Paper Towel Art

Each Christmas Eve eve, Briel kindly hosts a party (with latkas!) for members of our high school class that were smart enough to escape Connecticut, but are back for the holidays. This year, the party didn't have a theme, but if it did, it was paper towels. Yes, you read that correctly.

As people slowly filtered into the party, Briel regaled us with a tale of eir special curly hair shampoo. (Don't worry, Briel, I promise it was interesting. Really.) The bottle of shampoo dictates that users dry their hair not with a towel, but either a t-shirt or paper towels. Briel opts for paper towels, leaving a fallen forest in eir curly head's wake. The point of the story was that, consequently, Briel is often out of paper towels? I think? At any rate, this factoid became relevant when Bill opened an oversized bottle of beer and its contents comically exploded all over the kitchen. Multiple people requested paper towels, yet there were none. It wasn't all bad, though: Briel's hair did look especially nice.

A while later, Briel's mom returned home from shopping with a jumbo pack of paper towels. Score! Party on! Thereafter, the existence of paper towels was all but forgotten -- the sign of a successful party, I reckon, until the guests slowly dispersed and the night wound down. That's when I spotted the paper towels again. Large text bubbles were all over the paper towel packaging announcing that the towels featured the artwork of Jennifer Brinley. Who? I was intrigued for two reasons: I've never thought about the "art" on disposable products before, let alone who makes such art, and also who is this Jennifer Brinley to be so famous to have eir name prominently displayed on the wrapping as if to entice people to buy it. A third equally strong reason might be the fact that I had been drinking egg nog and rum, rendering just about anything intriguing.

Further examination of the Sparkle Paper Towels led me to find this graphic on the shrink wrap:


How naive I was to assume that paper towel purchasers are just interested in cleaning spills; apparently they also have a deep desire to read a trite biography about the paper towels' artist, too. I might go so far as to say that buyers of paper towels are not really homemakers, but patrons of the arts.

Finally, I decide to take a peek at the art. I mean, maybe it really is good. But look. Look! This is what all the fuss is about?


Try not to be distracted by my face (if I ever make that face in public again, please stop me), and look at the paper towel. It's colored lines and circles. If I hadn't read about the artist beforehand, I would have dismissed the design as crappy clipart. I mean what is this shit?


"Le Chef"? "La Soup Du Jour"? Is that a reference to eir supposed French inspiration? Jennifer Brinley gets heralded for this crap? You can check out the rest of the noteworthy designs at Sparkle Towels. My favorite is the one titled Dessert featuring asterisks, cupcakes, and the phrases "Yummy!" and "More please!"

I sort of doubted that Jennifer Brinley is a serious artist from the cute blurb in eir bio mentioning that ey paints "in between dog walks." If you're an artist, art should be your top priority. For further confirmation, we googled Jennifer Brinley, and found eir work on Art.com, which sounded really prestigious until I realized it's a commercial site devoted to selling any art rather than recognizing good art. Jennifer Brinley's artwork makes me want to expel things from my body that I would need paper towels to clean up.

Let's examine a series of Jennifer Brinley's work. Rather than talent, I see vapidness.







I actually find this artwork offensive in its promotion of flippant female stereotypes. It's as if Jennifer Brinley is pandering to this Sex and the City brand of feminism where women are reduced to their proclivities toward shopping and being pampered, yet own up to it. It might even be more offensive than that shit called art on the paper towels.

Some artists look to make profound statements and get hung in the Guggenheim. Other artists look to mass produce typical art and get hung next to the kitchen sink. Jennifer Brinley falls in the latter category and is not fit to wipe the grime off my toilet.

Good party, though!