I wrote this in 2010. I never posted it. Or so I say. Look, see, at the url. “http://bimshwel.com/?p=341.” Last week’s was 439. That PROVES that my website entries have numbers assigned to them. I reckon I could repost three solid years of old bimshwellians that I never found occasion to link back to at any point and say I hadn’t already posted them, when I had, but nobody would notice. Likewise if you were to hack into this (I doubt it’s hard) and repost them yourself I wouldn’t notice either.

What does RED mean to ME? I don’t know what it means. I don’t think about stuff that way. I can’t get punched in the nose at Shop Rite and then come home and fling paint angrily at a canvas for three hours and have something I think is great. Red, to me, is just a color which some things are. So I thought of some red things and made a picture with those in it. And then I added other irrelevant, distracting stuff that would confuse people. The person who sent the email said I didn’t have to deal with the THEME if I didn’t want to. Which meant I really had to, now, just to prove that I could. And like usual I figured it would take a lot less time than it did.

Not bad, but not great. I wished I had started sooner, but really the sooner I start working the sooner I start procrastinating. I thought I could pull off something this complicated because before this I made a pixelly version that I thought looked pretty nice.

Well I thought it did. Making computer stuff is considerably easier for me than real stuff. Hence why I did it there, first, but I figured I could copy it well enough. I also probably grossly overestimated how much time New Haven art enthusiasts spend watching the intro sequences to old Sega Genesis games.

Hmmmyes… fascinating.

Well maybe the picture isn’t ideal but it’s good enough. Anyway, this isn’t at the small space gallery like last time.
You remember the small space gallery, don’t you? Well I do. It’s a place that is not really an art gallery at all, it’s somebody’s office with a few pictures stuck to the [evidently incomplete] walls. THIS time, though, my object was going up in the Sumner McKnight Crosby Jr. Gallery. Things are getting a might bit fancy now.

Yaztaplazca! It’s the old switcheroo! I ought to have been fooled by nothing less than the new switcheroo!

Darth Snack Mix returns again. This may even be the same bowlful from last time and nobody dared to move it.

This is actually my third run-in with the snack mix. I didn’t tell you about the second because it must not have struck me as interesting at the time. It seems really exciting now, though.

I think I was the youngest person in there and the only one whose goals were in any way absurd or narrative-y. While it’s nice to not feel old, for once, if the only fellow ar teests who “get” what I do are kids I’d rather be around them than pretentious snobs who honestly think smearing red paint on a rectangle and taping newspaper headlines to it is worth charging $500 for.

I did like this red clock, even if there’s no apparent reason why it should be red as opposed to purple, periwinkle or a normal clock color. I think the label says Michael Johnson. I suppose I ought to have read it at some point. The title of the piece appears to be “Mullet Trap.” Alright so the guy’s name might not be Michael Johnson.

I thought since I had actually painted something and was offering the actual thing I’d made rather than a copy, I should have a proper frame for it, rather than look for a cheap one at walmart that the thing would fit within. The fancy frame would have cost $112 somehow. So I decided not to have a frame. This is but a matte and only cost $24. Much like with my digital prints the bottom edge was cut off, but unlike my prints that is because this is actually for a reason and the person who did it was conscious of where my signature was. I wouldn’t want to bring shame upon the famous E. Cunni by associating it with this anyhow.

That fool has some talent!

Beans that settles it. I’m going somehwere else to get my prints made.

And then I’m coming back again.

I saw this reflected on the inside doors of the elevation chamber when I went to drop this off (the elevator was shiny) and observed that the large figure’s head is incredibly lopsided. Not that it’s turned to one side; it actually appears to be melting. the ears and the eyes are both at different heights. The pine cone is tilted, to the left, the opposite direction that the other stuff seems to be going in. I was trying to compensate for the right shift without realizing it. I don’t have an easel, nor space for one. All “real” things that I do are seen almost exclusively flat on my desk. Distorted. Always. And this thing is going to hanging up until september. Urgik.

I called it “vegnarok” because the only other thing I could think of at the time was “vegarmageddon.” I didn’t realize that invoking ragnarok implied one side was evil. The point here is that both sides are victims. I later decided “Saladnarok” was a much better title and requested that the name be changed, but I apparently only succeeded in altering one letter.

september 2024 edit: it is past about time that I purged my old name from these web pages. that is fine if you already know it, I just personally do not want to see it.

None of these names, in fact, are accurate, because the stuff shown is actually produce; much of what is involved is fruit, but I was not thinking with efficiency, and in any event I couldn’t find some way to work in any part of the word in which it was evident that was the word I had used. “Warduce?” “Broduce vs broduce?” (this was the year before I declared war on “bro”) Nothing good. “Folic Heroics?” “The seeds of war?” Oh that one’s almost clever. “Salad Oppressing?” “You war what you eat” alright that one’s just stupid. I eventually thought of “Ragnarcrop,” but I didn’t like the way it sounded. Which doesn’t make any sense because “saladnarok” puts emphasis on the “lad” which one doesn’t do when pronouncing “salad” unless reciting a poem about fads and doodads (putting emphasis on the lad sounds illegaler than it is).

I also thought of “farmageddon” but a quick google search revealed two different things calling themselves that, one of them a non-existent yet perfectly hypey computer cartoon series based on a comic strip that ran somewhere, allegedly, for two years in the early 90s with a wikipedia page written by the authors four years ago, and I suddenly thought of myself as considerably less clever. The animals talk, though.

I was required to prepare a typed “artist’s statement” in order for the thing to be displayed. I didn’t know how to do that so I supplied this instead.

Hello! I am called B—— Cunningham. I make pictures sometimes. Many of them can be found on bimshwel.com, which is a website.

I am fond of stupid things happening to stupid looking creatures. I don’t, in general, “understand” art beyond what I immediately see in it, so I avoid attempts at symbolism and “meaning” in my own output as best I know how. You are welcome to your own interpretation, naturally! My primary goal is the amusement of myself and potentially others.

I primarily deal with pixels and other digital nonsense, but I envy those who use paint and ink. I’m only allowed to display one piece here so I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to misrepresent myself with a work in a medium I have no experience or comfort with.

In this scene the adherents of beets and the partisans of tomatoes have reached a moment of great potential conflict due to the vile trickery and sculduggery of Pinot Conio, the fiend whose upper portions float menacingly above, violating the laws of physics and perspective, as often occurs in uninspired film posters. My hope is that taking inspiration from the uninspired will overload the uninspiration meter and cause it to register a more favorable reading.

I think you’ll agree that this is incredibly stupid. However, despite it being the first serious thing I’ve ever attempted with this mysterious gouache substance, I am fond of the painting and have thus given it a ridiculous price to discourage any sensible person from purchasing it (I’m kidding, of course; no sensible person would take this for free!).

That’s done! My artist statement! It wasn’t so bad. I was worried I’d get myself in trouble. People are so easily offended in a dumpstervania like New Haven.

I didn’t include the last line.

I was trying to be as sincere as possible without seeming boring. The problem there is that in actuality I am both boring and insincere.
I discovered later that the artist’s statements were not displayed anywhere near the art or indeed anywhere near anything so it would not necessarily be clear what I was talking about when the time came for somebody to see this. So I was boring, insincere and irrelevant. I astound myself.

This is the best painting I have ever done, which would be a significant statement if I had ever made a good painting.

I should stick with acrylic paint, though, I think; that is the paint for indecisive mistake-makers who draw in pencil first. This is gouache. And after four days of looking at it I have a gou-ache.

^{And I know it’s not pronounced like that but it is spelled like that.}

I can’t believe I didn’t put a pumpkin in here. It would have been much more clear than the coconut-with-orange-slices-attached-to-it mace in the upper right quadrant.

Here’s another idea I almost had. I say almost because I never figured out what it potentially might mean. Unless… gah what a fool I’ve been! It all makes sense: the store deliberately priced the frames out of my range to cover-up that nemitz stole them all. Ironic, since it’s impossible to frame nemitz for a crime because anything bad you accuse it of it probably did. The fiend’s already started a war, for beet’s sakes. Alas beet didn’t realize that the war in fact did nothing to improve its own sake. For no obvious reason we have chosen to imprison nemitz inside both the windows 95 pipes and 3d maze screensavers at the same time. It’s good that nemitz is in jail but it never lasts and in any event the crime was still done.

on the positive side I now have one more thing I can do badly.