This piece, a cartoon executed in ink on cardboard (see detail below), memorializes a lost weekend when the three artists boarded the Enormous Richard van in their hometown of Louisville, Kentucky, for a rock-n-roll party all night gig in Chicago at the Cabaret Metro. Though indeed detailing one particular honeyed synapse in time, this cartoon also documents much of the Skuntry Aesthetic in general. Note:

• Many people crowded happily into one moving vehicle
• Ecstatic union with Nature (albeit in the compromised form of Lake Michigan)
• Long-haired man concerned that everyone has enough beer
• Joe ate biskits w/ gravy
• Presence of Gigus Bookus for documenting the bathroom wall of our soul
• Presence of David Jefferson and Robyn Flakne with free food and music
• Jude quitting job via phone
• Toes of sexy girls
• Things that got broken

DETAIL B:

DETAIL C:

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DOG AND MAN WITH THEIR HEADS OUT THE WINDOW
By Michael Friedman

What could be more skuntry than making a calendar of yourself in your car with your dog?

This gem of folk art was given to the Museum by Michael Friedman, the man with the dog in the car. Michael, along with his co-conspirator Roy Kasten, is a friend of skuntry, not to mention a great American troubadour, a bard of West Virginia, sex, drugs and stories stolen from other bards of sex, drugs and stolen stories. (That's why we help them sell their great record, Cool of the Coming Dark, online. All proceeds go to Michael's Scotch whisky cabinet.)

Brother Mick also pontificates one mean pontification, which is why we asked him to write the liner notes to Leo Connellan's Crossing America.

We can't appropriate (big, dumb grad. student word for steal) Mick's gospel for skuntry, but whatever's he's preaching, we're buying it, or selling it, or stealing it, or giving it away.

Last Modified: Jun 13, 2003 at 9:10AM (EST)