Art Director: I asked you all to come up with your own ideas this month, let's take a look. What is this?
Illustrator: Well, John Tenniel's birthday's coming up, so I put Alice in the place of the "L" in the company logo.
Art Director: He's not a company-approved "other" but we'll let that pass. I see that Alice is facing the Cheshire Cat and one arm is forming an "L" shape, that's good.
Illustrator: Yeah, isn't that cool--
Art Director: But what about her other arm? Is she making some sort of semaphore or turn signal? What does that do to the "L"? Look, let's shop out Alice's body and just leave the arms. You see? What letter is that? Not an "L," right?
Illustrator: I didn't think--
Art Director: Right, you didn't think. This level of mediocrity is exactly in line with our usual daily artwork. Approved.
February 2020
vintage ptato0
Found this paging back through an old Mike Francis account, when he was posting on Tumblr as ptato0. It's kind of a greatest hits of work he was doing at the time. Lately, mostly, he's been working under the name Spudoogle, and it's some of my favorite art/video/poetry being made in this bleak era of smartphones and "likes." Which isn't to say it's bleak -- far from it -- more like an irrepressible force trying to explode out of the corporate straitjacket.