Surprise!

Something that tends to irk me is newspaper articles that act like you don't know what they're about, despite headlines and photos above them. The author tries to work in a cute "surprise" a few paragraphs in:

The hottest new abstract artist in town has reason to celebrate.

This summer, she went from selling her work in a coffee shop to having her own gallery show.

After a local newspaper's feature on her, about 2,000 people came for opening night - everyone from serious collectors to the artist's preschool teacher. She earned more money than she could comprehend. The gallery owner said it was his most successful show ever and scheduled a second one for October.

Then comes the big "revelation":

So celebrate, the artist did. [Yuck.] During a recent visit, she climbed on a big bouncing ball shaped like a frog, grabbed the handles and bounced around the house with laughter pealing and pigtails flying.

The artist is Marla Olmstead. She is 4.

Oh, wow! What a cute opening! It would have been cuter if there hadn't been a huge photo of a four-year old girl with her "art" and the headline "4-Year-Old Paints With Flair".

As my quotes around "art" demonstrate, I have one more pet peeve with this piece: In a two-page spread and thirty paragraphs, there's not a hint that anyone might think this is, as Rush Limbaugh would say, Barbra Streisand. Six thousand bucks for the meaningless scribblings (I doubt named by the "artist," by the way, the article notwithstanding) of a four year old? Jeez.