Saturday, April 28, 2007

Award-winning Art


I actually won a prize for the creation pictured here. It's hard to appreciate the inspired design and fantastic detail from this ancient slide that I recently had scanned. In case it isn't obvious, that's the Mummy about to clobber the Wolfman with a large bone. Both are standing in a swampy graveyard beneath a tree full of bats next to a pit of quicksand. Oh yes, barely protruding from the quicksand is the face and hands of a terrified man -- the only witness to the battle of monsters taking place as he slides to his ghastly doom. I made the tableau out of paper mache, found objects and Aurora models. It was my entry in the Master Monster Maker contest, sponsored by the model company and a local hobby shop. I won first place and got a cheesy plastic plaque made to look like a green Frankenstein monster face. Wish I still had it. I could add it to my tiny case of awards earned over the years.

Sic transit gloria mundi

Oh, yeah, that's the foot of our dalmatian, Chicory, appearing at the top of the frame. This photo was taken in the gazebo of our house on Poquito Bayou Road in Shalimar, probably around 1964.

2 comments:

john broussard said...

I remember when you created that masterpiece! It was a harbinger of your monstrous talent. I also remember the hobby store that we used to haunt in the previous life of our adolescence. Do you remember the monster-driven stylized "Big Daddy" drag racing models?

Your Brother,

John

Unknown said...

I remember getting a couple of those "Big Daddy Roth" cars in Revell model sets and working on them while staying with Mom and Pop Bruce one summer. The plastic models were pretty outrageous, and I can't remember if I ever actually got one all put together. As cool as they were, the gray plastic didn't look as exciting as the illustration on the box and I don't think I was up to the kind of model painting that would have been required to bring them to life the way Roth did. But I remember lots of good times making models. I remember that the enemy planes were my favorites: Japanese Zeros were particularly sweet, and Russian or Soviet aircraft and tanks and such just seemed so much more stylish than American equipment did.