A Houston Cleanup
Squatting clown: Take a swipe at cheesy art with some Thomas Kinkade toiletpaper
Now you can buy a roll of fancy TP for just $15!Photo via Parody of Light.com
Thomas Kinkade, the self-proclaimed "Painter of Light."Photo via Thomas Kinkade.com
Patricia Hernanez, Fountain of Relief, from the exhibition Parody of Light atDiverseWorks early this year
Artists have been poking fun of Thomas Kinkade's cheesy and unfortunately ubiquitous images for a long time, but perhaps none has taken it further than Houston's own Patricia Hernandez.
In her Parody of Light exhibit at DiverseWorks earlier this year, Hernandez created an installation that included a decorated home space, a traditional gallery, and a "Parody of Light Mall." For the show, Hernandez digitally reproduced Kinkade's paintings and super-imposed each with a subversive clown — and then plastered those images everywhere, from canvases to blankets to squares of toilet paper.
"It was hard to out-parody [Kinkade], because he already is a parody of himself," Hernandez told CultureMap in an earlier interview about the show.
At the end of the show, the pieces and products that made up Parody of Light were sold at a Going Out of Business Sale. If you missed that, now you can buy the items on the Parody of Lightcollectibles website. Twenty percent of the profits go to Studio One Archive Resource, a nonprofit founded by Hernandez with the goal of helping Houston's alternative art spaces promote and preserve their histories.
Items for sale include book ends, night lights, and wall calendars. Our favorite is the toilet paper: Featuring an irreverently appropriate image of a squatting clown and entitled Morning Missed. It costs $15 a roll (it's "the most expensive toilet paper you'll ever buy," according to the website).
And certainly, the most hilarious.
