2 minute read
Mike Pitzer
Grape Tootsie Pop Mike Pitzer
This is another large Tootsie Pop drawing from my “Happy Art” series. With the pandemic in full swing, I was searching for the happiest of days as a child going up on the St. Clair River running through Algonac, Michigan. As a kid, we’d ride our bikes along M59 and pick up the pop and beer bottles people threw out of their car windows. Each bottle was worth 3 cents.
We’d find a dozen each. After we’d wash them out with the garden hose, we’d head up to the
Pte. Tremble Market and cash ‘em in. I’d buy a grape Faygo (25 cents) and a grape Tootsie
Pop (5 cents) and still have a nickel left over. My drawing brought back all those wonderful memories of being outside, running around the city with friends on our bikes, not a worry in the world. So un-Covid-like. 55 Contact information for this artist can be found on page 77.
Mighty Mouse Paddleball Game Mike Pitzer
As a kid, growing up on the St. Clair River that ran through the little town of Algonac, Michigan, we didn’t have a lot of games we’d plug in or that ran on batteries. Our games tended to run on our imaginations, sure determination, and probably cost a quarter at the local Ben Franklin store. One of my favorites was my Mighty Mouse Paddleball. If you couldn’t beat your brother or sister’s highest score, you’d best ‘em by doing it longer without stopping. I think the longest I ever went was 12 minutes non-stop. The only downside was these paddles could be used by Mom or Dad to give you a swat if you misbehaved — and what kid doesn’t misbehave? In this direction, graphite and colored pencil on painted wood panel came about when I ran out of large rolls of drawing paper. I had the urge to do something and I had several wood panels so I thought why not give it a try? The interesting thing to me is that with my Happy Art drawings, I work very hard to keep the paper clean yet working on panels, the dirtiness of media added a lot of energy and feeling for me.
