Ron English’s Abraham Obama

Andy Warhol once said, ““I’d like my own tombstone to be blank. No epitaph, and no name. Well, actually, I’d like it to say ‘figment.’” Ron English, in collaboration with metal experts Fully Visual, is happy to oblige!
Figment, edition of 15 in Bronze and White Bronze, stands 7.5” tall and features an iconic Warholian wispy wigged skull atop a turtle-necked tombstone. Available now at FullyVisual.com.

June 25, 9:24 PMProduct Recall ExaminerCheryl Phillips

Kellogg’s recalled four of its more popular cereals on June 25, 2010. Approximately 28 million boxes of Apple Jacks, Corn Pops, Froot Loops and Honey Smacks cereals have been voluntarily recalled due to a strange “waxy” smell coming from the package liners.

The Kellogg company stated in a press release on July 25, 2010 that about 20 people lodged claims about the smell and five reported nausea and vomiting.

The company feels the potential for serious health issues are low. Kellogg is trying to identify the substance on the liner that’s causing the problem.

“We apologize to our consumers and our customers and are working diligently to ensure that the affected products are rapidly removed from the marketplace,” said David Mackay, president and chief executive officer, Kellogg Company.

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The latest deconstructive pop piece from Ron English might not be all that self-aware.

You may have guessed from my posts here that I’m not easily offended, especially when it comes to art. I try to maintain an open mind when it comes to creative expression, to move into the thought processes of the artist, and carry a very welcoming definition of art in general. Read the rest of this entry »

Click here to see all photos from this day.

Ron English: Part 2

by Alexandra Iselin Waldhorn

Continuing our in-depth look at the art, development, and life of ‘popagandist’ Ron English, we now offer Part II of The Life and Times of Ron English [from Part I, here]. Guest contributor Alexandra Iselin Waldhorn took over the English household in Beacon, NY to spend the day figuring out what makes this legendary creator so special.

The town of Beacon, an hour and fifteen minutes from Grand Central Station, looks like a Norman Rockwell town. But with the Dia: Beacon contemporary art museum opening in 2003, artists have flocked to the town. Billboards are scarce and the only chain store is a Subway.

Leading a tour of Main Street, English stops into a toy store. A top shelf displays vinyl busts of his “Rainbow Abraham Obama” and a stack of his obese Ronald McDonald’s for sale in little blue boxes. It’s the English brand, “Popaganda,” that features Ron’s invented characters and America’s most iconic. The saleswoman asks him to sign an Abraham Obama for a customer, “but conspicuously.”

He stops and looks into a glass case with rows of miniature designer toys and figures. English, who travels frequently, brings home similar gizmos for Zephyr and Mars from around the world. “I don’t know if they like them,” he said, “but they wouldn’t tell me if they didn’t.”

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by Alexandra Iselin Waldhorn

From his living room, decorated with figurines and a three-foot tall obese Ronald McDonald, Ron English could look out the tall windows and see the Hudson River flowing beneath the quiet town of Beacon, New York. The three-story white house is propped on up stilts, making space for an added bottom floor studio where English creates his sui generis amalgams of rebellious pop art that speak to the sociopolitical issues of the day.

Photo by Adam Amengual.

A little over a year ago, English and his wife Tarssa Yazdani and their kids, Zephyr, 13, and Mars, 11, left Jersey City for the bucolic town, where English continues to paint protest with vivid color and precise lighting

But aside from expensive canvases reaching tens of thousands of dollars, English, is a political street artist who has pasted illicit posters on over 1,000 billboards across the country.

“It’s a second degree felony to make my art,” he said about his 30-year career. The tally so far: felonies committed, 2,000; arrests, four. Mussed blond hair the color of wheat parted down the middle grazes English’s shoulders and he wears boxy black-rimmed glasses. “Do not arrest this person,” his burgundy t-shirt warns in yellow letters. English commits freedom of speech.

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