illustrator: theology, family, and the mind in modern life. comics in highlights tab. recent books below. everything i do is here: https://t.co/uzxC71XMGI
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this sounds nonsensical at first - we can define all these terms easily: what a friend or grandparent is. but no one is clear on the obligations that these relationships entail, their day to day norms, what is expected, what assumptions are being made on either side: all unclear.
photos instead of paintings (all this was later removed): 
one fascination i have with this topic is that it seems to be instinctual, thus the turn to animals. in my parents friend group, they all had kids around the same time. i (probably too much) grilled them about why they all did this and they all gave some version of "we just did"
this is one level of symbolism: what does each animal mean? we can also climb up to a higher question: what do “animals” mean, as a class? how do we perceive and depict “animal”-ness? one case study of this is in an art and literature intersection often overlooked: kid’s books. 
the story in france has people in fancy restaurants. the story in switzerland has goats climbing mountains. the story in mexico has a guy eating beans and buying clay pots. the story in india has a fortune teller. and so on. the entire content is just basic stereotypes. 
in the eastern system i'm the most familiar with, buddhism, there's a concept called shunyata. usually translated as emptiness - it means things are empty of inherent existence. like a sweater: you can see the sweater, but if you keep pulling threads off, you never get "it". 
skinner himself wouldnt have seen this as unethical, but would have clearly recognized it as a form of operant conditioning (conditioning operants, changing people’s volitional actions) - as opposed to classical conditioning (pavlov’s dogs drooling)
of course the phenomenon of self-harm had probably gotten people referred to psychologists for some time. however, when he told his colleagues he was opening a practice specifically focusing on people who engaged in self-mutilation, he got an interesting response from them.
the above image is louis rhead
i was somewhere around my early teens, in a bookstore. i looked up on a bookshelf and saw a purple book spine. i just grabbed it. there was some feeling of providence about this book. i was called to take this book from the shelf.
festivus is presented as a holiday created by george’s father as a reaction against commercialism. this holiday is then actually celebrated, and becomes a family tradition.
that designation may seem somewhat absurd, but he was still doing B.C. when he died in the 2000s. considering he made two of the most popular american newspaper comics, and ran them for about half a century - in light of how many people read books, it might actually be the case. 
he also claimed this was a snowman, from 1603 (yellow circle). real "that guy" research hours 
so if youre getting 60 prints done, at the end there’s the 5 test ones. what do you do with these? these are “artists proofs”. you write “AP” on them instead of a number. its extra cool to have these, so they sell for more money.
my education is native to postmodern world. this isnt really a flex at all, because its a terrible place to start. you essentially start off with everything disassembled, and then you have to work backwards and figure out why people disassembled it. really, its a horrible set up 