That's All Folks!

On January 2 of 1989, my daughter Avery was born. It was an amazing year and I got to stay home and watch TV because I had a new baby. There was a smorgasbord of disasters that year; the Tammy Faye and Jimmy Baker PTL scandal, the fall of the Berlin Wall, Hurricane Hugo, the San Francisco Earthquake and the Exxon Valdez oil spill to name a few. Many years later when a local art gallery invited me to make a piece of jewelry about my favorite year, I looked up 1989 on the web and was reminded that Mel Blanc had died that year. I got sucked into YouTube clips of him on Carson and Letterman and Jack Benny and Wikipedia had 12 pages on the guy.  Anyway, I was hooked because Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, Daffy Duck, Tweety Bird, Wile E. Coyote, the Roadrunner and Pepe LePew were just too big a part of my childhood to ignore.  I hunted on the web for Looney Tunes stamps since I knew the USPS had done a series but they were too costly and rare, so I kept surfing and found Australian and Kyrgrzstan stamps. Mel Blanc was loved the world over as the voice for hundreds of his cartoon friends and he also developed their characters. He dictated that the inscription on his tombstone should say, “That’s All Folks!” and so it does. He was buried in Los Angeles, of course.

The name of this bracelet is "That's All Folks!" and it was created in 2010 for an exhibition of jewelry at Facere Jewelry Art in downtown Seattle to honor Karen Lorene, the owner and founder of the gallery. Since she was celebrating her 70th birthday, 70 artists were asked to chose a year within her lifetime and I chose 1989. This is what my assistant, Kyle Rees and I came up with. On the bangle is etched classic lines from some of Mel's best loved characters: Tweety Bird, "I tawt I taw a putty tat!"  Pepe LePe, "Ah my darling, it is love at first sight is it not, no?", Porky Pig, "Thaaaaaat’s all folks!", Sylvester,"SSSuffering SSSSSuccotash", Daffy Duck, "Hold everything Fatso!", Bugs Bunny, "What’s up, Doc?" and many more. Yes, the bracelet is still for sale. 

WORDERun