YSaC, Vol. 460: This messed with Texas.
Custom bull bike
This one of a kind work of art took over 100 hours. The Texas base is all hand carved, 24ct gold on motor, has won several awards at ceramic shows. Asking $3,500.00 make reasonable offer
I’ve had this in my queue forever, because it’s … well, because it’s that. But I just can’t spin a creative story about what would prompt someone to make something like … well, like that. A ceramic bull with horns that look as though they were made from a limb from a Barbie doll, on a motorcycle, on top of a skull, on top of a handcarved Texas, on top of a mirror on top of wood. It’s a feng shui nightmare. All I know is that when this bullcycle reanimates, and those wooden legs start walking stiffly off the mirror, carrying this monstrosity around looking for its creator to exact its revenge, I don’t want to be anywhere near it.
Thanks, Blake!
It kind of looks like the head crabs from “The Thing”… only with a bullbike on it’s head… and you know, more Texas.
I’ve got nothing.
Sorry Taco, I used your post so this would be near the top so people could scroll up easily:
Is this really an ode to a motorcycle accident?
Right under the bull part, that looks a lot like bull intestines. When you think of that, and the expression on the bull’s face, it really looks to me like this guy was trying to capture the moment when he rode his Harley right up a bull’s butt.
That would also explain the bull skull, because it doesn’t look to me like it could have survived 1200 cc’s up its rear end.
And it obviously happened in Texas, because if you ever watched “Dallas”, it was obvious that we have cows and bulls everywhere. I keep mine in the shed beside my lawn mower.
I may have broken the code.
I feel so used. Please tell me there is at least some cuddling afterwards.
Do you with for thome cuddling from thtitch boy?
oh. wow. ummm. i have to admire the time the guy put in it (and dear Lord, i would like to see the other ceramics he was up against when he won his awards), but couldn’t you have put your time into something ……. else?
See…this is one of those times when I wish craigslist had “tracking.” I want to know the moment this thing sells and for how much. Because to me…a “reasonable offer” would go something like this:
You give me $10 and I will make sure that thing never haunts another human’s nightmares again.
I think we should take up a collection so you can destroy the unholy object and cleanse it from the earth frankly.
Ceramic shows? For that price I want dates, locations, and a look at the awards. ROI!
ROI?
ROI = Return On Investment :0)
Thanks. I feel so provincial now.
Wait, I’m sorry, “Carved gold on motor”?!?! What does that even mean?
On the bull-butt motorcycle, the motor has some gold on it. You have to look closely, which I don’t recommend.
I had no idea ceramic shows had a category for “most deranged creation”. H.P. Lovecraft would base a story on that thing.
It could become the next Cthulhu. Athough I don’t know what you would call it.
Cshitlu?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxScTbIUvoA
That could work. BTW, I love that video… 🙂
The nightmarishness of this sophisticated piece is, of course, the whole point of it. Here we see an insouciant critique of Bush-era politics: rising from the state of Texas (Bush) and a potent memento mori (Cheney / Halliburton / Blackwater) in the form of a skull, an awkward hybrid of the bubble-driven stock market (a bullish market, the adult form of a golden calf) and America’s crippled consumerist manufacturing arm (half a motorcycle, plated with gold) lurches toward an inevitably contorted doom. Underneath all the surreal spectacle of post-9/11 swagger and know-nothing machismo, if we stoop to seek out some conspiracy supporting this abusive power structure, we only see ourselves: reflected in the mirror is an image of our own complicity in the subversion of our democratic ideals.
Either that, or it’s a massive piece of crap. Your call.
Man, I wish I had said that.
Ditto.
I am very jealous right now.
That was some fantastic bull…um…bike.
Yeah. That was awesome.
I want to vote twice for this.
I vote Ithaac gets a few minutes off the island with hith wife.
Rats! Isaac is going to have two days in a row up in the comments highlights box. (Pouting because my one day was hard won). I’ll be in my bunk.
I don’t really deserve yesterday’s.
But I worked hard for this one. I spent years and years in graduate school learning to
bullbikeinterpret art like that.Remember the $75 cat drawing by the six year old (drawing at an eight year old’s level)? This is just the logical extension of the art’s evolution. It’s obviously made by a 28 year old who is working the hot glue gun on a 32 year old level.
What the ad fails to mention was that the contest was held at the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired.
… and that it was represented at the contest only by photographs.
Because anyone with a sense of touch could tell that this “piece” is repugnant.
If you touch this piece, it absorbs your soul and replaces it with one under it’s control. THAT’s how it won.
This item is obviously going to be the cause of the first zombie outbreak.
This won an award? I find it far more likely that the judges dropped the award when they fled in terror, and he picked it up and claimed it.
that’s pretty much how i landed my husband…
At least it looks like he’s working with “recycled” (pun intended!) fibers – isn’t that an old felt Christmas stocking covering half of Texas?
To me that looks like spraypaint. I think some of it even got on the bottom of the skull.
“You get up off your bed, sure that you were taking your last breath on this earth, but somehow awake. Outside your front door, you hear a sound….a sound like feet, no hooves, running, flying, along the pavement.
You open the door. Down the dark street comes a sheet of smoke…you see that it is blood red under the streetlights. The smell…you recognize it. It’s….bacon. Bacon smoke! This must be a dream, a fabulous dream.
The hoof beats get louder…and then you see it. Flaming with the fire of a thousand Texas smoke houses, dripping with the fat of ribs and steaks and chops, glistening in the moonlight. The hooves are red with blood, the skin charred and smelling of burnt flesh. The nostrils flare and snort, smelling your fear as it approaches. But it is the eyes…oh those terrible eyes….the eyes burn with hate and vengenance.
There is no doubt. It is here for you. It is not heaven that awaits you. It is Hell. And not any hell….the Hell appointed for those of the darkest nature. It is a Hell of fires and spits and slow roasting anguish.
And the Hell-bike of the Texas Meat Eater shall ferry you there.”
—A Vegetarian’s View of Meat-Eaters Hell
by Meredith Lucas
Stupid work computer won’t let me edit.
See, I write. But when people ask what KIND of writer I am….what the hell do I say? What, would you say, is my style? “Mocking editorial in three minutes or less”??? “Off-color commentary”???
I’m leaning towards ‘genius’.
I got a bit distracted at “bacon smoke”, but that kicked ass.
It terrified me and made me want a bacon cheeseburger. Maybe some ribs. Oooh, and a chocolate milkshake. Since I’m going to Hell anyway, I might as well be full.
Have you tried the National Novel Writing Month contest? You get the entire month of November to write a 50k word novel and win…nothing. But you can tell everyone you’re a novelist.
I made my name a link to their site, but I get nothing out of it. I just think everyone should try it at least once, it’s a lot of fun.
That sounds…daunting. But interesting, too. I just might try it. THANKS!!!
My view on this whole vegetarian thing summed up EXACTLY:
“Since I’m going to Hell anyway, I might as well be full.”
Thanks Sarajean, I just went and signed up. 😀
Yay, Bunnymuffin! I’m going to add you to my list of writing buddies. (I’m simon.Jester on NaNoWriMo.)
I signed up today, SaraJean!!! I’m so excited and nervous!!!
Dang, there are too many Merediths. I wanted to add you as a writing buddy. You can add me if you’d like, I’m simon.Jester over there.(It’s my cat’s name). Don’t worry, the panic doesn’t really set in until Thanksgiving. That’s when I start scraping the bottom of the idea barrel. There’s also a great group in the forums, always ready to help and offering tons of support even with silly ideas. There’s actually several threads just for silly ideas.
Yeah! I have a writing buddy! I announced my intentions on facebook last night so that I can’t back out now. Because I have those kinds of friends that will bug the crap out of me if i start lagging. They are awesome. 😀
Also brilliant.
Oh, and I AM meat-eater, btw. But the flaming Hell-Bull was just too good to ignore.
And yes…bacon smoke does sound like the most wonderful pollution EVER!!!
Meredith- three words for you. Bacon Cinnamon Rolls.
More concise still: Pralined bacon.
I seem to have fainted after reading these two entries … those concepts are too great for my brain.
Being from Central Texas, I can tell you exactly what it is. It is pure Texas Bovine Scatology. Our Bovine Scatology is bigger in Texas, didn’t you know that? Everything is bigger in Texas, especially our Bovine Scatology. We don’t wear those boots just for walking through the cow pastures.
Actually, that might be the perfect hood ornament for my Santa Sleigh rides the next time it snows. I wonder if he’ll take $3,000 for it. I’ll make that back with only the first 300 rides I give!
“This one of a kind work of art took over 100 hours.”
To which I’ll finish that incomplete sentence with
“…that I’ll never get back.”
Hokay, I gotta weigh in here. Among the many polka dots in my speckled past, I made stuff and sold it at art shows (yes, for actual money). For a while, I did ceramics, although I used molded pieces. A lot of time goes into making a finished piece between cleanings, layering the underglazes, glazes, and overglazes, each with a firing in between.
However, it’s a hobby craft, not art. Yes, you can be very creative and I’ve seen some beautiful things, but they are about 1, maybe 2, steps up from mass produced ceramic art produced by the ton in various sweat shops in Asia. Not Art.
I’d estimate actual money on that part to be in the $25-$50 range, depending on the studio charges for firing and if this weirdo has used materials on multiple pieces (or just went to one of the many Paint and Fire shops that dot the strip mall landscape). The majority of the time spent is waiting for the damn thing to come out of the kiln. If it was fired more than once, that might total 20-30 hours.
Gluing said ceramic to a model motorcycle that’s been trimmed out with gilding (also from the local craft store) might have taken a couple of hours. Cursing and dancing around because you got hot glue on yourself — add another hour for that, plus an hour for sitting in the easy chair with ice on your hand, glaring and flipping channels.
The steer head? That looks for all the world like a plaster cast. It’s hard to measure size, but it looks AWFULLY SMALL for an actual skull. Also awfully white. Plaster. From a mold. Probably bought in the home decorating section of the craft store (no, really, I’ve seen ’em. Remember when Southwestern was a big, evil decorating trend?) Mirror? Craft store. Wood base? ARGH! Craft store, or ripped off an end table bought at the flea market.
The only thing that looks even REMOTELY handmade is the cut out of Texas and the weird legs holding the mess off the mirror. Of course, that’s the ugliest part of the thing.
Now, about those “art show awards” — first, the only awards worth mentioning are for juried shows, not local vending oriented “farts & crap” shows or shows sponsored by garden clubs and churches. Second, most shows are so small that awards tend to be certificates from a color printer and a template from MS WORD. Third, he’s HUGELY overpriced, trying to impress folks with the whole “hundred hours” and “24ct gold”.
How do I know? I’m a jewelry artist. There’s not a full ounce of gold on that damn bike. Standard pricing is 3 times materials plus time, so let’s call his material prices a (generous) $70 — that would be $210. Subtract that from his asking price and divide by his 100 hours, and he’s wanting to be paid $32.90 per hour!
I’d LOVE to be paid like that to use a hot glue gun and sit at a paint-n-glaze studio all day.
Please, feel free to use this information to mock this ass. I’m too angry. Pardon my rant. I tried to make a living at my art for 10 years. It’s a TOUCHY spot with me.
Wow, +50 for that inside view.
I’m glad I have no artistic ability, because that would drive me nuts. I am a magician with a computer, both hardware and software, but I don’t consider it art.
Nor do I consider this Bovine/Motorcycle Scatology piece to be art.
Sherri’s got it right on the money, but the line between Art and Hobby is often as thin as the line between Hobby and Obsession.
My mom made porcelain dolls for when I was little. When I say ‘made’ I mean she would:
pour the heads, hands, feet,and sometimes an entire torso,
clean them,
fire them,
paint them,
fire them again,
install eyes, wigs, and eyelashes,
sew bodies, stuff them and add plastic pellets so the doll would have the proper weight when held,
assemble the bits,
style the wigs and paint toe- and fingernails
and then dress them in clothing she made, sometimes down to little undies, socks, and shoes.
(It was odd to see a tray of small heads with no eyes sitting on the coffee table, staring through you while you did your homework. That could actually explain a lot.)
I thought it was magical, the way she could turn what was essentially mud into a baby so realistic it would fool people or a saloon girl the size of a Barbie.
She even had a glaze with real gold in it that would look like solid metal once it was fired (made nice wedding rings). It does take a long time to make a doll, but even with handmade clothing it would not take 100 hours. As Sherri said, most of the time is eaten up by the firing process and it’s not like you are sitting their the entire time with a Zippo. The only exception I know of would be a raku firing.(Lots of fun, involves using long metal tongs to fish your glowing hot work out of a firing kiln. Ideally done outside with asbestos gloves on.)
There is a lot of crap out there; mostly bad, cheaply made molds that are badly cast, painted with an airbrush, and shellacked – designed to be made as fast as possible for the least amount of money and sold for the most amount of profit. This thing looks like those bad ideas got a little too drunk one night and this is the result.
Mom finally got out of it because no one wanted to pay what she was asking for her works when you could get a cheap knock-off for a tenth of the price that looked like a child made it. She does like to go to “crap” shows and make snide remarks. (Wonder if that’s where I get it from?)
The thing I love to do more than almost anything in the world is sculpt. I did wheel-thrown pottery for several years and I loved it. Unfortunately, the time and effort it takes almost never equals what someone wants to pay, so I don’t do it as much as I would like.
Sarajean, I made a very short foray into dollmaking in the long ago, before beads and gems and bits of wire took over my life. I have met several doll makers who do fabulous work that I could, unfortunately, never afford (just doing the hair is enough to make me crazy.) Wow on your mom. I wish now I’d bought some of the hand made ones I saw. They were unique and special.
Some things are “craft” and proudly so. Hand made quilts, for instance, made with hundreds of little pieces sewn together, then plied and quilted — that’s a proud craft. The problem is, many crafts have been reduced to a mass production version, devaluing the original hand made piece.
I feel a need to get my wire out of storage and make something I can’t sell now.
This sounds cool, unless she was always telling you she was making you “a little brother or sister”. I am seeing myself doing this to a young child.
And people wonder why I don’t think I’ll ever have kids….
I need the unsee button, please.
JcT, can we get a modified Reset button for kelli that will cause her eyes to unsee?
Is the item/material that the legs are standing on camouflage, just to add to the multitude of visual sins, here?
… Just so many kinds of wrong …
To quote the guy who writes Dlisted, “I can’t with this.” That may not be grammatically correct, but it makes sense to me after viewing this.
I’m sorry, no. We must never unsee some things. Otherwise, people will be constantly saying, “That’s the biggest piece of crap I have ever seen!”
Because we will always remember this “one of a kind piece of art”, we can then reply, “no, it isn’t the biggest piece of crap you have ever seen, remember the Bull-Butt-Motorcycle-Texas thing? THAT was the biggest piece of crap you have ever seen!”
I think this thing is guilty of eye-rape. There is in fact an unsee button. Mine’s labeled “Maker’s Mark”.
Finally, a context in which “don’t mess with Texas!” is an appropriate sentiment!
Are you a fan of littering or something? “Don’t mess with Texas” is an appropriate sentiment any time you’re on a Texas road or highway.
Have a look at the original commercials. I’m partial to the Lyle Lovett one. The George Foreman one is pretty cool, too.
I never saw the littering commercials. I just saw it all over obnoxious tourist merchandise when I lived in Texas. I didn’t realize it actually came from a good cause. I thought it was just a “Texas is the best and we’ll kick the ass of anyone who says different!” kind of slogan. It was certainly being used that way when I was there.
Of course, that’s a big part of the slogan’s cachet: it was successful because Texans (generally) have a lot of blustery pride in their state. (Even I think it’s a grand place, though I’d rather eat Astroturf tacos than live in Houston or Dallas, and I haven’t lived in Austin since ’94.) The slogan did take on an unfortunate sort of life of its own, but in terms of its original message, it’s a pure appeal for ecology by patriotism, like asking people to pollute less while playing “This Land Is My Land” in the background.
I just had a look at the adverts. I like “the creature from the texas coast” one. It has a nice mix of quirkiness and blunt message which is done so well by american advertisers. What a pity the “artist” couldn’t achieve the same blend. He has all the subtlety of, well, um, perhaps a texan on holiday somewhere completely foreign -like hawaii. This is from personal experience – I heard this texan couple about a mile before i saw them in a rainforest on maui. It rather diminished the tranquility of the moment.
First, if those are legs from a Barbie doll, then it’s definitely Mattel’s little-known (and extremely rare) Porno Barbie.
Second, it looks like Sid is backsliding.
The only reasonable offer I can make on this eyesore is to burn it in a 55 gallon drum in my backyard and then call in the exorcists.
I was going to offer a lovely, gently used sledgehammer, but I like your idea more.
I was going to offer… Thome… Interethting… Modificationth, made by Igor thience. You thee, we have recently developed a blow torch that can make thingth disappear from existhtence. Forever. That ith clearly what thith “one of a kind work of art” needth.
This satisfies my craving for having things that are essentially pieces of crap glued on top of other pieces of crap – so that they all link together to make what can best be described as a “pile”.
That’s right – a steaming pile………
is he offering the 3.5k to us, for taking it? if yes, it’s not enough. if no, he should be castrated, so he can’t sire an offspring, having 50% of his dna. that means, there’s the 50fifty chance that offspring would inherit his art(sy) vein. and create some similar hideousness. and the world couldn’t stand that. it would implode.
actually, it has just occurred to me that the “Asking $3,500.00 make reasonable offer” closer shows that he knows this is a totally unreasonable price.
This looks like a prop from a terrible “Evil Dead” meets “Night at the Museum” movie… or possibly “Nightmare Before Christmas” meets “Texas Chainsaw Massacre”… either way, it makes me want go buy a shotgun and put it under my pillow.
Sadly I have family members that would think this was the mostest, nifty, neato thing ever. And then gift it to me, because I live in that weird Yankee city so I must like nice things. Then they would come to visit and look to see where I so proudly displayed this mostest, nifty neato work of art in my big city house so that all of my big city (Yankee) friends would know I have never forgotten my roots.
But here’s the saddest part… my family hails from Arkansas and I’ve lived along the West Coast most of my life.
This would live in the basement with the Christmas Tarantula except for the two days out of the year Gram comes to visit.
There are segments of my family who also would admire this and keep it on the coffee table. I do not associate with them any longer. It’s a mutual thing and will remain peacefully so until the day I am so unfortunate as to win a lottery.
I’ve got a music box that fits in that category. Mom gave it to me and it belonged to her mother, but I keep it behind the TV because it is the creepiest looking little shepherd girl you have ever see. It looks like a Hummel figurine sculpted by a sociopathic serial killer.
I have a nun doll from my kid’s great-grandmother that looks absolutely evil. This month she is sitting next to a cauldron. 😀 Usually she is hidden because she frightens small children.
I think my brain wants to file this with the FeeJee mermaid; it’s just about as horrendous and obvious.
I could see this being a good ego booster in beginning art classes though…
“Cheer up, struggling student! At least your creation doesn’t look like THIS!”
If they wanted something like that, they’d just have a giant poster of my face.
Whatever, dude. You’re adorable (if that’s actually you in your avatar).
Wait. What’s the age of consent where you live?
(I have decided that any time I address a message to you, I’m going to end it by asking about the age of consent in your state. Even if the message is “I like peas!”)
(Because it’s FUNNY, that’s why!)
“One of a kind” <– thank god it's really one of a kind and not one of a kind as in "ITS THE ONLY ONE LIKE IT ANYWHERE IN THE COUNTRY AND I HAVE MADE OVER 1000 OF THEM IN THE LAST 10 YEARS…"
This had to have been made by an Okie. It’s the only possible explanation.
Methinks this should be gifted to that Museum of Bad Art.