Adapting the Brothers Grimm

I'm excessively fond of fairytales, folktales, and fables.  I love the dark, troubled and murky waters you land in when reading them.  They rarely have a fully happy ending; even if there is love, there is usually death.  The stories start with heartbreak, deceit, or loss and don't always resolve into something that sits gently in the corners of your mind.  But there is magic, too, made by animals who speak and bestow gifts, fairies and sprites who heal and kill, goblins who steal secrets and babies, and trolls who live under bridges and in the rocky fabric of the mountains of the cold, bleak subarctic lands. The rich stories, passed on by mouth until they were finally transcribed in numerous sources, speak to our shared cultural past.

One of my favorite fairy tales, as you now know, is Hans-My-Hedgehog.  The Brothers Grimm version is unrelentingly harsh.  The poor hedgehog boy is unwanted, untended, and unloved.  He finally flees and becomes a sort of king of the forest. He eventually, though his own cleverness, wins a princess, but is forced to have his skin of quills burned, turning his own human skin underneath charcoal-black, to be freed from his enchantment.

Anthony Minghella later retold several fairy stories when he penned them for Jim Henson's undertaking, The Storyteller.  In his rendition of Hans, he infused the characters with life, feeling, and love: we get glimpses of the pain of barrenness in a woman, the heartbreaking longing for a child, a wish and a wish answered.  A baby boy is born, part boy and part hedgehog, but the mother cherishes her baby.  But the father remained unmoved at the sight of his strange child:

“For every quill that he had on his body, Hans had an animal for a friend, as many friends as he had quills. He had a special way with these creatures and they loved him. He could talk to them. If his mother was looking for him, she would always go first to the place where the rooster strutted, a proud soldier of hens. Hans tended to this bird, polished his beak, combed his comb, and fed and fattened him, and it wasn’t long before the rooster was the biggest rooster you could imagine, a hugeness, a vast red rooster all plump and flush-feathered.  Whenever the sadness came, whenever he caught his reflection in a pool, and saw his strange beast-boy face, Hans would run to these friends and be among them, for they found him neither strange nor odd but magnificent.  “Father," he said in his flute voice, ”I want you to do some things for me. I want you to go to the village and have a saddle made for my rooster so I can ride him.  And I want some sheep and some cattle and some pigs. They would be happy to come with me where I go. Which is away. Which is to somewhere.  Where I can’t hurt no one and no one can hurt me.”

The boy grows to be the king of a fine sylvan castle, and does indeed win a princess.  In true fairytale fashion, it's not that easy.  She betrays him, he flees again.  The second winning will be done by her, proving her love for her wedded husband. 

I've made a self-portrait that weaves in two elements of my favorite fairytale: the rooster and the hedgehog.  In the background is text from the story.

"Self Portrait with Fairytale" Pencil.  Copyright 2012 Jessica Boehman

The Cold of Winter

Winter is still a pretty great time to visit the zoo.  There are no crowds, and though many of the animals are taking it easy, you can still enjoy yourself at the petting zoo.  There, the llamas, alpacas, cows, horses, pigs, sheep and goats still vie for your attention unabashedly.  My husband and I visited the Queens Zoo for the first time on New Year's Eve.  What better way to end the year than hanging with the animals?  We met some new friends.

Me and the alpaca at the Queens Zoo.  He only wants me for my pellets.

Seeing all of these animals wearing their winter coats, I was grateful for how their wool keeps me warm in the winter as well.  My favorite winter hat is a Peruvian style alpaca wool hat, died bright colors.  You won't miss me in a snow storm.  Some of my favorite pictures of my husband and I are in our Peruvian hats.  

Indeed, this basically served as our engagement photo, as we never had any taken. My little sister did a photo shoot with us in our hats on Black Friday 2009.

In our Peruvian hats.

Here I am again in my hat at Cromwell Manor Inn in Cornwall, NY for my birthday weekend this past November.  They had a hammock, cool fall air, a petting zoo next door at Jones Farm, and crisp blue skies.  Bliss.  

In the hammock in my hat.

So I made a drawing to show how animals may keep warm, too.  Here are many friends I've met recently: the alpaca and the sheep from Queens Zoo, the rooster and spotted pig from Jones Farm, and a winter goose from the Brooklyn Zoo.  May you all be warm, safe, happy and healthy in this New Year.

"Staying Warm" Pencil and digital color.  Copyright 2012 Jessica Boehman

It's amazing how much it looks like the hasty sketch I made on a yellow post-it note.

Initial sketch for "Staying warm"

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

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.