For the Love of Munny:
Put Your Munny Where Your Mouth is at Doo Gallery
For our bi-weekly
meeting of Saturday, July 26, 2014, the Georgia Nutts Guild decided to hold
court at DooGallery, where facebook friend, Lacye A. Brown of Applehead Toys was hosting the Put
Your Munny Where Your Mouth Is art competition.
Local artists would seek to gain prestige and a pot of money for the
winning contribution of a "Munny" figure, suitably dressed up, pimped
or tricked out according to each's own personal vision. I'll admit to having had no idea what Munny
or MunnyWorld were before this, even if it makes me look as unsavvy and
reclusive as I, probably, am. The MunnyWorld
figures are small, plastic featureless dolls acting as a blank slate for DIY
hobbyists and other creatives, an open canvas in 3-D waiting to be given a
personality through the addition of sculpted embellishment, painting,
what-have-you.
The scene was a little different from
what we expected: we thought a room full
of artists would be at tables, stands, whatever, toiling over the face-needy
dolls, all taking shape in real time. It
ended up that most of the artists seemed to have already made their works and
submitted them, as they were all neatly exhibited before the event even
opened. So it was just Yvonne Walker, Ana’GiaWright, Dap Tales and I (your friendly neighborhood alFalaq) and a couple other artists at tables working what
creative magic we had in mind on the spot.
At first it looked as though we might suffer the scrutiny of a certain
oddball status. There were a couple of
sideways glances alongside the query as to why writers were inclined to
enter an art competition for artists.
C'mon guys -- a picture might be worth a thousand words but we were
there to REPRESENT that Literature Is ART,
Too!!! So, with pens in hands, we stitched
together clothes and features for our little figures from a fabric of dialogue snippets, descriptive phrases and lines of poetry from our collected
works. REPRESENT, WRITERS OF THE WORLD!
There were lots of intriguing works
lining the walls of the gallery, operated by Doug, whom we met (Super nice
guy), ranging from the macabre to the fanciful.
I walked around taking it all in as DJ Martian Kites laid on the
atmosphere from his workstation. A
contribution from Henry Gonzales illustrated "How to Train Your Dragon to
Drive" while just ahead, Slowturtle's piece literally puzzled over
"Illuminated Awareness".
"Children of the Watermelon", by Rich Strohmeyer was a real
eye catcher, as was (Beth Garland Strachan) Rotten Daughter's grisly alternate ending to the Red Riding
Hood tale, "What Big Eyes You Have".
I was swept away by the drink goddesses from Blazon Brickhaus, "Amaretto Sour" and "Mai
Tai". Kevin Hatchett hung out with
us for a while, taking time to get us up close and personal with his
monochrome, robo-apocolyptic "Dread".
Lacye (Applehead) of course was putting on show too, with her giant
"Mr. Bigglesworth" and "Naughty or Nice", which has been featured in our Inspired Works
of Fiction short series, which will be included in “In a Nuttshell, Vol. 2”
available in August.
Despite the seeming cold start, things
definitely got warmer as more and more folks; artists and attendees alike;
shared excellent conversation with us concerning what the GNG is about and what
the Georgia Nutts aim to do: To become ever better writers and Promote The
Arts. I knew it: People DO still like to read!! Even pub-crawling zombies, like Cara Caravan who can be seen posing with her nicely crafted work (I'm sorry, Cara! I didn't get the name of the piece...Bad,
al-Falaq! Bad! Bad!!) are into the word, man. So don't get left out! Read!
Today!! At readgeorgianuts.com,
of course. Or anywhere you like.
Check out our finished product!
