Just like in Alien

As we walked down Avenue Rd earlier this week, Hayden turned to me and said, “You know, it’s like you have an elephant coming out of your stomach.”

 

“Okay,” I thought. “Is this the West Coast way of calling someone a bitch?” (Hayden hails from Saskatoon and currently lives in Edmonton).

 

Fortunately for our friendship, Hayden wasn’t making any judgments on my character. Instead, she was referencing the drawing “My Secret Elephant” by Yuka Yamaguchi, a Japanese artist who now calls Toontown home. Yamaguchi’s work is cute, fun, humourous, macabre. Yet, more significantly – and this is what Hayden was getting at – it’s moody. I don’t mean her drawings wake up grumpy in the morning and refuse to utter a word until they’ve inhaled three cups of coffee. I mean they really describe and evoke moods. Who hasn’t felt like they’re stuck inside a giraffe’s head, their heart floating on the other side?

 

Have a look. Maybe you have a lobster sticking out of your eye right now.

 

-Andrea