "E" of the word "LENIN" visible at the top. That space was blank and it bothered me as to what to put there. Inspired by a laquered box of the Kremlin I used for painting the Moscow side, I figured why not. It is on Red Square and is apropos for the scene. But I didn't want to make a big to-do over a dead communist leader so I made it subtle. Pine trees will be added to fill in around it as is the case on Red Square.

The Main Facade

Since last writing, the mural has taken on a life of its own. I'm near completion of the main facade, the centerpiece of the entire project. It depicts my three cats-Felix, Suly and Lulu against a NYC skyline and a Moscow skyline. Rather biographical since they are all from Russia and now New Yorkers. I'll be adding some details today like Suly's other child, Eddy, who wound up in the Bronx and glowing stars and a moon ala Starry Night, one of my favorite paintings.
As things would have it, I had to drop mural painting for a week or so to take care of some other things (and work), but today I'm up early and in my painting clothes, ready to paint away.

The Three Inspirations

Felix, Suly and Lulu are the driving force behind this mural. There are other inspirations but we'll meet them later. felix is a big tabby, Suly is a Siamese and Lulu is all black. They were all born in Russia; Felix and Suly in Moscow, Lulu in Ekaterinburg. They are 16, 15 and 14 respectively and related. Mama Suly, Papa Felix and Baby Lulu--yes Felix and Suly had sex and produced two black babies. How a tabby and Siamese did that is a mystery to me, I think my landlady back in Ekaterinburg was taking Suly out for some good times while I was traveling all over the Urals.
Suly is actually my former boyfriend's cat. I had arrived in Moscow back in February 1992 with Bancroft, my fuzzy black cat, from San Francisco. Suly was a gift to Artem (my ex) to help round out the house--two guys and two cats. Suly was bought on the Arbat, Moscow's pedestrian street known for its artists selling their wares and, back then, old ladies selling puppies and kittens. Suly got picked up as a two for one deal--Angelina, Artem's friend, took one and gave the other to him. Suly had her fur bleached white (a common practice among the grandmas selling the kitties to make them look more desirable) so the contrast between snowy white fur and the chocolate points made her all the more sellable. Bancroft didn't appreciate her at first, chasing her around the apartment, whacking her like a cat toy. But with time, they became good friends, snuggling together, she curled up in his furry tummy--spooning kitty style.
Bancroft died in the beginning of 1994. We found him dead under the house and buried him down the hill in a little glen next to a holy spring. I was very sad that my friend of 5 years was gone-he too traveled a lot from San Diego (his home) to San Francisco and then all the way to Moscow via London. But after a month or so of morning, Artem and I went to check out Moscow's bustling pet market. Not to get a cat per se but just to check out the animals. It was March and the snow was starting to melt and spring could be felt slowly creeping into the capital. The market was bustling that Sunday. The ladies with their basket of puppies and kittens; little Perisans and Russian blues with their fur brushed forward to look fuzzier, all sorts of bleach jobs done to make the white cats look whiter, puppies with little bows tied on their heads or around their necks. Men selling monkeys, exotic birds, nutrias (a relative of the muskrat prized for its fur) and even hedgehogs. The rows were so packed you could barely squeeze through. We pushed and shoved our way around looking at all the animals and picking up some cat food for Suly back home. I couldn't take any more of this so I stood off to the side in a clear spot waiting for Artem to get through the mass of people. When he did pop out, he was not alone. In his hands was a wee little tabby kitten looking around dazed and confused. Apparently, said Artem, he looked down at his feet and there were two big eyes looking up at him among the bustling crowd of feet. He would have been trampled for sure so Artem snatched him up. As soon as he plopped him in my hands, I knew Bancroft had returned. The little cat scurried up my arm and perched himself on my shoulder as we continued our walk around the market. "We should give him to somebody, we don't need another cat now", exclaimed Artem. "Nope, it's fate," I replied, "Bancroft has come back in a new form, he's ours." And that's how Felix came into my life. Whether Artem set the whole thing up, knowing I'd be a sucker for the kitten is still an unsolved mystery to me. To this day, Artem avers that the story happened as I just described it.
People grow up and they grow apart. After two years of being together, Artem and I broke up. It was an inevitable break up and I helped speed things along by taking a job in Ekaterinburg, the capital of the Urals, known as the place where they killed the Tsar and his family. I went east to the Urals and Artem went west to Germany. That decided, I took custody of the cats, packed all my stuff and headed to a place I had lived before. Old friends would greet me but a new job and new adventures awaited me. My main job was to travel around the Ural and Western Siberian region recruiting high school kids for a US-funded cultural exchange. While I was busy going to plaes like Nizhny Tagil, Tyumen, Kurgan, Ufa, Orenburg and Perm, Felix and Suly were busy doing the wild thing! As biology would have it, all that shagging resulted in two little black kittens. They happened to be born while I was in the US so my landlady Tatyana Mikhailovna, oversaw the whole process bless her heart. Suly took on her role as a mother like a horse to water. She took care of her babies with all the love she could give. She nursed her babies in the comfort of my armoire. Felix, just like a typical man, was trying to get it on with Suly right after the birth so I had to take him to the vet for neutering. Now that was an experience. They drug your cat, give him a snip, then give him back to you in a matter of minutes. No overnight stuff. So here I am taking a drugged cat home with no ability to produce anymore and a few stitches on his cajones to prove it. This calmed him down a bit and the family of four were able to be n the same apartment together. Upon my return from a US vacation, I was welcomed by the two little additions, black fuzzy clumps with four legs--Lulu and Eddy. As the grew, I knew I couldn't keep both of them so I wound up giving one away to an American teaching in town. Lulu stayed with mom and dad and Eddy went to Maria. Maria loved her Eddy so much, that she wound up taking her back to the US, settling in the Bronx. So the whole family of immigrant cats is now in NYC.
Now, Felix, Suly and Lulu are happy old Brooklynites. They lounge around the house, hang out in the garden, sleep by the radiator in winter, visit with Liz's cats upstairs, hang out in Jeff and Amy's place downstairs. Doing what cats do.

Creating the Canvas

I call my house "The House of Three Cats" since my 3 animals are the founding felines of the place. We are up to five (Liz has 2 upstairs) but they are the stars of the show. The idea was that this would be a mural of my three cats as the focal point. So I began to sketch some ideas. Would they be in a garden peeking out of bushes and half hiding behind giant flowers? Or Chagall-like flying around in a pale blue sky? No I wanted something to reflect their worldliness so I would have them in front of a New York skyline and a Russian one too to reflect their original home (Russia) and their American home (NYC).
Meanwhile I got busy prepping the "canvas" by scraping all the old paint off, filling in cracks and then painting white with masonry paint to seal up my "canvas". OK we have the main wall figured out, but what about the other spaces? I can't just leave those white--they'll get dirty! Well it should all represent something neighborhoody not just random birds or flowers. Back to the art studio then.

Let's start at the very beginning...

This is the beginning of my story--an ugly stoop and front wall. First, I wanted to mosaic the entire thing, but after dabbling in mosaic a bit, I realized that would be too time consuming and expensive. It's lean times baby so why not use whatcha got, right? Since I paint murals, I have tons of paints at my disposal. Hmm, now what to paint on this wall? This must be something grand, colourful and representative of my life and the life of the hood somehow. Let me go out back in my art studio and sketch out some ideas.