Everyone loves an old-fashioned “local mutant makes good” story. It’s the kind of feel-good journalism that reaffirms your faith in God and country—and in this case, in a shambolic artist of humble Hoosier stock who’s found a way to turn his chaotic responses to a world gone sterile into provocative and original street art, album covers, paintings, music, and more.
He seemed locked in a tug-of-war: to create or to destroy, to channel spite and love and frustration and joy into self-expression or into a belligerent bender that got him kicked out of a bar. Was he going to be a real-deal artist, or just another urban jerkoff whose late-teen art-school ambitions dead-end in the ho-hum hedonism of coked-out service-industry lifers?
