by Casper Johansson in New Illustration on Monday 4 February 2008

The bio of San Fransisco-based illustrator Jenn Porreca says it all way better than I ever could: ‘Some time ago, Jenn Porreca moved from the edges of the real world to the edges of the underground. From the outside of the inside they look suspiciously similar. In her other life she walked the straight and narrow, and built this avatar picture pixel by pixel, appropriating images and ideas, Dr Frankensteining them together inch by agonizing inch’. ‘Every minute she can be, she is here, dancing with cartoon characters and elves and scientists and graffiti-writing apostles and astronauts and experimental musicians. Voraciously looking from behind beneath her netted hat and twiggy eyelashes. She likes this better. In cities worldwide, the eyes of the voyeurs are as ersatz as her identity’.