Food Parade

Drawing for a business mural, 2014.
With this, I gave an impassioned speech to my client about the rich history of anthropomorphic food in retail murals, and explained how we were in the unique position of being unburdened to represent anything actually sold by the business.
I am especially excited about the leggy chinese takeout box.



Above, some rejected designs.

Breakfast Imbalance

Bad breakfast for the collection, from the window of (award-winning wing merchant) Buffalouie's in Bloomington, IN.
Gaggy yolk and a bacon wave that's an affront to good taste.
Abject snack facts are stranger than fiction.

Bootleg Snoopy

Another bootleg Snoopy for my (ephemeral) collection. Found drawn on a picnic table outside Soma Coffeehouse, Bloomington, IN.

Girls' Room Graffiti

Kopec's, Pittsburgh

Travel Log

Considering renaming my blog.

Considering festooning my mental landscape with hand-routered sentiments from the hills of Indiana.

Kitsch is a positive word in some parts.

Good wood finds are rare.

Scenes from a Plaster Shak

A search for a lawn goose to treat with chrome paint for the upcoming sculpture park opening at MICO led me to this funky little shak (or shaq-ed.)
Where DO lawn ornaments come from?
Bill, the shak's proprietor makes them from molds.


Peaceable Kingdom


Choose your own Adventure


Paint your own RV

I returned home 80 lbs. richer in concrete and satisfied that shak business continues to thrive.

BooBouquet

One of the more compelling art urban legends I've heard is that there is ONE ARTIST who developed and mastered the dewy rose/ballet shoe/reflective piano surface stock photos that dot the walls of TCBYs and sub-par falafelries of our nation.
It is his work we see each time.
My friend Vanessa dropped this knowledge on me one memorable night at Zorba's 24-hour diner in Chicago's Greektown--the selfsame diner which appeared in Ice-T's expose on prostitution, Pimps Up Hoes Down--that featured an impressive collection of work in the stock rose genre.
I have chosen to refrain researching this hypothesis in any meaningful way because, simply, I WANT TO BELIEVE.

The annals of type

My years of cohabitation have yielded ample opportunities to explore the unsung and intriguing Vernacular Typography of the Passive Aggressive Sign.
Common among this genre: cardboard or repurposed garbage bases, multiple expletives, exclamation points.

The award for my favorite sign ever, and possible best collective house rule, goes to Emelda's text from my first house:
"If you eat too many cookies you won't have room for C@KE! (ed- Anarchy sign for A)
FUCKERS!! EAT THE CAKE!!"

Fair Play

Cellphone transmissions from the Indiana State Fair



The Bear Affair


Lambotard by American Apparel


Typography 101


Because they didn't know how to airbrush Black Cathy.

Train Trax/Trapper Keepers

Spring Break, Greencastle IN

Practice makes PerfectS

Revisionist Herstory

Cocaine Wolf was a woman.

Has No Boble

I stumbled upon "Has No Boble" while walking the railroad tracks of near east Indianapolis a couple years ago. Little did I know, this scrawl has been appearing across the city (and outside its limits) with subtle variations and impressive regularity.
My friend Paul Christian has been documenting the cryptic public writings of this seemingly local hobo poet for some time.
Check em out here.
(Not to be missed are his exhaustive Tom-J-Lael files, but far more has been written about that man/myth/legend.)

I'm intrigued by the minor star status (in certain communities) of local graffiti weirdos.
I'm not interested in over-analysis or artsploitation, I'm just genuinely fascinated by people's compulsions to make a distinctive mark on their environment.
The "Has no Boble" photograph on my refrigerator has provoked more comment than almost any other object in my house (and the walls are pretty plastered).
If you have similar stories/documents, feel free to post links.

Smartmouth: variations on a theme

Good Ideas, not by me, but I wish they were.

1)Get a tattoo of a white picket fence around your bicep in lieu of barbed wire.
Frontyard pride, straight out the suburbs.
(Idea by Tom Streit)

2)Carnie's: a Fair Food restaurant. Elephant ears for breakfast, fried Snickers around the clock. Tenderloins too big for the bun and the occasional Indiana Banana (corn on the cob) round out the food pyramid.
It could be at Washington Square Mall, or any airport.
(Idea by Benny Sanders)

3)An ode to Mrs. Ben Dover

(By the lovely and talented Jill Marie Mason)

Fear of a Soft Planet

stuffed animal insulation



pool noodle flying buttresses