Dave Dyment
Mondegreen for Yoko Ono
5 x 7" plexiglass
acrylic on laser cut plexiglass
For their annual fundraising event Struts and the Owens Art Gallery invite artists to donate a postcard-sized artwork which they auction off at a gala titled The Sweetest Little Thing. Until a few years ago they would mail out wooden 5 x 7 boards to participants, something which Jon Sasaki & Micah Lexier always put to good use.
In the fall I ran a series of posts here that could serve as an almost comprehensive overview of Yoko Ono's various iterations of her 1971 postcard A Hole To See The Sky Through. These were followed with a few variations by other artists (Dieter Roth, Alex Snukal, David Bellingham, etc).
My Sweetest Little Thing entry is another variation: a plexiglass postcard called Mondegreen for Yoko Ono, with the text reading "A Hole To See This Guy Through".
The term 'mondegreen' was coined by writer Sylvia Wright in 1954, who recalled a memory from her childhood of mishearing a line from the Scottish ballad "The Bonny Earl of Murray". She mistook the words "laid him on the green" as "Lady Mondegreen". I first heard of the term in the first grade. My teacher recounted that she always felt the Christmas carol Good King Wenceslas was a very sad song, because she mistook the line "Good King Wenceslas looked out on the feast of Stephen" as "Good King Wences last looked out."
Famous song lyric examples include "Hold me closer, Tony Danza", "Then I saw her face, now I'm gonna leave her", "You've been outright offensive, for so long now" and "I want to rock and roll all night, and part of every day". Perhaps the most infamous misreading is from the song Blinded By The Light: "Revved up like a deuce".
As a child, Roula and her sister thought the Beatles' "Get Back" included the line "Jojo was a dog who thought he was an owner", which is better than anything in the actual song.
Bidding began a couple of hours ago and continues until the 14th of February (Valentines Day and four days before Yoko Ono's 90th birthday), here:
Before Covid the auction was only in person, with most of the works selling locally, and typically for not much money. Artists participating this year who have previously appeared on this blog include: Jon Sasaki & Micah Lexier (collaboratively, as always), Bridget Moser, Graeme Patterson, Kerri Reid, Rhonda Weppler & Trevor Mahovsky, Joshua Schwebel and Roula Partheniou.
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