The Bird II dot jpg

Tom_Moody_CC_904_The_Bird_I

From my CCDS page. The source is a nascent/wannabe/lesser-known meme called "the bird" or "bird.jpg" Sterling Crispin did the first painted version.

This bird image has some internet juice, mostly as an avatar. Dump.fm and Moot's former site have helped.
The bird is a Common Grackle; related to the Great-Tailed Grackle, which has a hideous call [YouTube] that sounds like the word "grackle" but with extra consonants, whistles, and sounds beyond the range of human hearing.

Hat tips GucciSoFlosy, carjackcker, frederick, melipone, maryrachel, maxlabor, arjununcle and others.

product boxes 1993-2002

product_boxes

Was preparing to wrap these up and park them somewhere and it occurred to me I'd never photographed them together.
The spheroids are painted directly on the boxes in acrylic - in the case of a couple of boxes the pattern is made on a computer, printed, and glued on the box.
In the '90s these were criticized as a "step back from the Brillo box" in that the packages are altered/adorned rather than just presenting the design as a found object. Since their roots are equally in folk art it seemed limiting to peg their success/failure purely in Discourse terms, but I can't control the spin.
One thing that interests me about them now is the "default" nature of the materials. The paint is premixed, straight-from-the-jar color and the boxes are about as ordinary as it gets. They hang on the wall with pins inside the box.
This work was never shown together (until now) but individual boxes made the group show/art fair rounds. One was reproduced in Art in America; another was my first pic on the Internet--a photo someone took accompanying a review on a long-disappeared '90s website. I sold one and traded another with an artist I admire.
I still believe in this work. As Socrates said, "the unexamined garbage is not worth tossing."

Update: After posting this several of these sold. Many thanks.
These are now indicated "private collection": top row (1-4); second row (1); bottom row (4)