Honestly, the whole world of “high school art” generally just makes me a little bit sad, rarely does it ever actually frighten me. But I think we’re edging there now.

Mainly because I’m feeling like this might actually be some strange religious icon–”rapture of the dead pigeon,” or Pigiata. And if that’s the case the artist may have actually out-weirded the Unitarian Universalists, and that takes some effort.

Not sure what it is. But pretty sure you’re not supposed to feed it after midnight. Or really ever, feeding it might just encourage it. It’s bad enough that it’s a nightmarish bastard crossbreed of a care bear, Ross Perot, and a necrotic penguin, you don’t want to feel vaguely responsible for it somehow.

After the bird apocalypse, the last thing the starving, desperate members of the human race saw was this thing drifting over the horizon in a silent, still mockery of flight. The  particularly superstitious or foolish or Unitarian Universalist among them tried to placate it with worship. There is no more terrible way to die than a 700-gallon bird poopie.

Bird? Fly? Mouse?

Birdflymouse?

We don’t know either, but we think we saw this on “Ren and Stimpy” when we were much, much younger. Saturday morning cartoons were far, far too dark for us, and we longed for the blessed silence of televised golf.

Goodwill on 2222 and Lamar, Austin. 

Pity the penguin drawn by a six-year-old. It is well beyond flightless and into the realm of the pathologically antiaerodynamic.

You may have noticed, Benjamin’s vision of a penguin is uniquely round. We assume that the loss of penguin life to sea lions and the Inuit people is astonishing. One penguin could feed a small village–of Inuit, not sea lions, which do not have villages as far as we know–for a week.

They do not swim. They are, however, buoyant. During their hatching season, they fill the waves with bobbing like a remedial soccer class practicing on an aircraft carrier. It’s magic. The sea lions think so, too.

Personally I don’t think Benjamin has seen very many penguins, except that one that fell off a building and killed his sister.

This particular penguin has decided it is NOT going to be eaten by sea lions or the Inuit, and has picked up a spiked helmet and shoulder pads from the Antarctic Murderbowl team. It won’t help, because the poor thing is as round and succulent as a Butterball turkey stuffed with bacon, but it’s nice that it puts up a brave front.

Savers on Burnet and North Loop, Austin

Thesis #1: part of the experience of being an Artist (do not capital “a”) is not being understood.
Thesis #2: part of the experience of being a teenager is not being understood.

If these two states are additive, then a high school artist would be completely unintelligible. If, however, we’re in the “two wrongs make a right” and “two rights make a left” school of thought, then high school art would tend to be completely transparent. I really think this time around that’s more the case.

Now please put on some Depeche Mode (what, too dated?), a black tee shirt, and don’t speak to your parents for three months, or you just won’t be in the right headspace to appreciate this.

Not only do you not understand me, the trees, also, do not understand me. Behold, I turn my back on nature. Pleasant rolling hills with a small creek, and lofty pines, I deny you. You will not intrude on my endless solitude. In fact, just to nail down my outsider status, I have coated myself thoroughly in RustOleum brand black board paint. Once you have used me, please erase your work so that I can be utterly, utterly empty for my next user.

Woe.

Goodwill on 2222 and Lamar, Austin

No, it’s not asparagus. This is 1)  next  year’s “Mr. July” from “Men of Houndstooth,” 2) a shepherd, or 3) a textbook example of why you shouldn’t needlepoint in the same color as your backing material. Surprisingly, the answer is “Mr. July,” which is not to say that there’s some truth to #2 and #3. Because white sheep on a white background become strange, ghostly creatures that resemble points of hellish blue radiance staring out of the dark void of space.

gaze into the sheep…

Not knowing much about sheep, I’m unsure if those are big black ears, or flippers. The poor thing could be shoved upside down, waving its phalanges about in the air trying to right itself, for all I know. Being amorphous clouds of white on white, they work equally well upside down as right side up. Not very, either way. Free yourself, little sheep!

What an odd little gnome. I’d give good money to know what you call that sort of sweeping man-skirt he’s wearing. It’s rather bell-like, or merrily conical.  And he’s found another one of those void-sheep I see. This one’s spiralling out of the infinite darkness to feed on his elbow. Better you than us, brave shepherd.

Not even sheep respect a shoe like that. Granted, the lift he gets when he plays hacky-sack with the corner kids is phenomenal, but you really only see that kind of toe in the magical worlds of Renaissance Festivals and needlepoint. Please don’t wear that. The sheep keep snickering.

Savers, South Lamar, Austin

I like the fact that, after this thing escaped from Edward Gorey’s bedside endtable, it took the time to get its nails done. That’s how you know it’s a classy knob. Thing. Possibly fandangle. It’s certainly elegant, it’s got the curves of a 1940s Hollywood musical starlette. Particularly if her upper half was made out of lime “jolly ranchers” and fractured in a freak pas de deux accident.

On the other hand, it may actually be a lounge singer from the Mos Eisley Cantina. And maybe she wasn’t made of jolly ranchers. Maybe that’s her only functioning eye, and I’m judging her. If so, I’m sorry, and George Lucas  did a terrible thing to you. To all of us.

Does it make any more sense from this angle? No? Okay.

One thing that really bugs me about this is that the green nub is like 3 degrees off of symmetric. It’s…really empissing. Why? WHY?

That, dear, is probably an end.

I know that macro photography is kind of a “thing,” you can get any number of things blown up to hideously large scale with the click of a search button. But the fleshy pinkness of the balloon, the twisted little umbilicus knot, it looks like some strange pro-life advertisement. “Think before you pop…choose inflation.”

Uh…thingie…from Texas Thrift near I35 and 51st, balloon butt from Salvation Army on 1325 near Round Rock

At some point in time, not too awful long after the Thirteen Colonies, there was some divergent evolution in the flag department.

It was more or less around the time that Martha’s Vineyard became the nation’s capital, that was when things went a little cattywumpus. The 76 colonies had just declared their independence from the Ottoman Empire, giving Mustafa III the finger in the event that historians would later call “The Boston Dolmas Party.” In the new flag, each colony would be represented by a grape leaf, one that was open instead of filled with a tasty blend of rice, onions, and mint–this showed how the colonies were open to a new future, instead of being stuffed.

The seventeen stripes have evolved over time–originally there was only two stripes, the same red as the Ottoman Flag, to remind the colonies of their past and of the hard war they had fought–or at least the terrible and unconscionable tariffs on za’atar imposed by the sultanate. However, they eventually became oddly curved and densely packed, representing the intersection of VFW Highway and Bridge Street, to celebrate how that famous intersection stood at the turning point of the Revolutionary War, causing a massive 87-cart, 14-horse, and two-boat collision that caused both French and Turkish armies to be two weeks late to the Battle of Bunker Hill.

True story.

Goodwill on 2222 and Lamar, Austin

Just so you know.

Texas Thrift on 51st and I35

Here’s the sad, sad story of the cats at the lav.

When I saw this picture, I HAD to have it. It had drama. It had joy, it had anger. It had kilts. But mostly, it had cat people who really had to pee, and that, friends, is art.

As it happens, my mother lives about a block from a huge thrift store. In fact, it’s probably the only reason she ever sees me, that and when she has to post bail. And this…masterpiece…was on glorious display at that store for about two months.

If you’re anything like me, you’re saying, “It’s so beautiful.” And you are RIGHT. Images of a far-away land, a land with anthropomorphic cats, and a urinal in every driveway. I’m sure the owner of the bijou little restaurant under the stripy pavilion might prefer that the urinal was not in his or her driveway, but these things happen. A land with very, very tiny cars, cars so small that rather than instead of driving them, the cat-people sit on top of them and steer them with their toes.

And yet, the $30 pricetag seemed a little on the batshit crazy side, so I said…no.

And then, there was the Thanksgiving sale. The entire store, 1/3 off. “Oh mother,” I said, “I have been ever such a good boy this year, and if Santa Claus happened to pop by Thrift Town during the Thanksgiving Madness sale and buy me the picture of the cats peeing, I would be so very pleased.”

Christmas came, but this year was, obviously, the Christmas that Santa forgot. But at least I have memories. And magnification x10 photos.

So, I can handle outdoor urinals, sure, that’s fine. But I can’t handle that part of this tradition is that the next person in line gets to stare at you over the door. That seems a little invasive somehow. “Are you finished?” “I don’t know, you tell me.”

Am I misinterpreting? Probably. Hey, is that a mouse at the left? I bet she’s going to be finding a different stall.

I love the stall artwork. Sort of a “The great cavorting blond goddess Shirley Temple mocks the pathetic, full-bladdered catlings” thing.

“Dark master Cat-Satan says, ‘Did YOU bring exact change?’” The mouse, his strange court jester, nods frantically, lest she be devoured. It does no good, Cat-Satan devours all…but he devours mice first.

But really, it’s all about this. This is the rascal dog tugging at his master’s bikini, this is the “two bits” after the shave and a haircut.

He might want to see a doctor about that, though, that’s not a healthy color, and I’m not sure what to make about the naked fleshy legs. Cats shouldn’t shave their legs. He’s too young for such vanity.

Thrift Town near Stassney and Manchacha, and mom’s house, Austin

Angel? Demon? Mutant? We reserve judgement.

To be honest, we’re not really certain what gender we are looking at. We believe this to be a female, a female what is still one of those great unanswereds, like “Why does god allow Paris Hilton?” and “How will we overcome ADHD this week?”

About the wing. It seems…well, of dubious utility in any sort of controlled descent situation. More like a blue croissant than a wing, really, or a strange flipper molded from cement.

We thought perhaps she was flying against a fiery sky, but she may only be swimming nonchalantly through a sea of blood, doing a sort of backstroke. Wings that were absolutely useless for flying might be quite helpful in paddling merrily through a sea of blood, even the tiny, useless vestigial arm might be helpful in, say, steering, or digging for bloodclams.

None of which changes the fact that she seems to be made of concrete. So much so that a few birds seem to have mistaken her for a lovely mutant angeldemon statue, and spattered her chest with a fine appreciation of sculpture. She was somehow able to keep her hair clean, and good for her, but this does explain her little “oh, fiddlesticks” expression, the downward turn of her lip.

Wait, that’s not her lip, that’s the glare from the shelf. I forgot, mutant angeldemons don’t have lips. It’s been so long since I took that course, I lost track.

Savers on South Lamar, Austin

Okay, technically this guy’s not a clown, he’s a hobo. But they fill the same basic ecological niche, as far as Aisle 14, “Miscellaneous,” goes. Clowns are really life’s worst-case scenarios, and hobos are their spiritual cousins in the thrift ecosystem. So. Leer with me now.

This is the guy that showed up at the picnic last year, nobody knew who he was but everybody thought he was Sally’s boyfriend, the one who managed to fit all the potato salad in his pocket. And it turned out he was Sally’s boyfriend. Sally likes herself some potato salad.

Sock puppet? Arcane gesture beckoning eldritch forces beyond our reckoning? You be the judge. I’m thinking, extraterrestrial life. And he’d STILL be a better catch than Sally’s last boyfriend.

Behold Him in His glory:

I think he ran out of cigars a few weeks ago and tried to smoke his own foot. What’s wrong with that appendage?

Back to the strange intersection of extraterrestrial life and clowns. It’s not so much that there’s something wrong here as that nothing, nothing at all, is right. But really, we could just stop at his strange torso. Most people I know of don’t have their hands grafted to their knees. It’s not often done, not in a sane universe. Sure, maybe on the Muppets, but is that a sane universe? No. Maybe he’s from an alternate earth, some variation of Terra-Prime where life evolved not from one-celled organisms, but from donuts and crullers. Massive pastryform creatures wobbling across the land, desperately trying to hold in their strawberry filling, hoping to be able to make it to the glazepool before they drew the attention of Kolachesaurus Rex.

Hobo Art from Goodwill on 2222, Long-Necked Glass Clown from Goodwill on Stassney and Manchacha, Austin