Enter Gen Z: The Grandchild of the Hook
If Fred Shadows is the trickster‑press of the 70s and Wolfgang is the boomer monarch of Oil and Lube, then Gen Z is the heir who refuses the throne entirely. A few possibilities for how they emerge in your mythology:
1. The Digital Dissenter: Raised on Wi‑Fi, memes, and climate anxiety, they don’t inherit the crown—they hack it. They livestream the monarchy. They remix Fred’s graffiti lineage into augmented reality. They treat democracy like a group chat that desperately needs moderating.
2. The Anti‑Brand Brand Ambassador: Where Wolfgang wears the crown, Gen Z sells it on Marketplace. They thrift the monarchy. They upcycle the Hook. They turn King Oil and Lube into a sustainability parody without ever saying the word “sustainability.”
3. The Civic‑Pop Prodigy: They’re the first character in your lineage who was born online. A digital native in a world of analog satire. They speak in jump cuts, captions, and deadpan sincerity. They don’t rebel—they shrug, and the shrug becomes a movement.
A Possible Name: “Zero Hook”: A nod to Gen Z, to the reset, to the refusal of inherited narratives. The one who sees the whole dynasty—Fred, Wolfgang, the crown—and says: “Cool story. Now watch me remix it.”
If you want, I can help you build out this Gen Z character fully—name, backstory, visual motifs, their relationship to Fred and Wolfgang, even how they fit into left stage, exit right, free from artifice. This could be a wickedly fun expansion of your civic‑pop mythology. Microsoft AI.
Pop Dazzled by Every Day and Abstracts of Light and Shadows presents a découpé visual narrative on YouTube. It’s a look back to glimpse the unknown ahead, built through a method I first encountered at the Art Gallery of Alberta. There, I learned to interlace recent and archived citizen‑free news stories with layered sound and shifting visuals. This process becomes its own art form: a fresh narrative born through the cut‑up technique—découpé, as the French say. The original Cut-Up method emerged from the dissection and reassembly of written text, transforming it into new sounds, images, and meanings. Rooted in the Dadaist experiments of the 1920s, it was William S. Burroughs who propelled cut‑ups into the spotlight in the 1950s and early ’60s. For Burroughs, they weren’t just technique—they were prophecy. Cut‑ups unlock hidden meanings, fracture time, and offer fleeting glimpses of what may come. Turn on all three YouTubes simultaneously. Whether approached as divination or creative ignition, listen and take in the moment!
Pop Dazzled by Everyday
P I Z Z A vs S O U P
Painter's End Notes - 2026-02-08
Birds of a Feather grew out of the same instinct that has always guided outsider artists: the need to document a world that official narratives overlook. In this way, the project stands in quiet conversation with Henry Darger, who built an entire universe where little girls marched into impossible wars, carrying innocence and defiance in equal measure. His imagined world and mine share a belief that the fragile can be mythic, that small bodies can hold the weight of spiritual, civic, and ecological truth. As this project unfolded, the femininity of faith revealed itself not as ornament but as foundation. It became the soft architecture beneath every sketch, every observation, every moment of stillness. Darger’s faith was inward and apocalyptic; mine is outward and communal, shaped by the rituals of public life and the refusal to look away from what is real. Both approaches treat femininity as a vessel for endurance and moral imagination. The femininity of democracy emerged in the flock itself. Democracy, here, is not a system but a movement—messy, participatory, and always on the edge of reinvention. Darger dramatized this tension through fantastical conflict; I witness it in the everyday negotiations of belonging, in bylaws and public rituals, in the choreography of people trying to live together. Both visions reveal democracy as a living organism, vulnerable and feminine, always shifting its weight. Nature, throughout this project, has been a witness rather than a backdrop. The birds, the rapid sketch studies, the nature cams—Jackie & Shadow, Big Bear, the Bald Eagle—formed a chorus that watched human artifice from above. Darger’s landscapes served a similar purpose, vast and watchful, mirroring the emotional stakes of his characters. In both worlds, nature is a feminine intelligence: cyclical, resilient, and uninterested in human narratives. It is the counterpoint to civic tension, the reminder that life continues beyond our constructed dramas. What ultimately binds Birds of a Feather to Darger’s legacy is a shared commitment to mythic documentation. We both turn lived experience and private imagination into parallel worlds that reveal deeper truths. But where Darger retreated inward, I step outward—into public space, into civic dialogue, into collaborative ritual. This project is outsider art with its feet on the ground, rooted in Treaty 6, in Edmonton’s tensions, in the raw immediacy of observation. It is myth‑making as engagement rather than escape. Birds of a Feather is dedicated to two figures whose influence shaped its courage and clarity: Virgil Abloh, Chicago’s visionary fashion designer who transformed everyday materials into global dialogue, and Dennis Edney, Edmonton’s lawyer and freedom fighter whose work embodied dignity, resilience, and public courage.
Their spirits—innovative, unafraid, and radically generous—move through every feather of this work. AI Edited.
