Don’t _____ On Me

Joe Kitsch

Interview by L. Valena

Can you describe what you responded to?

It was a paper cutout piece of a same-sex couple with a newborn baby. The couple's sitting there, and there's a python, or some sort of long snake just wrapped all around them. Off to the left side it looked like there was someone kind of creeping in. Peeking through some kind of venetian blinds. And instantly (I go to weird places sometimes), I thought about this fact from Mashable dot com. In 2017, the most popular search term in the state of Texas on Pornhub was ‘lesbians’. So here we have this peeping tom peeking at this lesbian couple, and then the snake. The snake is what led me to the Texas thing. You often see the Gadsden flag being represented there. The Gadsden flag, if you don't know, is the big yellow flag with the rattlesnake coiled up on it, and it usually says 'Don't Tread of Me'. I was just kind of mashing that all together.

So I went on to the Pornhub website, and did the search term 'lesbian'. But on Pornhub, the background is very black, so I had to make the artistic choice to not use their site for the next part. I used a different site, and found one with a nice white background. I printed out the search term page, and then cut out all the thumbnails, and pasted them down to the paper I was working on. So then all these little thumbnails, and their descriptions, became the background for the piece that I was making. Then I just went with the Gadsden flag on top of that, and kinda played on the motto on there. Instead of 'Don't Tread on Me', I made it "Don't _____ on Me."

One of the things I was thinking about, was that guys in Texas are looking at this kind of porn, what does that say about them? Are they so homophobic that they can't stand the sight of male genitalia in their own porn? Maybe their flag motto would be "Don't Jizz on Me."

[Giggling like a 6th grader] Do you ever watch Ru Paul's Drag Race?

Once in a while.

Well, there's a famous scene where someone says "get those nuts away from MY face." I feel like maybe that could also be a contender for this motto. [At this point we were both giggling.] Okay, where to start? I guess my first question for you is, how did you think of Texas? Where did that come from?

From the online article from Mashable.com, they do this every year- like these little lists. What's the favorite beverage in your state? This one was the most searched term, for porn, in each state.

I've definitely looked at some of those lists, and one was a list of the most googled term in each state, and I'm pretty sure that Texas was 'Is my husband gay?' Which is also funny. A lot of confusion happening in the South, according to the internet.

It's not restricted to the South, there's also a lot of Midwestern states that have things along the same lines. The funny thing is, that they're often states that are associated with the modern use of the Gadsden flag. So originally the Gadsden flag was used during Revolutionary times, and the snake was representative of the thirteen colonies, which referenced the 'join or die' snake flag. That flag's been around. I believe some of the branches of the military still use it lightly, but only recently has it, in my opinion, been ruined, by the teaparty and libertarians. They gravitated to the use of this flag, and it's often seen in states like Texas and a lot of the Midwest.

So the meaning has changed to be a 'get out of my business, big government,' kind of thing?

Yeah. It's a shame- it's a pretty kickass flag.

I'm always just so fascinated by that logic. It's somehow like "stay out of my business, but get involved in everyone else's business." Wow- this got really political!

It's hard not to. I was trying to stay away from doing anything political for anything, and I just can't help it- it's just seeping into things. I'm even doing a giant portrait of Donald Trump right now. I had the idea for awhile, and I kept telling myself “Don't do it- nobody's going to want to sell it, and you're going to be stuck with it for the rest of your life, and just look at this guy all the time.”

Or you could just burn it someday. How does it feel to be painting Donald Trump? What is it doing to you?

I don't know- I think it's more like a ventilation system. Letting the steam out a little bit, instead of keeping it bottled up.

Well that's good- that's what art is for. What else do you have to say?

It was fun doing this. I came up with this quick idea, and just made a small one. But now that I'm looking at it, I might make a larger, more permanent-type piece. Kind of clean up the snake and everything, because I think that, on a larger scale, the snake's skin will be less busy with the pictures underneath it. I think the size and the relation of the shapes of everything is making it a little cluttered and dark. This is all just from an artistic standpoint.

I just keep coming back to this outrageous contradiction. That states that have a high concentration of people who are anti- LGBTQ+ rights, also have a high concentration of people who really want to watch stuff like this. Especially in context of what you said at the beginning, and talking about a gay couple parenting a child. The idea that somehow that's not okay, but porn- yep, I’ll pay for that. Someday we'll move beyond this bullshit.

This is your second time doing this- do you have any new advice for someone else doing this?

Just focus in on one or two things from the piece you're responding to, and just do what you're going to do. Let it go. It doesn't have to be all that serious. Sometimes the ideas are serious, but just go with it. Have fun with it.

Call Number: C35VA | C37VA.kiDo

Joe Kitsch is a conceptually-oriented artist who works in a wide variety of media, getting inspiration from popular culture and the sciences. He thinks bees are out of this world. (See what I did there?)