I feel like I’d mentioned Dean Roper’s ceramics at some point a few weeks back, specifically his really great looking Rolex ashtray:
I’ve been really into looking at his Instagram page lately. According to his bio, Roper “creates objects for the “betterment" of daily life, taking inspiration from junk food, pop culture, memes, head shops, outsider art, sports, fashion and growing up,” which is pretty much everything I could ever want from an artist. The Rolex ashtray ended up in a drop for Pon the Store along with others featuring logos for the MTA and BMW, the Grateful Dead logo and a basketball. I’d cop any of them, but the Rolex one especially spoke to me. It’s been sticking with me since he posted it to his Instagram in December. There’s just something about playing around with the Rolex that I find so lovely. Take, for instance, this drawing done by the artist Jange Rae. It’s weird but also really innocent and funny to me.
Then there’s this Rolex cookie the baker Lindsey Gazel made.
I sat down and really thought about why these particularly weird pieces speak to me and I boiled it down to my deep love for designer knockoffs. When I was a kid and we’d go into the city, I was always fascinated by people selling Louis Vuitton bags, Gucci shirts, and, yes, Rolex watches. These things that even at a young age I knew costed a lot of money, but were somehow just out there on the street, people handling them, buying them up in bulk. As a kid, it was all very confusing, but also made me think that maybe anything is possible if anybody could just buy a Rolex on the corner. I started to understand that the versions of these things were not authentic, but that only added to my interest in them and the people that sold these items. I think that’s also why I’ve had a longstanding interest in a designer like Dapper Dan, somebody who saw the beauty as well as the opportunity in blurring the lines of what we consider “fake” and “real.” Take a roll of “fake” Fendi fabric, make it into something dope, and who is to say whether it’s “real” or not. It looks great and that’s really what matters.
And I think ultimately that’s what appeals to me about those particular takes on Rolex: they’re all playful and fun in their way the way Dapper Dan elevated the knockoff into fashion. I mean, I obviously love real Rolexes, but I also really like it when somebody thinks “I should make a Rolex cookie or ashtray.”
Also, I can’t help but think maybe it’s something cultural that I appreciate bootleg stuff so much. Have you seen the “Knockoffs” episode of Broad City? Ilana and her mom (Queen Susie Essman) scouring the city for cheap purses when they’re supposed to be sitting shiva? Incredible vibe. Real heads know. Etc.
Get Yr Baggies
Keeping with a theme, I also noticed Petrified Good has started making the last thing I will ever need or want featuring the Black Flag logo.
The Hot Dog House
Thank you to Dave Infante (sign up for his great newsletter) for pointing this out to me. I somehow had no idea about Stanley Tigerman’s Hot Dog House in Harvard, Illinois.
I’m a little familiar with Tigerman’s work, but didn’t know much about him beyond his incredible name and he did the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center in my hometown of Skokie, IL. But my obsession with his Hot Dog House got me going down the little rabbit hole, starting, of course, with Wikipedia, where I learned he took home the “beautiful baby” contest at the 1933 World's Fair.
Incredible stuff, truly. But what about the Hot Dog House?
From the Art Institute of Chicago website:
Named by the architect after the shape of the plan, the Hot Dog House was developed for a client as a Michigan summer house. The two sides of the narrow home react to the environment—the side facing the highway has a blank facade while the opposite, private side opens up to the natural landscape. In a similar formal approach, the two-car garage for the Regional Library for the Blind derives its form from its function—in this case, a car. Painting the image of a car on the facade for an audience that presumably cannot see is a typically ironic gesture by Tigerman. While this act could be read as tongue-in-cheek, for Tigerman humor is used seriously as a symbolic statement to draw attention to the core issues of a project.
It’s a Michigan summer house. So how did it end up in McHenry, IL. not too far from the Wisconsin border and where did it go? Is it still there? Anybody have any info, please let me know. I want to know everything about the Hot Dog House.