Uncontested

Attention! Huck has won the very first coloring contest he has ever entered! He colored Larry the Lobster for our local Trader Joe's and they gave him a huge bag full of juice and cookies and gummy penguins and organic mac'n'cheese and more! His father and I are obviously pleased as punch! We hope that this is an indication of great things to come for our budding artiste--perhaps an art degree, tens of thousands of dollars in graduate school debt, and, (dare we hope it?!) moving back in with us at age 30 with his pregnant wife in tow! Way to go, Huck!

H. Huckleberry Haske
Larry the Lobster
Mixed Media, 2009

Statement by the Artist
I am always hesitant to collaborate with other artists: my intensely personal vision can so often clash with the pedestrian renderings of others. However, the re-imaging of the prefabricated “Larry” both as a common crustacean and cultural symbol sparked a similacritude of interest. Someone hands you a black and white image and says, “Here you go, kid, color this. Maybe we’ll give you some candy and juice.” But to simply color Larry with crayons, daring not to venture beyond the lines, would, I believe, be a grave injustice. Larry the Lobster is us, we are the lobster. Americans. America.
Before I made my first penstoke, there was already a lot going on in this piece. My job was to wrench out the essence of Larry. To suck his soul from the black and white lines, and bring his spirit force to the surface. I mean, look at the hands on this guy. They’re big and menacing. What does that say about us as a culture? I wanted to bring attention to that. Green was a deliberate choice. It is both unexpected (and therefore thought provoking) and representative of capitalism, consumerism and the American Way. We need these ideologies to be what we are in the global power structure, but it’s destroying us at a base level. The bold, untamed strokes reflect individual flights of introspection. Those moments when we say to ourselves, “Hey, I’m gonna buy that diamond even if it kills a hundred African babies because I’m an American, dammit, and I like shiny things.”
There’s a disturbing element here of bugs swarming over Larry’s face, covering his eyes, coming out of his mouth. It’s about degeneration, death, and, therefore, life, freedom, spiritual castration. All against a backdrop of fireworks and stars. Beauty and destruction. Transgression and redemption. Boom! This is Larry’s Independence Day.

-H.H.H.