[MISS HOKUSAI opens in Akron on Friday October 21st exclusively at the Nightlight Cinema.]
Artists are pretty
self-centered and borderline-dislikable people. Kind of a-holes, once you
really get down to it. Consider the Japanese printmaker and draftsman
Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849). Among his most famous works is the iconic The
Great Wave. We’ve all seen it. Now, back several years ago when one of my books
on Great Lakes paranormal phenomena came out, I campaigned for the old
Cleveland Free Times newspaper (it still existed then) to run an excerpt, my
disquisition on the Lake Erie Monster. Editor Frank Lewis agreed…but that wasn’t
enough for me. Even though I hadn’t drawn with pen and ink for decades, I sat
down and for days and days did a painstaking takeoff on Hokusai’s Great Wave
just to illustrate my Free Times book excerpt. I reproduced Hokusai’s wave, all
right, but to give it the proper Cleveland twist I included the Lake Erie
Monster (as a Chinese dragon), two floating drums of toxic waste, dead fish,
and a homely and fat chainsmoking Japanese mermaid in a LeBron jersey.
Artists are pretty
self-centered and borderline-dislikable people. Kind of a-holes, once you
really get down to it. Consider the Japanese printmaker and draftsman
Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849). Among his most famous works is the iconic The
Great Wave. We’ve all seen it. Now, back several years ago when one of my books
on Great Lakes paranormal phenomena came out, I campaigned for the old
Cleveland Free Times newspaper (it still existed then) to run an excerpt, my
disquisition on the Lake Erie Monster. Editor Frank Lewis agreed…but that wasn’t
enough for me. Even though I hadn’t drawn with pen and ink for decades, I sat
down and for days and days did a painstaking takeoff on Hokusai’s Great Wave
just to illustrate my Free Times book excerpt. I reproduced Hokusai’s wave, all
right, but to give it the proper Cleveland twist I included the Lake Erie
Monster (as a Chinese dragon), two floating drums of toxic waste, dead fish,
and a homely and fat chainsmoking Japanese mermaid in a LeBron jersey.
When Frank Lewis –
who probably had no idea I could draw – got the thing in the mail, he said it
was the damndest thing he ever beheld. Here’s the weird part, though: I never
knew if the drawing ran. The Lake Erie Monster article did, oh yes – it was
findable online while the Free Times still existed. But in all the years I
wrote for the paper, that was the one issue of which I could not locate one
printed copy on the street.
What does this
all have to do with artists being self-centered a-holes. Well, this review is
supposed to be about a wonderful and offbeat new movie about Hokusai. But I’ve just gone on rambling about
myself. And how I did a Hokusai takeoff. Hence, for a while here I am an
artist. And, therefore, a self-centered a-hole.
