This is Skeletor (no, not that one), the cat mascot of ribbonfarm.com. He is a Yardbirds junkyard critter created by Rich Kolb’s amazing art factory in Louisville, Kentucky.
I found him in an interesting antique shop in St. Michaels, Maryland. I instantly knew my blog needed a mascot and that this was it. Skeletor was born of the detritus of modern industry. His head is crafted from an old bicycle seat. His arched spine is a spring. He is designed as an outdoor sculpture, Kolb’s website says:
All of the Junkyard Dogs & Cats are bare metal and naturally rust with age — that’s their beauty. As I say, “They rust, but they’ll never run away.”
Letting Skeletor age, rust, gather entropy, and die naturally would fit beautifully with the philosophy of this site, but I had to make a concession to practicality and safety, since he is an indoor cat. Skeletor is coated with Krylon.
So why is he a perfect mascot? Well, as a cat (and we all know cats look at the world with weird perspectives) he embodies the point of this blog. Being created out of junk, he is the result of looking at the world differently. It takes a seriously artistic eye to see a cat where others see a junky bicycle seat, right? And finally, by being sort of skeletal looking, he captures yet another theme that drives ribbonfarm: looking beneath surface realities to what is hidden from view.
In fact, he pretty much models the tag-line of the blog: experiments in refactored perception.
