The PoPtiksArt group blossomed, like a prickly pear cactus flower after a gentle spring rain, in the mind of Inker early one morning, somewhere near, yet very far away, not long ago.
Inker resides somewhere in a desert in New Mexico... Or not…
These collections of hand-drawn images began appearing on parchment in a tiny adobe abode. The abode, heated by a simple wood-burning stove, dreams, and an excess of flatulence, is Inker’s amorphous home. In that hand-built hovel resides Inker from whose overheated imagination flows the images upon these pages. The images have a life of their own.
Home
Inker’s mud home stands beneath skies brilliantly blue by day which turn vermillion at the rising and setting of the sun and to inky purple-blue-black by night. A heady array of many–hued plants with flowering foliage grow in Inker’s magic garden; mystical mushrooms thrive beneath the ground.
Strange creatures soar, flutter, creep and slither about the House of Inker. No road nor trail leads to Inker’s hidden home, only an unseen path. The invisible meandering path winds and wends its way through and around sagebrush, cactus, and pine; past rattlesnake and prairie dog dens. The magical perfumes of the desert hover all around. Strange musics play both night and day as Inker plies his trade. Harps, guitars, drums, flutes, fiddles, zithers, and xylophones can be heard on the wind: the desert’s ancient song.
Past coyote’s home, and jackrabbit’s warren, ‘neath raven’s wingsand buzzard’s beaks, many have travelled in search of Inker. Any search is in vain, for Inker never shows himself to those that seek him out.
Inker shares his transcendental hacienda with Lord Phenwick the Phearsom and Sir Albert Underfoot, his canine companions. Other residents include an ever–changing array of scurrying, squeaking, gnawing, nibbling, but very cute rodents (whose names we are not allowed to disclose for security reasons). Out in the pasture are three horses, a goat who goes by Hortense and a call simply called Cow. The horses are Will, Won’t, and Whatever – no tellin’ why.
Inker’s work is enhanced and made available to you by the extraordinary skills and talents in the arcane magicks of technology by the one and only Calypso, she who rides the wind.
Inker had been raised in a smallish town in Southern Iowa, in the USA. A place of fertile farmland, fabulous fields of maze and milo, millet, and more. The fields stretched on and on and beyond the horizons. As a youth, young Inker found the world – in a word – boring.
His mind saw holes in the firmament, and from these gaps in reality sprang demons and beasts, unicorns, flying fish, talking dogs, and circuses.
Inker spent much of his time down by a river that ran nearby. The fish in the river wore top-hats and carried canes, wearing spats and high button shoes.
Fred, Inker’s fabulous farmer father, found farming to be, well, fantastic. Inker did not. Inker’s mother went missing months, and months, and months ago. OK let’s call it years ago. She found not farming fabulous; but was drawn to city life. Big city life, I mean – the hot times, bright lights, rock n’ roll and all a’ that modernness that could only be found, or so she thought, in Omaha, Nebraska, yeah Omaha. She had been a bit misinformed.
The last we heard, mama was waiting tables in a sad cafe in Omaha’s now painfully, tragic over-populated hipster Old Market. She’s also studying to get her real estate license and write an email. Thanks mom, Inker would say when he received his semi-annual birthday or Christmas card. The one that contained the requisite $5.00 bill. Yeah, a $5.00 bill.
Inker knew he had to leave, so when he was about seven and 19/32s years old he saddled up an ol’ Texas pony he called Chaw and set his gaze upon the West. He lit out sayin’ to his Pa, “I guess I’m gonna’ learn ta’ paddle my own canoe”. His framer father, not prone to metaphor nor analogy said to Inker, “Well, I done taught ya’ how ta’ paddle y’r own canoe even a’for ya’ could walk ‘er talk. N’ maybe you should go down to the river, ‘cause that’s where we keep that ol’ canoe”.
Mayhap that you, dear readers, might but grasp and understand some of Inker’s reasons fer his leavins…
