Madame Pickwick Art Blog Art and media blog of the unexpected

Jo Sonja Varnish Shampoo & Conditioner

Few products incite such passion,authenticity, radical and sometimes dysfunctional behavior as the quality paints and mediums from Jo Sonja’s.There was the lady several years ago who sat in the aisle pounding her fists into the carpet because we had not received Textile medium after an employee gave her false hopes on the phone.

Also, on a dark and rainy Thursday evening in April the phone rang in my office. The street and store was deserted as we were 15 minutes from closing.”There’s a man in the store and he took a bottle of Jo Sonja varnish and is putting it in his hair like shampoo!”.I said I’d go take a look but he had had vanished beforehand.I went back to finish my crossword when the phone rang again ,”He is back and he’s shampooing his hair again!

I bounded up this time with a little more spring in my sneakers and found myself in the presence of a stocky fellow in full flower of pre-middle age wearing a long black coat and generously applying Satin indoor outdoor varnish into his curly hair.”How are you?,I,m fine and how’s by you?Listen, the product is not conceived as a hair care….Leave me alone already! he shouted. With that he calmly walked across the aisle reached into his pocket and flipped a tooney onto the counter. He turned his back to leave which revealed a bibical style text hand painted against the black coton ” The meek shall inherit the shit” .

With that he parted into the rain and obscurity. Who knows I thought. Perhaps I just encountered one of the Last of the Just.I quickly followed him out. The street was deserted ,not a single car and the Man in the Long dark coat had somehow disappeared. The only sign of life of all things was a porcupine ambling towards the parking lot.