EXTRACTS: Illustrators issue 13 © 2015 The Book Palace (96 PAGES in Full edition)

3 Mitch O’Connell The self-proclaimed “World’s Best Artist” has thrived on a diet of low-brow art and unadulterated trash, as Diego Cordoba reveals in this exposé of the king of kitsch. Tell me what you like and I’ll tell you what you are. This 19th century adage by John Ruskin suggests that personal taste is not merely an absolute set of aesthetic principles valid for everyone, but a process of interpretation that has roots in a person’s life experiences as well. What better way of knowing an artist than by learning what he is most fond of, and what effect this has had on his career? For someone such as Mitch O’Connell, a spry fiftyish and born in Boston (though he lives in Chicago) and claiming loud and clear that he’s the world’s best artist, such an adage might seem like a conundrum. After all, we are in the presence of someone who seems to relish everything that is kitsch, tacky and in bad taste: he delves with unparalleled gusto into this world of trashy American sub-culture. No, it