OMG PONIES!!!

For those who know me better than I’d like (i.e. close family and anyone I’ve slurred drunken 80s nostalgia at over the years), my appreciation for the following find in today’s Street Anatomy post will come as no surprise.

Yes, as someone who both played with My Little Pony toys as a child (way more fun than that strumpet Barbie) and drew in an anatomy lab during university, this bizarre little critter has officially rocked my world today. Blogger Vanessa Ruiz attributes this creation to Willow, who posted Vena (yes, named after the Superior and Inferior Vena Cava… awww) at the My Little Pony Arena, which has opened my eyes to a hitherto unknown world of MLP custom jobs and nearly put me into a diabetic coma from all the sugary cuteness therein. But the attention to detail does explain the fortuitous strands of red and blue hair on Vena here.

Anyway, once I got over that special kneejerk giddiness only made possible by the confluence of My Little Pony and fussy anatomical illustration together at last, I was able to gratefully recognize that this fan-inspired object, regardless of its dubious cultural value, isn’t all that different from the drawn interventions that myself and any number of contemporary artists get up to on a regular basis, with the added kick of a format that makes the transference of drawing to a found object a sensible move - the heart merely replaces the graphic that’s usually present on that plump pony posterior. In spirit, it really is a remarkably similar object to parts of my practice involving found books, most recently in The Plagues but perhaps most comparably in The Making of the Nation, being another instance of conjoining dated academic models with something downright geek-worthy taken in reverse.

Subtle gestures such as these have been taking up more of my attention in the studio lately, especially now that a torn rotator cuff and tendonitis have curtailed my ability to splash out with larger, messier drawings for the time being. Fortunately, I had already selected out pages from four separate illustrated histories to form four new narrative works. First up is the Age of Enlightenment.

I’m thinking giant insects. Or else if I’m feeling especially restrained, I’ll streamline that down to giant bees. I hear the bees are disappearing, after all.

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