Mrgnsphere: The drawings and paintings of crazy uncle P.

Hello Folkpeople.

I've been wanting to make this post for a while but did not have the content needed to make it worth anybody's time. However today I was able to get some pretty decent photos, so lets give this a shot. First an introduction.

My next door neighbor is my schizophrenic uncle Preston, who also happens to be manic depressive and a big fan of meth to boot. He has lived near me for most of my life, though I moved away for about 7 years and just recently returned. Anyhow, he loves his meth, yes sir he does. He's referred to it as "the sacred crystal" in conversation, though lately (due to a run-in with the law and the resulting jail time) he has been off the stuff and assured me that it "can be enjoyed only by Philistines". He goes through periods of absolute bat-shit insanity, in which he can be found wearing nylon leggings and women's robes, screaming gibberish skyward and creating strange structures out of random knick-knacks, each of which is assigned a name and a level of personal value. He also has his more sane days when he's on his meds and off the meth, where he acts calm and is capable of having a mostly coherent conversation. What's odd, is that he became fascinated with the bible at about the same time that he became a hardcore drug addict and his relationship with the two have always been kind of hand-in-hand. I should note that, regardless of how sane he's acting at the time, he has always been harmless and for the most part friendly, though rarely outwardly.

Before Preston was a professional nutcase, he was a very talented artist. His story is a sad one, and I know few details regarding his fall from grace other than that it involved a break-up that was very difficult on him. For the past 30 or so years, he has lived in a small house out here in Our Town, California - a family owned housing establishment which nowadays resembles a ghost town more than anything. He has not been making art for the last 20 or so years, and likely never will again due to his mental state and a permanently shaky hand. Lately I've been talking with him fairly often, and he's given me a couple of his paintings (The first 2 shown below). He gave me permission to snoop around and photograph his stuff, but there are some great pieces that I was unable to find while I had the camera, so maybe I'll track them down some other time. You'll notice that he tore up a couple of the incredibly detailed ink drawings.