A self-described “meme artist,” Wookerson’s illustrations are verbal vignettes taken from his experiences growing up in the glassblowing, Grateful Dead and Cannabis scenes. Often filtered through the language of classic cartoons and comic characters, his work has an instantly recognizable style that’s become part of the visual identity of Cannabis culture.
Famous for his slogan, “You can’t smoke hash all day if you don’t start early in the morning,” his pieces pair cultural statements and non sequiturs with images distilled through a ‘90s-kid’s culture-sponge of a brain.
No doubt, Wookerson found a lot of inspiration growing up with the works of artists like Bill Watterson, Charles Schulz, Andy Warhol and Keith Haring. However, it’s the statements and impact their pieces have had on people that fascinate him more than just the lines on the paper.
Wookerson said that while he’s always loved making art, it wasn’t until the pandemic and some prodding from Banjo Glass that he felt launched into creating the ideas he had inside his head. “The pandemic forced me to try shit, to look at myself and ask, what did I really have control over besides my own art?” He posted some drawings at @lotcomedy. “It was just putting things out there to see what would happen,” he said. What started as just a meme page has ballooned into an art career and a position as sort of a cartoonist for the culture.
Speaking from his home in San Francisco, he showed us the first few projects he worked on with brands like Feeling Frosty, Have Hash and Professor Sift. “These really opened things up and brought my art in front of a lot of people’s eyes.” With hash and weed being the focus of so much of his personal and client-driven art, we were curious how much it’s involved in his actual studio time. “I’m mostly in there after the kids go to bed, so the art and the smoking are all kind of part of the same ritual.”
Just like choosing between a pencil and a paintbrush, Wookerson uses hash for all-night screen-printing sessions and reserves flower for things like oil painting. “For me, weed is more of a relaxing, mind-wandering experience, and dabs are like a cup of coffee,” he explained.
On the day we spoke, Dolly Parton had passed, and so Wookerson’s studio was filled with the sounds of Parton, Linda Ronstadt and other ‘80s ladies of country. “There is a level of what I do in my art that’s connected to my mother,” he told Leaf Magazine. “A lot of the time, the music I have on while I work is a mix of the rock and bluegrass I grew up hearing from her.”
Still inspired by the sights and sounds of his youth, the work he’s making right now is more focused on references to contemporary figures. “A lot of the inspiration for my work has been getting more current, and as that happens, the characters popping up have been the heroes of my adulthood as well as my childhood.”
Wookerson told us he sees a lot of this next capsule collection as being focused on typography paired with the larger-than-life figures in the Cannabis scene. Having been a kid raised on a steady diet of pop culture, he stopped a moment, smiled, and added, “but you know, GTA6 is also coming.”
