Fine Art With Yang Poppen
Yang Yoko Poppen started her first day of middle school art class saying, "My name is Mrs. Poppen...first name not Mary." I had her for 7th and 8th grade art, with misadventures-a-plenty. We clogged the sinks with soap, constantly turned the room's thermostat setting to its polar opposite temperature, and turned in fake poorly-drawn homework assignments with other kids' names on them. But two stories rise above the pack: Bird Hats and The Pencil Sharpener Incident.
In what is probably the single weirdest art assignment ever conceived, Mrs. Poppen asked us to make hats shaped like birds. You brought in an old baseball hat, smothered it in Plaster of Paris and painted it with acrylics. Don and I were in separate classes at the time, but decided to make bird brothers: LoLo and Fro. Don's LoLo was a spotted white bird with brown curled horns, and my Fro was a blue bug-eyed bird with a huge vertical green afro. Don and I were on the same baseball team that spring, and ended up bringing our bird hats to the games as our "rally caps". Nothing is quite as intimidating as a kid in the dugout wearing a bird with an afro. We also wrote a truly horrible song about them as one of our first band recordings.
The Pencil Sharpener Incident was even more drawn out. Towards the end of our 8th grade year, Don stole Mrs. Poppen's generic metal pencil sharpener - I think Eugene or Jeff or some Okay Samurai asian friend was there too. So when we walked by her classroom the next year, we saw that Mrs. Poppen had a new sharpener BOLTED into the table. Fast-forward to our senior year. Don and I were at lunch and ran into Mrs. Poppen. I asked her if she remembered us.
"Yes, I remember you David, but this one I'm not too sure about," she said, motioning to Don.
"Oh you know him, that's Don." I answered. "He's the one that stole your pencil sharpener."
Mrs. Poppen immediately grabbed Don's arm. "IT WAS YOU!" she exclaimed, finally finding her culprit after four years. Don quickly broke free and booked out of there as fast as he could. She wasn't really too upset - the pencil sharpeners were covered by the school - but it was still a funny scene. In retrospect, Mrs. Poppen was an excellent art teacher that didn't deserve all the craziness we put her through. She singlehandedly taught me how to draw with shading from a light source, a technique I still use all the time today. Mike thinks that my TFA experience was karma catching up with me, and there may be some truth to that.
I went logo loco this weekend, knocking out eleven jobs for Arteis (that freelance logo community I recently joined). This round included a Bermudan salsa dance troupe, two churches and a ranch. Word of advice: if you ever start your own company, give it an interesting name...not something snooze-worthy like Consumer Software Technology System Solutions LLC or MyCarDiagnosisMD.com.
Sunday, September 26 at 10:08 AM
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