False Idols
Hi everyone! This month, I went on a road trip and made a collage out of the Uline catalog.
Even though I've lived in Portland for a decade, I'd never been to central Oregon, because 1. You need a car to get there, and 2. You need someone willing to cover your shifts at work. After a year of pleading for an understudy, and weeks of training the new guy to make pizza dough and put onions in a container, I finally made it.
"Ant In Footprint, Prineville", 5.5x8.5", marker on paper, July 2026
The Oregon desert was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. However, the main thing that struck me was my own complete alienation from the land. I had no point of reference for it other than media. Despite my best efforts, I mainly just kept thinking about the game Spore. That game did inspire reverence and awe in me as a kid, but the comparison felt deeply profane.
The hills looked somehow even more real through my friend's red-tinted sunglasses, and I kept asking for a turn with them. At one point I saw a bird flying in the distance and thought it was a drone. I felt ashamed. I wished I could experience creation naked for what it was, not twisted and filtered through representations of it. But I just kept thinking about Spore. It was still very beautiful.
I've always found it strange when people leave Google reviews for things like forests and geologic sites, as if Nature might appreciate the feedback.
"Review Of Painted Hills", 11x15", Pen, marker, and colored pencil on cardboard, July 2026
For months, there was a strikingly ugly painting leaned against the wall under the time clock at my work. Or, not really a painting, but one of those canvases that someone paid to have a pixilated jpeg printed on and stapled to a stretcher bar. I honestly couldn't figure out what it was. Is it supposed to be a view of downtown from a fancy house in the West Hills, the city about to be consumed by God's fiery wrath like Sodom?
The original ugly painting.
Parts look AI generated, in an early DeepDream way, but the rest looks like a bad Photoshop edit. Regardless, I have no idea why someone would print this image on a canvas and abandon it in the back of a pizza parlor. One day, I got tired of stepping around it and bungee corded it to my bike as I was clocking out. No one has mentioned its absence since the heist.
My original plan was to paint over the canvas, but I found that, in addition to being quite ugly, it was also extremely thin and low quality. I decided it would be better to repurpose its ugliness as a collage base.
"Uline Carnival Hell (40 Years Ago You Would Have Begged For This)", 16x24", collage on found printed canvas, July 2026
I discovered that the color scheme beautifully matched a Uline catalog I'd just taken home. Pretty much every kitchen and factory I've ever worked at subscribes to the Uline catalog. It is almost 1000 pages long, printed in full color, and invariably goes straight into the recycling.
"Uline Carnival Hell (40 Years Ago You Would Have Begged For This)", close-up
The entire operation seems sinister and absurdly inefficient. According to Wikipedia, Uline's CEO will sometimes print her far-right political musings in the catalog. I was disappointed to find no deranged manifestos in my copy, but it did have thousands of images of every conceivable mass-produced plastic item.
"Uline Carnival Hell (40 Years Ago You Would Have Begged For This)", close-up
I especially liked the pictures of objects being asphyxiated in polypropylene bags. The material gives the items a soft, ethereal glow, like a silent film actress photographed through silk.
"Uline Carnival Hell (40 Years Ago You Would Have Begged For This)", close-up
Who took these photos? Are they from the early 90s, or last week? Who are these freaks grinning in hazmat suits? Are they professional models or random Uline employees, pulled from their desks mid-shift against their will? Who died manufacturing the garbage in this hellishly absurd supply chain? What were they paid? Why does any of this need to exist? Why is it this and not something else?
"Uline Carnival Hell (40 Years Ago You Would Have Begged For This)", close-up
1. "Love Is Such A Happy Thing" - Norma Tanega
2. "Know (Cut My Friend Down)" - Julian Cope
3. [Side A - Track 6] - Tesfaye Gebre [link / link]
4. "Thot Tactics" - JPEGMAFIA
5. "Feel Flows Free" - Guitar
6. "King Of The Dead" - XXXTENTACION
7. "እኔ እየውደድኩዋት [Track 6]" - Teshome Wolde [link / link]
8. "Like 38" - Bazille
9. "Love Is" - Robert Lester Folsom
Thanks for looking! Contact max@maxwickstrom.com.
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