a few months ago, we had a yard sale at my parents' house to get rid of a bunch of junk that would have never otherwise seen the light of day again. i ended up looking through our own sale and picking out stuff to keep for myself. again. i'm a junk collector. i found my old piggy bank that i painted when i was younger. we used to go to "jean's ceramics" near my house all the time to pick out and paint.ceramics. it used to be one of my favorite things to do and i wish it was still there so i could pretend i had nothing better to do but paint cliche cutesy ceramics. i still remember the little room of tables where they had classes/demonstrations and how nervewrecking it was to walk around with fear of knocking into and breaking every last delicate piece in the narrow aisles. i miss it. this was the piggy bank that i painted at who knows what age. i decided to grab it from our garage sale, give him some kaotic kritter eyes, and start legitimately using him as a real bank. i painted banky orange to match our kitchen and now he sits happily on our microwave waiting for me to feed him lots of spare change (even though i rarely have any.)
before anyone thinks i'm super awesome and creative, i must confess that the belly with the coins in it isn't an original idea. banky is a complete rip off (or should i say "tribute") to my favorite toy-designer, amanda visell. much of amanda visell's artwork (mostly figures) has characters with the silhouette of a belly, as shown above, with some sort of character or object inside of it. i thought it would be funny and cute to have a tummy full of coins on my piggy bank-- and figured my banky is for my own personal use, something i'll never redo for another so no harm done. she gets too much business from me anyway, i spend way too much on her figures.
and now that you are aware of her (if you weren't already), you can go look up and admire amanda visell's work and love her as much as i do.
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