Boneyard Media


Archive for the ‘Art’ Category

Checking in with Paul Borelli

Tuesday, November 30th, 2010

miller-square6001 leftover-paint-1-6001 knotts-stamp6002

I caught Paul Borelli‘s exhibit at the East Austin Studio Tour a few weekends ago and am pleased to report that he’s on a roll. His Squaresville collection is a special delight (featuring Mitch Miller in red and Lost in Space‘s Dr. Smith in yellow), as are his album cover mosaics (see the Partridges above; The Grass Roots Lovin’ Things LP is the latest), and the postage stamp series featuring unlikely subjects (see Don Knotts above). I made a special request for postage stamps of Jack Lord, Bob Barker, and the trio of Gunther Toody, Francis Muldoon, and Al Schnauser, but am happy to take it as it comes. See Paul Borelli’s website and online gallery at BorelliArt.com.

Brother Parker, by Paul Borelli

Wednesday, September 24th, 2008

brother_parker

Paul Borelli is currently working on a series of Pittsburgh Pirate batting champs, which he’s calling “HITsburgh, PA.” This one’s devoted to the Cobra, Dave Parker. He was the NL crown winner for 1977 and 1978 and then enjoyed a World Series victory with the Bucs at Baltimore’s expense in ‘79. Although he was nicknamed the Cobra for his peculiar, coiled up batting stance, Paul wisely sidestepped this theme, which I imagine would flirt too easily with the realm of velvet Elvis. So he went with this Parker Brothers theme instead, which is based on a game you might remember called Outwit. He especially liked that tagline, “It looks easy ’til you try it,” because it “could apply to the game, hitting a baseball, or even painting a picture.”

My Three Suns, by Paul Borelli

Thursday, August 21st, 2008

mythreesuns1

My friend Paul Borelli is a self-taught painter and the biggest Fred MacMurray fan I know of. This latest work of his is based on a photo from a Van Heusen shirt ad that appeared in mid-60s magazines.

The big news about this is that it will soon be added to the collection of the Museum of Bad Art, located in the basement of a community theatre in the Boston area. As Paul puts it, “I only recently became aware of their existence when I saw and purchased a book of their ‘masterworks’ at Book People here in Austin. Their web site also contains a gallery of some of their more dazzling pieces. I hope that they will see fit to add my work to their online gallery, where it could be seen and enjoyed by MOBA’s over 10,000 members.” Paul will be the first Austin artist to be curated by the MOBA, a true mark of distinction.

The portrait is also of personal significance to Paul, because as a “MacMurray-meets-Magritte treatment,” it marks the “transitional point from my Paint-by-Numbers Period to my Pseudo-Realistic Period.” It also prompted him to “read a few books about how to paint portraits more accurately.” Paul is currently in the middle of a self-portrait (his second), which he hopes to show at the Self-Portrait Show at the Austin Figurative Gallery.

(By the way, did the Three Suns ever do a version of the My Three Sons theme?)