Tasked with publishing a working body of art for Portland, OR’s mini-MFA program via the Independent Publishing Resource Center (IPRC), while working as Creative Director for SONGLYRICS, I created a rare-breed fictional music column dubbed ‘Lunatic Fringe’.
Inspired by ‘John Moe’s Pop Song Correspondences‘ on McSweeney’s, 50s pulp zine-culture, Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and Red Rider’s 1981 gleaming anti-anti-semitic rocker of the same name, the column ran for five humorous-leaning iterations pitting classic song characters and lyrics against systematic oppressions in a clinical hospital setting, presented as case files, with handmade illustrations by Julia Ciaccio.
Highlights:
Patient #1132: ‘Sheena is a Punk Rocker’; August 16, 1977