Plastic Whiskers

One evening in the very recent past I sat on the floor and pet my Siamese cat Ramona for a while. She repeatedly rubbed her face against the exterior side of hand, as she often does....she was more or less petting me. As she did this, one of her whiskers fell out and I caught it between my fingers. In all of my years of pet ownership (for lack of a better word,  I've never really felt like we have the ability to own another living thing, and one most certainly cannot own a cat...cat owners know what I mean) I have never knowingly been present for the shedding of whiskers. I'd never even seen a whisker detached from the body of a cat. I twirled it between my fingers and realized that I'd never once considered that whiskers are a type of a hair. To me they've always been their own thing, long tickling extensions of the cat, and extensions of their identities, a key detail on a simplistic cat drawing or a halloween costume; A defining factor...opening up all sorts of epistemological questions regarding appearance and identity. As I twirled it up and down the upper digits of my middle finger and thumb,  I thought back to a family trip to Hawaii. I was probably twelve or so. For some reason, the souvenir shops all carried those porcelain lucky money cats that act as generic decor in most Chinese restaurants. They're usually gold or white and have a raised, curved paw that is mobile in some like a bobbing head. I was obsessed with them, I had to have one.  As a kid I was always drawn to objects that were foreign to me, things I didn't understand, my ignorance gave them a stronger allure. Their aesthetic quality symbolized something to me, something I only really explored through my ability to occasionally possess these goods, if my parents were willing. I think I just liked what was "other" to me, objects from faraway lands that I idealized in a way that's probably very far from contemporary political correctness.  It didn't matter that these cats were mass produced in factories with terrible work conditions, I didn't know that. I just wanted one. I was a little, thirsty consumer drawn to the primary colors of these lucky cats.  I got one. It was probably 8 or 9 inches tall and white with long plastic whiskers. I remember one or two of these whiskers fell out early on. I couldn't stand the asymmetry nor the imperfection that this left on my cat, so I neurotically plucked them all out.

I snapped back into the present and realized Ramona's whisker was still in my fingers and that it wasn't plastic. I think since the purchase of that Hawaiian lucky money cat, I'd always thought all cat whiskers were made of plastic, without ever considering it or being conscious of this bizarre assumption. All the sudden I became aware that  I'd always passively assumed cat whiskers were plastic. Assumptions turn into beliefs, beliefs turn into assumptions, and all of it just get stored in our brains as accepted interpretations of reality, never to really be questioned. I would've been fine going on believing forever that cat whiskers were plastic without ever really acknowledging or being conscious of this belief.  They're whiskers regardless.

Soooo exciting

Miley 4 President

"Upcycled" Thrift Store Album Covers

Birthday Card for my friend Todd

I love 5 cent pictures of strangers from the thrift store. I always wonder what they're lives are (or were) like, and how the pictures ended up at the Scrap Exchange in North Carolina.

Cat Piss Melodramas

Always laugh when you're taking yourself seriously. 

When the cat pees on my artwork, I go through a time warp back into the existential angst of earlier days when I read Camus and Dostoevsky...that time of melancholic passion before I grew cynical, then jaded and then completely apathetic...Through the smell of feline piss on watercolors, I am reminded that everything is temporary and only matters if we feel that it matters, and even then it doesn't actually matter....So long urine soaked daffodils! Spring is over anyway.

Woody Allen + Willie Nelson =

Woody Nelson

Helilobster

Quality time with the Fam

Praying Mantis

Slang.

I am so behind the times. I like to pretend it's the 90's and Bill Clinton is still getting outside mouthgina while running the country super well.

So the other day I spent an hour or two or a whole day reading up on pop culture semantics in order to better acquaint myself with "reality".

I've grown fond of the expression "I can't even" ever since.

1. Can't even : Can't deal or can't handle it/you."I can't even right now."

Scotty Commando

Turn Up.

Baby Chickens

....

Found some random photos of strangers in a big pile at the thrift store.

Hippos on an Escalator

Porcupine&Opossum

Horses

I bought some horse pictures at the thrift store and turned one into a poster for my friend Kat's band, and the other into a joke for my manager at the grocery store....His mom is black and his dad is white, which I guess is fairly unique because he said he feels like a unicorn. 

2 days off

I rarely have consecutive days off. This weekend I did though, and I was bummin' it so hard around my house that by the evening on Sunday I decided it was time to put on a dress and some make up....to go buy cheap wine at the grocery store and come back home and drink it alone....with my cat beside me and Broad City reruns playing on Hulu.

fuck yes. The crazy cat lady life is good shit.

I got dressed today. It's all about the small victories in life.

new stuff

Tea Set

I'm currently trying to make shit that people might actually pay money for.

Backyard pics

I was doing my version of yoga in the backyard...which mostly just consists of laying on a mat and staring blankly upward.

I decided to take some pictures...and not do yoga.

Making the Peace

Drew this for my frat boy neighbors. I called the cops on them a couple times a while back, and it made me feel like an old maid/ bitch/ crazy person, so I'm hoping to make a mends. I don't know though, this drawing might make things worse...

New and a little different.

some stuff.

More art

hipster art for etsy, gotta start up a page...even though I don't especially want to. #brokeashell

For a cartoon contest in Slovakia themed "beer"

Ernest Hemingway

For a caricature contest in Portugal. Just mailed it in the other day.

Recent Work

My New Kitty Ramona

A Month in the Life of a Human Vagina

Human Error

The temperature dropped fairly drastically the other night here in North Carolina. Two pipes burst at my house. So glad I rent and don’t own. 

Well the following afternoon, I went to my sign-making job at the grocery store and about an hour into my shift the fire alarms went off and everyone had to exit the building. Some stubborn elderly customers objected to this, but eventually everyone was standing out in the freezing cold (by Southern standards) with their carts full of perishables involuntarily abandoned inside. A fire sprinkler had gone off. Luckily it was an outdoor one on the overhang of the front entrance.

Everyone was speculating on what had happened. Two fire trucks showed up impressively fast.  It turns out a pipe just burst; there was no fire, no real cause for alarm.

During the temporary outdoor detainment, I stood next to a young male cashier, whom I don’t really know. He said to me “Maybe someone just threw something up there and it set the sprinkler off…you know…just simple human error.” It was such an odd thing to say…

Is throwing shit upward at the entrance of a health foods store just commonplace human behavior? Just an everyday example of poor judgment?

Maybe he and I simply have different perceptions of normality.

Maybe throwing shit has recently become a conventionalized action in the world. I don’t really keep up with current events too well. Maybe throwing stuff is the new twerk. And it's consider "human error" because people like Miley Cyrus are killing people on accident. 

Human error. God I just adore that phrase.

Online Portfolio

Finally got one so I can look all professional and shit:

Fartwork

Monkey on Yo Back: 2015 Space Odyssey

#fascism #funzies

Olive the Canine Nihilist

My roommate's chocolate lab puppy, Olive, got her paws on a copy of "Man's Search for Meaning" and ripped it to shreds. It was hilariously existential. But then I realized that the book is about the Holocaust, so now I just think Olive is a Neo-Nazi. And I also feel a little ignorant for not knowing about this book prior to the incident. 

Olive & Me: 

The Great Escape

Purgatory

Sharks

Penis Santas

I made one penis santa card for a coworker, then I got commissioned to do 3 more for her, and 10 for another coworker. I have never drawn so many dicks in my life. By the end I really felt like I had accomplished something....then I thought to myself, it's 2014, why the fuck didn't you just make copies?

My sister's nursery

My sister is due in March and is waiting 'til the day of to know the sex, so I'm drawing a bunch of gender neutral animals for the nursery. Here's the first four:

My sister and brother in law are HUGE NC State fans/ Alum. I drew this for them while under the influence of hydrocodone after getting a wisdom tooth extracted.