As Ugly as a Hedgehog

The story of Hans-My-Hedgehog has been the subject of a few posts here: one, which shows the grown half-man half-hedgehog Hans riding astride his rooster as king of the forest, (click here); the other, which is a self-portrait with said rooster and hedgehog (click here). Here is my second installment of Hans-My-Hedgehog, though really, it would be the first following the story's narrative.

As always, the Brothers Grimm version is grim indeed, focusing on the horror of the story.  They look to the father instead of the mother. The father wishes for a son to help him in his old age, to be heir to his farm:

'Once upon a time there was a peasant who had money and land enough, but as rich as he was, there was still something missing from his happiness: He had no children with his wife. Often when he went to the city with the other peasants, they would mock him and ask him why he had no children. He finally became angry, and when he returned home, he said, "I will have a child, even if it is a hedgehog."  Then his wife had a baby, and the top half was a hedgehog and the bottom half a boy. When she saw the baby, she was horrified and said, "Now see what you have wished upon us!"
The man said, "It cannot be helped. The boy must be baptized, but we cannot ask anyone to be his godfather."  The woman said, "And the only name that we can give him is Hans-My-Hedgehog."'

But they miss the point of view of the mother; they did not understand that longing for a child that can run in a woman's blood.

Anthony Minghella's version comes closer to the truth:

'That woman wanted a bairn so bad she wouldn't care what she got.  If she had a hedgehog, she'd bring its snout to her breast...No sooner said than done, she got her wish. No time at all, she has her boy, little ball as ugly as sin with a pointed nose and sprouting hair everywhere, a hedgehog baby with quills as soft as feathers."

One of my favorite renditions of this scene is by an illustrator named Ina, whose subtly-rendered drawings are filled with loving detail (click here).  Ina shows the nursing mother with her gentle, beastly baby. 

What would it be like to finally have that much-desired child, even if it were as ugly as a hedgehog? Would a mother truly scorn that child and make it sleep behind the stove?  Or would the mother love that child as the darling of her heart, would she cuddle it and rock it and nurse it in the night? Would she heat milk for it and feed it to him and sing lullabies into his quills?  What would you do?  This is what I would do.

"Rocking the Hedgehog Baby" Pencil. copyright 2012 Jessica Boehman

On the Third Day of Christmas

My true love gave to me three french hens, two turtle doves and a partridge in a pear tree.

Unfortunately due to a moving snafu and the start of teaching, I won't be able to complete the fourth day in time for Christmas (and my fall art sale in Chelsea) this year, especially if I hope to complete an envelope liner. But I am very happy with the three plump hens.  They came to fruition on September 11, ten years after such a sad day.  Living in NYC this year, it was more potent than I expected. I was glad to have something for my hands to do.  Do you recognize the same border from the partridge? I think it looks much different with its new French inhabitants. 

"The Third Day of Christmas" Pencil. Copyright 2011 Jessica Boehman

For Everett

My family has never been short on imagination.  I was lucky to grow up before the rise of the video game, the iPod, the iPad, the smartphone, and the internet.  My mom filled our rooms with shelves of books and art supplies and games that made us think.  When we were bored, she'd tell us to read a book, but just as often as not, we would be outside playing some made-up game that was desperately fun.  To this day, walking in to a children's book store, especially magical ones like Books of Wonder in NYC, makes me feel nostalgic and sad and yet very happy, all at the same time.  My youngest brother had, and still has, an especially developed imagination, and he would spend hours fighting dragons and roaring like Godzilla as he pretended to battle Mothra or Gidorah or some other nasty Japanese monster.  My oldest brother once made a drawing of Josh as he pretended to be Godzilla. Now that my oldest brother has a son of his own, I thought I'd reimagine that scene.

My baby nephew is awesome. He's perfecting animal noises and will soon be at that age when he'll enter the world of dragons, dinosaurs and giant mutant lizards from the sea.   For a birthday present for my brother, I've drawn his son, now about twenty months old, dressed up for trick-or-treating.  He's wearing his trusty dragon costume, designed to impart courage and to elicit monstrous roars.  Hearing a step behind him, he starts to turn.  What's that behind him?   I was  influenced in equal measure by Chris van Allsburg, Bill Watterson, and Maurice Sendak...three of the 20th century masters of drawing and storytelling.  It's an homage to children with imagination and to that perfect age when a backyard can become a place of wonderful adventure.

"Boy vs. Dinosaur" Pencil Copyright 2011 Jessica Boehman

Detail, "Boy vs. Dinosaur"                 

Die Bremer Stadtmusikanten

We moved to Northern Germany five days after my tenth birthday. Though we were originally slated to move to Bavaria, the famously beautiful part of the country, it was changed to Bremerhaven, a seaport on the North Sea.  My father went in advance of us and secured housing. I remember that video that he sent back for us of the house. We were nervous to move to a new country. I was in fifth grade and it was the first time any of us had lived abroad.  We didn't know any German and we would not be coming back to the States for three years...an interminable amount of time for me and literally more than a lifetime to my little brother Josh, who was still a toddler.

Bremerhaven had a military base, but the city itself was interesting to my eyes.  We lived a short walk or bike ride away from a beautiful, sprawling wooded park called Speckenbüttel. The downtown, also a short walk away, was cobblestoned and charming.  There were pastries and spaghetti ice to be had. At the port itself I watched boats sailing by and pretended they were pirate ships. I imagined I could see the coast of America and that I could see my friends waving at me from three thousand miles away.  I remember eating my first chocolate crepe there. My dad always got chocolate and banana, a combo I found odd at the time.

Really the best part of the year was Christmastime.  We lived about a half an hour away from Bremen. Actually, Bremerhaven was part of the Bremen state within Germany (West Germany at the time).  During Advent the town put on an amazing Weihnachtsmarkt, a Christmas market.  Vendors from all over I don't even know where came to sell ornaments and toys and the cutest stuffed bears and the most delicious foods.  One of my first really strong food memories was of these amazing mushrooms in this creamy sauce that one vendor sold here. We ate them alongside bratwurst stuck through brötchen and pommes frites.

My family at the Bronze pigs, Bremen.

Bremen boasted three other wonders. The first was a child's paradise, a street called Zur Böttcherstraße, which had this amazing toy shop that sold the best glass marbles and steelies and even a hand crank music box that played Für Elise, a song I loved as my friend Mandy's mother used to play it on the piano while I was at their home.  The second was this beautiful statue of the medieval hero Roland, which got my mind bent towards romance:

Roland statue, Bremen, Germany.

But the most famous part of Bremen was the statue of the Brothers Grimm folktale, "The Bremen Town Musicians," the story of a donkey, a dog, a cat and a rooster who all want to be singers. They meet each other on the road and have adventures together.  Can you spot me in the turquoise jacket? Hint: I haven't yet gotten my growth spurt.

The Bremen Town Musicians Statue, Bremen

I've been toying around with sketches for this drawing for years.  I finally re-imagined them as singers and musicians. In my mind, they are singing Mozart's "The Magic Flute."  Do you know the song? Then you can picture the rooster perfectly.  This drawing is an ode to those years of my childhood.

"The Bremen Town Musicians" Pencil. Copyright 2011 Jessica Boehman

Because everybody needs one...

"Giraffe Finds a Friend" Pencil. Copyright 2011 Jessica Boehman

I'm not sure, really, when and where inspiration strikes.  The other night I was paging through an old sketchbook, looking at seeds of ideas for Halloween images, fairy tales, and more, when I found a written line (not terribly common for me), which read, "Giraffe with a nest on his head."

It could happen, you know, as the giraffe is up so high in the trees as he searches for a snack among the leaves.  As I sketched it out, I realized the giraffe was happy to have that nest there, because it was the home of this little bird.  You see, they are fast friends.  Drawing this picture made me as happy as the giraffe seems to be.

Considering that my hair sometimes resembles a nest, and that once a bird actually tried to get some of the hair from my head for a nest, I empathize with the giraffe a bit, too.

The Animal Parade, Part 1

When I was a kid, my Aunt Judi used to sing us this song called "Animal Fair."  It was very evocative, conjuring images of animals playing and grooming under the moonlight.  One line, "the old raccoon by the light of the moon was brushing her auburn hair," always caught my fancy.  I've read other versions where it's a baboon instead, but their rainbow colors aren't as magical in the moonlight.  The raccoon is a night animal; he's a masked menace.  He burgled his way into my trash time and time again in North Carolina, but I still find them intriguing, as if they have another personality hidden under that mask that's mild-mannered, more Clark Kent than Cat Burglar. 

I wanted to pair two animals that you might catch a glimpse of in the woods.  The bear is something I've only seen once in the wild, and though we were alarmed, he was a bumbling sort, more interested in the grass than in the family bathing on the river dock not far away.  Here the bear and raccoon are a happy pair, and they ride in the parade in style, bedecked with bells as they announce their arrival...so as not to startle anyone. :)  This is the first in a series.

"Bear and Raccoon", part of the series "The Animal Parade" Pencil. Copyright 2011 Jessica Boehman

For Fozzie

My family dog, Fozzie, really should've been named Godzilla. As a puppy, he was a real Jekyll and Hyde, crazy one minute and sweet the next.  When I say crazy, it's because he would go under the couch at nighttime and throwdown with...who knows? The other Fozz? He would bark and growl and then whine. The couch would wobble with his efforts. It was really, really odd.  He's turned into a toothy, noisy berserker butterball, a weird combination to be sure, with a deep abiding love for my family, and especially my brother-in-law.

One day while visiting home I was watching Fozz sit in the family room with his head resting on the stair to the kitchen. All of our dogs, Merlin, Jumper, and Fozzie all sat this way.  For a moment, he looked like a beast, a wild animal, and I thought about how weird it is to have an animal in the house.  Here's Fozzie running in the park not far from our house. He gets so excited he can't really stand it.

"Fozzie Running" Photo by Meghan Boehman

 

 

 

"Sweetheart" Photo by Meghan Boehman

I started to think about what it would be like to have a dragon that acted like Fozzie.  So here he is, with the squishiest squeaky I can imagine. He's a little cross-eyed and his teeth are a little weird, but you can tell he has a big heart and a soft spot for tearing stuffing out of toys.

"My Pet Dragon" Pencil. Copyright 2011 Jessica Boehman

Sneak Peek--Giraffe Liner

This is a sneak peak of my second liner, inspired by the graceful giraffes that I got to feed while in Singapore with my husband. I'm always amazed by the sheer size of these creatures, and by their gracefulness in bearing in spite of their amazing height.

Sneak Peek

Here is a sneak peek of first design for the envelope liner. Currently I have two different designs, with hopes of having a complete line so that card sets will all have different images and different liners.  I am striving to make every aspect of my cards whimsical and unique.  Of course, in order to see the entire design, you'll have to buy a card or card set from my shop.  Enjoy!

Sneak Peek of Envelope Liner. Pencil. Copyright 2011 Jessica Boehman

Gruff

"Goat with Horns" Pencil. Copyright 2011 Jessica Boehman

The goat is the fourth in the series of the Delacorte clock animals.  He's the one animal with cultural references.  Playing a double-horned aulos, he refers back to Greece.  Though all goat, he reminds me of the half-man half-goat satyr, the mischievous woodland creature of Greek myth.  Though artists in the Renaissance and points forward have made the goat a devilish or witchly character, the bearded, dancing Delacorte goat is playful, making music in a joyous menagerie.

The Kangaroo and the Elephant

The next two images for the Delacorte series were the Kangaroo with her kid playing the horns and the Elephant with Accordion.  When I was a child, I had a powerful desire to ride in a kangaroo pouch. This was, undoubtedly, spurred by the movie "Dot and the Kangaroo", where one of the songs is called "Riding in the Pouch of a Red Kangaroo".  This little kid seems so contented to be carried by his mother and joins in the music-making. 

"Kangaroo and Kid with Horns" Pencil. Copyright 2011 Jessica Boehman

The Elephant drawing immediately followed the "Walking the Dog" drawing seen below, so it was at once familiar and unusual.  Having just realized a very elephantine elephant, it seemed a bit strange to make one more human, playing the accordion.  Both the animal and his instrument remind me of moving to northern Germany.  My memories of this time are childlike, as we moved there five days after my tenth birthday, and are generally colored grey in my mind, likely due to the cool, cloudy weather that predominated there.  Our first house was in a German neighborhood, not within the large American complexes where many of my friends lived.  We lived a short walk away from a beautiful, sprawling forest park where we spent hours upon hours riding our bikes and pretending to be Robin Hood.  We also were a short walk from the cobblestoned downtown area with its tiny shops.  Of particular interest to a ten year-old child were the bakery that served these delicious, swirled meringue-type cookies, and the toystore.  German toystores were a thing of wonder (even if we weren't very welcome there as part of the army of Americans in town). Filled with puzzles and detailed plastic figures and trains and stuffed animals, we spent many hours gazing, wishing and making Christmas lists.  Since we arrived near Thanksgiving, I knew I had a good chance of getting my favorite toy in the shop for Christmas.  It was a blue baby elephant stuffed toy, whose fur was so soft and cuddly. I fell in love with him and couldn't bear the thought of a month of waiting to see if he would be mine.  On Christmas morning, when I found him waiting for me under the tree, I was the happiest a child could have been on that day.  It's still one of my all-time favorite gifts.  The accordion also reminds me of Germany, and not for stereotypical reasons.    After we had moved to our second house, there was this old German man who would come door-to-door with his accordion.  He would play without ringing the bell until we answered the door.  When offered money, he would always decline, asking instead for a Coke.  I always wanted to write to the Coca-Cola company with this idea for a commercial.  So as it is, that elephant with accordion must have been made just for me.  That's how I see him, in any case.

"Elephant with Accordion" Pencil. Copyright 2011 Jessica Boehman

The Delacorte Clock

My absolute favorite part of NYC is Central Park. It's where my husband and I first got to know each other, where we spent beautiful fall days, and where we got engaged.  Now, we live within a 10 minute walk to the park and to my favorite spot there, the Children's Zoo and Delacorte Clock. The area around this part of the park is all for children. There is a petting zoo and a larger zoo with pandas and penguins and monkeys.  There are statues of Alice in Wonderland and Hans Christian Andersen reading to children.  There's that famous lake with remote-controlled boats.  My favorite animals in the zoo are the sea lions, which you can see without entering the zoo.  They always make the kids laugh with their belching noises.  As you stand watching the sea lions (which I've named Edgar, Oscar and Lucy), you can also listen to the nursery book rhyme music coming from the Delacorte Clock.

The Delacorte Clock, Central Park, New York City

Its dancing animals making music are a wonder to behold. It makes me feel like a kid again, standing in Germany, watching those old clocks turn in the squares of medieval towns.  I've dedicated a series of drawings to these animals; in fact, they were much of the inspiration for my shop's theme (a whimsical menagerie).  I'll be sharing them one by one. My favorite is the bear.  If you look closely, you can see him; he's the right-most figure. He is joyous, lighthearted and delightful, and he makes me smile.

"Dancing Bear" Pencil. Copyright 2011 Jessica Boehman

Pals

"Walking the Dog" Pencil. Copyright 2011 Jessica Boehman

It's funny that as an adult I've come to love the zoo. We only went a handful of times as a kid, but since living in closer proximity to the animals while in Rome, Philadelphia and New York, I've gotten to spend more time there.  Last year, I met my best friend in Pittsburgh for my birthday. Together with our fiances, we wandered through the zoo. It was a beautiful, warm fall day.  We spent lots of time enjoying the antics of a baby elephant and listening to the surprisingly loud (and slightly terrifying) sound of a gorilla pounding his chest.  She always loved those elephants and I remember how we both reacted with childlike excitement when we got to ride one (although not together).  The one animal she loves even more is the basset hound, with their silly seriousness,  those large, melancholy eyes, that funny, low-slung gait, and their deep hound dog howl.  We even spent one day in State College, PA, driving to a nearby basset hound farm, where we got to pet those short lil' fellas.  Now that we're both crazy old married ladies, I hope we will never forget those days of childlike wonder and imagination.  So this one is for you, best friend. I hope that life will always bring you elephants and basset hounds, and if you're lucky, it will bring both at the same time.

Barocco

Ponte Sant'Angelo at dusk. Photo by the author. Copyright 2011 Jessica Boehman

I specialize in the study of Italian 17th-century sculpture. In my many trips to Rome and during the year that I lived there, my favorite place was always the Ponte Sant'Angelo.  This ancient bridge was the site of many a papal procession. It was also touched by miracles: the legends have it that a vision of St. Michael alighted on the topmost crenellation of the Castel Sant'Angelo, then better known as the Mausoleum of Hadrian. At that moment, the Eternal City was in the midst of a virulent plague, and when Michael sheathed his sword, the plague stopped. They erected a statue of him there, which has since been replaced.  That statue was said to bow to a miraculous icon of the Virgin Mary as it was carried across the bridge in procession, on the way back to St. Peter's Basilica by way of the Via della Conciliazione.  At nighttime, when the vendors have left and the pedestrians rule the way, it is a place of peace and beauty. Lights shine on the angels erected in the 1660s by Gianlorenzo Bernini, et al.  The Basilica, lit from afar, shines like a jewel over the Tiber River. 

Basilica di San Pietro at  night. Photo by author. Copyright 2011 Jessica Boehman

The procession down the bridge, whether by day or night, is a virtual tour through the final moments of Jesus. Each angel holds a relic associated with the Passion; we'll see the column and whip where Christ was scourged.  Other angels hold the Sudarium, the cloth used by Veronica to wipe his face free of sweat and blood as he carried the cross, the nails, the cloak and dice, the cross, the sponge, and the spear.   It is a pilgrimage bridge that takes you from torture to death, but in the most elegant way. The angels are serene, comforting. 

I've twice used the bridge as a source of inspiration. One was for a drawing for my mother.  This is a sculpture that I know intimately, The Angel with the Cross by Ercole Ferrata. I wrote about it in my dissertation, as its author was the subject of my project.  A drawing can't show the technical difficulties in carving from marble a figure holding a cross aloft, so instead, I concentrated on the challenge of rendering the folds in the cloth, the curls of the hair, and the grace of those fingers that gently support the cross.

"Angel with the Cross" Pencil drawing. Copyright 2011 Jessica Boehman

The other was for a drawing for my husband, long before we were married. This renders a wider view of Paolo Naldini's Angel with the Cloak and Dice.  Foretold by prophets that no man would divide Christ's garments when they stripped him for execution, the soldiers instead cast lots for it. The angel becomes a double for the Roman soldier who won the bet.   It was this drawing that actually gave me the inspiration for the Christmas card of the Annunciation to the Shepherds, seen below.  When faced with the background, I knew I wanted it black. One reason I love the Baroque is the rampant use of chiaroscuro, allowing me to sink into the image's inky blackness.  Only here, I decided to make the sky a combination of textures composed of angels and feathers. 

"Angel with the Cloak and Dice" Pencil Drawing. Copyright 2011 Jessica Boehman

Dream Flight

2010 has been a difficult year, full of love and loss. When dogged by stress and difficulty, I turn to drawings. More often than not, the drawings will take me someplace happier, someplace easier, which for me usually means back to childhood, when we just didn't know any better.
In times of stress, my dreams kick into full gear. It's like having a movie theatre in my head (and generally, those dreams are not very happy). This dream, however, wasn't my own flight of fancy.  My little sister, a talented artist studying animation in her freshman year of college, told me about this dream she had when she was younger.  She dreamt that she was flying through the sky on the back of a rhino...not the sort of vehicle one might expect to ride in a dream.  I was in the process of making drawings for all of my family members, and I thought this one might be perfect for her. Though I am sure the image does not match what she saw as she flew through the sky in her dream, it's how I saw her.  I've made the rhino pulling high up into the sky, above the cloud line, the way a plane flies. I love sitting in the window seat of planes and watching the world pass by.  It's the way I've visited places I'll likely never get to on foot, like Russia, Elba, and Greenland.  My sister is in pajamas, which look less like hers and more like a pair I own. She rides the rhino with ease, bareback, her curly hair blowing in the wind. I imagine it's dawn, and that she sees the rising sun painting the clouds pink and gold. I remember watching the sun rise over the Atlantic once as I flew alone to Italy. The sea was pure gold. It was one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen, and this way, I made sure that she could see it, too.

"Dream Flight" Pencil Drawing. Copyright 2011 Jessica Boehman

A bit about me and Hans...

I came to art as a very young child.  I remember asking for a sketch book for a birthday or Christmas present when I was maybe six or seven. My mom bought me a small, grey-covered ringed sketchbook. In fact, I still have it. It's filled with marker drawings of superheroes of my own design and pencil sketches of my dog.  Though it was the first of many, I will always keep the first evidence of my love of art close to my heart.  

One of my first memories about art was during the brief appearance of Halley's Comet in the winter of 1985. I had just turned eight.  I remember my dad waking us from our beds in Killeen, TX, to bring us outside in the cold winter air. (Even in Texas, it did get cold in the winter). We peered up into the clear night sky with my dad's binoculars, looking at that fuzzy-tailed smudge of light a million miles away. At that time, I was head-over-heels in love with astronomy. I had read every book in the elementary school library about the stars and planets. I remember being so excited to have seen a comet that I stayed up for an hour or more after seeing it to draw a pastel image of it, seen through the black borders caused by the binoculars. I wish I still had that picture, because that was the day that I knew I wanted to be an artist. After that, there was no stopping me from drawing.  I eventually graduated with a degree in Studio Art and Art History, with a concentration in Illustration.

In contrast to my early discovery of art-making, I came to be an art historian much later, but it really started with a love affair with Bernini and Michelangelo in the ninth and tenth grades. I didn't know it then, but flipping through some art books was going to change my life.  The love intensified in college under two wonderful professors who encouraged me and taught me to teach through their own actions.  After many years of toil, a year abroad in Rome, and after meeting many wonderful friends, I eventually earned my master's degree and my Ph.D. in Art History. I now teach college-level students in New York City to find the beauty and humor of art. 

Though I work by day as a professor of Art History, my first love will always be creating art. When I'm drawing, I feel like that child again.

As for Hans, our story is twenty years old.  I had always loved fairy tales and myths as a child.  One of my favorite books is still the compilation entitled, "The Magic Tree and other Tales."  I was first introduced to "Hans My Hedgehog" through Jim Henson's The Storyteller series that briefly ran on TV. The script was so gorgeous and the visuals left an indelible mark on me.  The next year, we moved to northern Germany with my father, who was stationed there. One day I was playing with a friend at a nearby park and we saw something moving in the grass. It was a little, spiked ball.  I knew immediately what we were seeing, and at that moment, I do not think I had ever been more excited. We picked up the tiny hedgehog and carried him home. Looking back on it, we never should have done that, for a myriad of reasons, but he was soft and adorable and I was 12 and didn't know any better.  We only kept him for a few days before returning him to nature. Ever since then, I have loved those prickly little creatures.

"Hans-My-Hedgehog" Pencil. Copyright 2011 Jessica Boehman

This illustration came to life in Rome. I had a pad of paper and a pencil and no other art supplies except for a pen and one red marker. Here, I rediscovered my love of drawing, and decided to illustrate a scene from my favorite Grimm's tale:

"When Hans-My-Hedgehog had them, he said, "Father, go to the blacksmith's and have my cock-rooster shod, then I will ride away and never again come back." The father was happy to get rid of him, so he had his rooster shod, and when it was done, Hans-My-Hedgehog climbed on it and rode away. He took pigs and donkeys with him, to tend in the forest.  In the forest the rooster flew into a tall tree with him. There he sat and watched over the donkeys and the pigs. He sat there for years, until finally the herd had grown large. His father knew nothing about him. While sitting in the tree, he played his bagpipes and made beautiful music.  One day a king came by. He was lost and heard the music. He was amazed to hear it, and sent a servant to look around and see where it was coming from. He looked here and there but only saw a little animal sitting high in a tree. It looked like a rooster up there with a hedgehog sitting on it making the music."

So that's how I've rendered him, in that moment of making magic with his pipes, up in the tree, calling a siren song and a lullaby to donkeys, pigs and kings.