Season 2, Episode 6

w/ Erykah Townsend

 

About the artist:Erykah Townsend, also known as E.T., is a multimedia conceptual artist from Cleveland, Ohio. Her paintings and objects are heavily influenced by pop culture. She quotes, “I use pop culture as a medium itself—exploring the spaces it fills in our lives and the inquiry of how real are the imaginary.” Her reflective and humorous narratives are interpretations of personal experiences, comments on consumerism and art history. Characters, icons, and objects depicted in her work play as avatars of her allegories and criticism, while they retain aspects of their original source. Townsend embodies her phrase “Substantially Inconsistent,” as she routinely explores different styles within the series in her practice, sustaining her urge to keep evolving. Laboriously inspired by the miscellaneous body of work by Andy Warhol, she embraces different media and visual depictions. Townsend received her BFA in painting from The Cleveland Institute of Art in 2020. Her work has been exhibited in the Akron Art Museum, Abattoir Gallery, and Newsense Gallery in Cleveland.

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About POP-sicles:

POP-sicles is a project developed and created by artist Erykah Townsend. Exploring both POP Culture and POP Art, only 3 of each limited edition, resin-molded, hand-painted sculptures has been produced. Each edition has a gold-mirror acrylic stick. Each edition (Tyler, the Creator; Thomas "Tom" Cat; Eric Cartman; or Andy Warhol) is sold INDIVIDUALLY. Each edition comes with a stand, a limited edition signed poster, and custom packaging.

From the artist:
POP-sicles is a collection of toys that are a parody of cartoon popsicles from the brand Popsicle. It's a known thing that the images on the packaging for their popsicles don’t look like the actually characters they depict. The faces of the characters are usually deformed and the gumball eyeballs are out of place. The beautiful “mistake” of the popsicles make them more memorable from childhood, and is a humorous comparison to the expected to reality of goods and consumerism.

  

Shop POP-sicles at shopmocacleveland.org.

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