Badly Licked Bear, well done

This week’s guest doesn’t put their self in a box, so neither shall we

Let’s start with the name’s meaning.

Medieval Europeans, it’s said, believed bears were born without form and were licked into shape by their moms. A badly licked bear is a child who was poorly raised.

Today’s guest heard that story in the 2010s, while studying at Pacific Northwest College of Art, understood deeply that that name fit, and named themselves that a bit after returning home to Los Angeles.

My longtime friend and colleague Badly Licked Bear is easily among the most interesting members of our species that I have known. They are academic and they are artful. And I can’t think of five people I’d rather hear discuss LA.

Their work has been exhibited or performed at venues including: MOCA, Hammer Museum, REDCAT, Human Resources Los Angeles, Machine Project, Cerritos College, The Wignall Museum, as well as less-institutional locales, like an illegal bar in the Pacific Ocean during the inaugural Current Triennial. Their work is in the library collections of The Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Otis College of Art and Design.

I’ve lately been telling Badly they should run for public office, and that’s perhaps where we should be begin. A natural leader who’s deeply attuned to the issues of the day, they chafe at my suggestion because of a past that includes some, er… non-mainstream behavior.

We get into some of that here, as well as their work with the Auntie Sewing Squad, “an 800 member organization that provided mutual aid primarily in the form of manufacturing and distributing 400,000 handmade masks during the primary phase of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Right here I’ma keep it short, because our video chat ran long. Stay tuned, of course, for the print Q&A version of my talk with Badly.

(But 👇🏿 is better)