a tale of pets, the internet and intrigue

Posted on by Jennifer Heller

Last February I held a Pets Amore Love Story Contest to promote my pet portraiture business, Van Gogh My Pet. For months following, my aunt Liz hounded me to submit the tale to This American Life. What follows is the pitch that Will and I put together, that both my father and my aunt found sub-par, and that we submitted anyway. Seriously, the two of us could spend years on just about any project…if we had it.

And..without any further ado…the pitch for This American Life:

Jennifer Heller is an artist and web designer in Oakland, California. In February she decided to use Valentine’s Day to promote one of her business projects, VanGoghMyPet.com. This is a business where Jennifer paints portraits of people’s cats and dogs, rendering them in the approximate style of Vincent Van Gogh. On the website Jennifer announced a contest: pet owners could submit their “pet love stories,” and viewers of the site would vote on which submitted story was the best. The pet owner voted best would win a free, original portrait of his or her pet.

Jennifer hoped that this contest would bring more attention to her website. She had no idea what was in store.

Quinn may look like a real dog, but she's not!

Thirteen pet owners submitted stories: pets ranged from dogs and cats to angelfish, a stuffed Yorkshire Terrier, and a horse. The voting was to last just five days–Monday through Friday, and each IP address was allowed one vote per hour.

One entry quickly pulled ahead, a horse named Weekend. The young woman who owned Weekend, Kayla, mobilized her large family to vote for her story. Her family viewed the contest with particular poignancy, because the horse she had been wanting her whole life had been a consolation after the painful passing of her father.

Kayla’s supportive family voted heavily: Kayla’s elderly grandmother slept with a laptop by the bed and set an alarm to wake hourly during the night. Family and friends as far away as Canada, Arizona, and Florida took part in the voting. Weekend’s love story on the website accrued regular comments from her supporters gushing with love and support.

Kayla and Weekend

Though he had a strong lead, Weekend was not without competition. A few of the other pet owners were putting up a good fight. Two coworkers at the office where Jennifer’s mother works had entered the contest. Among them was the mother of a girl and her Chihuahua, Libby. Jennifer recalls, “Throughout the week, I got phone calls every hour from my mom reporting what was happening at the office. The contest was a constant topic of conversation. My mom felt really sorry for the losing entries, and called me to say she voted for the underdogs, or why she thought that the Angelfish story was really the best written. I don’t think either of us got much work done; all we did was watch the voting.”

Late Wednesday, one of the other entries began to claw at Weekend’s lead, a story about a feline named Fence Cat. In contrast to most of the submissions, which told of the owners’ love for their pets, the Fence Cat story professed no such love, but told of an amorous liaison between Fence Cat and another cat. In contrast to Kayla and her emotional connection to her horse, the contestants who submitted the Fence Cat story were not even the animal’s owners: Fence Cat was a stray who lounged about on their property, and they viewed him with a sort of detached respect and bemusement. In contrast to the suburbanites voting for Weekend, Fence Cat’s hosts were residents of Oakland, recent graduates of UC Berkeley and still very much part of the student counterculture. It appeared for the first stretch of the contest that their feckless hipsterism would win them some laughs but fail in the face of Weekend’s mobilized effort. But they had a surprise up their sleeves.

As the weekend neared when the vote count was to wind down, the Fence Cat contestants whipped up their own voter mobilization scheme. They began having parties for students and recent graduates, giving them beer to sit around and vote, hour after hour, for Fence Cat . They formed a group on Facebook called “1000 Strong for Fence Cat.” Jennifer was surprised to see votes for Fence Cat mount swiftly, to the point where it appeared that Fence Cat had a chance of catching up with Weekend.

Fencecat pictured here without her fence.

As this change became apparent, Fence Cat’s hosts redoubled their efforts, bringing in even more people. Weekend’s supporters had already maximized the productiveness of their voting, and so they could do nothing to meet their rival’s challenge. Realizing that they stood to be overtaken, they became bitter about the possibility that their effort would be wasted. This demoralization was not helped by the rudeness of some of Fence Cat’s friends. A Fence Cat partisan, Ken, commented on Weekend’s love story under a pseudonym, declaring himself “an ardent Marxist,” and suggested that anyone who owned a horse was “bourgeois scum.” Kayla and her family members did not have thick skins when it came to such internet rudeness. Jennifer was left fretting, trying to placate the wronged parties and to keep the other parties on best behavior. She urged all contestants to “stay positive” and began monitoring the comments sections obsessively to prevent name-calling. She found this task to be a new headache, as some comments struck her as humorous but were taken by contestants to be hurtful. Jennifer could not believe what a Pandora’s box her Valentine’s Day contest had become! The contest had taken on a life of its own!

The contest was scheduled to end at 12:00 am Pacific Standard Time on Friday, February 12, 2010.  At 9:11 pm that fateful day, Fence Cat took the lead, surpassing Weekend’s impressive 800 and some votes.  Liz, who submitted the story of Fence Cat, mistakenly commented on Weekend’s story under the pseudonym Judy, “FENCE CAT takes the lead!!!! Love you Fence Cat 1,000 by midnight!”

Liz immediately posted again to apologize and explain that she meant to post that on Fence Cat’s story, but the damage was done. Weekend’s supporters, still glued to their computers, took it personally, and geographically, somehow interpreting the many comments to be directed against the city of Tracy, where Weekend and Kayla reside. Weekend supporter Ken Houzzier posted, hyperbolically, “As a candidate for Tracy’s city council, I fully support an investigation into said rude and shady actions. I promise that the killers will be brought to justice.”

Demoralized by Fence Cat’s recent lead, Kayla posted on Facebook that everyone should give up, and texted Jennifer to let her know. Weekend’s supporters largely threw in the towel. Some felt used and angry. The comments got worse. A saddened Jennifer began to realize that a week of pure fun had turned into a horrible PR debacle when someone named Cheryl commented on Weekend’s story, “Sorry, Kayla, that some people had to be rude and shady. I can’t wait to hear EXACTLY what went down. I’m sure there’s A LOT of people interested in this company and their true intentions.”

The finished portrait of Fence Cat

Jennifer tried to bolster the spirits of Weekends supporters and restrain the enthusiasm of the Fence Cat team. At one point the idealistic young artist even phoned the authors of the Fence Cat love story and asked above the din of their voting party if they could have their friends vote half the time for Weekend. Unsurprisingly, her plea went unanswered. Fence Cat won a robust victory, and Jennifer promptly made a Van-Gogh-style painting of the amorous cat for the ecstatic winner.

Jennifer no longer utilizes competitive contests for promotion having acutely learned a tough lesson: the passions of people who love animals are not to be toyed with.

Great pitch or greatest pitch ever?

My pet portraits make unforgettable gifts.  Portraits and gift certificates available at Van Gogh My Pet.

Gus Brain Map

Posted on by Jennifer Heller

My cat, the Guster, Gus or Mr. Peabody, spends most of his time campaigning for food. Whether this means anxiously watching our cooking process, following my fork from plate to mouth, plate to mouth, or clawing at me while I’m working, it really seems to be the only thing on his mind.

Last night Will and I conceived of a brain map to represent this obsession. I imagine your cat might have a similar brain map, though if you were smart enough not to feed them wet food at all they might just go over and munch on their dry food everytime they noticed there wasn’t food in their mouths.

Believe me, I will never give a cat mealtimes again. They just don’t understand why mealtime isn’t right now all the time.
Continue Reading

Filing Day

Posted on by Jennifer Heller

Yesterday was filing day and if you are anything like me, filing day is more like a week of procrastinating the filing before finally putting on Project Runway and digging in.

I finally dug in last night, and I was pleasantly surprised at how fun it was. I know…what??? Filing and fun in the same sentence? I didn’t think it was possible either.

But it was and for the following three reasons. Continue Reading

On Andy Warhol, Art and Business

Posted on by Jennifer Heller

I’ve been thinking a lot about Andy Warhol lately. He’s an artist I have a lot of respect for because he was so financially successful in his lifetime. And he got to have an awesome warehouse space filled with rad musicians and other artists.

When I win the lottery, the first thing I’m going to do is take a month-long European vacation. The next thing I’m going to do is rent a warehouse space and deck it out. I probably won’t paint it silver, but I promise, I will paint it. It will be the best few weeks ever. Then all day, every day, I will create–movies, paintings, sculpture–whatever strikes my fancy. I’ll invite other artists to share the space; rent out the film studio to artists for rock bottom prices. I’ll immediately take up neon sign making, an interest I’ve always had to forgo pursuing due to cost. Continue Reading

Starman

Posted on by Jennifer Heller

The BP oil spill fiasco seems to have fallen off our radar a bit, though the disaster is far from over.  Will tells me spills of that magnitude have happened before on other, not so affluent off-shore eco-systems.  Our Earth seems to have handled it; indeed if the last one was in the seventies, we ought to know if it hadn’t.

I can’t imagine seeing in the past those sickening images of pelicans and dolphins covered in oil, and having to see them again thirty years later.  Those images are forever burned in my memory, and I imagine in yours too. I toyed with the idea of doing a Van Gogh My Pet series of oil slicked creatures, but I have never enjoyed portraying sadness and despair. It’s hard to imagine that our world would recover, and it’s rather sickening to me how little we hear about the continued fallout.  I (perhaps conveniently) blame the media for our short attention span.

For the past few months, I’ve been obsessed with David Bowie.  OBSESSED.  Initially it was one of his earliest albums, Hunky Dory, on continual repeat, which was replaced after an appropriate amount of time with his subsequent album, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars. This album is a rock and roll opera, which Bowie intended to form the backbone of a stage show or television production (and it still should be).

The first track, Five Years, relates the devastating news that Earth’s days are numbered.  Finitely numbered, in fact, with only five years to go.  We’ve used up all our natural resources.  Adults have given up; kids are left to plunder and ravage what’s left of the Earth.

The reality in their world seemed so hauntingly similar to our current situation, and so many other environmental situations I’ve worried and fretted about.  This oil spill debacle seemed to me so much bigger than anything else.  People close to me suggested that this spill would ruin the Southern portion of the United States, forcing a mass migration.  The oil could be displaced via hurricanes and wind up poisoning our entire water supply.  Crops could fail and even the salmon swimming happily in the Klamath River would sport a shiny black coat.  Even without employing my overactive imagination, people were (are) out of work, and animals are dying (still!).

My favorite of the album is the fourth track, Starman.  We learn of a being, “waiting in the sky; he’d like to come and meet us but he thinks he’d blow our minds.”  He knows how to help us, but is afraid we might be be unwilling to accept him or his knowledge–a valid concern.  I’ve heard so many rumors of BP executives ignoring advice; as humans, we think, we feel, and we are stubborn.

Opening our ears, the Starman tells us “not to blow it cause he knows it’s all worthwhile.” A glimmer of hope! No matter how dark our reality might be, it is still worthwhile–life is still worthwhile.  We still love, we can still laugh.

The Starman continues, “let the children lose it, let the children use it.” And it is so true; we are merely the stewards of our home.  It is our children who will inherit it when we are gone. They have the freedom to do with it what they will, just as we have the freedom to do to it what we will.  If we consider how it affects those following in our footsteps, perhaps we would take different paths.

As a Girl Scout, I have always been taught to take care of my surroundings.  When I leave a camp site, I pick up as many pieces of trash as I can find–far more, indeed than I have left there. I know that the people who are camping there next will probably destroy it again, but I can only do what I can do.  I think Starman would want it that way.

To honor this ambassador of hope I created this work:

I started with EJ DiMira’s body, which I cut out of Soap Opera Digest (quite an inspiration for me of late), added some images from Wikimedia Commons, and Photoshop flares to create his body.  I had it printed on this crazy metallic paper that adds just the faintest glimmer to finish the piece.

Will wants me to send one to David Bowie.  Julia challenged me to find his address, which ten seconds on google yielded (though I will probably only reach his publicist).

I’ve taken this as a challenge to create a triad of David Bowie inspired art, that will likely include elements from Soap Opera Digest.  Once the triad is finished, and only then, will I send them to David Bowie.  He has a habit of supporting unknown and budding artists.  I have a daydream that perhaps one day he will have to phone someone and he will pick on me.

Compost, Recycling, Trash Signage

Posted on by Jennifer Heller

I made these signs a couple years ago when I put on the unfortunately named First Annual Holiday Gift Bizarre in San Francisco.  It was unfortunate because we wound up only having the one.  Hindsight is always 20/20.

Please feel free to print them for use at your events.  If you laminate them, they will last forever :).  I reuse mine every event, and keep them in a folder marked “Signage”.  I know just where to find them when I go to pack for Jenfest this Saturday morning.  I’ve learned a lot about design since making these, so my apologies for the rough edges.

Jenfest 2010

Posted on by Jennifer Heller

Every year I throw myself a Jenfest.  It’s half birthday party, half theatrical event.  Ask my close friends–I spend half a year planning it.  Each year I design a ridiculous invitation; a tradition my sister started, and I have continued.  Nowadays they’re websites.  You can view them all here, or check out this year’s invite (complete with a BINGO game you can play at home!).

Jenfest is my favorite time of the year.  I love throwing events–big and small.  I love finding a theme and working my face into it and adding in as much hilarity as I can possibly muster.  Oh yes, it is quite my favorite part of the year.

I have utilized large photos of my face at multiple Jenfests. I think it’s funny!

Jenfest has always been green:  I put out recycling and compost bins (with signage!), use paper plates (compostable), keep and wash plastic flatware and cups.

I was having an internal battle this year over Jenfest’s budget.  Ever since I became self-employed, I’ve had to look at the costs associated with Jenfest differently. I’ve had steady work since I was 14, often working as many as three jobs.  I am hella motivated by money.  Paying for Jenfest wasn’t ever anything I thought about, I just loved it, and looked at the associated costs as a birthday present to myself.  But over the years the price of Jenfest has steadily risen: my standards for food and beverages has gone up, I’ve exhausted the cheapest options for souvenirs, I no longer live in a large student cooperative happy to hold my parties.  Now that I have to seek out a client for each dollar I make, life is different.

I set my budget for Jenfest this year at $250 and was bound and determined to stick with it.  I was shocked with the cost for the rentals came in at $224, but I should have seen that coming.  After all, I’ve thrown enough parties and events for myself and others that I knew that rentals cost waaaay more than that.  Blissful ignorance, I suppose.  All of a sudden I couldn’t afford the decorations I had planned: the full color JENGO playing cards, the sparkly (and reusable) Jenfest banner, the Jenfest ribbons to mark the prizes.  I was stranded in the land of indecision, until I met my friend Rosalie for coffee yesterday.

I was expressing my confusion about where to go from here, and she said, “I would just to Creative Reuse and find some fabric there and paint on it.”  The light went off in my head.  I was already planning on finding the prizes from thrift stores and friends’ garages.  But what if I recycled (or upcycled, depending…) all of the Jenfest materials and decorations?  What would that look like?

I wasn’t sure, but a trip to the Center for Creative Reuse (a wonderful resource if you live in the Bay Area!) pointed me down the yellow brick road towards an awesome, even greener Jenfest.  Mardi Gras beads at 15 cents each; shiny plastic paper at 5 cents each.  Fabric at 75 cents a yard.  Tie silk I had bought years ago for a fraction of an Andrew Jackson.  Used golf balls for the Jengo balls. Reused cardstock for hand-made JENGO playing cards.

I spent a total of $22 and wound up with all the materials I could possibly need to deck out Jenfest 2010, a couple ancient history text books for Will and some cool envelopes I can use for Van Gogh My Pet.

I’ll let you know how it goes, and I would love to see you there!  All are invited to Jenfest this Saturday.  Full details.

Of Penguins and Theatre

Posted on by Jennifer Heller

Last January, I concocted a plan. My great friend John was starting up his theatre company, Hella Fresh Theatre. I was in the process of designing his website for him, which features a penguin very prominently. I decided that John absolutely needed an actual penguin mascot to be present for the first performance.

I had a few cubic feet of roving wool I had picked up while working as a Super Sponge Saleswoman and a needle felting tool. Now, for those of you who have never needle felted (and really, why would you?), it is a slow and laborious process. You use a needle felting tool (which consists of a few barbed needles) and you poke a puff of wool many, many, many hundreds and hundreds of times to sculpt that which you’ve decided to sculpt. Continue Reading

some cartoon in me

Posted on by Jennifer Heller

I have been wanting to try my hand at a self-portrait.

I’m not really sure how it’s going.

I have been planning this portrait for many weeks, and when I mentioned to my boyfriend that I was going to start on it the other evening, he said, “You know, I’m not entirely on board with this self-portrait plan. You paint pets!”

He was worried, as was I, that I would be terrible at painting a person. But, I explained, that was the adventure in it! Perhaps I will be–but I have to find out!

I was not prepared, however, for the end of the evening, when I couldn’t even look at it. That’s how terrible my self-portrait was turning out. At first I was so easy to paint–I know myself well. And I had the self-portraits of Van Gogh for inspiration. What could be easier?

It wasn’t easy. I haven’t been able to pick it back up, but my parents have assured me that it’s worth finishing. I said to my mom, “Mom! I look like a cartoon!” and she said, “Well, honey, you do have some cartoon in you.”