Here is a quick blog about little known facts about artists from any era. I hope you enjoy it and entertained at the same time…

Norman Rockwell never smiled because he had no teeth. They were replaced with a composite of peanut shells and high sucrose gum.

Leonardo da Vinci is from the town of Vinci, Italy. His middle name is not Da.

Andy Warhol, ironically never liked Campbell’s Soup, he preferred Progresso.

Claude Monet and Eduard Manet were the same person.

Pablo Picasso actually had an astigmatism in his eye that caused him to see things like his cubist paintings. He just painted what he saw.

Mary Cassatt really wanted to be a go-go dancer instead of an artist, except for the fact that go-go dancing was not around in the early 1900’s.

Georges Seurat thought he was two persons, hence his first name.

Edward Hopper, ironically could not balance on one foot and move around.

Georgia O’Keeffe was a groupie for the Rolling Stones in her youth after she left art school.

Eduard Manet despised mayonnaise although it was invented by him in a freak accident involving paint gesso, bread and luncheon meats.

Pablo Picasso always wore a white short sleeved shirt with thin, horizontal red lines.

Vincent Van Gogh, was a great pinball player.

Roy Lichtenstein, ironically hated the comics page of the newspaper as it always made his fingers dirty.

The tallest artist was Edward Hopper at 7 feet 7” and shortest was Henri de’ Toulouse Lautrec at a little under 6-8 inches tall in his stocking feet.

Georgia O’Keeffe was born in Wisconsin but had never eaten a brat.

Hokusai has a cool name.

Paul Gauguin gave up his tranquil life in Tahiti to become a professional bowler.

Jacob Lawrence invented the “electric slide” and the “hustle”.

Wait…I think I am wrong on that…..yep, I checked my facts…..it was actually Georgia O’Keeffe who invented those dances. Man, she really did stuff!

Albrecht Durer liked to be called Fat Albrecht due to the fact that he would enter a room in Germany saying, “Ja! Ja! Ja! Was ist going on now, huh?”

John Singer Sargent was neither an accompanist to a band nor in the military.

Georgia O’Keeffe was the inspiration to Ray Charles’ song “Georgia” due to the fact that he really liked her paintings of Southwestern scenes.

Claude Monet actually wrote a rock and roll hit. Ironically it was not “Monet, Monet” but rather “Billy, Don’t be a Hero.”

A little known fact, Georgia O’Keeffe was the heavyweight champion of the world in 1953 and the Playmate of the Year at the same time.

And finally….

Dean Konop made up most of the information you see here to humanize these great artists. If you are offended please note that it was all in fun and that they are all deceased and note that none of these facts are true….except for a few of them…..guess which ones?

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Yesterday was the first official snow day of the 2009-2010 school year. It is extra special as I was supposed to teach that day. No school though, so that meant no art class. Kind of a ying to the yang thing, something good but then something bad at the same time. But that is what happens in Wisconsin during the winter months.

I can remember the snow days from the time I was a student. The worst kind of snow days were those half days off. The snow could be removed by the noon hour, so you were still expected to get to school. Or you would have a two hour delay, which means that you still had to get ready for school and your whole day was condensed in shorter time periods. You would have math class during lunch and science class right next to gym. It would have been easier to just cancel the whole day and start over the next day, but apparently that matrix equation and cosine could not wait.

So what do kids do on a snow day? Well, some find time to play in the snow and build forts and for the most part, kids sleep in a bit more. Usually the older students do this and some art teachers too. It is a great feeling to know that basically you are not expected to actually show up and been seen at school. For the most part, with weather-predicting equipment and forecasts so up-to-date, teachers know for sure if the schools would be closed the day before. Then they really can sleep in! For the poor part-time teacher (and I make an emphasis on POOR) that type of teacher has to watch the new crawl of closings on the local tv morning shows or listen to the radio. Either option is not the highlight of the morning ritual for the very poor part-time teacher. (Did I mention that I meant poor, as in not financially abundant and not weak in skills…just needed to make note of that)

Getting back to watching morning tv and listening to the radio, I really can’t stand either. Take for instance yesterday: I hate the morning radio as there is a broadcaster on the air that thinks he is the next coming of Walter Winchell. I hat this guy. He is a blowhard and a bully and leans so much to the right that I am amazed he does not fall off his chair. So I totally do not listen to the radio. The television…no better. They crawl the canceled schools on the bottom of the screen and because my school could go by two names… St. Peter the Fisherman Catholic Grade School or Two Rivers Public and Private schools, two names that are waaaaaaayyyyyyy in the back of the alphabet. So you are not only seeking intensely to find those schools listed on the crawl, but you get a little upset when you see all the schools from Appleton and Beaver Dam hog all the time allotted.

To really make matters worse, if the broadcast goes into commercial, the crawl stops and starts over again FROM THE BEGINNING!!!!! Argggggghhhhhh! By this this you can’t get back to sleep. You might as well get ready for school and hope that the principal acts like the death row warden and gives you a last minute reprieve
. This is what happened yesterday, I was watching the ABC morning show. I do not want or care to give the name of the program because it stinks. That is not fair, let me iterate….it really blows. I do not watch it often or at all, but Diane Sawyer is on the screen and is talking to a doctor about the very importance of a vitamins to young women a very important issue as both of them are sitting on stuffed chairs and drinking liquid in a hot cup. I do not give a crap about that at the time. I want to know if the crawl will say “ST. Peter the Fisherman Catholic Grade School——canceled”. They are almost ready to get to the S’s of the list of schools that are canceled and the whole screen pops up to show this doctor’s name. What the heck?!!!! ARRRRGGGHGHHHHHHHH!!!!

To make matters worse they keep his name on the screen for the rest of the interview and all the names on the crawl are blocked because of it. Diane and the young doctor are having such a good time meanwhile I am pulling clumps of hair out of my head as this is the tenth time I have missed my school’s name. There is no time for me to get a few more z’s. I have to be at school and get supplies ready for the few kids that will show up. I want to curse Diane the Cougar and her boy-toy doctor.

Quickly the email rings and I am notified that school is canceled. What a relief. I put down my notepad of which I was writing a letter to the ABC affiliate, and went back to sleep…..only to be awakened by the call to get out of bed and start shoveling.

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