The Skull of Truthiness

Some projects start with a plan. Some start with an idea. This one started with a pile of comic books and a human skull.

Last year, I was invited to participate in the Madison Public Library’s 150x150 exhibition, a project celebrating the library’s sesquicentennial anniversary. One hundred and fifty artists were each assigned a year and asked to create a piece inspired by a word that entered the dictionary in that year. My year was 2005, and the word I chose was truthiness; a term describing something accepted as true based on feeling rather than facts or something having the appearance of truth.

The more I mused on the topic, the more this skull idea started to make materialize. I spent hours scouring hundreds of comic books, clipping out all onomatopoeia I could find; BANG, POW, CRACK, ZAP. Eventually I had enough to cover the entire skull, which has more surface area than you think.

There’s a long-running debate in my household about whether or not I’m an artist. I hold the position that, no, I am not. My kids are adamant that I am. The disagreement comes down to how I think about the work I do at Mordecai. Most of what I make is intentionally simple and utilitarian. It’s creative, yes, but I tend to think of it as design or craft more than art. I like making things that are used, books that get handled, objects that live in people’s daily lives.

But the truth is that I also like making things that are beautiful.

Every once in a while I drift into work that feels more purely artistic. A few years ago I made a series of planet prints that were really fun. Those were definitely art. St. Carl is another example. And now there’s this skull. I’m proud of it. It’s strange, playful, and curious.

So maybe my kids are right.

I don’t know if art is like humor (if you have to explain the joke it stops being funny), but I enjoyed exploring onomatopoeia as an oblique example of truthiness. The words represent the sounds they describe, but they are not actually the sound itself. Most words have meaning behind them, these words mean only what they spell. They only become the sound once someone reads them aloud. They have the appearance of sound without literally being a sound. Is the room spinning, or is it just me?

Digging through decades of comic books was interesting. Looking at how artists used onomatopoeia over the years was interesting. Older books were overflowing with onomatopoeia, and most newer editions used it sparingly, but effectively. It was also fun to say the words out loud while clipping them out. Some sounds you never really think about how they are spelled until you see them on the page. Then you read it and think, yes, that is exactly what that sounds like.

If you stare into the eyes of the skull (in person), you will notice one more piece of onomatopoeia tucked inside. Read that one aloud and you unlock another level of truthiness.

If you are interested, this piece is now for sale here.

Thank you to the wonderful team at The Bubbler and Madison Public Library for inviting me to be part of the exhibition. It was an honor and a pleasure.

Boom.