Fashion Animals

Fashion Animals 1990-2021:

This was a recent birthday card I made that referred to a project from 1990. I made a bunch of life size “fashion animals” - ladies in designer dresses with animal heads out of paper maché and assorted other stuff for display in a shoe store (yes, my mother’s shoe store!) 

Please remember this was over thirty years ago. I was not afraid of the difficulties of fabrication...or critical judgement- I have to at least appreciate those qualities in my younger self. 

The following images are the animals in my swanky first studio in Chicago, where I slept immediately next to my plaster and cement mixing and casting area, and the elevated train ran past the windows approximately every five minutes. 

(How often does the train go by? So often you won’t even notice it!- accolades to those who know what movie that quote comes from)

Not sure that my rendering ability has become much less awkward in the intervening three decades... but I still enjoy the opportunity to draw an aardvark in a dress. 

And there was a warthog in the original set of figures- but it does not feature in these photos I unearthed from a dusty filing cabinet.

July Fourth Hotdog

Happy July 4th

Joey Chestnut, again the winner of the annual Nathan’s Famous Fourth of July hot dog eating contest, prepares to ingest Hotdog Rick.

This napkin was a very brief effort, mostly executed between viewing the NYC fireworks and the broadcast of the latest episode of Rick and Morty. 

An exciting evening at our house.

Hope your fourth was exciting.

Captain Planet for Earth Day 2021

Clumsy Cheadle Portrait Meets Combustible Crucifer

When our younger son suggested I draw Captain Planet today, he was thinking of the original animated show “Captain Planet and the Planeteers” from back in the 90’s.  It was considerably after my time, and well before his.

I gather both of our kids were aware of Captain Planet because of its memeification... (is that a word yet?) and because one notorious episode concerning drug addiction features an overdose, so the internet is interested in that sort of thing. 

But despite the amazing list of celebrities voicing the villains, (Ed Asner, Jeff Goldblum, Meg Ryan,  Martin Sheen, Sting, Malcolm McDowell, etc, etc) I can’t remember ever having seen the show. 

But I do remember the Don Cheadle parody where the Captain goes insane and turns everyone into trees: “Remember to recycle or I’ll turn you into a f*cking tree!”  He is quite on the wavelength of Ultron and Thanos, destroying humanity for its own good. 

I think there was also a bit where he turned a guy into broccoli for failing to recycle a bottle. 

We had a long history with my passive aggressive representations of broccoli on my kids’ lunch napkins, so a flaming floret seemed appropriate for today. 

Valentines Day Grogu Cupid

Happy Valentines Day 2021

I once drew napkins to gratify my sons’ wishes, now my goal might be to make them cringe. Is this my job as a parent of teens? 

We might all be tired of Baby Yoda, but it seemed like the obvious choice.