If, dear reader, there is one thing you should take out of your character study of Magpie, it is that "clean living" can include dumpster-diving for food and supplies. Magpie is a photographer, writer, and publisher who has spent the past two years maintaining SteamPunk Magazine. Having spent more than half a decade as an international ne'er-do-well, squatter, and activist, he is currently enjoying the post-civilized life in Portland, Oregon. He is proud to be among the ranks of art school dropouts, having learned more from art in his years on the road than his years in classroom study. His interests include steampunk, anarchism, fiction, adventure, and raining on people's parades.
My artwork, at its best, expresses the desire for the individual to shape their community and their future. It is about self-determination and collectivism; it is about the rejection of mediocre living.
Statement on "Anachrotechnofetishism":
I realized at some point that the future is all set to suck. Science, what ought to be a chaotic demon of a genie, has been yoked and set to work at money-making and people-killing endeavors. Nature is undervalued and tokenized (Look, honey! A national park! Let's go to the gift-shop!) and all we've got to show for it is mass-manufactured, homogeneous detritus. And then I realized--the future doesn't have to be anything we don't want it to be, and there's no reason to accept having been cast in some bit part on the grand stage. The idea of this series was to explore, roughly and joyfully, the blank page of the future.
