SEPTEMBER 7, 2023

It’s time to tell you a bulleted version of my history in the arts!!

– I hated art class and everything about it. I hated the paint and the paper and the RULLLLES and the wearing the stupid smelly SHIRT. I did not understand color palettes or why we cared to study them; I hated the contradictory criticism – that art is what you make it, the beauty is in the eye of the beholder — except when the painter was Ani Cannon — because whatever that was — it wasn’t art.

– Even my 6th grade masterpiece, Gipper the Guinea Pig went MIA, and when mom “couldn’t find him” I KNEW Gipper didn’t reside in the basement — he was in the DUMP!

– My middle school art teacher outwardly loathed me; I knew it was because I sucked.

– And that would have wrapped up my career in the arts if not for the occasion, several decades into the future, that Ani’s Orphans would need a logo, and I had to be involved.

I went right back to my youth and REVOLTED in procrastination until my mother forced the issue during the poop candle project. She sat at the computer, and I watched my own mom – the embodiment of creativity – type “Ani’s Orphans” onto the screen, and then SYMMETRICALLY add a paw on either end.

Did I scowl? I don’t know, but I said “MOM! Everyone can do that … put the paw thru the text or something…. No – WIPE OFF A TOE! “

And that’s officially where my part ended, because to Ani Cannon, the deliverable had been delivered.

Except that it hadn’t.

My 25 seconds of input — literally the totality of what I could offer our logo — came to fruition because of the kids who were excelling in art class while I was producing Gipper.

The entire time we’ve been working on branding, those kids drug me along, and they made decisions that I will not ever be qualified to make; and they did so knowing that I couldn’t see. And those gifted kids took what I had to offer, my one little idea, and they made it into a whole brand.

Specifically to Jeniffer Petitt – the oxygen to our existence and my vote for AOI President; Gerald, Brett, and Irene of The Childress Agency, Inc., and to our graphic designer, Kayla Newcomb, who took my little idea and made it something worthy of printing on a BIG OL’ BANNER –

THANK YOU for a million things, but today, thank you for making it possible for me to know what it is like to sit at the other end of the art table.

And Jen Petitt & Stafford Printing – you nailed it on the banner!!!!

COME TAKE A SELFIE WITH IT AT THE BAKE SALE ON THE 24th!