kanga monster

This is Kanga Monster, thus named because he resembles, in some respects, a kangaroo. Although, truth be told, he was inspired not by our bouncing Australian friends, but rather by a vase that sits in my living room. Kanga's body and this vase share a sneakily similar shape. I spend a lot of time in our living room these days. With a baby boy who likes to eat every three-ish hours, I typically find myself seated across from the aforementioned vase for a good portion of each day. My eyes can only look at the same things for so long before they start merging into new things. Air conditioner becomes robot. And because I have a slight robot obsession, lamp also becomes robot. And vases, apparently, become monsters. This transformative quality from inanimate objects to previously unforeseen creatures is one of the many harmless side effects of being an artist. I think that I inherited this quality from my grandpa who is also an artist and who would often point out the images he found hidden in the knotty pine paneled walls of our summer cottage. Just as some families find animals, objects, and other hidden pictures within a cloud-covered sky, we'd hunt for the intriguing details within woodgrain. And now I transform household objects into robots and monsters. I suppose this could seem, to the untrained observer, to be a strange habit. To me, I know no other way of observing the world. And, really, what fun is there if a vase is always a vase? A lamp always a lamp? Good things come from liberated vision. I'm inclined to think that Kanga would agree.