ArtVerks!

Ja, hallo. In my copious spare time, I am a world-renowned member of the elite multinational artists' kollective known to outsiders only as ArtVerks! Below you can sample some of my insanely spiffy outpourings--the tortured scribblings of a mind in pain. I normally walk around in a daze because I have a persistent headache that would kill ten normal men, and that's just the start of it. You see, when I was a young lad, my mother took time out from my regularly-scheduled 3pm cudgeling, which I got each day after watching Adam West as Batman, and told me the following story:

"Son, I think you're about old enough to be told the truth. I don't beat you because I like it--I beat you for your own good, and for the good of the entire @ clan. You see, I once read this book by James Michener, called Hawaii, the idea of which was that all the kids pick professions that help the family. And therefore they are strong, even though in the future the whole Hawaiian pineapple farming thing will go down the toilet and be replaced by golf courses catering to rich, snobby, gaijin-hating Japanese businessmen. So, for the good of the clan, I have chosen professions for all my children. I told them at a family council meeting that you all can be anything you want--a doctor, or a lawyer, or an architect...

"Mother," I said, "I want to be an Indian Chief."

She cudgled me once and continued. "... your brother chose "doctor" and your sister chose "lawyer" so all that was left was architect, which you didn't choose, since you missed the whole meeting because you were in here watching TV. So upon reflection, I decided we didn't have much use for an architect, but we would need an artist to round us out. I read in the Herr Doktor Spock book that the artist's need to create comes from his inner pain. This is why I have taken to beating you."

Of course I rebelled, and became an engineer. However, every once in a great while, I think back fondly on those welts and lashings, and I hold an artistic utensil in my strong, nimble fingers, and struggle to control it with the rest of my underdeveloped muscles. What comes out can only be described as ArtVerks!

Right now only two images are available, both of which I drew at my last job. In the course of my work, I had to regression test some computerized fax functionality, so I composed these two images as test faxes. The medium was whiteboard marker and highliter on laser printer paper.

Ernie Bert Both were submitted to and accepted for display at an international fax art exhibition in England in 1993.

ArtVerks! is a trademark of First Interskate Productions.

@Man, World Class Data Snuggler / First Interskate Productions / atman@ecst.csuchico.edu

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