I wrote this Yelp* review of www.EmilyArts.com a couple of weeks ago after she created the “face of HomeOwnerMan.” (So you can all blame her.) I wanted to post it here too along with some other tidbits about Emily…
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I should mention at the outset that I’ve known Emily for many years, and I mention this because I have had the opportunity to view scores of her caricatures on social media. I never get tired of looking at them, and I’ll tell you why. Emily does more than capture what the person looks like; she somehow manages to depict their entire personality right on the page. For many years I thought this was just a perception I had, but one day she posted a caricature of a woman I’ve known since high school. Let me tell you, the image so accurately depicted her personality that I had to do a double-take to make sure it wasn’t one of those animated “Harry Potter” photographs.
So, when my wife suggested that I start a blog to showcase some of my tall tales and attempts at painting, I immediately thought that the site would be enhanced by a caricature by Emily. I contacted her, and she made the process as easy as could be. She asked me to email few good photographs of myself (if there is such a thing). Then we discussed what it was I was looking for. Her pricing schedule is written clearly on her web site, so we chose the appropriate one, and she was off and running. She sent periodic drafts to ensure I was happy with the direction in which she was going. From the first pencil sketch it was clear that I would be better off giving her full artistic license, because she really knows the business. By the time she got to the finished product, I marveled (and was horrified at the same time lol) at how much it looked like me. Even more incredible was that it looked a little like my mother, who to my knowledge Emily never met and even more incredibly most people say I look like my father. And yet she accentuated parts of my face that are part of my mother’s ancestry.
So, let’s talk about the business transaction a little more. Have you ever worked with artists? They can be quirky and the business transaction can be awkward. This is not at all the case with Emily. She is upfront about costs, deadlines, and requirements. This makes her perfect for doing corporate events where there is a bean-counter watching from a business perspective. She is unobtrusive, which makes her perfect for your wedding or Bar Mitzvah. Her prices are very reasonable, which makes her perfect for your family gathering. And she is fun, which makes her perfect for your birthday party.
Thanks, Emily, for making the ordinary extraordinary!
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I went to high school with Emily. It was in the early days when they started closing down Catholic schools for low attendance, or as I learned recently from Emily, in order to sell off valuable land to the highest bidder. Anyway, Emily got displaced into my high school from an all-girls high school, which in theory meant that my chances of a date on a Friday night just improved. It was always just a theory. Anyway, it turned out that I was not the only senior in the parking lot driving a ’74 Plymouth Satellite, there was also a “Notre Dame” girl who drove one, too. Actually, hers might have been a ’73, I can’t remember and it is not important to the story, but if my brother is reading this and happens to remember what year hers was, he would correct me so I might as well disclaim it here.
Anyway, it was a foot in the door to talk to Emily which I did, shyly, but I never got to really know her until Senior Week 1982 in Wildwood, NJ. It was there I found out she had a boyfriend, and I was demoralized only slightly, because I had a girlfriend at the time too. But it turned out her boyfriend was working and couldn’t come to senior week, and my girlfriend was an underclassman so wouldn’t likely be there. So we made one of those “When Harry Met Sally” deals that if we both were alone on Wednesday night we’d hit the clubs together.
Wednesday came, and I was alone as was she all day. Things were looking up. So I gussied up the best I could and arrived at her door to go out. I was crestfallen as she answered the door and introduced me to her boyfriend. [queue violins].
Flash forward 30 years. Facebook came along. Emily and I got back in touch. She immortalized me in a caricature. HomeOwnerMan.com was born.