“That would be a good thing for them to cut on my tombstone: Wherever she went, including here, it was against her better judgment.” ~Dorothy Parker
It was in a hotel room on Lake Michigan when Melissa introduced me to the art of Little Bubby Child. My mom had passed away suddenly just a couple months before; I was numb from grief and overwhelmed with this new life I was supposed to navigate without my best friend, confidant, companion. (This is something that, I admit, I have yet to figure out.) Melissa was a little over mid-way through her year long road trip across the country and invited me to escape for a little while and join her. I flew to Wisconsin; she picked me up in Vanessa, her travel van, and we started off on a mini-Midwest adventure that took us through Green Bay, into the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and eventually to that hotel room near Mackinac Island. We were upgraded to a lake view room. It was beautiful. It was chilly. If you stepped out on the little balcony, you were immediately attacked by a swarm of bugs. Melissa said to me “I can’t believe you don’t know Little Bubby Child!” and directed me to the Instagram account. A large part of the rest of the evening consisted of me reading the Little Bubby Child captions out loud. We were from the same part of the world. We knew the same kinds of people.
My jaw loosened and the voices I knew and understood poured out of my mouth.This may have been the first time I’d laughed–really laughed–for months, and I was so grateful.
The artist of Little Bubby Child creates art that it is whimsical and maybe sometimes a little silly, filled with a childlike wonderment at the world. While the people he draws might be a little outside of what much of America would consider “mainstream”, he never exploits or makes fun. He allows those of us who are from rural areas, small towns, hillbilly hollers, to see ourselves, families, and neighbors reflected in art. He gives all of his viewers a window into his vision of a world as sweetly hilarious as young Wade’s rat tail, as beautiful as those huskies.
We are so thrilled that this artist has allowed us to publish a selection of his work, a well as treated us to a Little Bubby Child origin story. Change Seven is proud to feature the work of Little Bubby Child in our first Better Judgment.
-Natalie
A lot of people has asked us who is Bubby Child. Well really bubby child was the name of a injured possum that my brother wade had rescued. He started caring for him and rehabilitating him and whatnot, and before long he named him Bubby. We thought the name would be good for a instagram page, and amazingly the name was not already taken.
On the one hand Bubby come from that possum, but on the other hand you could say that Little Bubby Child is myself (Kenneth Pergram) and my brother Wade. For a long time I babysat my brother and he would say off the wall ignurt stuff and I would draw it. I have been a artist since I was big enough to hold a pencil. It’s one of my favorite ways to exscape into other realms. But like finally I had seen where Instagram was blowing up, so I started putting my drawings on there, and put my brother’s words with it. And like we was amazed at how people have latched onto it.
I let my brother write the captions. They are usually hilarious. Sometimes I write the captions too and respond to comments. Usually the ones I do have more sense than Wade’s.
As far as the characters in the cartoon, those are a lot of our friends and family. I don’t filter Wade, so basically whatever rolls out of his mouth I put it out there. We have done comics on our grandparents (mamaw and papaw), our dad, our neighbor Frog Manson, and all kinds of other characters. He even does comics about me. It’s really surprised us how well it’s been received because it’s so different that what else we see on there.
We got big plans for the future, and we just released our first fully animated cartoon clip about me and my son Goro. We hope to expand the full animation and do a lot more of it in the near future. If you got any other questions, definitely let me know and I will try to respond!
-Kenneth Pergram
You can find Bubby on Facebook, Instagram, or shoot him an email at littlebubbychild@gmail.com
In each issue, we hope to feature the work of a creator that has moved, touched, and/or inspired us. This is a little corner of the magazine that allows us to celebrate things (and people) we love. We hope the work will be as exciting to you as it has been to us! If you have a suggestion for an artist or creator we might want to feature on Better Judgment, email us at changesevenmagazine@gmail.com
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