Skinny Gaviar is a talented graphic artist. That much is clear. But first and foremost, Skinny considers killing to be his art, and to that end he has murdered hordes of homeless, often using their dismembered bodies as models for his twisted Photoshop creations. This adds a real sense of urgency to [...]

An event within an event — the Flatstock poster show series is hosted by the American Poster Institute. Happening annually at SXSW, but also independently at various times during the year, this is the show’s 24th gathering.
Flatstock features concert posters and art print of the veritable who’s who of the rock poster community. Veteran artists [...]

Comic books and music often come together in strange, blind date sort of situations that feel forced and unwholesome. It’s hard to believe that your favorite arena rock star (ala Gene Simmons or Ozzy Osbourne) will suddenly save the world using the power of ROCK.
One Model Nation, by C. Allbritton Taylor and Donovan Leitch, is [...]

Bonnie Wood is a rogue taxidermist from Norwich, England. Traditional taxidermy focuses on making deceased animals appear as lifelike and realistic as possible. Rogue taxidermists tend to take artistic license in the reassembly and posing of the stuffed animals. Bonnie explains, “Commonly, [rogue taxidermy] is understood as the creation of animals that do not exist [...]

Originally published in Verbicide issue #24
It started as a project to document the abandoned symbols of our failed American infrastructure; steel mills and power plants that were left behind as technology shifted to adapt to the modern age. But as photographer Shawn May discovered more and more deteriorating state hospitals in 2006, he shifted his [...]

Originally published in Verbicide issue #22
Kevin O’Rourke is part of a new generation of Motor City artists. This low-key powerhouse fuses elements of graphic design and advertising verve into frenetic rock art that’s cool as liquid nitrogen. He recently produced both the movie poster and onscreen credits for It Came From Detroit, a film about [...]

Don’t cast Melinda Gebbie as one of the wayward characters depicted in The Lost Girls, the three-volume, 30-chapter masterpiece of erotic fiction she illustrated and coauthored with long-time love Alan Moore. Sure, she’s had her fair share of weird exploits and random affairs — she was making feminist comics in 1973 in San Francisco, tuning [...]

Originally published in Verbicide issue #19
Molly Crabapple, functioning on just four hours of sleep and looking no worse for the wear, perches on a bar stool in a t-shirt emblazoned with the words “Art Monkey.” She’s conducting an interview with a pair of students holding video cameras. Her doe-eyes are rimmed in a heavy black [...]

Originally published in Verbicide issue #18
I have not, since my first peek of John Webster or Poe in early high school, had a taste for macabre inclinations or perspectives. I have, however, quite a taste for anyone who can wrap me up in a dimension of their life that is more about the human experience [...]

Originally published in Verbicide issue #16
Combining elements of fashion and art by the use of reversible clothing and artwork, the still5 design team’s dynamic exhibit “The Modern Essential” debuted in April at New York City’s Atelier 34 Studio. The Modern Essential is a project that seeks to elevate international plugs and sockets — commonplace household [...]

Originally published in Verbicide issue #15
I was confused. This usually doesn’t happen to me, but I was, admittedly, profoundly confused. As an art history teacher I have spent countless hours lecturing on the duty of the viewer to take everything in, even the hard to look at, and value it for its presence and inherent [...]