High Brow, Low Brow...Uni Brow
Growing up as an Art Dork in the 1980s, I had a serious comic book habit . I used to spend most of my money at Forbidden Planet in Manhattan, (on the weekends I’d sneak off to the city) and weekdays at every corner news-stand within a ten mile radius of my grandparents’ house. Whatever was left over went towards wax packs of cards like the Garbage Pail KIds, Wacky Packages, Dinosaurs Attack, Mars Attacks, Fright Flicks and every video-game themed thing the collectable card giants deemed fit to pump out.
I also loved emptying those four coin-slot sticker vending machines. -You know, the ones that were filled with reflective, prismatic stickers, sandwiched in white protective cardboard sleeves. What an amazing feeling it was to see each new surprise image revealed as it Ker-chunked it’s way out of the steel box and into my waiting hands. Four quarters at a time, until it was all gone. Scarcely enough left for a candy bar.
Years later I would scratch my way through Art School, Open my own Tattoo Studio, land a solo show in NY City, and then California, Philadelphia and Seattle, Luxembourg and a bunch of other places. Id go on to sell work at Art Basel, own a Gallery in the French Quarter of New Orleans-all the while toting around my sketchbook and Art supplies in a steel military-style suitcase, covered in those Garbage Pail Kids, Wacky Packages and Prismatic foil stickers. I’d look at them every day.
At some point, the High-brow Art world lost it’s lustre. Maybe it never had any to begin with. Every time I reached the top, it always ended up in sillies. Gallerists drunk and pulling their filberts out, Rainbow-haired millionaire patrons ogling little children, talentless artists stenciling their way to Christies. It got old and tired.
But those comic books and stickers never did.
So maybe it’s time to make my own.
