Chicken Man - May 8, 2008

I've been coming to Los Angeles for visits and brief periods of "squatting"--you could say--since early 2005. A good deal of the time I've spent here has been in Silverlake, at my friend TheProducer's home. I'm staying there now, and I was staying there one memorable morning when I took a walk up the street to get coffee--a ritual. The walk necessitates negotiating an undeveloped stretch of Sunset Boulevard banked at either side by sandy cliffs. It's almost a canyon. Great, cement walls hold in the earth as much as is possible, though the silt erodes more and more each year, sliding over the sidewalks into Sunset Boulevard, exposing the foundations of the houses that perch precariously overhead as much as such slides expose the insanity of the Los Angeles housing market. You walk and look up and think, "Who would live up there?" Someone does, and they paid close to a mil to do it.

On the memorable morning, I passed a young Mexican boy in a painter's mask. He was spraying defined, black edges--comic edges--on a white circle of fluff. The fluff had a triangle stuck to its head. It almost resembled a beak of sorts. I found the art less entertaining than the maker. The boy was dressed all in black, surly and bitter. He had skin the color of overly-sweetened, corn-syrup based, latte drinks. The kind the candy man brings each week to the 7-11 in industrial bags he dumps into steel, spicketed boxes wrapped in latte graphics; the kind white people won't drink for fear of the carbs. It was a beautiful color. His eyes caught mine, and they were so fucking bitter. Bitter and light brown and beautiful. I said, "Hi. I like your art." I didn't like his art; I liked him. I wanted to have an anonymous and violent hatefuck with him, and then hear about why "my people" destroy everything.

That wouldn't happen. He ignored me. No one exists to me when I make art--no sounds, languages, smells; bombs could go off, and I wouldn't know. When I draw, I am the alpha and the omega, so I understood his silence.

On my way back from procuring coffee, the work had progressed. Quickly. He worked very quickly, and I suspected it was because he didn't have permission to be painting the walls. The white fluff now had wings and a blank, black eye, and I saw that it was bouncing on a red string of liquid with other white fluffs, the liquid of a seemingly high viscosity, like wax in a lava lamp. It was kind of neat. But not amazing, or anything. There was something oddly vacuous about the chicken fluffs that didn't sit right with me. Why would such a bitter thing paint such pap?

I found out a year later, while reading a bicycling magazine. The Chicken Man had garnered himself a reputation painting the fluffs around Los Angeles. He was a bike courier by day and fluff-painter by night, and he said he painted the fluffs because he felt that "Most people are chickens," too scared to take control of their own lives, or try anything new.

'Well that explains it,' I thought. With a provided explanation, I liked his art a great deal more.

* * *

Perhaps I've written about it prior, but considering the content of the story I'm beginning to tell, its apropos to repeat it: I grew up quite poor. My mother and father came from stock most would call "Country Trash" or even "Poor White Trash," which is why I refer to myself as a "Poor White Treasure." Some of my relatives live in trailers; some are more well-off. Some made it the mini-mansion level of wealth, but I assure you that none of them have been able to buy the luxury of being able to move through life without the constant buzz of "What about money?" in the brain, on the palate, in the shower, over and over until the end, when the buzz becomes "What about funeral costs?" This is the kind of worry that keeps one living an insular life a stone's throw from where their life began, and we all know that limited life experience breeds some unique notions about what's going on elsewhere. This is a nice way of saying my family is racist.

I write to you now a profoundly-poor woman, not because I grew up in the tippy top of Appalachia, but because I have not chosen the path that leads to the cinder-block palace of well-offness. I have chosen art instead. Trying to make it in art requires the abandonment of material pleasures, full-stop. It requires other things too. You wouldn't believe the commitment, the mental tenacity, the inconstancy of stability--you only know artists are really weird people. Well, that's why. We have no money, nor any notion of future money, and we struggle--ostensibly--for a fantasy that we might speak in our weird way, and the world might take note of it and say, "I understand you," a fantasy that might never come to fruition so long as we live.

The abandonment of the material is the easiest part for me. I never had to abandon it. I never had it. My life has always been full of simple--free--pleasures. Natural ones. It remains that way today.

[Aside: Perhaps you've noticed my sister has taken the opposite route. Some people think she's shallow. To me, she's just a grownup poor kid, buying all the fancy things she adored but couldn't afford, having a fabulous time indulging her childhood fantasies of unlimited ribbons in every color, shoes for each outfit (and outfits to wear the shoes with), glossy bags full of special things wrapped in layers of pink tissue paper. I get it; I totally do. I just happened to go the other way.]

For ten years, I've lived hand-to-mouth while I taught myself to write (I couldn't afford an MFA). As a result, I've lived in "less-than-savory" neighborhoods, the ones in which I could afford the rent--blue-collar and inhabited by minorities, black, Chinese, Korean and Mexican. My white friends--because white people are capable of gross, fear-based ignorance--tend to grimace when I say where I'm now doing my squat thing, and I have to then tell them the truth about minorities, which is: they are normal people. They may do things in their own way, and have different-colored skin--they like sugar a whole lot more than whites and don't like to use trash cans--but they are human too, and no, they do not run drunken and willy-nilly through the streets, shooting pistolas and raping every woman they come upon. I didn't enjoy running pigtails-first into a pile of gutted sharks lying sans-fins and slimy on the sidewalk when I lived in Chinatown, I didn't enjoy breathing the smoke of ten thousand fireworks last 4th of July in South Central, and I don't really care for the smell of dried fish that wafts about Koreatown, but I don't dislike living in minority neighborhoods at all. They're just...neighborhoods.

You want to know the truth? Minorities remind me of my family--a little broken, somewhat bitter, but full of character; making the most of what little they've got. I wish poor white people knew how much they had in common with minorities, but there's that problem of strange notions, the ones that grow in the walled gardens of the insular.

* * *

It's now 2008, and Chicken Man has clout. He paints his beaked fluffs all over East Los Angeles in a variety of primary colors, all heavily lined in black, which is his now-iconic Chicken Man style. He doesn't have to steal wallspace to get his chickens seen. More than that, hipsters invite him to paint their Silverlake storefronts. As a result, the canyon I walk through to get my coffee is now completely covered in chickens on one side. A Chicken Man collaboration with an artist called "Eyeone" stretches in a mural a block in length, tinted purple, orange, green and red. I've been stopping to study it on coffee walks, and I'll admit that during a pondering, Murph peed on a chicken, which was unfortunate. Never a good thing to deface a piece of art, but then Murph likes to add her "touch" every now and again.

Now, I had a run-in with Chicken Man. A good one. I know he's a bitter fuck; it was one of the things I liked about him, his "fuck off" energy. Perhaps my pondering of his latest piece has been too limited to make a concise speculation of what goes on in the mind of the Chicken Man, and surely there are infinite ways one can interpret a piece of art, but it seems to me that Chicken Man has become comfortable with his "voice" as an artist, and the thing that he's been trying to say all these years is: I am a racist moron.

Tell me I'm wrong.

Take this first clipping. This is an early work featuring a "white period" chicken fluff. The early work tended to be friendlier, yet emptier. It was leaning toward the abstract. A shimmer of light--and thus life--could be seen in the eye area in the form of a little triangle of white paint. That shimmer is important. It adds life to drawings of characters. I never draw an eye without it.

Here we have a clipping from the more recent collaboration with this "Eyeone" fellow. In it, are two "primary period" chickens. The chicken on the left is a white female, marching with her sign for the purpose of feminist equality. She does so impassionately with pellets of coal for eyes that have no shimmer, and her facial area remains completely expressionless which makes one wonder whether or not she actually gives a damn about equality at all. Next to her is a black chicken (notice the afro, and also the pic sticking out of it). He's a shimmerless mocha fluff, marching vapidly to the beat of his own drummer. He does...nothing.

In this next clipping, we have a Hasidic Jew fluff. He is whining, "I'm hungry," and like the chicken fluffs of the other races, his face remains expressionless. His eyes are black and blank.

Now, let's interpret the other figures represented in the mural. Here we see someone called "Eyeone's" representation of Mexican figures--slim and vibrant in the colors of the Bolsheviks, or in this case, the Argentine Marxist Revolutionaries (never mind that Communism was a disastrous, poor-enslaving failure). They are revolutionaries! They wear the image of Che Guevara. They rock socks on electric guitars with proud body language and piercing gazes so full of shimmer as to be almost totally white in color.

In summation: Blacks are lazy, whites are vapid and Jews are whiny. Also, Blacks, Whites and Jews are cowardly chickens with huge waistlines and no passion for life. They only half-pursue their causes. Mexicans, on the other hand, are sexy rockstar revolutionaries.

If my interpretation is correct, and I'm not sure how it could be wrong, considering the straightforward, comic style, this mural might be the most unapologetically-racist piece of art I've ever seen. I don't quite understand why Silverlake is cool with such racism. Perhaps racism is the new irony. Maybe I should put on a Porkpie hat, and go over to the Tropicala for some antisemitism and a guava tart.

Drawing from my experiences with my "Country Trash" family, I guess I understand why a poor Mexican kid would collaborate to make something like that. My uncles would like to build a fence as high as those canyon walls along our southern border, and line the top of it in barbed wire to be sure not one more Mexican sets foot in America. Chicken Man thinks anyone who isn't Mexican is a stupid piece of shit. Maybe it's crazy, but I happen to think that my uncles and Chicken Man would totally hit it off. Both camps are ignorant and proud of it. Both camps live in walled gardens. Chickens, the lot of 'em.

Posted by The Bunny at 6:47 PM

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Comments

Bun,

Pretty appropriate. Like you I also grew up in a somewhat poor household. My mother was an artist that worked mostly in clays and my stepfather was a firefighter that was resentful of her lack of work. Mom's side of the family was pretty much lily-white, ignoramuses that resented anything that made them think or wasn't "like them".

Until I came along.

My mom had a one nighter with a mexican kid that produced me. Needless to say, the family was pissed and didn't let me forget what my mom had done until I left home and severed ties with them. I had spent time around my biological father when I was younger and I saw the same insular feelings that you had described here.

Why do I write this? Pretty much to let you know that this is spot on. I'm still looking for someone to come out and say, "this is fucked up! We're all looking to just live our lives!" and have a big ol lightbulb go off in the populace.

Not gonna happen though. *sigh*

In the meantime, keep up with writing. Been reading ever since I came across the link on Tucker's site.

Take care,

Posted by: nate at May 8, 2008 08:00 PM

You've heard it before, you'll hear it again, but your work is brilliant.

Please, don't ever stop writing.

Posted by: Kristin at May 8, 2008 09:09 PM

You'd be surprised. I'm Mexican and a lot of mexican people I know are racist. It's weird, Bunny. It's weird.

Posted by: hotwheelz at May 9, 2008 02:03 AM

Typically, I only comment on local-Philadelphia sports blogs....
but this post was too damn-good not to take a minute out of my day and say so.
I've also been reading your blog since I stumbled onto it from Tucker's and I just wanted to let you know I've enjoyed your work immensely. You're are an extraordinarily talented writer and (seem to be) an equally good person.

Posted by: Avery at May 9, 2008 08:53 AM

I don't have anything to say. You said it.

Posted by: Wayland at May 9, 2008 12:14 PM

Nice piece, Bunny!!!

But about that starving artist bit... Seriously, start a line of greeting cards. Nurse Murph Get Well Cards would sell off the shelves. They are brilliant.

So are you.

Posted by: Argent at May 10, 2008 01:00 AM

I lived in the 'hood (or ghetto...your choice) in S. Florida for 11 years. It wasn't to piss my parents off (although they rarely made trips from their upper-class 'hood into mine--a whopping five miles away); rather, the rent was cheap and when I originally moved in the neighborhood was definitely a bohemian melange full of caribbean (and rastafarian) flavor (literally and figuratively).

Now that I'm out here in the 'burbs, I do miss my eclectic, warm, 'dangerous' neighborhood. Everyone here is super nice, but the flavor is missing.

I've been back to the old 'hood, once. It's really no longer the safe haven I thought it had been. Perhaps it hadn't ever been safe, as my family is quick to point out, but I did love it there, and I firmly believe I couldn't live *here* if I hadn't been *there* for so long.

All that said, you're welcome to come squat in Austin anytime you'd like.

Posted by: Judi at May 10, 2008 07:22 AM

"So I'm back, to the velvet underground
Back to the floor, that I love
To a room with some lace and paper flowers
Back to the gypsy that I was
To the gypsy... that I was"

I'm beginning to think it all tastes like chicken.
colin

Posted by: colin at May 10, 2008 08:37 PM

"I wish poor white people knew how much they had in common with minorities, but there's that problem of strange notions, the ones that grow in the walled gardens of the insular."

I wholeheartedly agree because I've been aware of this fact for some time now.(Country trash married to a mexican)We talk about it all the time. Growing up poor builds character, and gives a person little tolerance for the superficial and shallow.

Posted by: Michelle at May 13, 2008 12:55 PM

Nice work. I think the problem is exposure really. There is no fundamental reason that someone should hate like that on either side. When Reagan met Gorbachev the first time, he asked him a question. If you take a family from the middle of the US somewhere and one from the middle of Russia and somehow removed the language barrier, what did he think they would talk about.
Gorby responded that they would talk about their families, their jobs, their friends . . . the same things that anyone else would talk about. I think race relations have the same chance, but you have to take the time to bridge the gap and spend time with people to figure it out. The trick is getting someone with preconceived notions to give it a try.

Posted by: Dan at May 13, 2008 02:09 PM

The two most openly racist people I know are an Arab and an Asian. I live in liberal college town so any whites that are racist feel too guilty about it to say it openly.

Posted by: Joe at May 14, 2008 08:28 PM

I agree that this art is a bit racially biased, but since when should artists censor themselves in order to be PC? It's how the guy feels.

Posted by: gravyboat at May 15, 2008 04:53 AM

I like the idea of reducing racial stereotypes to poorly drawn, broad cartoon animals. Love it. I think our man Crumb already did that with Fritz the Cat, and then there were the crows from "Dumbo".....

But this model breaks down when you make your own race look like superior superheroes among a bunch of whiny jew birds and afro chickens.

Uhh...so...I initially wanted to disagree with you, but now I'm not sure where I stand.

Thanks for making me think.

Posted by: clitoris rex at May 16, 2008 11:19 AM

Not sure I agree with your conclusion that this piece of art is racist. The chickens were all painted by [redacted] as is his trademark, the rockstar revolutionaries by Eyer or Eyeone which is his trademark. It isn't one artist painting his people one way and everyone else another way, these are two artists painting their trademarks. Also there are alot more chickens in the mural of every color, including "latte", and none of them have that eye shimmer you refer to.

You can see more of the mural here:

[redacted]

Whether or not this art is good, however, I think I am in complete agreement with you. I think the mural is vapid and somewhat boring.

Bunny Edit: Bob, I've checked and rechecked both murals, north and south, for a "latte" chicken--because hurling the R card at somebody is a big deal--and there just isn't one. I'd be willing to agree with you if there were a Mexican chicken with a sombrero and blanket wrapped around his waist (remember, that's the kind of lame stereotypes this guy works in), but there just isn't. There isn't much mention of Mexican culture in Chicken Man's art at all, and believe me--because I've made MANY pieces of collaborative art--the contrast between Eyeone's Mexicans and all other races is hardly an accident.

I've pulled the references to the artist's name out of your comment. I'm sorry, but I'm not promoting a racist artist on my blog. It would be terrifically easy to figure out who this guy was, but I'm not connecting the dots.

Posted by: Bob at May 16, 2008 03:31 PM

You make a good point about the lack of a sombrero chicken, I hadn't thought about it that way. When I referred to a latte colored chicken I meant just the color light brown just like the purple, blue and green chickens he has elsewhere (like in the no-war section).

Concerning eyeone's characters...I think that's all the guy knows how to paint. I think he only has 6 - 8 total characters and a few interchangable poses to share between them. Certainly not a big fan of either of them in any event.

I am however a huge fan of yours. I hope your book gets published soon. I am really looking forward to it.

Posted by: Bob at May 19, 2008 12:11 PM

Hi Bunny,
I do like art. I find it interesting. And though I'm not one to interpret it, I do find your interpretation fascinating.
As a Black woman, reading posts like this makes me very sad. I've never been one to be angry about things like this--just sad. Also, I get very confused. I guess I was one of those fortunate(?) Black kids who got exposure to all sorts of people and cultures(White and other groups). I've also been blessed with education (scholastic and self-gained), so I speak well and I have the ability and desire to relate to people who are not like me. Yet, it sucks to be seen as an "exception".
For whatever reason, people find me to be an exception to the stereotype and feel at ease even communicating with me about their issues with Black people. I guess I'm not one of "those" Blacks. Even communicating with other minorities is challenging sometimes because for that reason they think it's ok to judge my ethnicity and vent to me about their issues with Black people--like somehow because they're not White, it makes it okay to say these things to me; as if I'll take note of it and pass it on to "my people".
The other day, a Latina woman I was having a conversation with even decided that it was okay to vent such things to me, but made sure to add the disclaimer: "Well, in my opinion, you're not Black." It was truely a head scratching moment as well as a heart-breaking one. All this to say that despite who says these things--be they Indian, Latino, or Chinese--it still hurts and is extremely uncalled for.

I apologize for writing so much on this, but I say all of this to let you know that you're right, it hurts, and it needs to stop. The reality is we are all trying to get by in this world the best we can and we just need to let each other be.

-Liz

Posted by: Liz at June 12, 2008 07:46 PM