episode forty | raj bunnag

Published 22 April 2020

Miranda Metcalf  Hello print friends, and welcome to the 40th episode of Pine Copper Lime (Hello, Print Friend), the internet's number one printmaking podcast. I'm your host, Miranda Metcalf. I release weekly episodes with people from all over the print world doing something a bit beyond the expected. So if you like what you hear, please subscribe on your podcast listening app of choice. You can support PCL through our Patreon and our online print gallery. You'll find a link in the show notes to both of these, and so many thanks to those of you out there who have joined Patreon and purchased prints in the last few weeks. You all are amazing, stepping up during these COVID times. Printmaking forever, shun the non believers. My guest this week is Raj Bunnag, a printmaker currently living and working in North Carolina. Raj makes large and exceptionally detailed woodcuts, which address the war on drugs, skillfully borrowing imagery from everything from the news media, his Thai roots, and 16th century etchings by the likes of Pieter Bruegel the Elder and Francisco Goya. He speaks passionately and beautifully about using his work to exorcise the demons found in society and his own experiences. So sit back, relax, and buy the ticket, take the ride with Raj Bunnag. Hi, Raj, how's it going?

Raj Bunnag  Hey, Miranda, how you doing?

Miranda Metcalf  Pretty good. All things considered.

Raj Bunnag  Yeah, the world is a little topsy turvy these days.

Miranda Metcalf  It is a little topsy turvy. I was thinking before we got started that I've never done this before, but the world is changing so quickly, I feel like I should mark the date that we're talking. And I should be like, so this interview was recorded on March 24 at 6:15pm Raleigh time. 

Raj Bunnag  2020. 

Miranda Metcalf  2020. Because this is the first post-pandemic interview I've done, and the world is changing, and I'm sure that we're going to get into the ways in which you and your art have been responding to that. It's podcasting in our strange new world.

Raj Bunnag  And thank you, Miranda, for having me. It feels kind of weird that I would be doing this on such a big print podcast, because I am like very obsessed with - I'm obsessed with the apocalypse from a scholarly standpoint. I don't believe in any of it. It's just interesting. I just find it completely interesting how people can take an idea, run with it,  and just like really include a lot of other people, and it's like, holy shit, this got crazy. We have this pattern you can look through in art history and in history that shows us this, like, collective madness, I call it.

Miranda Metcalf  Absolutely. I feel like just hearing you say that little bit, I feel like I've just had a light bulb go on to some of the aesthetic in your work. So we'll have to talk about that a bit, a little bit later on. But before we dive into the really juicy details, would you mind telling everyone, please, who you are, where you are, and what you do?

Raj Bunnag  My name is Raj Bunnag. I'm an artist and printmaker in Durham, North Carolina. I print, I do mostly relief prints. Linocuts, I do woodcuts sometimes, for bigger stuff. And then I do screenprinting, I teach - I was teaching at DukeCreate, they had this really awesome art program that they've pretty much like canceled all classes for the rest of the semester because of the pandemic, the Rona, as they call it. So I was teaching that, but I work on a farm also, and yeah, just print. And I am currently working on a series of prints about the war on drugs called "March of the Druggernauts," a fantastical manifestation of the world.

Miranda Metcalf  Beauty. So tell me a little bit about growing up for you. Where was that? And what role did art play in your life during that time?

Raj Bunnag  I grew up in Montgomery County, Maryland, but also, we moved a lot when I was young and we lived all around the DC metropolitan area. And we eventually landed in a town called Kensington, which is kind of smack dab in between much larger suburban areas of Maryland. And growing up, art was an outlet for me to entertain myself. We didn't have a lot of money, both my parents are from Thailand. At the time, my mom, I think when she had me she was going to community college and working in various kitchens and cleaning houses. My dad was a mechanic in Thailand, came here and was a mechanic, worked for Goodyear for I think about 30 years. So we moved around a bunch, and drawing was pretty much my way to make toys. I would create these... you know, I'd see toys, I'd see different things on TV, like different monsters and stuff, and I would draw them on paper, and then I would take that paper and I would glue it to a piece of cardboard, and I would cut it out, and that cardboard would have a little heft to it, so I could move it around, I could stand it up with stuff behind it. And so I would just have these boxes of drawn monsters and then... yeah, it kept me entertained. And then in school, I kind of lost... it was just kind of like, at the time, no one nurtured it. I didn't know to nurture it or do anything with it. Just kind of passed through the system, just kind of let me, you know, you can just be average and here you go. Now you're out in the world. And then at one point, I did want to be... I was like, 'I'm going to try to go to art school. I've been drawing enough.' And I'd be like, 'I have sketchbooks, I've been drawing,' like I was drawing still lifes of like parties or just doing drawings of my friends, just drawing stupid high school stuff at the time. What did I know? But a teacher who pretty much shot down everything I did was like, 'You shouldn't do this.' And I was like, 'Ah, that's... I mean, you're the adult, I guess you're right.' 

Miranda Metcalf  Did they say why?

Raj Bunnag  There was too much drug reference in my work. Which also, again, is weird that the prints I'm doing, they're all about drugs. Those are the ones that people have been reacting the most to. 

Miranda Metcalf  So the very thing that your high school teacher was saying 'This isn't gonna make you a good artist' is the very thing that people have responded to the most in your work.

Raj Bunnag  Exactly. Yeah, it's kind of a... I don't want to say 'F you' to that teacher. But you know, it's... cuz I don't want to ignore, it's like, it was a big... you shattered me. But I built myself back up.

Miranda Metcalf  Right, right. There's something really to the fact that the people who challenge us and even the people who hurt us in our trajectory, they do give us opportunities to grow and expand and to find out what it's like to do something when you're not getting affirmation. And when you really do have to have to do it yourself. And so while part of you is like, 'Yeah, fuck off,' part of you, too, is like, but also I learned some shit. Yeah, it's an interesting balance.

Raj Bunnag  At one point I think I just, in my own mind, I just kind of was like... I just had a shock of reality, I think, being in California - I lived in California, I lived in Santa Barbara for a while. But I think there was something about California that just, it changed me. And I had to leave America, and it, immediately. And I went to Thailand for for about a year.

Miranda Metcalf  Where in Thailand? 

Raj Bunnag  I was kind of all over the place. I was in Bangkok and Chiang Mai. I was in Kanchanaburi, which is in the western part of Thailand. And then I spent some time at the beach, you know, as everyone does when you go to Thailand. I saw you were in Chiang Mai and all those dope, dope, dope print studios.

Miranda Metcalf  Yeah, I've been to Chiang Mai several times for the printmaking scene there. It's incredible. I'm guessing that maybe you didn't know about printmaking or it wasn't a big part of your life when you were traveling at the time?

Raj Bunnag  It wasn't. It wasn't a big part of my life.

Miranda Metcalf  So you didn't get a chance to visit, huh?

Raj Bunnag  Mm-mm. I did not. 

Miranda Metcalf  Oh, yeah. You have to go back then, yeah.

Raj Bunnag  But I will say, the one thing I did in Santa Barbara that had a super super long lasting effect - well, I did take my first print class. It was intro to print. That was like, 'What!' It kind of connected all these dots from since I was a kid to that moment in time. It was like, 'Oh my god, all the drawings, what I thought were ink drawings, were actually just prints.' It just all clicked. I was like, 'Oh my god. This changes everything.' Because no one, there was never ever a print class offered to me or anyone who thought me to put me in that. I don't know. It was cool to find. So when I found printmaking, it kind of was like, 'Oh my god, this... I need to do something with this. This is good.'

Miranda Metcalf  Well, I think [what] happens to a lot of people is that when they see prints just kind of out in the world through art history, through going to museums, through popular culture, they don't necessarily know what they're seeing. Because they you don't get trained on it. You don't get told. You don't get told that MC Escher's tessellations are woodcuts, you don't get told that Andy Warhol's Marilyn is silkscreen.

Raj Bunnag  A lot of artists don't know!

Miranda Metcalf  A lot of artists! 

Raj Bunnag  I feel like... well, printmaking to me is... once I learned it, I was like, 'Holy shit, this is a combination of everything.' It's so malleable, but it's so rigid at the same time. And I mean, there's so many possibilities with it. It is an art in itself, but it can elevate things and just really make them have a bigger impact, I don't know. Print, the multiple, it changes things. It changes worlds. The printed word has power.

Miranda Metcalf  Yeah. Yeah, it almost feels like a secret history when you get to discover it.

Raj Bunnag  And that's why I feel like, judging what we're witnessing today in this pandemic time, like... there is art that covers this. It's not pretty. Or times like this, or administrations like this, these things exist in a visual context. We just don't, it's not as... it's been hidden over the last couple years, which I feel is on purpose for the most part. But it's because it's a little too thought provoking sometimes, you know, you want to keep people docile, show them some flowers.

Miranda Metcalf  Make them watch Two and a Half Men.

Raj Bunnag  Oh, man.

Miranda Metcalf  I think that some of us are sort of waiting for this huge influx of art that's reacting to this global tragedy that's unfolding both very quickly and very slowly at the same time in front of our eyes. Yet at the same time, so many artists in my life, and people that I talk to, and what I've experienced myself, is it's been so hard to make. Like, we've finally been given time to ourselves where we can't go to work. And it's almost like this is what we've always just asked for, now we can finally make work -

Raj Bunnag  It's too much.

Miranda Metcalf  But there's too much going on. Exactly. 

Raj Bunnag  And imbalance. That imbalance. 

Miranda Metcalf  And it's weird guilt about it, because you're like, 'Oh, this is what I've always asked for. But now I feel like I can't even work.' But I think we just have to be so gentle with ourselves and with each other right now, because it's not that humans haven't lived through pandemics, but we've never lived through them with the amount of travel and communication and images and connections.

Raj Bunnag  And connections. Imagine some people who, you know, you're in your house and you just see, 'Oh, what's going on with the neighbors? What's happening over there?' Like, you're in Australia, and we can talk during during this pandemic. So it's like we're alone,  not alone. But it is a weird... there's a lot of bad energy going on.

Miranda Metcalf  Yeah. And I've heard a lot of people describe it that way, because I'm someone who is, by nature, ridiculously, foolishly optimistic. And so there's very few things in the world that I can't spin. And I can't spin this one. Like, well, this just looks like shit.

Raj Bunnag  That's true. And that's what scares me, is during this time, there are a lot of unknowns, but there are still good things happening. Happening while... like one good thing, my partner, she works in public health, and she has been working hard to make sure kids are fed during this. Because she's a dietician for elementary school kids. So she's trying to make sure the next generation is well fed during this time of pandemic, which is, you know - because some of the kids in the school she's working in, they get most of their meals from school. And so it's just like, 'Ah! How can I be mad during this when people are doing stuff!' You know? That's another thing, too, is there's a lot of moments right now to do good, and it's not that hard. And it's like, we can do things to support people who are going through way worse. Or like, there's a lot of blowback coming [from] the other end of this whole thing. I think it's important that we support people who are actively trying to keep those lines, supply lines, the medical, you know, doctors, nurses, grocery clerks. People are trying to feed us and take care of us. It's so weird, and for me, it's brought in this whole new thought of just, what do we really spend all our money on as a society? We weren't prepared for this. And I feel like, at this point now, I have this weird feeling [that] in America, it's a matter of when you get it, not if you get it now. Because it's like, if they really have Easter service, that's going to be bad. And I don't know, we'll see. That's all we can do. We'll leave up to the... all I can do is quarantine and help the community.

Miranda Metcalf  So you were saying that you kind of went on this journey from DC to California, and then you went to Thailand and were there for a year. Was that your first time going back to where your parents are from?

Raj Bunnag  It wasn't my first time, but it was my first time spending any type of extended time there alone, not with any family, like by myself. And it was very much an eye opening experience for me, just because... so in America, I'm foreign. In Thailand, I'm American. It's a weird tightrope I walk. So being in Thailand, it was interesting to be there, but then go from an American to then feel like a Thai person, Thai, feel like a part of that country and know where my roots, my ancestry, is from. And know the land, know the cities, the various mountains and waterfalls, and just learning it and really taking it in. Because you know, all I had growing up were... not even books. I didn't even really get books of things till later in life, it was just stories my dad would tell me. And then maybe some crazy artwork at my grandma's house. I'd be like, 'What's the story of this?' And they're like, 'I don't know!' My grandma was like, 'I have no idea.' And I'm like, 'What?' But my dad would know, because he liked myths and he liked mythology, and all kinds of mythology. So I grew up in a household [where] I read all Greek myths, Norse myths, African myths, Middle Eastern, like Arabian Nights, I read all these different stories, but it was like, for some reason, Thai ones were always so hard to come by or find.

Miranda Metcalf  That's really interesting.

Raj Bunnag  So going back was just this immersion into Thai culture and, again, my ancestry. While I was in Thailand, I realized the great chance I had at doing stuff in America, and what my parents sacrificed moving to America, like, holy shit, they started at zero. Like, zero zero. Didn't know the language, didn't know... you gotta learn how to drive differently in America, you know, it's like a whole... they gave up so much for the potential of doing what they want.

Miranda Metcalf  Yeah, and am I - I feel like I've read somewhere, and correct me if this is wrong, but was your father an artist himself?

Raj Bunnag  He could always draw, but he never made great pieces - like, he could draft anything. He was a very good draftsman, and he did a lot of woodwork and metalworking. He was like a self taught gunsmith and knifesmith, and he was... so, my handle on Instagram, @jungle_asian_redneck, is... so "Jungle Asian," you know, a very vulgar term for someone from Southeast Asia, but I embraced it because if I embrace it, you can't use it against me. It's mine, I own it. And then the "redneck" part is for, my dad is just kind of like a country Thai boy, so he taught me to hunt and camp and fish and track things and do outdoorsy woodsman stuff, cut trees, make snare traps. He was a jack of all trades, master of none. But in my eyes, he could... he made some pretty awesome things. Like, when I was young, he would draw... I could be like, 'Hey, can you draw me like a seven headed dragon?' And he'd draw this dragon, like, super quick. And I'd just be like, 'Whoa...' Like, just be amazed, like, blow my mind. And he did a couple things, but it's weird, over the years it's like the things just kind of disappeared, got lost. But we've found... because we've moved so many times. And one of the things we did find were like these drawings of - so my dad was really into hunting, and so he would draw these potential covers of hunting stories, or something like that. Like a polar bear attacking the group of hunters, and they're in this pose of like, the bear's roaring, and you know, the hunters are like, 'Whoa!' Having a reaction to this polar bear coming into their camp. And the other one's a pen drawing of a Gaur, which is a Southeast Asian jungle bull. Have you ever seen those when you were in Thailand? I don't think I've ever seen those, no. Next time you're in Thailand, if you go to the eastern part, I believe, like toward Laos, there's a certain area, there might be like a park somewhere, it's all about Gaurs. It's these jungle bulls that are like, the size of maybe small elephants. Like, they're pretty big. They can be massive. They're like massive cow, like just beefy jungle - I don't know, they're pretty impressive beasts of the jungle that not a lot of people know about.

Miranda Metcalf  I did not. And I love animals. So I'm always for being introduced to a new one.

Raj Bunnag  Gaur. It's G-A-U-R.

Miranda Metcalf  Okay, because I was like, I was thinking, if I was to look up "gore" like G-O-R-E, and then "bull," I would just get a bunch of people getting their crotches torn out.

Raj Bunnag  Yeah, no, not that gore. Well, this bull could definitely do some damage. It's like an impressive beast. You're like, whoa, like I didn't know... like, you think of cows, you're like, 'Oh, they're just this soft looking animal!' And sometimes like even like the bull in the cartoon, it's a little beefy, but kind of dopey. This guy's like, this bull's like, cartoon-like steroids.

Miranda Metcalf  Amazing. I can't wait.

Raj Bunnag  But yeah, so my dad had some skills. And even my mom, my mom has some painting ability, drawing ability, she can whip some things up.

Miranda Metcalf  So you're saying, you've gone to Thailand, and then at what point do you end up going to art school? Because you still haven't been there, right? California, Thailand, and then art school shortly thereafter?

Raj Bunnag  I went to community college back in Maryland, and I took print classes, because at that point, my GPA was dogshit. It was trash. And so I went to community college to bump it up, because you know, I was back my parents' place and just like, 'Ah, I need to work again, or get things going.' So I was going to school, and I was taking some print classes there just to kind of work in print and create a portfolio, because at that point, I didn't have anything to work with. So just took all the different classes, started with the intro again, and then took litho, relief printing class, etching - and actually, the funny part is, I hated relief printing when I first started. I didn't like it. Maybe the image I chose was wrong, or it just didn't work, and I was like, 'Ah, this is dumb. Whatever.' I just kind of blew it off, but I really liked etching. I was like, 'Oh, this is cool, I'm gonna do etching.' So I really got into etching. So after community college, I went to MICA and discovered the artist Bill Fick, who is - he visited our print shop, but I couldn't be in there. I had like a family obligation while he was visiting campus. And so everyone had his work, and it looked really dope, and I was like, 'Oh man, I missed that? It's relief prints and he just printed on shirts? Ah, that's really awesome, but I'm pissed I missed it!' At that point, I saw his relief prints, and I was like, 'I'm gonna revisit relief printing and give it a go.' Then it started, and that's kind of like the beginning of the end. I haven't been able to really go back to any other form of printing since then. Screenprinting has become this, like, commercial thing, which I like, kind of detest - like, I like it, but I hate doing it now. But it's like, I like it, but I hate doing it. I don't know. It's a weird... working in a commercial place, it can be eye opening.

Miranda Metcalf  But now, I was gonna say, you've rediscovered or really learned about the magic of what relief can be. And now your current series is really these quite large linocuts, 40, 43 by 23 inches. And exceptionally detailed, you know, they really have a Pieter Bruegel the Elder kind of a feel to them, or a Hieronymus Bosch kind of a feel. And, of course, much larger scale than either one of those artists ever worked. And they're all a bit monstrous and a bit chaotic, and really all about the war on drugs, as you mentioned. I would love to hear you talk about how you came to this as a subject matter and as something that you found worthy of dedicating the massive amounts of time that it takes.

Raj Bunnag  It's been seven years - or - seven years I've devoted my life to this series. I'm like, what? How did that happen? There was a two year, one of the prints took two years, because I was like... that was a bad two years. It was early in Trump's presidency. It's like, ah, I was just like, mentally sapped. My energy was sapped. But it came back. But so the war on drugs, it came from, it really came through my love of print history. It really started when I first saw Jacques Callot's "Miseries and Misfortunes of War" in person, in this class called The History of Prints, taught by Tru Ludwig, who was my academic advisor at MICA. That class changed my life. It really showed me, A, what art history class could do, and B, the insane resource that museums actually are that we don't utilize as a whole. Like, there's so much we can get access to that people aren't showing us. But through that class, I saw Callot's Miseries and Misfortunes. The first print, I think it was "The Hanging," it's this giant tree, and there's just bodies hanging from it. And there's like, you see there's a ladder leaning up against the branch that the bodies are hanging from, and they're putting up another one, and then there's a priest down there giving someone their last rites, and then as you zoom out more, there's pikemen and all the different types of warriors dressed up, witnessing this day of judgment, you know, for these people. And then from there, digging more into seeing "The Disasters Of War" by Francisco Goya, and then an even more modern approach, "The Depravities of War" by Sandow Birk. And all those moments, they're very much of their time. You know, what Callot was seeing, what Goya was seeing, what Sandow was seeing. And it became important to me, this idea that the war on drugs should be represented in this way. I don't know, it was a weird... I know it sounds kind of miniscule in times of pandemic, but if you think about it, people who've experienced the war on drugs now experiencing the pandemic, it's even crazier for them. The world is... you know, the war on drugs is kind of an ongoing issue that has been going for like 50, 60 years now, or longer, I mean, 70 years now, it's done nothing but weaken the systems. We're jailing too many people, were not rehabilitating people, it's destroying communities, and currently, now with the opioid epidemic, you're seeing suburban rural communities now being ravaged. But you go back a couple years, in the 70s, 80s, even in the 90s, too, heroin was just rocketing, just destroying Baltimore. And it was starting, it was beginning, in a lot of inner cities, too, not just Baltimore. Many inner cities were being affected by the war on drugs, but no one gave a fuck. And now with opioids in suburban homes and rural areas, now it's killing white kids, it's like, 'Oh, we gotta get up and do something now, guys!' It's like, what? Yeah, this has been an issue. And the drugs themselves, I know I'm kind of like... making them kind of silly. They're like, almost like clown car-y, just like, 'Doo doo doo-doo-doo...' That's what's going on in my head. Like, all these monsters running around our world just destroying us, these goofy... it's just like, oh my gosh. Because they are. They have that type of, you know, that effect... and it's not just an American issue. It's an everywhere issue. Every country has issues with drugs. And it's something that affects people of all walks of life. It doesn't matter how much money you have, what color you are, what socioeconomic status you are, if you're LGBTQIA, or... it doesn't matter. We all have someone, know someone, lost someone to drugs. I describe my work as almost like a beautiful train wreck. Would you say that's an appropriate statement?

Miranda Metcalf  I think that that is. 

Raj Bunnag  It's like so chaotic, but I present it in such a way where it's like, in this day and age, what I try to do is, if I can capture your vision for three minutes, maybe, I'll take that this day and age. Because the way we consume media and consume things, we don't sit and appreciate, really take in, visual - or just art in general. We're at a time right now where there's so much art. So much. It's like almost overwhelming. I'm sure it's overwhelming for you. You have to find all these printers and artists. This series, I felt it was something that, you know, I was looking around like, 'Not a lot of people are addressinng this.' And I feel like this would be a good way to potentially address this series, using that, that 16th, 15th century carving, kind of medieval style, and just filling it with contemporary imagery and iconography.

Miranda Metcalf  Yeah, well I think a lot of those images sort of famous from that time, they are dealing with images of war. You're talking about Goya's Disasters Of War, and in terms of Pieter Bruegel, you're dealing with the reformation. So here's this violence, this control, the atrocities that are happening, the fallout from it, the unintended consequences, really all of it.

Raj Bunnag  Misery is kind of a constant in our existence. That's what I really... I mean, again, you know, we were talking earlier about going on in this pandemic, like, you can go back and look at work that is about pandemics, or about atrocities, or about terrible, terrible, terrible missteps in human history. And you know, you soon realize, when you've seen so many of them, you realize that some of these things are just unavoidable in our existence on this planet. It's like, we consume, and we just like, eat, and we just, ahhh, you know. Again, why the war on drugs... it's consumerism, it's a different type. There's the materialism of America, like, 'I gotta have the nice things, I gotta have the best stuff, the newest stuff.' And then with drugs, especially nowadays, there's various classes of them now. We have so many. There's like designer drugs, it's just like, never ending. We have this appetite that we can't seem to, we can't quench it, we can't feed it. It's just never ending. And until that happens, like... the war on drugs really won't change until we actually treat it like a medical issue. But I try to, like, when I'm showing these things, I'm talking with people about the work, I try to use it as a jumping point to maybe get them to rethink how they view the war on drugs. Just maybe. I know it seems like an overarching kind of like, big, big reach. But I've had moments with people who see the work and just get it. And it's like, they're not an artist, but you know, it's a nurse who works in rural North Carolina, just like, 'I see this every day.' It's like, 'Holy...' Like, whoa. And then having conversations about it, and using it, again, as a way to catch your eye for the three minutes.

Miranda Metcalf  Yeah, yeah. Well, I think that your work definitely can do that. Which is no small feat, as you said, in the current world. So you mentioned specifically, the talking to a nurse who's working in rural North Carolina, or anything like that. Would you say that actually where you live and work influences what you're doing? Because when you're talking about the different classes of drugs, it just hadn't actually occurred to me before how much drugs are an issue of class. You know, the 23 year old college senior with a purse full of Xanax versus someone who's doing meth versus...

Raj Bunnag  Or someone who's just smoking weed, or someone snorting coke, like some Wall Street people snorting coke, or just some frat boy snorting coke. It's accessibility. And you know, when I was young, it was funny, my mom was like, 'We're not going to send you to this one school, because there's like gangs and all this other stuff, we're gonna send you to this other school,' that's predominantly white, and I learned way more about drugs than I would have. Like, I learned more, like about the basics, and then more. Because it was like, so many people had access to those things. It's like, holy shit! This is a new ballgame here.

Miranda Metcalf  Yeah. And again, of course, the whole idea of the war on drugs is is intimately linked to this idea of who gets punished for it, how much should they get punished for it.

Raj Bunnag  I mean, I've seen kids who got arrested with like a pound of weed, and get probation and classes, and I've seen kids get arrested with like a gram or an eighth and get the book thrown at them and like, you know, expelled from school, all this other stuff. And it's like, holy jeez, it's like... the more you dig, the more upsetting it gets. It's one of those things. And with the prints, with the series, I try to... it's like a fucked up Where's Waldo. If you know what to look for, know what you're looking at, or know the culture, or know the history behind that substance, you see things that like, oh. Like in my most current one, the "Cocaine Hurricane," it's all about everything cocaine that I could feasibly fit into a print. And seeing all the culture that has spawned off of it, you know, the funny stuff, the sad stuff, there's just such a range of characters and tragedies, and so many people involved with the hype and the shipping of cocaine, it's just been like, if you look at the print, the hurricane itself I modeled after Pablo Escobar, because he was the original, the original hurricane, to really change the game to a point where people are now getting killed over it. And the the levels of cocaine that were coming were destroying communities. These substances have a footprint of a giant Godzilla-like monster. That's why it's the march, the March of the Druggernaughts. And what does he actually have on his teeth in the Cocaine Hurricane? He's got some words. It says "Plato Plomo." Plato is silver, and plomo is lead. And that's what Escobar used to say to cops or politicians when he would, if he was, you know, driving a shipment across the border, across whatever, and he'd get stopped by police, it's like, hey, you can have my bullets - 'Silver or lead,' being either you can take my money, or you can take my bullet.

Miranda Metcalf  Oh, I see.

Raj Bunnag  And a lot of people were like, 'Yep, you can go through, Mr. Escobar. Thank you for not killing me today.' So it is a wild world, and it's a world we just kind of have let run rampant for too long. It's done more harm than good at this point. We got to address things that need to be addressed that I don't think are going to be addressed anytime soon.

Miranda Metcalf  Because the war on drugs is something that I think is present in a lot of people's minds, and it's been a little bit eclipsed in the way that everything has been a little bit eclipsed, but how every social problem we have just gets completely compounded when you add a crisis like this. So where our attention and our energy run short, it's this awful irony where we have less of it than usual, but these problems are accelerating at the same time that we're running out of battery life for it.

Raj Bunnag  I think that there's one thing that printers, I think we have, like across the board, printers, we all experience our ups and downs in print shops. We've seen things come and then go, and seen things flourish but then seen things fall, it's like printers are always... we keep going. We can print, we can mass produce stuff, essentially on a whim. Listening to the Kill Joy episode - and I love her. Her work is amazing. And seeing the posts of the the linocut stamped priority mail stickers, it's just like, oh, man, I gotta load up on stickers. You know? The power of the multiple, we don't need a lot to make work prolific, or get it out there, get it into people's hands. We will continue. Printers, we print through pandemics. We always have, we always will, you know?

Miranda Metcalf  You're right. And I think that printmakers are, by nature, communicators.

Raj Bunnag  It's like, we have these really good groups, these points of contact at the print shop, like any print shop you've gone to or worked in, you have points of contact there. Every time you work in a print shop, it's like you're of that world. You're like, 'Oh, I just made like seven new friends. Tight.' That's really awesome. It's really cool to to experience, cuz especially for me growing up, I think not having that community, I didn't realize what that community was 'til I actually found it, and I was just like, 'Oh, this is where I want to be. This is the spot.'

Miranda Metcalf  And I think that it just makes printmakers a bit scrappy. And so we will come out on the other side of things.

Raj Bunnag  The one thing I learned through all of this, even through this, you vote, you protest when needed, and you just be a member of your community. Like, know your neighbors, know who's around you, know what's going on. And be a part of it. Try to be a more positive impact on the people around you, rather than like, you could just read everything -  and again, like I said earlier, I love the apocalypse, you know, I can talk you red in the face and make you think the world is ending tomorrow. But I still maintain that there is hope, you can make a difference, even if you do a little bit, just do something. Like, my mom always says, 'Have a little, give a little, have a lot, give a lot.' You just give back when you can, and just take care of others. That's really all you can do.

Miranda Metcalf  So you were talking a little bit before about the ways in which you're using your art and your practice to sort of process what we're in right now, and I'm hoping you can speak to that a little bit.

Raj Bunnag  It's hard, too, because there's so much unknown. But again, I think the best way is trying to strengthen your community. I think that's really, even though we are isolated, we have ways to talk to each other, we have ways to get out, be wacky, and get our wackiness, our artness, to people. Like, I know Speedball right now is doing online print classes, if you pay attention to their Instagram, they have various artists in the demo artist program and I think in the Print Posse who are doing classes. Maybe not Print Posse, but at least I - I'm a demo artist for them. So I could potentially be doing some stuff. But yeah, we will adapt. It's what we do. We keep going. We'll find a way to keep moving on and keep working and keep living.

Miranda Metcalf  Absolutely. So where can people find you and follow seeing anything that you're doing, with online classes, or see some of your incredible work, or maybe pictures of your dog?

Raj Bunnag  So you can follow me, my Instagram is @jungle_asian_redneck. And then I have a website, rajbunnag.com. That's where I have my future exhibitions and current exhibitions and some of my most recent pieces.

Miranda Metcalf  Well, thank you for joining me.

Raj Bunnag  Thank you for having me. It's been an honor. I followed your podcast for a while, so I was just like, 'This is really cool. I need to get on more print podcasts.' And then you had reached out.

Miranda Metcalf  Yeah, it was funny, it was one of those things when I found your work, I was like, 'How come I haven't heard of this person before? These are brilliant.' So I'm really excited.

Raj Bunnag  Thank you for reaching out. That was a big part of 2020, because it's like, 'Whoa! Pine Copper Lime wants to talk with me?'

Miranda Metcalf  I feel like we all need some highlights for 2020.

Raj Bunnag  For sure. For sure. Definitely now. We got to really, really, really, really celebrate those highs, and be together. Be together, but be away.

Miranda Metcalf  Totally, totally. Excellent. Well, thank you again. Well, that's our show for this week. Join me again next week when my guest will be John Hancock. John is... actually, if you don't already know John, you're just gonna have to tune in next week. I'm not gonna do a spoiler for this one. I think you'll see what I mean. This episode, like all episodes, was written and produced by me, Miranda Metcalf, with editing help from Timothy Pauszek and music by Joshua Webber. I'll see you next week.