Your work “Little Carbon Footprint” is a little Tykes comfortable toy built on four upgraded wooden pallets. This is faithful to the original. Did you have a coup for reference?
Not every parent? Our yard was filled with rain. Yes, I definitely use it for reference, almost all parts are measured or stereotyped. That was probably the most interesting piece of work in the show. My daughter is 5 years old and loves it now and still does it. Aside from using another rescued commercial waste (pallet wood), my motivation is indeed to recall the long moments of being a baby parent during the pandemic, who ruthlessly pushed her into the yard on that plastic toddler’s car. She would ride her bike with great pleasure, heading forward, turn the steering wheel to nowhere, honk the horn, and ignore the dangers of the world around her. When I pushed her, the invisible back drooped my appearance and hung it on me, pondering the present and thinking about the future. I really want to look back and face that moment. Face this demon and deal with that time by recreating the toddler car of wood. Now, I can look back at that moment with a smile, although bittersweet.
Pay tribute to the two companies in Tacoma. Can you tell us something Return from Tacoma to Mars?
Mars Candy Company was originally founded by Franklin Mars in Washington Tacoma, south of Seattle. Tacoma also happens to be where Fox News is broadcast locally. Growing up before 9/11, Fox was the fourth local news channel branch after NBC, ABC and CBS. I never thought about it much. They seem more interesting, showcasing more sports and licensed the same cooler joint as the married ones of the kids, twins and X-Files. I feel like I’m a little burning, and now Fox News has started to consume a lot of products, so I definitely want to use this show to target them. So when I found a local connection to Mars Wrigley, I ran away.
Recently, I saw (ironically) a gem Z’er who really believed in something that might not exist for public phones, and it was just a device seen in the movie. I don’t have the logic of “birds are not real”, but pay calls are weird. They look busy and seem to be giant bacterial magnets. We really put our mouths on the receiver in the wild! No wonder we get sick like children. You inject the sarcastic phone “Macintosh kills public phone” with the top app injected on it and the non-front friendly Apple logo…
Oh, I was just intoxicated. These days, I’m driving this 1978 Volkswagen. I was riding in a friend in his 30s and didn’t know how to buckle the old seat belt. Manually shaking the window is also a trip. When I taught my 10-year-old nephew how to plug a cassette into the player, he didn’t try hard enough to press the play button. “No, you have to like, actually press the button. You can click on it.”
I think your other point about the fact that the actual thing is not actually happening is just something that goes back to the entire squad. The moon landing didn’t happen, right? Another thing that got me on this show is that it’s about whether Wilt Chamberlain actually scored 100 points in the game…just because it happened so long, so few people see it still talking about it. So, the “Chocolate Chamberlain” shoes made with Hershey’s waste… because he scored 100 points in Hershey’s town, Pennsylvania… where he built Hershey’s chocolate! I think I just feel like I have a lot of juicy elements on this show and things really blend together in some really nice intersections.
Sure, this show is full of dark humor, but, with the amount of details you have ever (re)created in the work, I have to be your love of pop culture to a large extent. If so, do you hate doing this yourself?
I love pop culture enough that I don’t hate myself. This is just part of me. This is my history. This is every fiber I have.
Are you shining on TV commercials? Are you creating satirical works such as members of the rib family?
Look, I was born for a year in Star Wars. I was the only child of a divorced baby boomer who left my own equipment and lasted for a long time, TV, cartoons, baseball cards, action characters and all the necessary commercial marketing that all of these things bring. If anything, I hate the marketers behind that and the marketers today who continue to forcefully market the target audience to young people. Yes, pop culture, TV and advertising are a lot like family to me. The ribs feel very familiar. I am the kind of person I always meet with my friends and family – love each other – love each other.
I can’t imagine you being covered up like a Jedi Monk, these brands must be like old friends. Does working in this ironic visual language feel like playing in a familiar sandbox, or does it feel like being in a comfortable dialect, such as Pig Latin?
I definitely feel like this is sometimes, especially in the middle of the process, while doing homework for the show. More than 20 years ago, when I was about to graduate from college, I decided to want to make a living by art, but I didn’t know how or where to start. I have a lot of ideas. Too many ideas. Contrary to the author’s block. My professor told me that I had to stop filling the sketchbook with ideas. I need to really start doing something with my hands or he will be in trouble. So I decided to make something out of the sketches in the book. I thought of my ideas and sketches, such as inspiration, like flash cards I’m going to learn. Then, I expanded to all the artists who inspired me. So the idea is – as baseball card trash – I worked with another artist who inspired me to make a transaction card from my sketchbook. For some time, I’ve considered putting them in the cards so I can choose my own choice. Over the years, I’ve been back in a lot of brainstorming mode. For the work system, I can find out what my ingredients – I want to mess with the icons, elements, or language – but I didn’t know how to put them together in the first place. I imagine throwing them into tumblers like lottery balls, or printing them in a slot machine roll where I can pull the lever to randomly select various kits. I won’t say they’re like old friends. I would say that the brand is more like a fanatic. Sometimes we get along like oil and water. What is the saying that shuts the enemy down?
I love pop culture enough that I don’t hate myself. This is just part of me. This is my history. This is every fiber I have.
