Recapturing
the Forest Monster: Andy Kehoe’s Creatures
by Hannah
Stephenson
I’m on an
ongoing quest for a pop-up edition of The
Wizard of Oz that my
dad and I would read together when I was young. I’ve looked online, in used
bookstores, and in libraries, and haven’t found it yet. In this edition, there
was a chapter on The Forest Monster: a terrifying, many-eyed spider. In an
effort to make him seem more friendly, my dad ripped him out of the book, and
we would take turns hiding The Forest Monster for each other---in sock drawers,
lunch boxes, and on the fridge. Neither my dad nor I can find our kidnapped
Forest Monster, or the pop-up book in which it was featured. I feel sure that
the book is out there somewhere, waiting for me to rediscover it. I don’t remember
what the cover looks like, but I’ll know it when I see it.
In looking at
certain pieces of art, I have that Recapturing the Forest Monster feeling. Here is the treasure you
alone have been seeking,
the art that we love whispers to us.
 |
| Lord of Ghouls |
It’s what I
feel when looking at Andy Kehoe’s art. There are no giant,
grotesque spiders in his forests--but there are large creatures, sad-eyed,
gentle, lonely, and a bit scared of us. Antlered, bunny-eared, shadowy figures
have stepped into view. Consider Lord of
Ghouls, taller than the trees, crowned with either flames or pale
spirits. He’s walking through the fog, and stops to stare at us (maybe we
startled him) with glowing, round eyes.
Kehoe’s
creatures aren’t always alone in these images. Sometimes they clutch little
buddies (like the wolf in Call Forth
the Seed of Winter--he carries a small, toothlike being with white
branches growing from it---and several of the larger beasts have a cat or pet
in the crook of an arm).
 |
| Call Forth the Seed of Winter |
In my
favorite pieces by Kehoe, there is a gorgeously-layered, starry sky, and the creature
is shown with a companion of equal size (most beautifully demonstrated in Together at
the Threshold--we see the backs of the silhouettes of two beings
holding hands beneath the bare trees, gazing out at a sky that looks like a
foggy Milky Way. Poignantly, Kehoe’s description notes that he made this for
his wife).
 |
| Together at the Threshold |
There is a
disarming privacy to Kehoe’s paintings, an intimacy that his beasts build with
the viewer (and sometimes, with one another). There is a paused
story-in-progress that we are witnessing, like pages torn from a picture book
(think Where
the Wild Things Are,
or Runaway
Bunny). A lost
personal artifact, rediscovered. Art provides us a space to stand in while we
respond and remember, like a souvenir in reverse (a place in which to remember
a thing).
I miss the
Forest Monster, as it turns out. Poor guy. In that pop-up book, it was ugly and
alone, its many eyes bugging out at Dorothy and Co. (and the reader). What fear
did this monster feel, looking out at its readers, when it should have felt
safe. In a dark forest, pressed between the pages of a book, in the shelf of a
dusty bookstore somewhere, a companionless creature waits for me. Patiently.
***
Hannah Stephenson is a poet, editor, and instructor living in Columbus, Ohio. Her poems have appeared recently in Huffington Post, Contrary, MAYDAY, qarrtsiluni, and The Nervous Breakdown; her full-length collection, In the Kettle, the Shriek, is forthcoming from Gold Wake Press (October 2013). She is the founder of Paging Columbus!, a literary arts monthly event series. You can visit her daily poetry site, The Storialist.
