Since time immemorial, bored teen boys have been drawing a certain part of the male anatomy on anything they can set pen to. Identification of such “artists” usually leads to their detention. However, for Mike Bauer and Dustin Bythrow, doodling juvenile outlines of phalluses was the stepping-stone to their artistic careers.
Together known as Bzzy Lps, the two have spent the past eight years bringing an artistic touch to subject matter that most consider crass. From turning a childhood image of Lindsay Lohan into a Juggalo to splicing together bizarre online conspiracy videos, their work is always fresh, unique, and never without controversy. The group's name is a term borrowed from a hip-hop jargon dictionary that refers to a woman who enjoys fellatio.
"We became friends after discovering we have a mutual enjoyment of drawing stupid pictures," Bythrow says.
When the two first met, Bauer was attending the University of Nebraska at Omaha for a degree in art, and Bythrow was working at a gas station. Mutual friends introduced them knowing Bauer would enjoy Bythrow's side art project—a hand-drawn book of convenience store items: i.e., big gulps, churros, and overdone hot dogs talking back to customers.
Following their instant connection, the two would regularly get together to draw and drink (and yes, sometimes this included illustrating parts of the male reproductive system). During each boozy hangout, they'd collaborate on images to see where their creative and liquored-up minds would take them. Soon these quasi-creative brainstorm meetings became a regular thing, and they decided to start illustrating content others could enjoy in zine form.
"Zines were an easy way to get all our drawings into one place at one time," Bauer says.
At last year's Omaha Zine Fest, Bzzy Lps hosted a table of their independently published content, with their Juggaluminati Hachetmanifesto zine quickly selling out. Inside the illustrated book are popular pop culture icons—Judge Judy, Yogi Bear, and Rob Lowe to name a few—painted to look like fans of the Insane Clown Posse. For next year's Zine Fest, Bythrow is working to develop character concepts of his Mouse Boy, a Mickey Mouse-esque superhero with a really rotten attitude, into a comic.
While these inventive cartoons and illustrations are Bzzy Lps' specialty, they also have created T-shirts, stickers, and dabbled in video art. For the independent art venue Project Project, under Bythrow's lead, the two made a three-hour-long video installation that stitched together nonsensical content found on YouTube.
"I didn't sleep for weeks and just went down the rabbit hole of the internet," Bythow says. "But we got asked back again, which was a first for Project Project.”
During an unseasonably warm October day on a NoDo patio, in between drags of cigarettes and a rather heated discussion on the underrated roles of Nicholas Cage, the two weigh where they'd like to see their careers develop. Visions of drawing professional comics and developing content for Adult Swim dance in their heads.
"All that stuff on Cartoon Network, it's nice to see other people who draw dumb cartoons and care about it," Bauer says. "We just don't want to go back to drawing dicks again.”
Visit bzzylps.storenvy.com for more information.
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