My Beautiful Horse Girls

Can’t wait for, like, 2025 when we look back on the 2018/2019 era and say “hey, remember when we were all really freaking depressed? That was a crazy time! Glad we aren’t like that anymore”

my goal for 2025 is small simple and clear: change my whole entire life

Everyone please behold this baby tree:

It's so much smaller than the support posts, they had to secure it with caution tape.

Sometimes, I Wonder if I Accidentally Bumped Off JD Salinger

This story is true and goes back to 2008 when John Hamilton at Penguin commissioned me to design the book jackets for JD Salinger's entire back catalogue.

Mr. Salinger was alive then, in his early 90s and, by all accounts, a belligerent and grumpy recluse. The chain of command was unusual and went like this. Salinger directed all his feedback via his New York lawyer, who then communicated with his London lawyer, who then communicated with Penguin, who then communicated with me, in my tiny home studio in North London. This process was somewhat intimidating, and went back and forth for weeks. It must have cost him a fucking fortune.

John told me Salinger was a very sensitive and emotional man and had always hated the first book jacket design for 'The Catcher in the Rye', a book which to this day still sells over a million copies a year. He had instructed Penguin to redesign the jackets using lettering only. "No pictures!" Salinger had stated. That's when John thought of me.

I designed three options, and Salinger chose the third — bespoke Inline Roman Capital letterforms with minimal and carefully considered flourishing to add a touch of refined elegance and unify the set. Salinger was shown the designs and signed them off himself, making only one change to the ‘Catcher’ jacket. He wanted the junction on the 'Y' in 'Rye' raised, which he felt made it more legible.

A day later, Salinger died. John said signing off the jackets was probably Salinger's last creative decision.

To this day I sometimes lie in bed at night wondering if the surprise of my stark, graphic and (back then) avant-garde new covers for his life's work tipped the poor fella over the edge. Fuck me, I hope I didn’t accidentally bump off JD Salinger. I just want to get this off my tits after all these years. Rest in Peace, Mr Salinger. What an intense privilege to be involved in a project of such literary magnitude.

You don't have to like weed but I find people who are vehemently anti-weed but claim to be left leaning infuriating. If you go into a rage because you smelled someone smoking pot, how the fuck do you expect to form community with people addicted to meth? It's easier to say you hate smokers than to say you hate all drug users in leftist spaces because one makes you sound a bit like a square while the other is the writing on the wall. You aren't anti-weed, you're anti-drug user and anyone who uses substances is not safe around you.

the david zwirner gallery and the felix gonzalez torres foundation in the smithsonian removed the descriptive plaque for portrait of ross in la by felix gonzalez-torres. the old plaque explained portrait for ross' origins as the artist's partner's aids related death, and replaced it with a plaque with absolutely no information about the piece itself, who ross was, or who gonzalez-torres was either. portrait of ross was also reeranged to lay on the floor long ways instead of in a pile as it typically is situated, and the plaque outside the exhibition FOR GONZALEZ-TORRES omits his sexuality, as well as his aids related death. i'm in utter disbelief

Out Magazine

The Smithsonian's queer erasure of an AIDS artwork should alarm us all

By omitting the tragic story behind Felix González-Torres "Untitled" (Portrait of Ross in L.A.), the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery i