Evolution of the Pig Flower

The pig flower is a funny, happy creation inspired by the work of a real child in collaboration with my inner one. I was working on the papier-mâché nudes in my outdoor studio (i.e., the driveway) when a delightful girl hailed me from the second-floor balcony of the apartment complex across the alley. Calling back and forth like Romeo and Juilet I got the details: her name was Ariana; she was visiting her aunt on her summer vacation; she was from Venice, Italy; and of course she would like to do papier-mâché. Her aunt, with whom I was friendly, had no objections.

Pig dog

Ariana decided that she wanted to make a dog, like her pet dog Fannie. Thinking that I'd keep things simple so as not to test the patience of an 11-year old, we settled on making the dog's head. Starting with a big styrofoam ball, we attached ears cut out from paper plates and reinforced them with popsicle sticks. Then we crumpled paper and taped it to the ball for a nose, and voilà! We had a pig. Fortunately, she was the one who called it. Undeterred, she ran with the idea. She decided that she wanted to add google eyes to her pig and requested some "string made from metal" which she wound into springs and attached to round eyeballs.

Pig on a stick

To prevent the pig head from rolling around when Ariana was applying the papier-mâché strips, I skewered the ball on a chopstick and stuck it in an empty wine bottle for a stand. Ariana painted her pig hot pink (what else?) added a bow, eyelashes, blond hair, lipstick, and wire earrings. She named her Hannah, after Hannah Montana. Vacation over, Ariana flew home. When Hannah was dry, I shipped her to Venice to reunite with her creator.

After Ariana left, Gilda, my art buddy, suggested that we both make pigs on sticks to get us out of the creative doldrums. It seemed to do the trick. We started the process at her house, and then I brought my prenatal pig home, back to my outdoor studio. It was high summer, and the sunflowers were high: the traditional kind planted by the birds, intermingled with Mexican sunflowers, Tithonia, torch, which I had planted from seed, towered over the chainlink fence topping out at 10 feet. Masses of bright orange flowers with yellow centers smiled down on me. That's when I decided to turn the stick into a stem, add a "ruff" at the base of the stem, and attach big floppy leaves. The pig flower was born. I painted mine bright golden yellow (what else?).

Bouquet of pigs

The big golden yellow pig flower was followed by a tomato red piglet flower and an orange mamma pig flower. I put each pig in its own vase with some orange and yellow silk flowers to create a bouquet of pigs. Everywhere they go, they make people laugh. You can't take yourself too seriously in the company of a pig flower.