Whistlepig Tales Studio

08/12/2026

Sooooo, ya wanna know what "Nomadic Regionalism" is? OK. ***but now I fixed the audio so you can actually hear what I'm saying!***😬😜

08/04/2026

07/28/2026

This weekend I wandered through the Menil Drawing Institute with friends, and among other sights, we spent some time with Gladys Nilsson's enormous drawing.
The Menil doesn't encourage a lot of photography, which turned out to be a gift. There wasn't much temptation to collect the experience. We just had to...have it.
The drawing doesn't sit still.
Every time I thought I had figured out what I was looking at, another little revelation appeared somewhere else. A hand echoed another hand. A face appeared out of nowhere. Figures folded into one another until I couldn't quite tell where one story ended and another began. Skin became a shirt. Funnily enough, one figure touching the leg of the large central figure made me think about the scene in The Piano where Harvey Keitel's character touches the skin on Holly Hunter's character's leg. You could almost feel the history in the work—the drawing, erasing, laughing, remembering, and beginning again—still humming inside the marks.
I think we forget how attention works. Attention. Attentiveness. Seeing. You can't rush it. Attention has its own timetable. The longer you stay with something, the more life begins to rise to the surface.
For me, sometimes that's standing in front of a drawing. For someone else, it might be watching a soccer game, sitting on a fishing pier, pulling weeds in the garden, walking through the woods, or shaping clay with both hands.
The place almost doesn't matter.
It's the decision to linger.
The world is loud. It throws monstrosities at us every hour of every day. It practically begs us to believe that's all there is.
But I've become convinced that the guardians don't shout.
They wait.
They wait in drawings. In birds. In conversations with old friends. In strange little coincidences. In the stories we tell ourselves after we've finally slowed down enough to notice them.
So today, if you can, carve out twenty minutes that belong to no one else. Go look at something.
Not to accomplish anything. Not to become more productive. Just because the world is still full of ordinary wonders quietly waiting for someone to notice.
And yes...
The world is full of monstrosities.
But it's also full of wondrous guardians.
And before you go to bed tonight, check out the video interview with Gladys Nilsson on the Menil website.

07/22/2026

Episode 4! Psst... come closer.
Tonight's Story Fire begins with Hans Christian Andersen's paper cuts and memories from Denmark. It ends with a question that has nothing to do with Denmark—and everything to do with us.
Have you ever caught yourself becoming the Wicked Prince? If so, what helped you rein your worst self back in?

07/18/2026

Every artist has a handful of ideas that seem determined to follow them through life.
Here's one of mine.
🌙

07/16/2026

People often ask where my Guardian Monsters come from. They begin with paying attention.
For years, I've been collecting little pieces of the places I visit—not souvenirs, but evidence. Every place has its own visual vocabulary. My job is to learn its language before I introduce one of its Guardians.
A leaf with an unusual shape.
The nose of a bison.
The mouth of a lamprey.
A botanical illustration.
A weathered roadside attraction.
An old ceremonial mask.
A story someone told me over coffee.
None of these things become a Guardian Monster on their own.
They wait.
Eventually, enough observations begin talking to one another, and a creature slowly reveals itself. My job isn't to invent it so much as to recognize that it's been there all along.
Looking back through old sketchbooks and process images today, I realized I've been documenting this practice for years without having a name for it.
Every Guardian is regional.
Every Guardian belongs to a place.
Every Guardian is assembled from evidence gathered with curiosity.
The more closely I observe the world, the stranger and more wonderful it becomes.
What have you been noticing lately that everyone else seems to overlook?
Maybe that's where your own Guardian Monster is waiting. The collages appear in the order the Guardians were discovered:
Missouri (deer), Greece (cyclops eagle), Montana (bison), Florida (gator), Minnesota (polar bear/bull), Missouri/China (wooly worm), Nelson-Atkins Picasso Exhibition, Duluth (pike & lures), and a little bit from the wayback machine (St. Sebastian, Dog Friends, Deep Sea Fascination, and Montana).

🎵 Music: "You've Got a Friend in Me"
Written and performed by Randy Newman
Licensed through the TikTok Music Library

07/12/2026

The Steamboat Arabia tells a story that shines a light on that intangible notion sometimes referred to as the American spirit. It is also a story about who gets to pursue their curiosities (and to what end).

Steamboat history, in general, is a story of commerce and expansion.

Steamboat history also shines a light on the familiar struggle between hubris and humility.

I often find myself caught between a state of awe at human inventiveness and weary dismay at our inability to be satisfied.

What constitutes enough?

What advancements pull you between yesterday and tomorrow?
Better yet, what leaves you feeling both hopeful and uneasy?

Where do you think we have gone too far?
Where do you think we haven't gone far enough?

🎵 "Miss Ferris" by John Hartford

Send a message to learn more

07/11/2026

The Rhythm of Pilgrimage asks what pilgrimage looks like today.
Most of us aren't walking hundreds of miles toward a sacred city. Instead, we repeat familiar routes through our lives: work, relationships, loss, hope, disappointment, joy. Along the way we collect little moments that begin to feel significant.
Are these messages?
Coincidences?
Or are they reminders that human beings are extraordinary makers of meaning?
I'm not trying to answer those questions.
I'm more interested in staying awake to them.
This sculpture and accompanying risograph zine became my way of thinking through that idea.








🎵Jesse Welles Quartet for "Pilgrim," courtesy of the TikTok Music Library. See less

07/11/2026

About 95% of my Guardian Monsters begin in the real world.
This one started with a few days on Galveston Bay.
A laughing gull.
A tangle of dried seaweed.
More jellyfish stings than I care to count.
None of those things looked like a Guardian Monster...
Until they found each other.
That's how most of these creatures are born—not from fantasy, but from paying attention.
Now I'd love to borrow your eyes.
Tell me about something you've been observing lately that's making you curious.
Sometime next week I'll choose one observation that sparks my imagination and send that person a handmade Whistlepig Tales Studio incense burner or flower brick.
I can't wait to see the world through your eyes.
🎵 "Galveston Bay" by Parker McCollum (licensed through TikTok Music Library)
Song written by Parker McCollum.