static pictures

graphics without motion

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HONK

a real life silly goose story

tattoo and sticker design

one spring afternoon in 2022, i was collecting books at Madison College, as was normal for me then, an employee of the bookstore.
as i made my way toward one of the health/science buildings, trundling my large, unwieldy cart along the ADA construction, i didn’t notice the huge, pregnant goose minding her own business near the front entrance.
moreover, i didn’t notice she’d roosted and built her nest for her soon-to-be-birthed young inside the flag stand/planter that flanked the entrance to the building i needed to get into.
suffice to say, i scared the goose without meaning to. i tried to talk to her when i noticed i scared her, but she honked furiously, flapping her wings and snapping her jaws.
i hustled to retrieve the books and disturb the goose no longer. i don’t recall seeing her again.
i was so moved by the plight of this soon-to-be mommy goose—a plight, of course, that i myself caused—that i commemorated our meeting by creating two artistic versions of her: a tattoo version for one of my very dear friends, and a sticker version to hand out to new friends that i would meet later that year at Electric Forest 2022 in Rothbury, Michigan
i consider myself an amateur when it comes to hand drawing and tattoo design. i have a visual arts degree, sure, but most of my focus was digital, rather than analog, art.
i was incredibly touched when my friend even considered my art good enough to tattoo onto their body.
to be able to be a part of my friend’s life so indelibly, to give them something so precious and impactful that they want to imprint their flesh with it forever—that’s an incredible feeling.
a difficult, sometimes stuck feeling, absolutely the opposite of feeling so honored, is the feeling of struggling through rough drafting and creating the perfect version of Honk for my friend’s skin.
i’m so pleased to finally say, as of November 2023, we’ve reached the final version of Honk! for me, i know when i’m done with a project when all the lines are satisfying to me and my client; a final means the lines are in their final place and form.
the main lesson to learn from rough drafting is to keep trying, slowly, if necessary, and do a lot of reassuring and checking in along the way—with your client and with yourself as an artist
Honk was the first sticker i ever designed and physically printed.
i specifically designed Honk for Electric Forest 2022, my first multi-day EDM camping festival. i wanted to be able to keep in touch with folks that i met at EF, but, more broadly, anyone i met at concerts, raves, or festivals after Forest.
the color palette i used was taken directly from the Electric Forest 2022 website banner, and the sticker is my absolute favorite way to keep in touch with people

the origin of saint alligator

catholic violence and the ecstasy of pain

i was inculcated in the catholic faith in two main ways: directly, through learning about western art and art history, and indirectly, as an overbearing leftover from my father’s upbringing in the Philippines.
as an institution of money, power, influence, and the ability to spread knowledge, the catholic church dominates much of western art and art history. to understand the church goes hand-in-hand with understanding art, and those two powerful and emotional institutions together create the Cronenberg-esque flesh circus that is religious art: essentially, violence against human bodies (and flesh, in general) on display for an audience.
maestro Giotto’s work, above, is meant to be beautiful and violent. some would argue that Nature with a capital-N is this same flesh circus—beautiful and violent. watch any nature documentary, and most of us (humans being apex predators) root for the wolves as the pack runs down a moose to death.
however, from the perspective of the catholic church, the suffering and physical endurance—the pain itself, and the reveling in the pain—makes the flesh beautiful. instead of only resorting to physical violence for absolute necessity (the wolves eating the moose), or, instead, as logical humans, abhorring the violence done to flesh for beauty’s sake, the catholic church celebrates it, and that celebration was made most evident by their treatment of the scapegoat made flesh: jesus christ himself
to be one with christ is a very visceral experience, and, perhaps, the most violently physical act a catholic can commit. a catholic eats and drinks christ to be fulfilled and fully loved.
cannibalizing christ isn’t the only way to be close with the son of god. christ has one very powerful influence over the flesh of the faithful: christ’s ecstatic touch within sacred flesh, the stigmata.
it’s christ’s physical calling card, and the suffering that the holy person endures is part of what makes them holy.
in the artistic recreations of the stigmata in holy bodies, i learned that suffering, beauty, art, sanctity, blood, uncanniness, love, and truth all go hand in hand, and that christ’s love cuts deep and hurts.
to return to the concept of capital-N Nature, there is beauty and violence there, yes. but the church would have us believe, especially visually, that the violence, blood, and anguish suffered literally at the hands of christ is a sacred violence—a pleasure and a spectacle for all involved, most especially the sufferer of the stigmata.
ecstasy was catholic before it was club culture, but the same rule applies: catholic ecstasy is divine and unadulterated sensual pleasure, meaning all of the senses of the body are ignited by christ’s flaming love. essentially, every single limiter cap on every piece of a body and mind that can feel pleasure and pain is active at the same time. apparently, that’s how christ’s love—and christ’s stigmata—feels.
this divine decree of gleeful violence against flesh was one major excuse the catholics used to inflict their twisted and predatory viewpoint in real life, specifically and especially against indigenous peoples all around the world. but that’s a slightly different discussion. i want to talk about capital-N Nature and violence, and the invasion of the catholic church into Nature—for that is the birth of Saint Alligator

the birth of Saint Alligator

i can’t help comparing the killing practices of the church to the killing practices of predators in nature. to some people, there may seem to be no natural bridge between the church and nature, but the church didn’t simply kill and displace human beings in their quest to conquer the earth.
ever heard the phrase “shepherds of the earth,” or, more insidiously, “stewards of the earth”? a very common concept that catholics, and most christians, believe in is that humans, as a species, are the superior species, and we must steward (guide) the species’ on the earth. those who believe in this stewardship often pull human beings out of the concept of the natural, of the biological and evolutionary, centering humans (as a species) inside god’s special love.
this dangerous centering has allowed christians, but, more specifically, the catholics, to destroy the earth as they have pleased, with absolutely no regret. their god said it was okay to kill the indigenous animals and burn all of the indigenous fauna if it didn’t want to be stewarded, so everything was square.
now, compare that killing mindset to the killing mindset of one of the greatest predators to walk the earth: the alligator (one of my personal favorites, obviously).
alligators have the same opportunistic attitude toward prey as the catholic church does, but alligators feel no pity because they don’t have the capacity for cruelty, therefore, they do not need the capacity for pity. the alligator kills mercilessly, sure, but for food, and at its most efficient peak, evolutionarily speaking.
humans are not better than nature; humans are a part of nature. we are a species on this earth. we evolved, like all of the other animals, to the best of our ability and to try to further the survival of the fittest genetics among our species.
so, with our “superior” intellect, we should know better than any other species on earth. we should have the wherewithal to be the kindest species on the planet.
turns out, we are the cruelest, the most twisted, and, perhaps, the saddest and most disconnected species, from the earth and from the other terran animals.
so, with these concepts swirling in my head, i set out to find the right stock photos and create my own patron saint. not a human, though, since we are beaten down by fear and unable to show kindness to our own species.
no, i needed an alligator. something beyond and removed from our mammalian humanity. something incapable of evolving into having mercy, because their evolutionary chain was complete already

Saint Alligator, a kind sufferer

although i wasn’t trying to be offensive on purpose, i was trying to be profane on purpose. i guess the difference, to me, is that the profane is meant to offend god, and god’s institutions, and the whole structure of the catholic church itself. the shock of seeing an alligator as a catholic saint is not inherently harmful to anyone, although it is sacrilegious.
i don’t want to hurt the individual people; i just want them to open their eyes from their blind and unkind faith, and then choose a path of kindness instead. this does, of course, require that the institutions that once swayed their thoughts and emotions, like the church, need to become memories of the past.
christ himself appears on Saint Alligator’s playing card, as a velociraptor, for two different reasons.
the first is to be sacrilegious. nothing offends the institution of the church than the marriage of the mystical and the scientific, or science explaining away the mystical, and nothing unites those concepts more than christ himself being a dinosaur.
the second reason for the velociraptor appearance is “joke logic”—what other kind of animal could an alligator pray to for absolution, patience, kindness? i.e., what other animal could possibly be an evolutionary step above alligators, especially a visually funny and easily recognizable animal? certainly not humans, so human jesus was out of the running. but velociraptors promote the greatest of human traits: powerful teamwork, community-based decision-making, and, of course, a hint of intelligence that could sprout human-like cruelty