Benched Week 87: unicorns in the garden

I opened the solid, wooden door of Thurber House in Columbus, Ohio, and entered a little hesitantly. Expecting to find a docent hovering near the historical building’s entrance, I waited, feeling like I had intruded into someone’s home while they were napping upstairs. I wandered a bit, reading little displays. A bench in the living room beckoned, so I took a seat.



Overhead, muffled voice accompanied creaking floorboards. Perhaps James was getting up from that nap.



James Thurber (1894-1961) was a cartoonist, essayist, playwright and humorous author. Despite losing an eye in a childhood game of William Tell gone tragically wrong, he had a wry view on life. His work was steeped in satire, but a gentler sort than today’s sharpened swords of irony.



His cartoons have an odd looseness to them. His friend, Dorothy Parker, said they had a “semblance of unbaked cookies.” I like Thurber’s dogs, in particular. I find that my go-to drawing when I’m leaving notes in hotels or drawing for kids on planes is a something similar. There’s something disarming about a silly dog.




This one is mine.








 





He credited his mother for giving him his sense of humor. Years ago, while researching the childhoods of creative celebrities,  I discovered a delightful story about Mrs. Thurber.  One time, when dignified visitors had come to the house, she descended the stairs in her dressing gown, wild-eyed and hair disheveled, saying that she had just escaped from the attic, where she had been locked because of her profession of love for the postman!

There’s some serious playfulness at work there.




Outside, I found a shady side-yard, where two stone dogs kept me company. And across the street, a ring of bushes surrounded a statue of a unicorn, eating a lily. That image came from one of Thurber’s many fables, in which a husband tries to convince his wife that he has seen a unicorn in the garden.






It’s a nice analogy for Thurber’s created world – where the whimsical and the unexpected bump regularly up against every day life. (Just like with another of his creations, Walter Mitty.) And in my art, I strive to make the whimsical nibble at the edges of the world’s seriousness.



On my way back to the hotel, I passed under an imposing piece of sculpture at the Columbus College of Art and Design. But I’m happier thinking of ART in lower-case letters. Art as the unicorn in the garden.

Or a slightly goofy dog.