ooga chaka, ooga chaka!

It’s been a while since we had a nice, resin-cast child here, and I think I remember why.

Of all the forms resin can take when it glops and pools in the great resin-swamps east of Houston, the most obnoxious is the resin-cast child. At least, that’s what I thought. Turns out, I was right. I don’t know what tragic, dwindling tribe this little guy’s from, but I don’t doubt they’ll be happy to take their last swirl around the toilet basin of oblivion once they see how the great artists of resin have chosen to commemorate them.

The chicken…the chicken adds class.

If I was celebrating my heritage through interpretive dance, I’d totally want to have a chicken in the middle of my patch of weirdly-textured concrete. The affronted squawk will just heighten the dignity of the whole thing.

From this angle, I can’t tell if he’s playing a djembe, or trying to dig out all the filberts from a weird blue bowl of mixed nuts. My bet’s on the filberts. Filberts are awesome. A skirt made of blue leather and peacock feathers is kind of awesome, too, but not on him. Maybe on a member of Thunder Down Under, but not on this kid.

46 years later, washed up, broken, alcoholic and probably on his second loveless marriage, he’s still wearing the little skirt. “You should have seen me. God, those were the salad days. Big endorsements…women…all the damn filberts I could eat…it was paradise. Then I got…I don’t know, too old. My agent said it was the filberts what done it, but I knew…he didn’t come out and say it, but I could see him thinking ‘Dave…Dave, put down the funny felt hat. 26 is too old for that hat.’ But you’re never too old for peacock feathers, know what I’m saying? Now get the hell out of here, or pass me another can o’them mixed nuts.”

Savers on Burnet near 2222, Austin

So…Goodwill had a WHOLE lot of mixed media art that day. There was a sort of “high school art class dumping ceremony” that went on, and I was lucky enough to witness this great abandonment of B- projects. Woohoo.

So…this probably is deeply meaningful to someone.

Maybe you.

We’re on some sort of artistic journey here, a road we’re taking together. It clearly starts with the crass material world, which is always in the upper left. A road stretches out in front of you like the first three squares of “Candyland” before you stumble over your INNER VIEW” and everything totally falls apart.

Already you’ve fallen from heaven and ended up in New Zealand. Why? Why did you fall from grace? Were you scared of the giant spinning plate filled with goldfish? Probably. I would be.

You look for meaning—you see a window, and try to dive through it, but at this point, you’re on a downward spiral, or sort of a downward French curve. You see another window—another chance for escape—but you’re thwarted by crossword puzzles. Damn them! Crucigrams always dogged your steps, and now, they hound you even in this metaphorical mindscape. Inevitably, the desire to create art draws you into a maelstrom of madness, where, deep in your ch’i, what at first looks like a devouring maw opens up to consume you.

But that would be too easy.

No, instead, your journey throws you into a pit of molten gold, where angels and the baby Jesus watch as strange, saint-like angel figures slowly pull you apart. THAT is the ultimate fate of any who create art in their Ch’i. Next time, create art in your garage, studio, or maybe in Photoshop. Never in your ch’i.

Goodwill on Lamar near Manchacha, Austin

Even common household goods have needs. Take cardboard tubes, for example. Their powerful sexual urges have only recently been explored by biologists. Bored, bored biologists, who really needed this grant, you have no idea how hard it is to get funding for aquatic biology these days. In fact, we couldn’t even afford the field trip to Galveston to observe some real fish. We couldn’t even make it to that little creek by the park, the one with the minnows. Nope, we’re down to cardboard tubes.

But they’re excited tubes.

Sometimes an artist just has to release their inner Warhol. That’s when it’s time to go full multimedia. Whip out the cans.
O

A can of soda hiding behind desperately behind a mesh, scant protection against the oncoming tubes. Oh how they circle in their frustration, thirsty for whatever dregs of Diet Coke they can shake out of its aluminum casket–if they could only reach it!

Actually, looking at the work in its full glory, I’m thinking mice. Tube-mice dancing through a world of fire, trying to find the coke can that, embedded in the fiery medium of their world, can thus transcend the world, leading them to a perhaps somewhat cooler afterlife.

All this for just $8.99!

Sometimes, when you look at a picture, and ask yourself “what was the artist thinking?” the answer you keep coming back to is “…what the hell am I going to do with all these tubes, and an 11:00 deadline?”



Once again, we delve into the exciting world of “When the Frame is Better than the Art.” Note the intricacy of the frame. How the scrollwork plays a golden tune, carressing the interior of the wood with a rivulet of gilded swirls, vaguely reminiscent of the heraldic crest of Spain, itself an homage to the Virgin Mary in her celestial glory.

Observe the marbled finish, a delicate antique veneer brushed over sturdy oak, adding the weight of years without weakening the integrity of the wood with dry rot and the slow advance of the years. So rarely does baroque ornamentation and utilitarianism come together in such harmony!

I guess we should talk about the art, at some point. I’d been trying to avoid it.

Hrrnuurrrr!! Somehow we have realized the worst possible elements of bad photoshop and bad oil paint in unholy union. Take a postage-stamp-sized photograph of someone’s grand-daughter, the photo she hates, the one where she was yawning AND eating, or just stepped off the short bus into bright sunshine. Blow it up. WAY up. Airbrush over it, then add a creeping white frost slowly crawling up her shoulder like the fungus from Pluto. Cover your brush with spackle. Add a mumu. You know, every horror show of a screaming, Münsch-esque anklebiter needs to be wearing a thick, thick layer of paste. It’s like a toothpaste toga.

Take this lively little abomination, roll it in a pile of confetti, and paste her against a quick-and-dirty rendition of “Autumn in New England After the Bomb.” Add salt to taste. Serves six.

Salvation Army on 183, Austin



Good luck with that, Bob!

Bob the Builder is, if anything, an optimist. He is also, if anything, animated clay, but it’s best not to hold that against him. Don’t mention the clay thing. He gets testy.

So, when he saw the brick-a-brack section at the Goodwill on Metric, he thought, “Well, no problem! How many broken clowns and crappy children’s ceramic bowls can there be?”

Oh, Bob, quite a lot. Quite a lot.

By the time Bob the Builder got through with just the children’s section, he was a broken man. “Why do people donate this sh&t?” he screamed, scaring the hell out of Pilchard the Cat, who had never heard Bob use a word stronger than “Gosh!” up till this point. He had to agree with Bob, though, who had uncovered a buried horde of headless barbies. Why, indeed.

When we last left Bob, he was somewhere in “housewares,” muttering “I don’t know what this is. I can’t FIX something that I don’t even recognize. There’s, like, marbles in it, and it’s huge, and I’ve HAD IT with these stupid, stupid candle sticks. NOBODY needs them. Come on, Mr. Jackhammer. It’s time to fix it…for good.”

Goodwill on 183 and Metric, Austin

I always feel a sense of vague guilt for these posts. Not a LOT of guilt. Perhaps I should lay the guilt at the feet of the crafters themselves, but I’m not sure it would stick.

Question: Why was this in the Christmas display? What part of this screams “santa” or “elf” or “good idea”? In her defense, I’ve definitely seen worse examples of Country Crafting. Like the doll whose body was a giant blue cube. If only someone had thought to add this head to a blue cube, I could have finally said “okay, thrift, I’m done, you win.” But, no.

The legs, the feet, are amazing.Massive engines of mobility, huge tree-trunks bearing their owner across the land, hearkening to an older, primal period where giant racial stereotypes roamed the earth in search of food and Vaudeville theaters. I do worry, though, that her head will roll off, bouncing away down the road. I think it already did, that hair is glued at an angle that could generally be described as “rakish,” or just “unfortunate.”

And another fun game of “guess the subtext!”

I’m a messy, messy cook. And at the end of a crazy night of spaghetti and olive oil and buffalo wing sauce, my stove looks like an imitation of a Jackson Pollock painting, and whatever the heck I had my spoons sitting on looks like a bib at a cherry pie eating contest. But, like, the loser’s bib, one who seriously overestimated his pie tolerance. So…do I really want to do that to a face? Even if she’s a happy face with a wide, spoon-holding grin? We’re out of the kitchen and into some very weird sauce-fetishism here.

Unlike most Mammies, this one is dishwasher-safe. So, that’s some relief. I’m still not comfortable with a piece of kitchen equipment that says “Sauce me, baby,” even if it looks like it would enjoy it.

Mammy spoon from Salvation Army on 183 and Metric, Round Head Doll from Goodwill on Brodie in South Austin

Yeah, yeah. “Things breaking off resin statues,” not original. But…what the heck. They aren’t getting any more headless.

Oh, crap. I think this must have been a bunny! How did I miss that? Oh, well. Happy belated Easter. Here’s another damned headless rabbit. At least this one was a good bunny. When it died, God gave it wings.

Must be hard watering cactus without a head. How do you know you’ve given it enough water? Too much water? Any water?

Or maybe this was literally half a second after the Angel Bunny massacre of 2007, and the poor thing hasn’t even had the time to slump to the floor, watering can bouncing uselessly to rest beside the giant glass candle holder, before the blood pools around it and the crime unit shows up. “Central, it’s another dead angel bunny. Fourth one this week. ‘Course, angel-bunnies, they’ll just breed more.”

Anyway.

Maybe if you wish real hard, the Nursery Magic Fairy will make you real. Ideally, she’ll give you a head first. But that’s not always part of the package. “You only get one, real, or head. Your choice.”

“….I see you chose…poorly.”

“One head, gently used. That’s worth $50 or $60 off my taxes this year, right?”

If you want to know where Jolly Green Giants come from, look no further than this. They grow from spores, from vast fields filled with heads. The chorus of “ho ho ho…” echoes through the valley. Oh, General Mills is happy to put the Mr. J. Green on all their products, but will they show you how he spreads those spores? No.

The sad truth is that jolly green giants actually only live for a year or two. Then you have to dispose of the body. And that’s how we get “niblets.”

Headless bunny angel from 2222 and Lamar Goodwill. “Praying for a Head” from Goodwill on 183 and Research. Jolly Green Head from…proooobably Thrift Land on Stassney and Manchaca, but that was 2006, we were all young and crazy then.

There is a trend—a weird one—in the Austin thrift stores. Someone, somewhere, has been pushing “DIY Diorama candles.” At least, I THINK that’s what’s happening–some sort of kit that you can use to create open-faced display candles, with bits of things glued to them, or parts of the wax scraped away in a relief carving sort of effect.

The trend, of course, is people dumping the damned things at Goodwill as soon as they get one for Christmas. And I’ve been seeing about one a month for most of the year. It’s a Bad Thing.

Take this crime against Arts and Crafts. Please note, it is not to scale. An the elephant-like thing hiding behind it in terror is not a part of the actual product. How do I know? Because the elephant thing isn’t the color of entrails at sunset.

Puckered, scarred, and oozing, this is a cornucopia of ick. Like a carbuncle on the cheek of a Victorian begger terrifying you into giving him every bit of spare change you have, the artist has added a nice, purple bubo on the side of the thing. No idea why. Perhaps it’s meant to be the part of an adobe house where the dryer vents its steam. No clue.

The weird, cow-tongue structure dragging its way out of the saguaro cactus is only a little less off-putting than the poorly-stitched scar running along the side. If this is some sort of primative dwelling, why go through the trouble of stitching up its battle wounds? It’s only going to get into more fights, you’d hardly need to bother.

I’m thinking Jaws 4: This Time, It Got Texas.

Oh look, honey, more deep wounds. This time, they’re actually oozing. Let’s buy one for grandma!

So…I don’t know an awful lot about coyotes. I’ve always assumed they were, you know, pretty much like a scrawny sort of wolf that lives on a diet of voles and housecats. Kind of doggy. I didn’t know they could increase their temperature to 1215° to melt dens out of sandstone and Texas granite. They’re pretty clever and adaptable, but not blast furnace adaptable. Note the tail eating itself into the rock behind him, and the molten pink lava flow around his feet. I’m surprised the cow skull hasn’t burst into flames yet—but not TERRIBLY surprised, as Texas summers are pretty fierce and sometimes the rock gets a little melty even without the coyotes.

Texas Thrift on I35 and 51st, Austin

Not everybody has felt the magic, the awesome grandeur, that is the Deathhorse Experience. Many people haven’t. Many people that are, in some small sense, slightly better off, haven’t. Which is not to say there are winners and losers in “Deathhorse.” To my mind, anyone published by the American Library of Poetry is a winner. It’s very “Special Olympics” in that sense.

So celebrate with me…the return of Deathhorse.

File this one under “Sins Committed Against Multimedia.” And I’m not even sure where to begin on those sins, for they are many.

Being a child of the 80′s, I remember when puffy paint made its debut. It was magical. So magical that it did, in fact, get put on every tee shirt ever made. I’m betting Ronald Reagan and Gorbechov made puffy paint shirts at Camp David. And then we, as a culture, moved on, because thick, somewhat random globules of pain are UGLY.

Although not quite as ugly as what happens when you yank the stuff off.

Poor horse. Poor horse with the denuded ear. You didn’t deserve what the 80s did to you.

The eyebrow jewelry was an innovative touch. It would give the entire thing an “anime” sort of quality, if it wasn’t very small pebbles, and if the horse wasn’t obviously deceased. Covering it with bits of random paint and splotches of dried blood was NOT a wise choice. I don’t know what the artist’s intended effect was, but I don’t think it was “advanced decomposition.” Gluing lots and lots of pieces of grass and dirt certainly adds to the effect there. But if “Zombie Horse” was your intent—and not just the name of a really great drink—why the blue hair? The entire thing looks like Starlite’s necrotic half-brother. They don’t talk about him in Rainbow Land.

Not after the time they saw him feeding, anyway.

Goodwill at 183 and Research. Oh, if you were flesh and blood instead of a retail institution, the fun we would have.



Using only the AMAZING HEAD POWERS granted to me by my magical blood hat, I shall control the very mind of this cactus!

Which is actually harder than it sounds. Cactuses are pretty sharp.

I’m not sure about wearing the aztec style headdress and the white tank top, though. It kind of looks like you’re wearing the bib there, Mr. Plant Guy. Or were the only guy to bring your cactus to the foam party. Not a good idea. The cactus would pop all the bubbles, and then everybody would think you’re not into the whole foam party headspace.

Hello, Mr. Plant Guy?

Hello?

…Oh. I can see you’re in some sort of demonic trance. Please don’t let me get in your way. As you were.

I would gladly buy a Dr Pepper for anyone who can tell me what’s going on here. Is this Quetztaplaxtal, the Aztec god of cacti and bangle bracelets, communing with his bride on the rocky cliffs? Just possibly. Is there a reason why he wears bloody leg-warmers? Yes. It’s probably a complicated metaphor for sex, or a rain-making ritual. Ultimately, sex is really just a complicated metaphor for making rain.

Now, iss he aiming is red-eyed baleful stare of infinite evil power at the poor cactus? And does the special blood-red hat of power with the golden concentration crystal let him channel his massive powers into the cactus? Perhaps. We’ll never know, though, because it’s a cactus, and honestly, they’re not good for much.

Aztec Cactus God from Goodwill on 222, Austin.