I spent a long time this morning on the FB profile of Ross Priddle—a long, LONG time.
You know when you see a train wreck and you just can’t look away? It was something like that. At first glance, I was experiencing a sort of mental hysteria at the rate of about 10 WTF’s per minute. To the outside eye, Ross is an exhausting blur of abstract bits and bobs. He’s the impossible and illegitimate love child of John Lennon and Walter Bishop.
Dig a little deeper and you find that he is, in fact, the Mad Hatter of the visual art world. He is an enigma of visual creativity. The kind of enigma that starts an international movement—there are people studying the religion of Priddlism all over the world—right as I type.
While I can’t confirm that he isn’t perpetually high, I can assure you that his mind runs off the beaten path with a sort of ping-pong precision. His thoughts are usually unpredictably fun-loving and they come wrapped up in a tight little crusty contradiction. I know, right? I hope Mr. Spock never has to mind meld with Mr. Priddle. It would spell certain d-o-o-m for the Vulcan mind.
Ross is one of those people who you would pay good money to spend 5 minutes in a room with—and he’s easy to find. Go see his creative genius here, or just follow the Bob Dylan music to Alberta, look for the house that small children run past, and then loiter around outside. Sooner or later, he’ll come out to lure you in with chocolate covered LSD and Jasmine Tea.
As it turns out, Ross Priddle fascinates me. Not only does he maintain some 40+ blogs, he also single-handedly keeps the postal service in business with mail art and visual poetry—and pretties the entire industry up while he’s at it. Before today, I had no idea that such an art existed. There’s nothing like a little old-fashioned schoolin’ for a Friday morning.
I’m on the path of Priddlism—my robe is in the mail.
~uberscribbler