Tiny Hole in the Wall

Pigeon Mail

A "deleted scene" from my solo show at Nucleus Portland. I didn't think the colors fit well enough with the others, but this one little corner made me happy!

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Updated 07/21/24:

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(Also, horrible things with legs. I’ll always give them attention too.)

(This was also a horrible thing with legs.)

So much of what we search for is here, all along. So much of what we chase after is already in this bug. The child scribbles it, hands it to the baby, who obediently folds it up and puts it in their mouth; the child answers a few questions, then runs off to get sticky; you are left holding the wonder, going: somewhere in here is something we are missing, something we’ve lost track of, and I could spend quite a lot of time trying to pin it down (anthropologically, psychologically, poetically, in a very special episode of a children’s cartoon, in a degree, as an instagram account)

- this is a weird silly bug. It’s weird!

- I love the smile.

- Yes, he’s very silly.

- I love the legs. So many!

- Yes; I drewed them like that.

- What does he do?

- He’s a present for the baby. He is a tummy bug (EDITOR’S NOTE: gastrovirus) and he loves sick (Ed: vomit) HAHAHAHAHA.

- Oh wow.

- HE LOVES TO EAT THE SICK! HAHAHA

- Oh wow. Did … did you know we use the word “bug” for two things - we can use it to mean a little animals, like a woodlouse, that lives outside? But also, when we say tummy bug, we mean a germ - the little tiny things we can’t see - they’re different. Which one is he?

- Oh this is a ninvisible bug.

- A germ?

(Image: a furry bug with lots of legs, wide staring eyes, and a slightly deranged grin from eye to eye.)

- He’s the BUG that makes you sick. That’s why he has so many legs. (Ed: here I thought this was possibly influenced by the educational book they have called “see inside germs,” depicting various microorganisms with flagella and mycelium and so on.) when it’s time to be sick, he uses his legs to tickle the back of your throat to make you be sick. And then he! eats! the! sick! HAHAHA

- (Ed: at this point I helplessly let go of my attempt to teach germ theory in the face of such superior theology) oh … wow.

- He lives inside you all the time but doesn’t tickle you all the time because it isn’t always time to be sick. He’s ninvisible. He’s not an outside bug. He’s the tummy bug. that’s why him make you be sick to come up to your throat and eat the sick. See, the baby loves that bug.

- does the baby… like germs?

- he is NOT a GERM!!

LATER

- what made you choose to draw a tummy bug, to give to the baby?

- The crying was annoying to me.

- Um…. I mean, why did you draw the bug?

- I choose a bug because they’re my favourite to draw to give to the baby to help them calm down. because the crying is annoying to me.

- What makes you choose to draw a bug?

- The baby loves bugs.

- How do you know that?

- The baby always calms down and stops crying when I’m give them my bugs.

- Oh, I see.

- I’m also best at drawing bugs.

- How are you so good?

- I’m just know.

LATER

- I see that you have cut the paper?

- Yes! I’m snipped him out carefully with the white (Ed: child-safe baby’s nail cutting) scissors.

- are you happy with it?

- Yes, I’m really pleased that I m draw him all by myself. He’s all wiggly biggly. I drewed him to be wiggly and biggly.

END

Some things that interested me: the way that the knowledge you put into them is synthesized and recreated: the very Greek-philosophy-of-medicine idea of the Tummy Bug as large soft benign prawn that triggers vomiting by tickling you. We are all fascinated by AI right now, the way it spits our own things back at us; here is a juvenile human intelligence, which does the same thing, but less predictably. The way the artist is already self-proclaiming their awareness of the audience: using the baby’s nail scissors, which are Allowed Blades, and stating in advance that they did so carefully, therefore dodging the expected reflexive criticism of “please don’t use scissors without me!” Or the tiresome parental “WHERE DID YOU GET SCISSORS?” The gentle reproach that the baby, fussing mildly for five minutes while I prepared breakfast, was so ANNOYING that the poor toddler had to create an art piece to meet this unmet need.

But also: a piece of work with thoughtfulness and attention given to medium, execution, and topic. Did it do its job? Yes. Did it communicate? Yes. Did it provoke reactions? Multiple ones. Was there intentionality? Yes. Was an emotion captured? Surely. Was the mark-making technically skilled and the result admirable? Of course. What about mastery? Mastery of some topics is clearly shown here. There was a clear trajectory from the artist’s brain to the audience’s, with evidence showing that the bridge was good.

And do you know that it is good? Yes, it is good. How do you know? I’m just do.

See, I LOVE the National Parks. I always have a pass. I got to multiple parks a year. I LOVE them, and always viewed them as this unambiguously GOOD thing. Like, the best thing America has done. 

BUT, I just finished reading this book called “I am the Grand Canyon” all about the native Havasupai people and their fight to gain back their rights to the lands above the canyon rim. Historically, they spent the summer months farming in the canyon, and then the winter months hunter-gathering up above the rim. When their reservation was made though, they lost basically all rights to the rim land (They had limited grazing rights to some of it, but it was renewed year to year and always threatened, and it was a whole thing), leading to a century long fight to get it back. 

And in that book there are a couple of really poignant anecdotes- one man talks about how park rangers would come harass them if they tried to collect pinon nuts too close to park land- worried that they would take too many pinon nuts that the squirrels wanted. Despite the fact that the Havasupai had harvested pinon nuts for thousands and thousands of years without ever…like…starving the squirrels. 

There’s another anecdote of them seeing the park rangers hauling away the bodies of dozens of deer- killed in the park because of overpopulation- while the Havasupai had been banned from hunting. (Making them more and more reliant on government aid just to survive the winter months.) 

They talk about how they would traditionally carve out these natural cisterns above the rim to catch rainwater, and how all the animals benefitted from this, but it was difficult to maintain those cisterns when their “ownership” of the land was so disputed. 

So here you have examples of when people are forcibly separated from their ecosystem and how it hurts both those people and the ecosystem. 

And then when the Havasupai finally got legislation before Congress to give them ownership of the rim land back- their biggest opponent was the Parks system and the Sierra Club. The Sierra Club (a big conservation group here in the US) ran a huge smear campaign against these people on the belief that any humans owning this land other than the park system (which aims at conservation, even while developing for recreation) was unacceptable. 

And it all got me thinking about how, as much as I love the National Parks, there are times when its insistence that nature be left “untouched” (except, ya know, for recreation) can actually harm both the native people who have traditionally been part of those ecosystems AND potentially the ecosystems themselves. And I just think there’s a lot of nuance there about recognizing that there are ways for us to be in balance with nature, and that our environmentalism should respect that and push for sustainability over preserving “pristine” human-less landscapes. Removing ourselves from nature isn’t the answer. 

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🎆 faerie-type Follow

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🎡 so-fucking-wurmple Follow

dear jirachi please send me 1,000,000,000p ^_^ (brink of tears)

🎡 so-fucking-wurmple Follow

GUYS GUYS THIS POST WAS A JOKE

I JUST GOT A CALL FROM MY MOM AND SAHHLJBGF[L;DLKJLFGDI SHE SENT ME A FREE SUPER POTION

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🏖 hoennianblues Follow

Always reblog Lucky Jirachi Post

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🌖 solgayleo Follow

i just saw another Youngster throwing a pokéball into the water and it completely missed and he didn't even bother to scoop up the broken pieces. i'm so fucking disappointed with this generation see this is why lapras are so endangered because they keep fuckin Literally Choking On Net Balls that you don't bother to clean up. this is one of the most bueatiful shores in the world and there are only 40 lapras left IN EXISTENCE and one washed up just last week please please please STOP SURFING and STOP BATTLING on the ocean

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THIS!!!!! ^^^^ SIGNAL BEAM

💽 adultyoungster Follow

if you dont rb this post lets just say we're making eye contact

🛳 hmmmmsurf Follow

Wait what is op talking about? Lapras officially stopped being endangered back in 2016 and are actually an overeffective predator that are driving gastrodon populations almost to extinction in some parts of alola. This is actually just blatant misinformation? I guess??

🥘 malasada-mercy Follow

I gained a net 0 amount of information from this post 😭

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need

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"this is my beautiful baby his name is #00FF0E"

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🪁 macrobyke Follow

since tumblr is going to start scraping blogs to train ai be sure to glaze and nightshade your art!! Not only will both of these programs protect your art from being copied but nightshade also poisons any ai that tries to steal it

here is some more info on these tools and where you can download them:

Nightshade: Protecting Copyright (uchicago.edu)

Nightshade: Downloads (uchicago.edu)

Glaze - What is Glaze (uchicago.edu)