Last night Moonie and I headed to the AS220 Project Space to view “Toy Portraits” by Sandy MacDonald Studio, which is on display now through January 30th. He was so excited to see paintings of some of his toy friends!

It was so crowded, packed to the gills with art lovers and well-wishers, that we first ducked into the non-Sandy half of the project space to view works by talented artist Antoine Revoy. His whimsical illustrations featured interesting and colorful character concepts. Moonie really liked “Meteorites (Noah’s Ark)” – although he was a little concerned that the polar bears’ tummies looked suspiciously full.

But then we found a break in the crowd and headed in to see Sandy’s paintings in their own special little room. Oh boy!

This was Moonie’s favorite, because he’s enjoyed the company of his monkey friend and his little bathtub ducky. He jumped right into their conversation, making sure they’d both heard all of his knock-knock jokes.

This one, entitled “Joy Ride,” was my favorite. There was just something so wonderful about rubber chickens stealing and crashing a scooter.

Moonie moved quickly past a portrait of G.I. Joe. When I looked quizzically at him, he whispered, “He was my roommate once. He was kind of weird about going to bed early and getting up early and fighting cobras.” I didn’t press for details. What happened in Moonie’s toybox before he and I met stays in Moonie’s toybox.

We got to meet Sandy and enjoy some wine with Providence artists and art lovers, but Moonie just couldn’t leave before reaching out to Godzilla, who was the sole scary persona among all the cute and humorous portraits of Popeye, Olive Oyl, toy robots, and the like that lined the walls.

Moonie says Godzilla is misunderstood. He didn’t mean to step on Toyko. He was just looking for a hug.

So Moonie gave him one.