So, we did a thing this summer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=630UbYKavCY&t=60s 

That is the link to BenDen Productions first video. It's a short film about my big sister Linda who got killed at age 9. But it's also about racism, immigration, and forgiveness.  Watch it. And look for our ext project, a massive episodic space opera.

A new work

The Anxious Cat. 

(Acrylic and marker on 30x38" canvas)

This work is all one line. I started with my marker on the canvas and filled in the spaces with paint.

 

I'm a real artist now!

My first solo art show was a huge success. Sold many works, got two more promises of sshows in the pipeline for next year, and made many new friends.

Thank you to Leslie at Ravenworks for taking a chance on me and for believing in me. All my haters, all the galleries who turned me down, and especially that greedy pig who calls himself my brother can suck it. 

 

Triumph

 My first solo art shw was a smashing sucess. I priced my work so that working folks could afford it and I ended up selling a lot of work. This piece went to a good friend's home. And this show has other dealers in the area interested in giving me shows in 2024.

I'll be giving most of my money from it to non religious charities and using it to buy art supplies for the elementary school down the street from us.

I'm over the moon. 

In the pipeline

 My first solo art exhibit is coming this month of May. Deal with it.

Trump or DeSantis?

"We like Ike."

"Both make my vagina dry up."

"Spiderman!"

"Look, I need to pee so I guess Joe Biden."

"We've decided to back whoever isn't a fascist, so neither. Also we hear Dr. Jeff Schoondyke attacked Dr. Monkey and got away with it. He's an angry closeted bully who brutally attacked our friend and karma will come back to bite him"

"I love to vote against my self intrest so I'm going to vote for whoever scares me most with their wildest conspiracy theories."

 

A shocking crime

 On October 14th I was attacked and assaulted by a cardiologist named Jeff Schoondyke at Karing Hearts Cardiology. I have the police report to prove it and I have filed a complaint about this incident to the TN medical board. This man attacked me while I was having an anxiety attack and my neuropathy was flaring up. He is a menace, a bully, and a person who thinks he is a god. 

If he loses his license to practice medicine in TN, I won't hold my breath, then he deserves it. 

I fear for my life as long as he is allowed to practice medicine and lives in Johnson City, TN.

Eight Karens explain why they believe Trump's election lies

"Trump is God's chosen candidate and God don't play games, he'll fuck you right up if you disobey him, just like my husband."

"Jewish space lasers."

"What about Herbert Hoover's lies? Why doesn't the liberal media talk about that?"

"Is it pudding time yet?"

"WHY AM I NOT A CELEBRITY ANYMORE? I'M STUCK WITH ALL THESE KIDS AND NO LIMELIGHT FOR THEM. I DEMAND TO SEE THE MANAGER!"

"He won't let Negroes take my gun and let them use it to gay marry Mexican Muslim immigrants."

"Trump cut my taxes and he hates unions like I do."

"He's not lying, you're lying. Now leave me alone I need to report on the activities of black people."

 

National Bird Night 1975

 In 1975 white America was beginning to find out what black folks always knew, that the USA was still segregated as hell. This piece is all about that. Ask any white person you know if they know what 'redlining' is and most can't tell you.  Banks literally took a map of a city or county and drew red lines around areas they didn't want black folks living in. Home loans were declined to black folks because white folks feared them and feared they would bring down property values.  

Notice how the black(ish) birds are cooped up behind the redline while the 'virginal' innocent 'normal' whiteish bird has plenty of room to grow and get access to good schools and a better life since property taxes pay for schools in all areas, those in neighborhoods with better housing got better schools and more, while at the same time black kids were expected to do as well academically as white kids despite having virtually no school funding and trigger happy cops ran wild to enforce laws that protected the institutionally racist system. Bankers and mortgage company owners exchanged Klan robes for business suits. And the sad thing is it hasn't changed much since 1975.

National Bird Night 1974

 

I grew up watching Alfred Hitchcock films, in 1974, it seemed like I was trapped in one.

Still reeling from the deaths of my sister and mother and getting no help for that because my bipolar aunt and her adulterous husband thought that seeking mental health help for kids was a waste of their time, I was expected to suck it up and be a man. And suffering from culture shock from moving from the KKK capital of Michigan to an even smaller town in SW VA where if you were the slightest bit different you were bullied and looked upon as weirdo, I had to make do as best as I could. My aunt bullied me and her children followed her example, with her illiterate son Matthew at one point trying to murder me by shooting at me with a rifle. When the bullet hit the trailer near where I was standing, my uncle flew into a rage, not because I could have been killed, but because his property was being was in danger of being damaged. The look of disgust on his face when I told him that his son had tried to shoot me showed me he could not care less about my life and that his trailer was more important then my life. And with the bullying I had to endure for being an outsider in a small town made me feel like a target constantly.

On a national level we were finding out Nixon was a crook who put targets on anyone who disagreed with him and that the FBI was spying on anyone considered a threat, like leftists, black activists, gay folks, anyone Hoover didn't like. 

This work represents all that. And the sad thing is, not much of it has changed.

National Bird Night 1973

                  National Bird Night 1973. (Acrylic, ink, markers, and paper on 24x30" canvas)

1973 was one of the worst years ever for me. In late winter/early spring in Detroit an incompetent doctor killed my mother on an operating table. I was not ten years old yet and I had watched my big sister Linda get hit and killed by a car and then a little over two years later I lost the most important person in my life, my mom. We, my remaining siblings and I were forced to go live in a farm, in what turned out to be the Klu Klux Klan HQ of Michigan, with my dad's half sister, her adulterous husband who was obsessed with proving at all times that he was the Alpha male, and their bullying children. It was made clear from day one that they came first and we were second class citizens in a place I did not want to be. I was bullied by my aunt and uncle, whipped with belts, slapped, kicked, and under constant threat of violence. Many foster kids had it worse but any abuse of children, especially ones suffering the trauma I was suffering, was wrong. And to this day my bullying cousins refuse to admit they bullied me. Too bad their parents are dead because I wanted them to admit how badly they treated me and my siblings and to spit on them to show my contempt.  Still though, dancing on their graves is pretty satisfying. 

This work represents on one level my mom leaving my physical life and on another it represents the gains made by women in the fight for equality. I added bits of color to the female figures to give a nod to all the courageous women of color who had it worse than white women. And the crow/raven has long been associated with death in western art.
 

National Bird Night 1972

National Bird Night 1972

(Acrylic, ink, and paper on 20x24" canvas)

In 1972 things looked dark for all of us. Nixon was bombing the shit out of Vietnam, his war on drugs was really a war on black and brown dissent after years of institutional racism, and we had four more years of putting up with him after the election in 1972. Watergate had went down but no one knew yet it would bring Nixon down and cement his place in history s a crook. 

On the bright side George McGovern had opened up the Democratic party and broke the death grip that old white men held on the party at that time. He helped open the door for women, more people of color, and LGBTQ people to come inside the previously smoke filled backrooms where the real decisions were made in the Democratic party. We also saw the great Shirley Chisholm run for the Democratic Party nomination. She was a black woman and for her to run was a heroic and historic thing to do, women, especially black women had historically been shut out of the corridors of power and she helped lead the way for many more to come after her in her wake. She and McGovern remain some of my heroes.

The lavender bird represents the breakthroughs the gay community was making in the USA and worldwide. They had been labeled as mentally ill for being born homosexual. I remember my mom insisting us children go upstairs when a gay man my dad became friends with in a mental hospital came over to visit him at our home. It's sad to think my late sweet little momma swallowed the lies that went around about gay folks back then, she was afraid he was going to molest us or some shit while across the street from us was a Catholic church full of priests who were raping kids and everyone looked the other way. 

The dark background represents the unease I felt at the time. Things looked bleak to me. Four more years of war, police brutality, state sanctioned oppression of anyone who disagreed with Nixon, and more of dealing with the trauma of watching my sister get killed and how it affected my mother. I was ten years old and I thought things got better as you got older. I found out the next year how wrong I was.

National Bird Night 1971

National Bird Night 1971

(Acrylic ink, and paper on 20x24" canvas)

This work refers to phony rightwing Republican/conservative patriotism. If you dared criticize Nixon or the raging Vietnam war they lied us into, they shrieked that if you don't love America you should leave. They wrapped themselves in the flag, that doesn't mean shit to me and many people of color who got screwed over by our government.

The bird is a nod to the Pop art of the period, especially Roy Lichtenstein and his Ben-Day dot works. 

A always click on the image for a larger view.

 

National Bird Night 1970

 

National Bird Night 1970 

(Acrylic, ink, and paper on 3x5' canvas)

The 1970's started off with a bang for me. We were living in the projects, that's council housing to my British friends, and poor as church mice. We got every scrap of welfare the Great Society provided, this was before massive tax cuts and right wing efforts to take welfare away from poor and working class people and give it to the rich white men in the form of corporate welfare and tax cuts. We were one of three white families in our neighborhood which was 'on the wrong side of the tracks' as the saying goes. 

The big greenish building represents the small apartment we lived in inside of the building. And when I say 'we,' I mean my mother, my mentally ill father, when he was well enough to come home, and my four siblings and I. It was a multi family building and from it we could see the big brick houses of the rich white people across the busy highway who they wanted nothing to do with poor people like us. The massive Roman Catholic church St. Monica's was also across the street. Mother took us to mass there and when we could escape the priests, we'd play football on the huge manicured lawn on the church grounds. The priests would shout at us and run us off.

The woman kissing the child in the bottom right corner represents my mom kissing my big sister, she was 9 yrs old, I was 8, Linda goodbye. We kids were going to the store to spend what little coins we managed to get from various places. The car on the left represents the car that would hit and kill my big sister as we tried to cross a busy car filled highway on our way to the little store where we bought penny candy, comic books, and cheap toys.

The girl under the street lamp represents all the girls I had crushes on and the bird looking up her dress is me, I got in to trouble for looking up a girl's dress in school. I was curious, I want to see what made them so different and alluring. The Vietnam war was raging and film of dead and wounded soldiers was on TV every night and the plane dropping the bomb represents Nixon's love of bombing and killing innocent people he didn't like. 

We had a playground behind our apartment building but all the action was playing in the street in front of our house. The kids playing on the old car on the left represents that. And the figures in the streets and in the windows represent all the neighbors who watched out for kids and for the cops, there was still left over tension from the 1967 riots and no one in our neighborhood trusted cops,

In 1970 I harbored dreams of becoming a baseball star for my hometown Detroit Tigers, so the numerals are outlined in their team colors. 

This is not a happy work since it deals with the death of my sister that I witnessed, but it is happy in that it represents the last day my mother was happy and before Linda's death crushed her and her spirit. The light behind her eyes went out and she was never the same after that day. But she carried on and did her best, she still had four kids and a husband to look after. 

Rand Paul Presents More Science Experiments for Young Conservatives

 Hi kids! Rand Paul here, I'm a board certified doctor of something, never you mind that the board is made up of me, my wife, and some toothless homeless guy who gives me blowjobs for not calling the cops on him for vagrancy. So you can be sure I know science, not like that smarty pants Dr. Fauci. 

Ready for some fun science for conservatives? Here we go!

Hook up a wire to a battery and use that wire to give a girl an electric shock. When she complains, tell her girls aren't fit to be scientists and that she is a crybaby femi-Nazi.

Poop in a liberal tree huggers tent when you go camping. See how long it takes for flies to gather and then if they ask you who pooped in their tent, blame the liberal media.

Push someone you don't know in front of a moving car. See what happens. If a policeman catches them in time or stops the car, tell the policeman that blue lives matter and that Negro hippies want to kill  him and rape his wife.

Go to a beach when it is really hot. Deny global warming is a 

thing. Watch out for Jewish space lasers though, Dr. Fauci controls them and he hates anybody who denies climate change is a Chinese hoax.

If you see a girl doing science remind her that Jesus gave men dominion over women and you take credit for any scientific breakthrough she made.

Nurse rabid animals so you can let them loose in a gay Communist party Boy Scout meeting. Don't get bit by the animal or you might get rabies and start voting for Democrats.

Stick a magnet in water and see how long it takes for the water to rust the magnet. Leave it to rust and then go to a pro Trump insurrection rally and call everyone not there a traitor.

Learn how to obtain horse semen so you can mix it in cakes and things to feed Black Lives Matter rioters. Watch them and giggle as they eat horse jizz. Then wait to see how they react after you tell them that ate horse sperm. 

That's all for now kids, I've got to go make sure no one but big business gets government money. Have fun and keep on doing conservative science.

Interview with Trump

 (All answers are actual Trump quotes.)

You said you could shoot someone dead and get away with it.

"No matter what you do - guns, no guns - it doesn't matter. You have people that are mentally ill. And they're gonna come through the cracks. And they're going to do things that people will not even believe are possible."

What's up with all your lies that the election was stolen?

"Our country is in serious trouble. We don't have victories any more. We used to have victories but [now] we don't have them. When was the last time anybody saw us beating, let's say, China, in a trade deal? They kill us. I beat China all the time. All the time."

Childhood discipline, where do you stand?

"When you see the other side chopping off heads, waterboarding doesn't sound very severe."

Tell me something demented about yourself.

"To be blunt, people would vote for me. They just would. Why? Maybe because I'm so good looking."

Who is your favorite Middle Eastern dictator?

"If you look at Saddam Hussein, he killed terrorists. I'm not saying he was an angel, but this guy killed terrorists."

How do you feel about Eric, your son?

"I never attacked him on his looks, and believe me, there's plenty of subject matter right there."

What have you nicknamed your tiny ball sack?

"I look very much forward to showing my financials, because they are huge."

Jesus, who you claim to believe in and even worship, laid hands on people, how do you feel about things like shaking hands? If Jesus thought it was okay, then how do you stand on it?

"The concept of shaking hands is absolutely terrible, and statistically I've been proven right."

Respond to the rumor that you're a closeted gay man like your dead fascist Red baiting AIDS riddled buddy Roy Cohn.

"All of the women on The Apprentice flirted with me - consciously or unconsciously. That's to be expected."

Denial isn't just a river in Egypt...

"She does have a very nice figure... If [Ivanka] weren't my daughter, perhaps I'd be dating her."

You're making me physically ill. You are a boorish pig fucking thin skinned idiot. I can't stand being around you anymore.

“You’re disgusting.”

You sound like my cousin John who probably voted for you.

"There are those that say they have never seen the Queen have a better time, a more animated time."

So you just called my cousin gay.

"I think the big problem this country has is being politically correct. I've been challenged by so many people and I don't, frankly, have time for total political correctness."

I'm leaving you now. Go crawl back under your rock in Mar-a-Lago. Or better yet go swimming with hungry alligators. You are a piece of shit human.

Imagine

Imagine being such a shitty thin skinned asshole that in order to cover up your shitty bullying past that you scrolled through the posts on this blog and emailed commenters to tell them what I wrote about my shitty cousin John and his shitty family was a pack of lies. A long time loyal friend of this blog and Facebook friend from Mexico admitted that my cousin sent her emails telling her that I was a liar and his family never bullied me. But then again John punched me repeatedly in the nose to make me sneeze uncontrollably because he found it funny the first time he did it. 

I look forward to shitting on his grave one day.

New art from my National Bird Night 1970s series.

 One day I might explain the symbolism and context of these works, until then, read into them what ever you like. And if your jam is leaving hateful comments about other people's work, then know your comment will never see the light of day on this blog.

What would you like for the holidays?

"An end to the patriarchy."

"A bag of weed for my stressed out single mom who works three jobs."

"Some kindness in a world full of assholes."

"I want to find out why I laugh all the time."

"I want you baby doll. Bom chicka wow wow."

"To poop more. I hate being constipated."

"More angst."

"I'd like to be able to walk down the street and not have grown ass men stare at my developing body and treating me like I'm a piece of meat to fuck and toss aside. And I want pie."

 

New art

 Newt's nightmare. (Acrylic, watercolor, marker, paper, and fabric on 30x15 canvas)

Why do you still believe that Trump won the election?

My name is John Iwaniszak and I believe it because I'm a fan of Tucker Carlson. He has a tiny pee pee like me.

Gerrie Steele here, Trump was sent by God and I love to pretend I'm Christian.

Bess Greene is my name and being a media dupe is my game.

My name is John Collier and I want to go to Brokeback Mountain with my illiterate  BFF Matt. 

I'm gifted. Just like Trump's kids. That's what my parents say. But I'm not allowed to talk to strangers who believe in evolution, like Susan Adams.

I'm John Iwaniszak senior and I live to prove that I am the alpha male, just like Trump is.