Hot & stanky

One panel, an upright ironing board rimmed by sharp nails spaced equidistantly, like malevolent pubic hairs, is topped by a red crucifix. Next to it, on a giant red cruciform panel is painted a scarecrow, lashed to a burning stake. “I peed on my ex-boyfriend’s vehicle,” reads a line of text painted over the flames. “I dropped a sandwich on the floor and served it anyway.”

Nearby, a large green humpback pokes a grimacing turd with a stick. Around it are painted slogans: “Doll it up. Cover your hump. Good time freak. Dumb it down.”

On another, a riled-up broom mixes it up with an old boiler while a couple of young’uns cower in fear nearby. “Now you’ve done it,” it reads. “You’ve upset the kids.”

And a painting that reads “I forget” around a scary-looking minstrel figure is overlayed with a long rant, part of which reads: “She tried dating the mentally ill. At first their constant incoherent dribble was charming but usually all she was left with was a poop stain on her mattress.”

The 14 pieces on display at Gallery Horse Cow by a duo billing itself as the Stanky Sisters—actually, local artists Stephanie Skalisky and Kele Duncan, working in collaboration—may not pass any “politically correct” smell test. Some of them are downright scatological, in tune with the experience one of the artists had with a rental unit where diarrhea flowed from a faucet and bubbled up in the front yard. Other paintings bear the slight paranoic whiff of a stove-top meth cooker, like the dyptich “Point/Counterpoint,” which details a confrontation with an angry neighbor.

Do the random images represent the kinds of weird curve balls that everyday life can toss one’s way? Perhaps. Skalisky painted them, in lurid cartoony color, while Duncan provided the text. The results, which come across like Lynda Barry and Rev. Howard Finster tripping at S. Clay Wilson’s house, can be checked out at a second Saturday reception from 7 to 10 p.m. on April 13 will be held at Gallery Horse Cow, 1409 Del Paso Blvd.