Well through a post on a blog that I read which mentioned something about her I recently ran across the art of Ursula Vernon. I fell in love with it right away. When I was a undergrad in college, in the not so distant passed, her graphic novels Digger was quite popular among the geeks of which, lets face it, I am one. However I hadn't read any of her stuff at the time, being overcome with school work and all that. My loss it turns out. I love the whimsy of her work. I love how so much of it is at once so fantastical and so down to earth. Ursula is obviously one of those people who has figured out that the weird can be fun and that's ok. It doesn't have to have a deeper meaning but if it does that's ok too. Truthfully there isn't anything of hers, that I've seen, that I dislike but my two favorite art series by her are Weird Fruit and Phalloi.
Weird Fruit is a series of painting of different anthropomorphized fruit and vegetables. I've never seen anyone who antrhopomorphized fruit to look like different kinds of animals but I love the idea of pears with teeth, or lemons with horns, eggplant with chicken legs and squash with bat wings. Weird Fruit indeed because let's face it the only thing weirder then a fruit or vegetable is an animal. These are definitely the prints I want in my kitchen.
Another series of paintings by Ursula Vernon is the series Phalloi. This was actually how I found Ursula's art in the first place when this series came up in a conversation between a bunch of people who wear, use and love packers. We were having a conversation about how they can be cute and someone mentioned Ursula's Phalloi paintings. The series was inspired by the Ancient Roman's who wore pendants of phalluses with wings or little feet for good luck. These good luck charms were worn by both men and women, old and young.
Penises are not often portrayed as cute or cuddly in our culture. Yet that's how Phalloi portrays them and I like that*.
*more of my thoughts on portrayals of masculinity later.
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