| Place a Classified | Subscribe today | July 10, 2009 |
|
|
|
|||||||||
| |||||||||
|
|
|||||||||
|
Inspired by absinthe
POCATELLO - Ron Lewis' recent award has no doubt left his competitors green with envy.
Lewis is known for his sports portraits, but he does not limit himself to that genre. In January, he was looking for information about absinthe, intrigued after trying some of the infamous drink offered by a friend. Lewis came across a Web site for Absinthe Original, a retailer in the recently booming market for the green spirit, once widely banned. On a whim, he decided to enter the Great Britain-based company's design contest.
The catch was he only had two weeks to submit his entry, and many entries had already been online for months, racking up votes for the favorite design. Lewis obtained a bottle from a local store and began his work.
As he neared completion, his wife, Debbie, viewed his oil painting, which included the laborious details of a green fairy and the bottle's seals and labels. She asked him if he had read the contest's rules. He assured her he had. She told him he'd better check again.
And it turned out he had used the wrong bottle as his model. All his painstaking work had to be redone.
''It was real elaborate stuff,'' Lewis said. He finished the piece, photographed the result and sent the digital image off on the last day for entry.
His piece had a month to accumulate votes, and he was so far behind artworks that had had months to gather votes that he wrote off his chances. Then Debbie checked the site and found Ron had won. While the popular vote was part of the decision, Lewis' artistic vision was enough to overwhelm the competition.
His piece, titled ''Two Muses,'' has elements of psychedelia, as well as a nod to the ''green fairy'' of absinthe mystique. The anise-flavored drink, which was a favorite of late 19th- and early 20th-century bohemians, was vilified by social conservatives and wrongly pronounced as dangerously addictive and psychoactive. It was banned in the United States and most European countries. Those bans have almost universally since been lifted.
French novelist Émile Zola's description of the stark fate of an imbiber of the drink is indicative of its infamy: ''(The unfortunate) stripped himself stark naked in the rue Saint-Martin and died doing the polka - he was an absinthe-drinker.'' Lewis received six bottles of absinthe, valued at $90 apiece, for his successful entry.
It's an unusual type of compensation for his work, but his design will likely see worldwide distribution, making the gamble well worth the while. ''Sometimes you have to take these spec things,'' Lewis said. Article RatingReader CommentsSubmit a CommentCommenting RulesWe encourage your feedback and dialog. All comments are subject to deletion by our Web staff.
|
|
Comment
Rate
Report a Comment
