Tag Archives: artist

2015/12/23

This and That Spectator

By dsholloway

I know this artist who is also a taxidermist. Naturally gifted in art, he found that he could only accurately sketch living creatures if he killed them, stuffed them, and manipulated their bodies into wildlife scenarios.

 

In his home, which I borrowed for the first time in high school to rob my girlfriend of her virginity, are lots of taxidermied creatures and accompanying artistic renderings. They’re perfect renderings and also that girl and I broke up shortly after because the dead animals, which seemed very alive, made her uncomfortable.

 

I had the opposite reaction and haven’t been able to have sex not surrounded by dead animals ever since.

 

“K, I need your house,” I implore a little less often than I like. With each visit, I find that his home is a little more overrun by his animals and his art. Last week, I had sex with a girl inside the mouth of a large shark. She cut her hand on one of its teeth and won’t return my calls.

 

I kinda want him to kill and stuff her. But he would probably want to sketch her and that would make me uncomfortable because I like her a little bit.

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2015/08/07

The Victim and the [Reluctant] Executioner

By dsholloway

“Here, give this woman a call. She seems to have your”–she paused–“aesthetic sensibilities.”

Spinning her interior design book toward me, she pointed at a woman cradling a bronzed human skull the way you might show off your newborn. Below the photo, a caption:

I just like body parts. I use them all the time. People ask why. I don’t know why. I just like body parts. 

I looked her up and sent an email detailing my own fondness for body parts: disembodied limbs, torsos of in-shape women, etc. I moved into a new apartment, my email continued, and would she be available for consultation?

……….

The woman had on the same brand of perfume my girlfriend wears, which I found off-putting. She padded across the floor (I have a no shoes rule) and my girlfriend’s scent followed, like a pet.

“I can do a lot with this space,” she said to my ceiling. “In fact,” she turned toward me, “I brought you a housewarming gift.” She pulled a lacquered head from her oversized shoulder bag. She held it toward me, gripping it by its long, brown hair.

“Is it real,” I asked?

She smiled and the scent of perfume overtook me.

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2014/06/09

Antinomies of Postmodern Individuality

By dsholloway

The tattoo artist was a master of his craft, but what his customer asked for proved difficult. The problem, he later justified to himself, was that “[he] just didn’t know what a woman being attacked by a school of jellyfish looked like.”

Matters were worsened by his extremely demanding customer who, wealthy indeed, was used to getting what he wanted, when he wanted. The tattoo artist could have waved him away with a curt flick of the wrist. But the sum of money offered was just too grand to pass up: “Come back at such and such date, and I will have your design.”

While the design seemed intimidating from the outset, the tattoo artist had been confident in his abilities. But time grew short, and the tattoo artist grew anxious.

He reached for his phone, only a few days left.

“Hello, K, I need to draw a woman being attacked by jellyfish.” Plans were made.

The next day he showed up at Q beach at the designated time, pad and pencil in hand. He sketched furiously, creativity liberated, until he realized that the woman in the water was his sister.

Besieged by anguish, he decided to double the price.

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2012/07/30

Eau de Tanizaki

By dsholloway

A tattoo artist by trade, but also a bit of a creep, the woman had long fantasized about kidnapping an unwitting man, drugging him, and tattooing a large cock on his back. She theorized that in doing so, the man would absorb the qualities of the animal. She was also totally into astrology.

She envisioned the perfect man: he was neither too tall nor too muscular; he was probably not very nice, and probably did not have a tattoo on his back already. As fate would have it, she spied such a man one night at a bar. Pressing her breasts together, she approached him….

….sucking face, or whatever, as they danced across her foyer, she extracted from her back pocket a cloth soaked in chemical and pressed it to the man’s face. He then fell to the floor.

She readied her tattooing things and began undressing the man. Removing his shirt, she frowned, for there on the man’s back was a tattoo already–an erect penis and accompanying testicles. [You saw that coming.]

What a dick, she muttered with a sigh. [That too.] A naturally pleasant woman, she called him a cab and rolled his body out to the curb.

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