Velvet Painting Gallery

My friend Marty sent me this great link from Flicker on velvet paintings. Close friends know my taste for kitsch - myself a proud owner of a delicious tiger velvet painting among others (see below) - so I might as well share a few of these great gems with Little-Pumpkins readers. These here are to be found on display in the hallways of New Jersey's WFMU radio station and belong to the station's manager. The thing with "velvet art" is that it tries really hard to be good and probably it's painters actually believe they are good, but in the end the images speak for themselves. I do love the naive charm of their celebrity's homages, vaguely resembling famous icons but in reality simply turning them into disfigured monsters in the name of bad art. How can you not feel pity for poor Marilyn Monroe? She must be twisting in her grave with her depiction, looking more like a man in Marilyn drag than herself. Clint Eastwood, the rugged cowboy, seems like his face was used as a doormat at boot camp, not that Ronald Reagan looks much better either. The prize for most-tasteless-bad-joke is a tie between a zombie-looking Jon-Bennet, the murdered child-beauty-queen, and Monica Lewinsky with a stained dress. Gross. But I must confess that I would kill for the Jesus & Elvis combo...