Creature Panic Chats beso bears, Guerilla Art at Punk Rock Flea Market

***This is Part 2 of Samuel’s foray into the Punk Rock Flea Market, in which he interviews the creator of beso bears. Part 1 provides some background.

I found out that these strangely assuaging entities were called “beso bears” and they were being created by an artist called Creature Panic.

I found them in the middle of their half-workspace, half-gallery corner of flea market paradise. They were surrounded by their signature beso bears and clutching a black marker with a corgi sock as a custom grip. A 6’x 4’ painting with three bears appearing to pounce in place in a meadow with a stream hung overhead.

A few sculptures—conglomerations of various scavenged items—were placed at the edges of this scene to delineate the creative zone. There were 15 or so other canvas paintings, small and large lids of paint cans with stylized beso bears painted on them, stickers of the bear, a frisbee with the bear drawn on the inside, and so much more to discover.

Samuel (S): Excuse me, are you Creature Panic?

Creature Panic (C): Sometimes.

(S): I'm interested in you as an artist and this little nook that you have. How long have you been associated with the punk rock flea market?

(C): I did a market with them in 2017. And then I think I did one market a year for a while.

(S): How did the bear start? Because it's super cute and iconic and I just want to know where did you get the idea first?

(C): My elementary school principal had a bear [she] would draw in a weird way. She would do this like...

Creature Panic walks over to a giant pad of paper, taking the corgi marker and demonstrating the proto-bear. It takes the form of the face of a bear with button eyes and a wide-open mouth with a wavy boundary. The expression is slightly forlorn, and the bear is towering as a half-silhouette from the shoulders up.

(S): Aw, I see it.  

(C): Later on, when I was out of school, I would draw this bear a lot.

Creature Panic continues to create iterations of the same design as they speak.

Creature Panic and Samuel over quick beso bear renderings

The Evergreen Echo

(C): They make different faces all the time. Which was kind of like the Crofter's bear on the jelly. The Crofter's jars. They have a bear on there that [has] these sad eyes. And its head is really flat. I don't remember how to draw the whole thing.

[Now] I just got stuck on doing these.

They effortlessly draw the beso bear outline in a variety of different positions.

(C): I'm like, fixated. Yeah.

(S): It just comes out of the page. So, your teacher drew something and then you started to draw these bears?

(C): Yeah. And then I think because I'm sort of—there's part of me that's like repressed into...fifth grade, sixth grade, fourth grade. You know, like wanting to sort of be back in a mental space of then.

(S): I love this like Sputnik kind of thing.

Our attention turns to a sculpture, about a foot and a half tall. A broken Santa mug has a sputnik-esque spherical photo stand with long metal arms and clamps coming out of the top of the sculpture at a tasteful angle.

(C): That's what I thought was interesting too. I'm not in love with... I haven't worked on that in a really long time. It's just sort of like a stale set. He's kind of feeling...

Santa looks dejected. The cracks in what's left of his face don't help.

(C): A lot of this isn't new work. I haven't been making much new work lately. I've been working too much. And haven't really had a lot of time... Doodling is about the extent of what I do [at the moment]. I haven't been doing much painting. This one is finished.

Creature Panic gestures to a paint can lid with vibrant neon colors and an outline of a bear done in triumphant contrast.

(C): None of it feels like: Ah, yes, it's polished and together and complete. It turns into this—what the fuck are you selling?! Are you selling anything? ...I'm putting myself out there in a way to get met by people like you.

(S): There's a film canister in there?

(C): Oh, the film, yeah, I don't know what the pictures are of. And then this Santa mug I got from my friend. I had an abandoned car that was mine and this person started living in it. And robbing on the side—there were robbery tools inside of it, like a gun and a computer.

(S): That's not great.

(C): No. And I had this Santa mug on my dashboard with this little folded pink handkerchief in it. It was just a cute little Santa mug on the dashboard. And it was fucking smooshed. And—and—but still there?! It [was] just in there. So, I of course collected its pieces and saved one of them. And then this is gorilla glue.

(S): This looks like the lid of a can too.

(C): This is the lid of a can of great stuff. That's like expanding foam. Feel how heavy it is!

(S): That is really heavy. It's very dense. What's in the cap?

(C): They were some kind of BBs. And then they were like rolled around in a bunch of gold paint. And then it kind of solidified and they turned into a mass of shot and gold paint. And then they kind of crumpled and broke apart again over time. But there are still these little chunks. It's kind of weird.

(S): You have little patches people can put on their clothes and stuff.

One square patch is four inches wide; the other is six or seven. The smaller patch has a zigzag red beso bear outline. It looks like the bear is electrified. It retains its third dimension somehow. The larger patch is a wild combination of multiple different color strings and hot glue to finish the outline on parts where string was deliberately withheld. There's lots of green and blue and pink, with clear hot glue. The whole thing looks like a cool ghastly zombie bear.

(C): I don't know what I'm trying. It's the first one's ever made. So, we'll see if anybody likes [it].

I did an outline, drew it on this side and then I tried to stitch on that pattern, but it didn't really work out. There was some adjustment. And then that kind of translated into being a zigzag on this side. I want it to be easily reproducible.

Creature Panic’s beso bear in a corner / The Evergreen Echo

(S): How did you get the name Creature Panic?

(C): It's like the opposite of creature comforts: it's creature panic. I don't know what the story is, Sam. But it's important to panic. It's that kind of... those moment to moment—it's just sort of like embracing that kind of panic. It's a way to mobilize you into doing stuff. Learning ways to stay calm and collected while experiencing panic at the same time. It's like, how do I mobilize it into flow forward? And work.

(S): This is a gong sort of thing.

An electric tea kettle is suspended by a long strand of wire rope inside of a giant metal white rigid lampshade at least six feet in the air. There is no lightbulb present. Part of the heating element is visible on the bottom of the kettle. It looks like some sort of faraway space station.

(C): It's not loud. [But] it actually makes some really interesting sounds. You could capture it with a microphone if it was a quieter evening.

(S): You've done beautiful murals. I also see your art around town in other places. What is your general philosophy about graffiti and where it's found? Do you approve of it across the board? Is there some ambivalence about it or...?

(C): My philosophy is: it's good. The places it happens are usually grimy. Unexpectedly more grimy than they would even seem. And I think it's a bummer when the city fines people for it; it hurts small businesses. That sucks. Because I think the businesses look dope when they're [covered in] it.

(S): What is your next project you hope to complete?

(C): I want to do like an actual little animation. I did a couple of animation studies but I want to do painted versions of that. I made a 3D model. Not digitally but a physical 3D model of [the beso bear] out of clay. To make like... Like a soft toy version. Like a plushie. I think they'd just be really cute little friends. I don't know that that's the next one but I've been wanting to figure that out for a while.

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When asked for their bio, they replied: “Creature Panic is not dead.” This is perhaps in reference to the famous adage, “punk’s not dead.”