Happy New Year! Thanks to my good neighbours A and S, I'm celebrating Lunar New Year very companionably with this basketball-sized Lion Dancer. With his battery engaged, he dances forward, he dances back, his tail and ears wag, his forehead lights up, and he sings stridently. Total fun! (Does my aura send out a message that says, "If you're looking for the grown-up in the room, it's not me"?)
It's so sad that Vancouver's Chinese New Year parade is a COVID-induced non-starter for the second year in a row.
But the Year of the Tiger offers hope and courage. With that in mind, I'll say this quickly: One more Beetle Being is headed your way today! It's not a ladybug, though, but a Calligraphy Beetle!! They're in the same Order (Coleoptera) as ladybugs, but have their own family (Chrysomelidae).
This beetle has been on my radar since early Ladybug days, and I have a very good reason for giving in to the temptation to feature it on its own. I have a special vintage pin that belonged to my Great-aunt Florence – renowned in our family for her gifts and eccentricities. In her young adulthood, she left her native South Carolina for New York City, where she had aimed to sing someday with the Metropolitan Opera but instead (once reality set in) she worked as an administrator/editor at the American Museum of Natural History. It's from those days, in the 1920s-30s, that I believe she acquired this pin, shown front and back:
You might recognize it as an Egyptian scarab – or a wannabe Egyptian scarab, perhaps a forgery (as I learned on-line), nonetheless a beauty. I found this near-match on Ebay.
Scroll down for a description of the marks on the old silver pin itself. Great-aunt F's pin shows the very same markings – although Ebay's guess at dates in the 1940s can't be right. As a cautionary note, I wouldn't recommend delving too deeply into the behaviour of the actual beetle that the Egyptians worshipped. You might find it too pungent.
Now, on to the Calligraphy Beetle. I identified a model who was willing to put her face forward in the cause of "just one more beetle." The gazillion varieties of Calligrapha could surely accommodate her features, I reasoned. And they are:– Long face, big ears, thin nose, thin lips, grey-white hair, sagging eyelids, cheeks, and chin-line, all age-related. (Definitely not beetle-browed, which means having thick bushy eyebrows). You've guessed, haven't you? I am the eccentrically brave volunteer, as shown in this very preliminary study:
I could not resist the calligraphy! My interest in "beautiful writing" (which is what "calligraphy" means) goes back to high school days. Later on, I once even co-produced a cookbook – as one of my co-conspirators and a follower of this blog can attest.
Moving right along, here's the quick half-sized painted study I made:
Here, an early stage in the 24x18" painting:
And here's the final version, "Self-Portrait as a Calligraphy Beetle," copyright 2022.
You might wonder what the calligraphy has to say for itself. Well, even as I recognize the limits of my aspirations in this lifetime (bring on those Egyptians for a little pep talk on reincarnation!), I'm trying to recapture the excitement and hopefulness of my early years of "doing art." In university, I came across a quote from the American writer Henry James which has always stayed with me – as has this panel, which I painted in our first years in Vancouver.
The essence (minus some duplication of the passion and the madness) is:
"We work in the dark, we do what we can. Our doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art."
Can you trace this quote in the eccentric beetle's cape? And aren't you SO glad that I became enthralled with beetles, rather than with spotted skunks?
Some members of the beetle clan are getting old and rusty – but if you look carefully, you'll see we still have green shoots around us, and we're attuned to what spring's renewal might bring.
And while my serious mien has often been noted, if you look closely you'll see a faint smile. Besides, you'd feel serious yourself if your hands were 25% larger than they ought to be.
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