Pipe Dreams

When I thought about doing another smoke painting, I decided to use a pipe as my source for some voluminous smoke and couldn’t help but choose what I and probably everyone thinks of as the pipe Sherlock Holmes smoked for my subject, if only because I love the look of it. It wasn’t until just now, trying to come up with something to post about my painting, Pipe Dreams, that I googled “Sherlock Holmes pipe” and found out that the one I painted is called a calabash and was first used by an actor playing Holmes on the stage. As soon as I saw “calabash,” I could only think of Jimmy Durante (google him, if you’re too young to have heard of him), who said goodnight to Mrs. Calabash after every performance. As mysterious as smoke…