Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Leaping Man

Leaping man - digital collage
I've recently received a couple very old scrapbooks. One is from my great-grandmother and the other is from my grandmother (both on my father's side). In one of the scrapbooks, I found an odd little magazine clipping of a performer named Hal Sherman. The promotional photograph was from a revue called "Hellz-a-Poppin." I don't know who the writer was but Sherman was referred to as "..a misfit, a little man in a big world; still a tramp, but a worldly Broadway tramp, a bitter, dancing humorist of the banana-peel school." I like that.

I created the background by scanning a hand-written letter from my great-grandmother and repeating and overlapping the text. The "leaping man" is Sherman.

4 comments:

Marianne Morris Art said...

I LOVE this! HellzaPoppin' was an old movie (I think it's on youtube) featuring Lindy Hop dancing. It's very fun and full of energy. Keep posting! Love seeing your work!!

Lev said...

Wow! I'm impressed that you know about the movie. I haven't a clue about it. I'll check it out. Perhaps this piece is a bit of an homage to your dancers, eh?

cbb said...

What a marvelous way to commemorate ancestry as well as make a contemporary piece - cool!

Lev said...

Thanks, Cynthia. It's a lot of fun going through the ephemera my grandmother collected to see what interested her as a young woman. Lots of movie star clippings. She was really interested in the pilots that flew the long distances before it was common.