Friday, July 31, 2009

UNSUITED - Friday Flash 55



This post is in response to
The idea is to write a story in exactly 55 words.
Click on the yellow link above to join the fun or read others’ stories.





Entering PetroAm’s lobby, John passed through the security scanner with his briefcase. An alarm sounded.

“I forgot my badge. I’m John Wallington Wexford,” he announced indignantly.

“We know,” the guard said, already dialing the memorized number.

“Dr. Landon, I’m afraid Mr. Wexford has escaped again. The hospital gown and slippers give him away every time.”


I'm going to be at a Mark Twain Conference next week, so I probably will not participate in Friday Flash 55 on 8/7/09.
I will have internet access, but I will be so busy, I doubt I will have time for anything except checking email.
See you in two weeks.
(©2009, C.J. Peiffer)

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

MANWICH™ PIZZA - Easy Recipe


I love nothing better than an easy recipe with few ingredients. A friend suggested this to me, and gave me a verbal recipe. I tried it and my husband and I like it, so we make it occasionally. I never use a recipe, I just throw it together with what I have available.

Ingredients:
amounts are approximate: use more or less as you prefer

•1 pre-made pizza crust or focaccia
•1.25 lb. ground turkey (regular or all breast meat which has less fat) or 1 lb. ground beef or 1 lb. cubed chicken breast
•1 can of Manwich™ sauce
•Shredded mozzarella or provolone or sliced provolone to cover pizza
•Optional: sauteed onions or peppers, sauteed or drained canned mushrooms, cooked broccoli, sliced tomatoes, or other traditional pizza toppings. Be creative.

Preparation:

•Cook the meat.
•Add enough Manwich™ sauce to cover the meat, but not enough to make it soupy ---usually about 3/4 of a can. Heat until hot.
•Spread the cooked meat mixture on your pizza crust.
•Place other toppings either on top of the meat mixture or on top of the cheese, whichever you prefer.
•Cover with cheese.

Bake according to the pizza crust's instructions.
If there are no instructions heat long enough for the crust to brown or if the focaccia is already baked, make sure the toppings (except the cheese) are hot, then heat the assembled pizza in a hot oven (450-475 degrees) just long enough for the cheese to melt.

Enjoy!

Saturday, July 25, 2009

SOME THINGS YOU MIGHT NOT KNOW ABOUT MARK TWAIN

This article is in response to
Click on the yellow link to join in or read other entries.

See the answer to last week's question:
"What famous person was hiding under the clown makeup?"
Click HERE.

How it works: Raven supplies two sets of words (or phrases) to use in a piece of writing. One can choose the ten- or five-word challenge ---or combine both into a fifteen word mega-challenge.

Mega Challenge: riverboat, procrastinaton, drank, demons, invisible, candle, enough, film stars, summer job, computer, general demeanor, surprisingly, masked man, reach, standards
(Words from the challenge are in bold face in the story.)

Even though I submitted this week’s words (which I chose at random) it took me
a long time to decide what to write. Eventually, the word “riverboat” prompted
me to write a non-fiction piece about one of my favorite writers.

I can imagine Mark Twain in the 1880s, writing his most famous novel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by candlelight in his study, which was also his billiard room on the third floor of his mansion in Hartford, CT. Many people said that Twain wanted his home to look like a riverboat, reminiscent of the ones he piloted before the Civil War stopped traffic on the Mississippi River. Its style has been referred to as “Steamboat Gothic.”
Twain had started Huck Finn in 1876, worked on it again in 1879, but set it aside when his "well ran dry." What may have motivated Twain to overcome his long period of procrastination was a trip down the Mississippi nearly twenty years after the Civil War. He was living in New England next door to Harriet Beecher Stowe and married to Livy Langdon, who was from a wealthy abolitionist family, so he was worlds away from the boy who grew up in a slaveholding community in Missouri. He may have been surprised that the racial situation in the south had not changed much since his days in Hannibal. Once he pulled Huck off the shelf in 1882, he was able to complete his novel, which was published in 1884.
Twain’s summer job was to work on his writing at Quarry Farm, the home of his sister-in-law, where he, his wife and three daughters spent their summers on a hill overlooking Elmira, NY. His sister-in-law had a small octagonal study built for him on a little rise above the farm house. Now it is located on the campus of Elmira College.

Twain’s wife Livy held his writing to high standards. Today, some scholars think that, in her effort to keep him on the straight and narrow, she acted as a censor who prevented him from reaching an even higher level of creative expression. Others are sure her influence was superficial. Yet, without her wealth Twain might never have had the opportunity to be a full-time writer.
Twain was one of the first people to embrace the typewriter as a writing tool. He liked new innovations. In more recent times, he probably would have been one of the first writers to adopt a computer to create his novels. But technology had brought him trouble.
Young Sam Clemens had worked as a newspaper typesetter, assembling tiny raised letters into columns, a tedious job for a boy. Typesetting technology had not changed much sincce Gutenberg’s first movable type in he 15th century. So when Twain was a successful writer and asked to invest in a typesetting machine, he jumped at the chance. The problem was that the Paige typesetter had 18,000 parts, so it broke down frequently and Twain, not knowing when to say “Enough” invested good money after bad, eventually going through his wife’s fortune and his own earnings from several popular books. Meanwhile, before Paige’s machine was perfected, someone developed a mechanical linotype machine that became the newspaper standard. Paige’s failed compositor now rests at the Mark Twain home in Hartford.
Twain suffered from invisible demons. He felt guilt over the death of his younger brother in a riverboat accident, because he had procurred employment on the river for Henry. He also felt responsible for the death of his only son, a sickly toddler who died after a carriage ride in cold weather. He felt responsible for the debt his family incurred. He also felt guilty that he was out of the country on a lecture tour to pay off his debts when his eldest daughter died from meningitis at age 24 in 1896. Twain and his family found it impossible to return to the Hartford home where Suzy had died.
Twain’s general demeanor was calm and fun loving, but not surprisingly, like many creative people, Twain could be moody and even go into rages. In some ways he was like a masked man, hiding his pain behind a mask of humor.
In his lifetime, Twain was about as close as one could get, in that era, to being a super star. In fact, there is a very short, grainy silent film of him walking around Stormfield, his last home (in Redding CT) so, in a way, he had become a film star.
I read the usual Twain books when I was young, Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, The Prince and the Pauper, A Connecticut Yankee, Puddinhead Wilson, but it was as an adult, when I drank from his social commentary, that I fell under Twain’s spell. Now, I am as interested in the man himself as I am in his writing.

6th International Conference on Mark Twain Studies, Elmira, NY August 6-8, 2009
Registration deadline: 7/27/09, just 2 days away. (You can fax or call in your registration.)
I will be attending.
Find more information, schedule and registration forms HERE.
(art©2002, photo©1997, text©2009, C.J. Peiffer)

Friday, July 24, 2009

WHO WAS THAT CLOWN?



On last weeks WORDZZLE challenge "CLOWNING AROUND" I made a clown from a photo of a famous person. I challenged readers to guess who it was. No one took me up on the challenge.

Scroll down to see who is behind the clown makeup.
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JUST SAY “NO” - Friday Flash 55

This post is in response to
The idea is to write a story in exactly 55 words.
Click on the yellow link above to join the fun or read others’ stories.


Suzanna had to admit Jeremy was drop-dead handsome and a sweet guy, too.
“Will you be my girlfriend,” he asked.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Among other things, you’re far too young for me.”
“I’m seventeen,” Jeremy said, staring at her with his ice-blue eyes.
“I’m thirty.”
“What does that matter?”
“It matters.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m your teacher.”
(©2009, C.J. Peiffer)

Sunday, July 19, 2009

HERBIE TAKES A STROLL



"HERBIE TAKES A STROLL"

(click on image for larger view)

This image is in response to

CAMERA CRITTERS SUNDAY

and

ODD SHOTS

Click on the links to post your own images

or see what others have posted.


He may look like a totally pampered dog, maybe even a spoiled one, however Herbie is an older dog who suffers from arthritis, so when his human parents walk at North Park (Allegheny County, PA) Herbie gets V.I.D. ---Very Important Dog ---treatment. He will walk for a short distance, but when he tires his owners lift him into his stroller.

The area near the swimming pool where my husband and I walk is about a mile and a half oval, with one crossover road that is approximately another quarter mile. We don't walk there every day, nor do we always walk at the same time. Even if Herbie and his family are at the park, they may be at the opposite end of the walking area, so we may miss them. But Herbie has a very distinctive bark, so I often hear him, even if I don't see him.

Herbie seems to be a much-loved pet. And he probably is totally pampered and spoiled. I hope so, because Herbie is currently my favorite dog and I look forward to seeing him on our walks.

Good doggie!
















(©2009, C.J. Peiffer)

Saturday, July 18, 2009

CLOWNING AROUND - Short Fiction

This short story is in response to
Click on the above link to join in or read other entries.

How it works: Raven supplies two sets of words (or phrases) to use in a piece of writing. One can choose the ten- or five-word challenge ---or combine both into a fifteen word mega-challenge.

Mega Challenge: corn pone, delegation, nectarines, happiness, 12 going on 13, prancing horses, magenta, butterflies, fragmentary, arthritis, lavender cowboy, over the moon, preparation, zebra, area rug
(Words from the challenge are in bold face in the story.)

Darla had been trying to rid herself of her phobias for years. Her therapist convinced her that some of them were not a problem. If she stayed away from the African section at the zoo, she wouldn’t have to address her fear of zebras. She wasn’t likely to run into one in her ordinary life.
She had never been able to take her children to the circus because of her fear of clowns. When she was 12, going on 13, a clown had jumped out at her from a dark alley on Halloween and ever since then she burst into tears when she saw a clown, even on TV.
Now Darla was a grandmother and she was determined to take her grandchildren to the circus before the arthritis in her knees got any worse.
In preparation, her therapist helped her to use the computer to make famous people into clowns, first by changing the colors of their clothes, then adding white faces, red noses, broad mouths, and wigs. She made clowns from photos of beautiful movies stars like Angelina and Brad. She made clowns out of politicians. Bill Clinton already had a large red nose. She even made one from a photo of herself. Gradually she became accustomed to looking at the silly faces and was able to look at the clown pictures without crying.
Then her therapist had her visit a clown in his home. He met her at the door without makeup. As she watched him put on makeup, the gradual transformation to clown didn’t frighten her. Only after he donned his wild magenta wig did she feel like there were prancing horses in her stomach. She backed up and almost tripped over an area rug. She kept telling herself, “He’s just a man in makeup; he’s just a man in makeup” until she calmed down.
Her friends formed a delegation to support her. They told funny stories of clown acts and offered to accompany her to the circus. But Darla decided she could do it on her own.
On the big day, Darla made lunch for herself, Jon and Jessy. She packed Jessy’s favorite fruit, nectarines and Jon’s favorite food, his grandmother’s famous corn pone baked with crumbled cooked sausage mixed in the batter. They ate their lunches in the park across from the huge tent that had been set up for the circus.
As Darla discarded the wrappings from lunch, she had butterflies in her stomach, but she gathered her courage and entered the tent with her grandchildren.
The master of ceremonies was the famous Lavendar Cowboy, who wore a violet silk shirt, purple suede chaps, and a lavendar felt cowboy hat. Even his white horse had lilac ribbons in his main and tail.
Jon loved the lions and tigers, while Jessy thought the trained horses with acrobats on their backs were over the moon.
Without warning, twenty clowns ran from behind a curtain. Darla gasped. For a fragmentary second, she was terrified. She quickly closed her eyes and kept saying her mantra, “They’re ordinary people in makeup” over and over. Jessy grabbed her right hand. Then Jon grabbed her left one. When she heard them both laughing, Darla opened her eyes. Then she started to laugh, too.
Darla decided that happiness was overcoming her own fears and spending a perfect day with the grandchildren.
Next on her agenda, her unreasonable fear of thunderstorms.

* * * * * * *
Can you guess the name of the famous person whose
photo was used to make the clown image?

* * * * * * *

Update: 7/24/09: see which famous person was
used to create the clown HERE.

(©2009, C.J. Peiffer)

Friday, July 17, 2009

WHAT’S IN A NAME? - Friday Flash 55

This post is in response to
The idea is to write a story in exactly 55 words.
Click on the yellow link above to join the fun or read others’ stories.

All Calico wanted was a warm lap, a bowl of tuna, chin scratches, and a sunny spot for a nap.

She rubbed against the bars and looked sadly at the young woman.

Soon she was in the woman’s lap and away from the shelter. The lady called her Patches, but Calico could live with that.


(Photo note: The photo is of my cat Patches. I added the bars digitally. Patches was not adopted from a shelter like my fictional cat, but was the daughter of Calico, a pregnant stray who adopted us. Unlike her long-haired daughter, short-haired Calico loved to be petted, but she hated to be picked up, always retaining some of her feral instincts. Patches was a sweet and lovable girl who loved to sit on our laps. Both eventually succumbed to illnesses in old age. Calico's all-white son, Mr. Snowball, survived them both, but eventually died, too. Now we have only one cat, Lunette. You can read about her HERE.)
(©2009, C.J. Peiffer)

Monday, July 13, 2009

ALIENation


This image is in response to
Click on the link to post your own image
or see what others have posted.

One day, I found the above alien creature in my garage. Well...... I admit it really looked much more like this:


(scroll down)







But then, under the buggy eyes, I found this:

My good-looking, blue-eyed husband. I'm not sure what he was doing, but I remember he was filthy when he returned to the house.
(©2009, C.J. Peiffer)

Saturday, July 11, 2009

YOU BETCHA' - Short Fiction
















This short story is in response to
Click on the above link to join in or read other entries.

How it works: Raven supplies two sets of words (or phrases) to use in a piece of writing. One can choose the ten- or five-word challenge ---or combine both into a fifteen word mega-challenge.

Mega Challenge: sober, spoilage, knight, laugh and the world laughs with you, peak, blueberries, owl, drugstore, lampshade, keyboard, economy, Michael Jackson, ladder, clue, structure
(Words from the challenge are in bold face in the story.)

Rachel had been pulling weeds around the flowers near the low fence between her property and the neighbors’. She hadn’t seen her annoying neighbor all day, so she thought she was safe. Suddenly, sandaled feet were only inches from the weed she was pulling.
“Did you hear?” her neighbor asked. Mimi looked a little dazed. She wore a filthy shirt that looked like she had smeared blueberries all over it. Rachel wondered if she were sober. Maybe the shirt was stained with wine. Mimi was always an odd duck, but she'd never seen her like this before.
Rachel imagined Mimi at a party. She would be the sloppy drunk brooding by herself in a corner, while her husband John would be wearing a lampshade and dancing the Macarena.
“Hear what? Rachel asked.
“Sarah resigned.”
“Who?”
“Sarah Palin. Did you hear?” she asked.
“You betcha,” Rachel answered. She couldn’t help herself.
“I just love her. What do you like best about her?”
“She thinks she's a maverick,” Rachel said, emphasizing the word 'thinks.'
Mimi missed Rachel’s sarcasm.
“And Michael Jackson. I still can’t believe he’s dead. I just know his career was going to peak again. Don’t you love his music?”
“Can’t 'Beat It.'” Rachel never listened to pop music, so until a few weeks earlier, she had no clue what songs Jackson had made famous. But with the 24/7 news coverage, she could hardly miss hearing a few of the titles. Didn’t the national news have more pressing issues to report, like maybe the miserable economy, Rachel asked herself.
“Which is your favorite song?” Mimi asked.
“'I’m Bad,'” Rachel said, adding after a pause “at remembering song titles.”
“I asked John to buy me an organ, you know, one of those ones that the keyboard plays itself so I can play Michael’s music all day.”
Rachel decided not to ask why she wanted to do that rather than buy CDs.
Mimi, still looking dazed, sprinkled some spoilage from her kitchen around her tomato plants, over-ripe banana slices and potato peels. Then she climbed a short ladder to adjust the owl sculpture on top of her trellis. Rachel had always assumed it was to scare birds from her garden, yet Mimi had recently added fifteen bird feeders to her eclectic assortment of yard decor. The trellis’ structure wasn’t very sturdy. Rachel thought it was going to topple over, but it just swayed back and forth a few times before settling.
Mimi was swaying a little herself. She moved unsteadily around the yard, between her windmill, plastic flamingos, rusty sculpture that looked like a knight in not-so-shiny armor, and cut outs that resembled the couple in “American Gothic.” She moved two of her gnomes from behind orange marigolds. When she looked up, she seemed surprised to find Rachel still weeding.
“I don’t like that weirdo that replaced Jay Leno,” Mimi said. “When do you think they’ll get rid of him, that Brian O'Connor guy?”
“In the year 3000,” Rachel answered. She knew she was being bitchy, but she was in that kind of mood.
“What do you think of our commie president? I heard he wants to eliminate pennies. Do you think that’s true?””
Rachel had to think for a few seconds tbefore answering, “That’s a change we can believe in.” She’d heard the treasury department had suggested that move years ago, but hadn't heard anything lately.
“Do you think we can impeach him?”
“Yes we can,” Rachel answered, trying not to go for Mimi’s jugular. Hadn’t Mimi seen her Obama ‘08 bumper sticker last year? No one could miss Mimi’s Bush/Cheney 2000 and 2004 stickers, still on the back of her gas guzzler.
“Do you know anyone who didn’t like McCain?” she asked.
“My friends, “ Rachel answered.
“Oh! Really?” Mimi responded. “And what about Farrah and Ed McMahon dying at the same time, too?” She shook her head.
Rachel saw Mimi’s husband’s pickup approaching the driveway, right on cue.
Rachel rose from her knees. “Here’s Johnny,” she said. “See ya’.”
She wanted to run to the drugstore for some extra-strength headache relief before Mimi could ask more questions.
Rachel had been waiting for Mimi to get one of her witty remarks, but she knew it wasn’t going to happen in this lifetime. She guessed that old saying ‘laugh and the world laughs with you’ applied only when one’s audience got your jokes.
(©2009, C.J. Peiffer)

Friday, July 10, 2009

FLOWER CHILD - Friday Flash 55

This post is in response to
The idea is to write a story in exactly 55 words.
Click on the yellow link above to join the fun or read others’ stories.

Petunia hated her stupid name. Her mother, who loved gardening, named her and her sisters after flowers: Iris, Daisy, Violet, Rose, and Petunia.

Kids at school had taunted them by calling them the Flower Girls.

If she had a brother, he would have been tormented ruthlessly. Surely her crazy mother would have named him Pansy.
(©2009, C.J. Peiffer)

Thursday, July 9, 2009

VIEW FROM MY HAMMOCK

(click on image for larger view)
This post is in response to
click on the link to post your own
or to see what others have posted


Lazing in the shade,
Looking toward the sky,
Resting in my hammock,
Watching clouds roll by.

Hearing robins twitter,
Seeing shades of green,
Feeling gentle breezes,
Prizing the fair scene.

Fearing green might cease,
Hoping it will stay.
Saving verdant earth,
To live a new green day.

(©2009, C.J. Peiffer)

Saturday, July 4, 2009

THE FINAL CUT - Short Fiction

This short story is in response to
Click on the above link to join in or read other entries.

How it works: Raven supplies two sets of words (or phrases) to use in a piece of writing. One can choose the ten- or five-word challenge ---or combine both into a fifteen word mega-challenge.

Mega Challenge: Florida, spit, child bride, operatic, busy, holding pattern, sunflowers, ginger jars, office, superintendent, music to my ears, plot, powerful, braggart, super model
(Words from the challenge are in bold face in the story.)


Florida wasn’t Cassy’s first choice, but it had two advantages. First, her sister Kate had offered Cassy a job in her brother-in-law’s company. Second, it was about as far from Seattle and her husband as she could get. She wanted to spit each time she heard his name. In her head, she called him Brutus.
Cassy had been swept off her feet at age 17 and had become the child bride of a a man who was pushing forty. A few weeks of marriage had revealed that Brutus was a braggart with nothing to brag about except the powerful hold he had on her. Before they were married, he bragged about being a superintendent in a large business. He was actually a mechanic in a garage that employed six people, superintendent only in the sense that he was in charge when the owner stepped out.
He severed Cassy’s contacts with friends and family, insisted she keep busy managing their spotless home, and counted every penny she spent. There was not a spec of dust on their ginger jar lamps, not a crumb on the carpet, not a dish left in the sink, not a dried leaf on the sunflowers in their yard. For if anything had been out of place, there would have been hell to pay.
One minute he told her she was supermodel beautiful and the next said she was lucky she had him because no one else would marry someone so ugly. He refused to take her anywhere because of the bruises.
One day, Cassy’s new neighbor Diana stopped by to introduce herself. When Cassy anxiously told her she had to finish cleaning and have dinner on the table at exactly six, Diana, who had been a volunteer counselor in a women’s shelter, recognized the problem. She drew the story from Cassy. It was a soap-operatic tale of isolation and battery. Soon the two of them devised a plot to remove Cassy from her situation.
Cassy called her sister, collect, from a pay phone with money Diana gave her. Kate sent a check to Diana for Cassy’s airfare and other expenses. With the help of another battered woman who worked for the Social Security administration, Diana acquired a new social security number in a new name for Cassy. She arranged for a new ID, including a photo with darker hair.
As soon as Brutus had left for work one morning, Diana showed up. “Today’s the day to start your new life,” she announced.
“Oh, that is music to my ears,” said Cassy. “I feel like I’ve been in a holding pattern waiting for this day to come."
Cassy and Diana tore through the house doing the things Cassy would normally do. They cleaned, scrubbed, did laundry, ironed and cooked dinner leaving it to simmer in a crock pot. They even ate what Cassy would eat for lunch so the trash can would contain an apple core, napkin and small piece of bread crust.
Cassy removed a wet bandage from her hand and applied a new one.
"That's a nasty wound. What did you do?" Diana asked.
"I cut myself making dinner yesterday." Cassy slipped the wet bandage from her hand into her pocket so it wouldn’t be found in the trash.
By ten, they were ready to leave. It would appear that Cassy had been there until shortly before her husband arrived home. They hoped that would delay his missing person's report and confuse him and the police when checking airlines.
That night, Brutus would be late. He had been searching for a used motorcycle. Cassy just ‘happened’ to find an ad for one on a supermarket bulletin board. Her husband had called the number and talked to the wife of the owner. She made an appontment for him to look at the bike. It was sixty miles from home, but a deal too good for him to pass up. In reality, Brutus had called Diana on her new throw-away cell phone. The address where he was to meet the bike’s owner didn’t exist.
In Diana’s house, Cassy donned a dark wig over her light hair, applied makeup over her bruised cheek. She changed into the too-large clothes Diana had found at the Goodwill. They wrapped cloth around her middle to make her look heavier. Diana gave her an old suitcase with two extra sets of clothes, a few packs of underwear, and toiletries to get her through a few days.

In Miami, the newly-born Isabel Fortuna stepped into Kate’s waiting arms at the airport baggage claim.
A month later, Diana sent an email from her brother’s office computer to Kate in a prearranged code. The police were suspicious because Cassy had taken nothing with her except the clothes she wore and Brutus had no alibi for his whereabouts except for a non-existant motorcycle owner. He could provide the police with no names of Cassy’s friends, because she hadn’t been allowed to have any. When the police contacted her family, everyone said they hadn’t heard from her for years. Diana was concerned because Brutus' being suspected of murder had not been in the plan.
Isabel Fortuna was pleased to hear that Brutus was under constant serveillance. In other words, Brutus was in his own kind of prison, not unlike the one Cassy had been locked in for six years.
Isabel Fortuna knew the blood from Cassy's cut, left in the trunk of Brutus’s car before he had gone to work that morning had been a brilliant touch.
(©2009, C.J. Peiffer)

Friday, July 3, 2009

CHAZ's BIG SURPRISE - Friday Flash 55

This post is in response to
The object is to write a complete story in 55 words..
Click on the red link to join the fun or read what others have posted.

This is my first response to this writing prompt:


Chaz selected his next victim ---tall, brunette, resembling his mother.

In a dark alley, he offered her a thousand bucks. The slut seemed thrilled.

When he locked his apartment door, Chaz pulled out his knife and turned toward her.

He wasn’t thrilled to see the gun, the badge and the chest hair on his date.

(©2009, C.J. Peiffer)

Thursday, July 2, 2009

THE CREATIVE PROCESS #10 COW PIE


"COW PIE"
(click on image for larger view)


This post is in response

to a writing prompt at
Prompt: "SHOW US SOMETHING YOU MADE"
Click on the link to join in or view other responses.

Many people expect artists to be brooding, dead-serious, nonconformists. I suppose I might be characterized as a nonconformist, but I don’t brood and I am rarely dead serious about anything. In fact, I love to find humor in nearly everything, including my own art work.
I spent several years creating a series of about 50 works of art featuring cows which I called ‘visual puns.’ They had titles like “Americow Graffiti,” “It’s Only a Paper Moo,” “A Line of Bull,” “The Dark Side of the Moo,” “A Streetcow Named Desire”---well, you get the idea.
Most of the time, when I create works of art, I start with images and then have to think of clever titles. While I worked on these pieces, I went through lists of phrases, movies and songs, looking for titles I could turn into amusing cow puns, then came up with images that fit.
I created my art in acrylic paint on canvas, colored pencils, ink, and in mixed media. I had several exhibits featuring my cow art which resulted in a few interviews with Pittsburgh TV and newspaper reporters. What surprised me was that, eventually, I had my fifteen minutes of fame when the Dallas Morning News, CBS radio in NY City, Stars and Stripes, a morning radio show in South Australia, and newspapers as far away as the Gulf News in Abu Dhabi ran stories on my cow obsession.
One day on my way to work, the idea to create a work called “Cow Pie” came to me. Being an art teacher, I didn’t have to wait until I returned home to create what I had in my head. I started to work on it at lunch time, then stayed an extra hour after the students left and my “Cow Pie” was almost complete by the time I returned home.
On water color paper, I lightly drew a pie with a slice cut from it. I painted the pie and pie pan with watercolors. Once the watercolors dried, I added a few details with colored pencils. Then I cut the image from the watercolor paper and cut holes in the top of the crust and in the part where one would see the filling, with an Exacto knife.
When I took the ‘pie’ home, I selected some of my cow photos. (To help me with ideas and also to have ‘models’ to draw from, I took lots of cow photos at farms near my home.) I cut up the photos and glued them behind the holes in the ‘pie.’ Then I glued everything on a green background.
“Cow Pie” has always been a favorite at galleries and I have sold many reproductions of this piece. I am pleased when someone looks at one of these images and bursts into laughter.

See more of my cow art visual puns HERE and HERE.

Find gifts and products with the “Cow Pie’ image HERE.

And if you are really into cow puns, find a post full of them HERE.

Please search on the right sidebar under CREATIVE PROCESS for more of my art work and how I created it.

(art © 2001, text ©2009, C.J. Peiffer)