Category: Avant-Garde

When your main line of dialogue is “my precious,” it’s not easy to diagram your sentences. But Gollum will try. And Freddy Age Eleven will take a break from his English homework to illustrate it. Crumpled papers litter the floor, with “papers about to be crumpled” on their way. Meanwhile, the page taped to the…

The artist known as Phoebe Age Nine has been working on this piece for a while. Every few days her friends, fans, and gallery agent have been asking, “Is the Cat Card done yet?” The terse but unworried answer has been, “Not yet. There’s still space on it.” We were beginning to worry that the…

Supercat! Faster than a speeding bullet! More powerful than a locomotive! Able to leap over tall buildings in a single bound! Yes, Supercat! Saving kittens as crowds cheer! Super, duper, supercat!

Freddy Age Eleven is a prolific artist who draws dragons daily. His studio is littered with them, a hoard of sketches big enough to make Smaug jealous. But for Halloween, he undertook a collaboration with Sanders Consulting, a company that specializes in taking sketches and rendering them in full-scale three-dimensional models. Here is the sketch…

Here is a little glimpse of what an intense writing schedule apparently looks like to the fourth-grader who shares the home with the busy scholar. The thing on the (awesome retro-modernist) table is a small scroll containing the Decliration of DaddyLand. What Daddy has to declire is unclear, as is what LAND he will rule.…

The artist known as Phoebe Age Nine submits an anatomical study. Or does she? A skeletal study is a foundational beginner’s exercise in many life drawing courses, but an artist as original and accomplished as PA9 is not likely to publish a simple exercise in representation. What’s going on in this drawing is not really…

The church bulletin featured a photomontage based on Jean-Francois Millet’s 1857 painting The Angelus. But Freddy Age Ten, perhaps influenced by the recent craze for street art, added a little something. The average viewer thinks of this descending dragon as a menacing presence, perhaps as extra motivation to pray harder. Perhaps he is one of…

Since the violence-drenched, action-soaked, gore-marinated trailer, there has been much debate about the details of Two-Fisted Gun Monger with Knife Breath. What does his costume look like? How many guns does he mong? How do the knives come out on his breath? Here is a clearer drawing of him. For this image, Freddy Age Ten…

Sure, movies are violent these days. But in between the violent bits, there’s always a bunch of dialogue and character development and stuff. What we really need is a movie designed for pure violence. What we need is a character who is designed for nothing but sheer violent mayhem. What we need is a hero…

There’s an attitude of gratitude at the pumpkin diner, as the meals-with-friends-and-family part of the holiday kicks in. You can either be grumbly and hateful, or humbly grateful, so which is it gonna be? Today’s special speshle is turkey ham, according to the little bird who posts the menu. This detail is a good example…

The fourth Psalm, in graphic form by renowned interpreter Freddy Age Nine: Following a medieval tradition, Freddy Age Nine has taken the first letter of the Psalm (A is for “Answer me when I call”) and made it the architectural center of the composition. The A is not only the largest shape on the page,…

What are you dressing as, and what dance are you doing? Astromech Droid Artoo Unit Waltz (Bleep Blaap Blooop Danube) Ewok Sabre Dance (but Ewoks don’t have sabres, so here’s a spear) Begin the Boba Beguine (or is it the Jango Jig?) Poppin and Lockin Protocol Droid (fluent in over six million forms of electric…