jewel chihuahua: meet artist ilona sampovaara

Copyright ©2008 by Ilona Sampovaara

Isn't this a charming piece? Wait till you hear the best part - it's a ring. Artist Ilona Sampovaara creates these "art jewels" and they're available for you at her Etsy shop, Ilona Art.

I was looking for something totally different and unrelated - oh, a western pioneer outfit, if you must know, but it's a long story - when I caught site of the image above. Though it reminded me of my favorite boy Diego, the set of the dog's lips and the quirk of its eyes had something more knowing, even Old World about them. This was the sort of dog I might see lolling to the side of a Velasquez canvas. I couldn't help but investigate. . .

Copyright ©2008 by Ilona Sampovaara

Ilona titled this "The Xolo King," and while it's of course a fanciful take on a Renaissance portrait, Ilona has made a perfect worldly, wily gentleman from this Xoloescuicle hound. You should read what she says about him here. If you wonder, as I immediately began to do, about her ability to mash up cultures and histories with assurance, you can betake yourself over to her main Ilona Art website. Her bio there mentions that she was born in Finland, but lived a great many places, a way of life that the Finns call a "suitcase child." Now she lives in Mexico, and says:

My home is where ever my art takes me. The greatest journey of them all...I am fascinated by Pop Surrealism and Pop Culture, anything that falls into the Steampunk category. I get inspired by the new in the old, the beautiful in the ugly, if that makes any sense.

And it does. Do visit her site and her Etsy shop. They are full of sophisticated and playful retakes of images you know. You'll have fun.

best collie website ever (bonus! it's post #1,000!)

Seriously, anything I say this morning will only hold you up when you should be surfing over to Old Time Farm Shepherd, "Dedicated to Bringing Back the Old Scotch Collie of Yesterday." The level of research and content and sheer attractiveness of this site fills me with delighted envy, if you can imagine such an emotion. You'll see an article on Queen Victoria's collies; many engravings and photos of historic collies; an article on earlier forms of the name collie; and much, much, dizzyingly much more.

PS: I didn't notice till I logged into my Dashboard today that this is Post #1000. Gosh, that was fast. Thanks for all of your visits!

fred the fuzz

He might have been the cutest undercover agent the NYPD and the Brooklyn District Attorney ever had: a buff and black tabby from the streets, named after one of the Weasleys in the Harry Potter series. His name was Fred. He came to be known as "Fred the Undercover Cat" after his major role in busting a petty criminal practising as a veterinarian without a license.

He started out as a sick little stray with a bad case of pneumonia. He recovered under the care of his adoptive mom, who was a Brooklyn deputy district attorney, and in February 2006 became the secret weapon in the quest to catch a fake. But then what do you do when you've made the collar of 9 lifetimes? Fred was on tap to become a therapy cat.

Then one morning in August 2006 Fred decided to run into the traffic in front of his house. He was hit by a car and died instantly - that's a mercy, I suppose.

Tribute article with utterly fab photo from the New York Times, here.

(a break for a good word)

It's time for the Itty Bitty Kitty Committee to do some fundraising, participating in Tacoma/Pierce County Humane Society's "Dog-A-Thon Walk for Homeless Pets". If you live round these parts - well, even if you don't - wanna help? Last year they started out wanting to raise a mere $3K and boy, did they blow that out of the water about 10 times over.

What will they do this year?

solstice dog

i took this

Fremont Solstice Fair! Though the skies were overcast and the day was often close to chilly, we were not about to miss the parade. So off we went, with Robin & Finchy's dad John, to celebrate the longest day of the year and celebrate summer. (Or look for it, actually - but we didn't find it!)

That's where we found this little rockstar, sitting as patient as can be in her mom's bike basket. Like we could pass up that photo op. No.

I formally and finally joined the Snow Leopard Trust, checked in with PAWS and the Northwest Animal Rights Network, and shook the hand of Kelly Lyles.

And I found this little guy sitting under the Fremont Bridge . . .

Happy Solstice, everybody.

the merchant's wife...and cat

public domain

Everything here is round and bright: the fruit, the cake, the samovar probably full of piping hot tea, the woman enjoying this bounty - and the cat, whose face shows every expectation of sharing soon to be fulfilled. I can't help but think all this plenitude is a neat trick to pull off in revolutionary Russia. This is Boris Kustodiev's (Russian, 1878 - 1927) 1918 portrait of The Merchant's Wife, full of color and a gentle wry look at his subject. Meticulously rendered, the artist's pleasure in its creation still shines through.

This is all the more delightful when you realize this work was created two years after tuberculosis of the spine paralyzed his legs and confined him to a wheelchair, and years after the onset of the illness had left one arm in great pain. Even so, he loved and lived to work, and seems to have been a man of cheerful and affectionate spirit. This biography page has some facts and photos (scroll way down, though).

two dog anecdotes from scotland

Mr. Smellie (honestly, that's the name - Curator), in his "Philosophy of Natural History," mentions a curious instance of the intellectual faculty of a dog. He states that "a grocer in Edinburgh had one which for some time amused and astonished the people in the neighbourhood. A man who went through the streets ringing a bell and selling pies, happened one day to treat this dog with a pie. The next time he heard the pieman's bell he ran impetuously toward him, seized him by the coat, and would not suffer him to pass. The pieman, who understood what the animal wanted, showed him a penny, and pointed to his master, who stood at the street-door, and saw what was going on. The dog immediately supplicated his master by many humble gestures and looks, and on receiving a penny he instantly carried it in his mouth to the pieman, and received his pie. This traffic between the pieman and the grocer's dog continued to be daily practised for several months."

(I would have loved to see a dog buying its supper. How could you resist giving it a penny for a pie?)
* * *

During a very severe frost and fall of snow in Scotland, the fowls did not make their appearance at the hour when they usually retired to roost, and no one knew what had become of them ; the house-dog at last entered the kitchen, having in his mouth a hen, apparently dead. Forcing his way to the fire, the sagacious animal laid his charge down upon the warm hearth, and immediately set off. He soon came again with another, which he deposited in the same place, and so continued till the whole of the poor birds were rescued. Wandering about the stack-yard, the fowls had become quite benumbed by the extreme cold, and had crowded together, when the dog observing them, effected their deliverance, for they all revived by the warmth of the fire.

-- From Edward Jesse, Anecdotes of Dogs (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1858), pps. 17 - 19.

furry, the baby squirrel: his diary

In 1902 Anna Botsford Comstock, an assistant professor of Nature-Study at Cornell, rescued a baby red squirrel dropped by its mother. She managed to raise it, and kept a diary of the process. Some excerpts:

* * *
May 18, 1902—The baby squirrel is just large enough to cuddle in one hand. He cuddles all right when once he is captured; but he is a terrible fighter, and when I attempt to take him in one hand, he scratches and bites and growls so that I have been obliged to name him Fury. I told him, however, if he improved in temper I would change his name to Furry.

May 19—Fury greets me when I open his box, with the most awe-inspiring little growls, which he evidently supposes will make me turn pale with fear. He has not cut his teeth yet, so he cannot bite very severely, but that isn't his fault, for he tries hard enough. The Naturalist said cold milk would kill him, so I warmed the milk and put it in a teaspoon and placed it in front of his nose; he batted the spoon with both forepaws and tried to bite it, and thus got a taste of the milk, which he drank eagerly lapping it up like a kitten. When I hold him in one hand and cover him with the other, he turns contented little somersaults over and over.

May 26—He holds the bowl of the spoon with both front paws while he drinks the milk. When I try to draw the spoon away, to fill it again after he has emptied it, he objects and hangs on to it with all his little might, and scolds as hard as ever he can. He is such a funny, unreasonable baby.

May 28—To-night I gave Furry a walnut meat. As soon as he smelled it he became greatly excited; he grasped the meat in his hands and ran off and hid under my elbow, growling like a kitten with its first mouse.

June 4—Furry ranges around the room now to please himself. He is a little mischief; he tips over his cup of milk and has commenced gnawing off the wall paper behind the book-shelf to make him a nest. The paper is green and will probably make him sorry.

June 7—I caught Furry to-day and he bit my finger so it bled. But afterwards, he cuddled in my hand for a long time and then climbed my shoulder and went hunting around in my hair and wanted to stay there and make a nest. When I took him away, he pulled out his two hands full of my devoted tresses. I'll not employ him as a hairdresser.

* * *
To her credit, she seems to have found all that biting and yelling cause for affection rather than resentment. By August 20th Furry was able to live his natural life outdoors in a tree near Comstock's house. Pages 80-33, Anna Botsford Comstock, The Pet Book (Geneva, NY: Comstock Publishing Co., 1914). And you should know a little about the formidable Professor herself, who among other accomplishments was Cornell's first female assistant professor. Read it here.

kit (and more) lit: animal noir

I found it while surfing through Guardian.co.uk, my favorite online news source: an article from November 2009 taking note of a genre in which animals are depicted being their animal selves, with or without human-friendly guises. I've some books to catch up with, it seems, Gun with Occasional Music by Jonathan Lethem being among them. Have a look at Suzanne Munshower's review.

meet cookie and bernadette

image courtesy of the artist, with thanks

This most charming linoleum block print is called "The Goddess." Meet Cookie, one of the feline inspirations belonging to - or is that the other way round? - artist and writer Bernadette E. Kazmarski.

"I have my cats to thank for being an artist," Bernadette writes. "When, as an adult, I chose to pick up a pencil and paper and put them together, it was because images of my cats kept appearing in my thoughts as pencil drawings and paintings and I decided to draw what I was envisioning." And that includes such moments as Cookie's bellyrub command, above, captured in the split second before one caves in and goes for the tummy. I know it well from experience.

The directness of linoleum (and wood) block lends itself perfectly to immediate, strong images; what got me with Bernadette's work is the sheer character she's worked in with the tilt of a head and the curl of a foot. You can see and delight in much more work in many mediums when you visit her Etsy store, Portraits of Animals (where I first found her and Cookie!), and her marketplace blog. Her blog, The Creative Cat, is full of written portraits of the creatures she loves, along with useful and entertaining news.

Really, there's so much to Bernadette E. Kazmarski that I should simply point you once more to her main site and say, "Adventure time!" But do be sure to read about the cat portrait that essentially started it all. "It’s been magic since then, not just with my portraits and other animal artwork, but with all my artwork. I may have arrived at that point as an artist eventually, but it was my deep feeling for Stanley that delivered me to the door, which I had only to open."

As Sir Kenneth Clark wrote, "Facts are made art through love." And how true this is for Bernadette.

vintage photo time!

I bought this yesterday at an antique mall in West Seattle. Notice the dirndl sort of getup the girl is wearing - maybe that's her hat. Suits the dog rather handsomely, though, and he knows it.

ancient thoughts on puppies

Pliny the Elder, the Roman military commander and naturalist, has this to say about the birth and character of puppies (catch the reference to dogs likely to suffer nightmares!):

CHAP. 62.—THE GENERATION OF THE DOG.
This animal brings forth twice in the year; it is capable of bearing young when a year old, and gestation continues for sixty days. The young ones are born blind, and the greater the supply of nourishment from the mother's milk, the more slowly do they acquire their sight; still, however, this never takes place later than the twentieth day, or earlier than the seventh. It is said by some writers, that if only one is born, it is able to see on the ninth day; and that if there are two, they begin to see on the tenth, every additional one causing the power of seeing to come a day later. It is said, too, that the females which are produced by the mother in her first litter, are subject to the night-mare. The best dog of the litter is the one which is last in obtaining its sight, or else the one which the mother carries first into her bed.

-- The Natural History of Pliny the Elder; see text and footnotes of this chapter here, which will also permit you access to the entire translation.

definitely an ex-parrot

Frances Teresa Stuart, Duchess of Richmond and Lennox, was said to be a woman of beauty without parallel. King Charles II adored her for years. Perhaps that's how she acquired the wherewithal to get what at the time was an expensive and exotic pet: her African gray parrot, which she loved for the last 40 or so years of her life - she lived from 1647 to 1702, so that's a significant chunk of time to devote to anybody, much less a pet. When you realize that this young Duchess suffered smallpox two years into her marriage and was no longer a stunning beauty thereafter, you can imagine the loyalty of a feathered buddy would be a great comfort. (Note: To Charles' credit, he did behave towards her as a friend for the rest of his life.)

Did she get anything in return, you wonder? The parrot died four days after its mistress, which tells me a great deal about how much it could love, and was stuffed and placed near Frances Stuart's effigy in Westminster Abbey's collection. It's still there, said by many to be the oldest taxidermized bird in Britain. You can read a bit about that here at Westminster Abbey's official site. What's really interesting is this article from ravishingbeasts.com. I tried to find a look at the parrot, but no luck (I could buy a postcard of it from the Abbey, it seems).