Music Credit: “Foreric: piano study” written and performed by Todd Barton from the EP Metascapes.

Liz Reed: It is hard to explain what we do sometimes. Like the best way to describe it is mixed-media storytelling. We created this world called Cuddles and Rage which is all about food and animals living in Snuggle City. We focus on telling stories with heart that are also disturbingly cute.

Jo Reed: That is Liz Reed the co-creator, with her husband Jimmy of Cuddles and Rage, and this is Art Works, the weekly podcast from the National Endowment for the Arts. I’m Josephine Reed.

I was wandering around Awesome Con this year—that great celebration of geek culture—enjoying the costumes, the art, the clothing, the accessories and the comics. I came across the cartoons and dioramas of the husband and wife team Liz and Jimmy Reed—unfortunately no relation to me. Their work created this quirky universe they called Cuddles and Rage and I was immediately taken with it. Most of their work centers on food with on-panel cartoons. One, for example, is very simply drawn of two eggs standing on a hill with one saying to the other, “Dude, Do Not Move. You Got a Crack.” Or a glass filled with ice cubes with one cube yelling ”We’re all going to die in here.” The dioramas, while typically more intricate constructions, still pull from the darkish food world the Reeds have created, like a glass of orange juice, holding a picture of an orange, with a sad look saying "I miss the old me.” The world of Cuddles and Rage also contains the merciless Dr. Taquito—who is a serial killer of food—chopping up lettuce for salad, scrambling eggs for omelets, slicing cakes in half—he’s utterly ruthless. When Liz and Jimmy began doing short animated videos, they began with Dr. Taquito and his dark art of food savagery. What Liz and Jimmy Reed have done is use their sense of play to create a multi-media world with a skewed and funny vision that allow their imaginations to thrive and they’re succeeding at it: they’ve had a diorama in The National Building Museum, Dr Taquito won an award for best short film, they have a two book deal with HarperCollins, and Liz Reed has been able to quit the day job and devote herself fulltime to Cuddles and Rage. Earlier this week she stopped by the NEA studio, and you know I had to begin with the name.

I have to ask you where the name Cuddles and Rage came from.

Liz Reed: Yes. Well, it came from when we were co-op gaming one night. We were playing this game called “Army of Two.” And whenever we play games together we often have different strategies which I think says a lot about our personalities, too. For me, when I play a game, I like to just go in and attack. I don't like having a plan. I just like just seeing how it goes. And for Jimmy a lot of times he has a plan. He wants to stay back. He wants to be strategic. And so within that game I don't know how the cuddles part came in, maybe because he had to revive me lots of times. But the rage came from me just kind of like going in and going crazy. And for some reason like when we decided to do a Webcomic it just kind of lended itself to being a really fun thing to say.

Jo Reed: It is a fun thing to say. Now, why disturbingly cute?

<group laughter>

Liz Reed: Jimmy and I are both huge fans of horror. And so that's actually something that we bonded over early on. So we always enjoyed having stories that also have this dark sense of humor to them. And just when you have these cute, happy, you know, especially food and, you know, the act of consuming food and cooking food just lends itself to this natural dark side.

Jo Reed: When we look at the world of Cuddles and Rage now, we see it contains cartoons, dioramas, videos, miniature sculpture, animation. What came first? How did you begin this?

Liz Reed: <laughs> Well, really sad doodles with pencil on paper and doodling specifically on like cups at bar trivia. We just started doodling wherever we could to make jokes that made each other laugh. And from there we just decided to take those crude drawings and put them online. And over time we just got better at drawing, learned how to use things like Photoshop, and got better at our comics. But the diorama part of it didn't come in until about a year later.

Jo Reed: Well since Cuddles and Rage started with comics, I'm going to start with comics. Describe those comics that you and Jimmy create.

Liz Reed: Well, the comics that we create are just one panel comics most of the time that try and tell a joke with a punch. So we would try and come up with jokes that made sense to us. And not only made each other laugh, but also like had some truth in them. So one of the comics that a lot of people ask to borrow is called “Oreo Divorce” where we have an Oreo split up and one Oreo has all the cream on him and the other one has nothing. And one Oreo is saying, “We decide to split and you take everything.” <laughs> So it's just all the jokes that we have it's either there's some weird cuteness to them. Or there's just some dark truth to them that makes it work. There always has to be some other element there.

Jo Reed: The cartoons are very spare, they're not stick figures but they are minimal. The dioramas are more intricate and of course three-dimensional. How did you move from comics to dioramas?

Liz Reed: We didn't go into comics thinking that, oh, we're going to do this mixed-media storytelling. I just happen to have a coworker who worked in clay and made like little tiny clay sculptures. And I thought, "Hey, I can take this and what if I sculpted one of our characters and set up this whole scene?" So in our apartment, on our kitchen table, I set up a scene with one of our characters, Dr. Taquito. And I posted it online and people just went nuts because it was this joke that kind of came to life and had all of this texture to it. So that inspired us to take that stuff further and try and challenge ourselves to make more dioramas. And if we’re lucky enough we might have some dollhouse furniture that can really set the scene for us. And so we can lean towards that. Or sometimes we have this big creepy dollhouse that we got off Craigslist <laughs> that works as a really nice prop. But in some of the later stuff that we've done we've tried to make all our props from scratch and to really look at things behind us and see if we can use them for like another purpose. So you can take a cap off a thing of toothpaste and use that as a lampshade. Or you can take your coffee grounds and use that for dirt.

Jo Reed: That first diorama, Dr. Taquito, and we will definitely talk more about Dr. Taquito soon. Describe what you created. Paint us a visual picture.

Liz Reed: <laughs> It was very dark. <laughs> We've lightened up a lot since then but it was-- well, I guess, a little background. Dr. Taquito might help explain why it was what it was. Dr. Taquito is this serial killer in our world who teaches you cooking tips.

Jo Reed: And the cooking tips are real.

Liz Reed: They are real. They are real. So they’re all real ingredients. So it's with a purpose. The diorama had him running through it almost like a woodland like scene with a knife chasing after a peanut. Now, I can't tell you what that joke is. I don't know if I made it with the intention of even telling a joke. I just wanted to be creative and try this new medium.

Jo Reed: And Dr. Taquito is a taquito…

Liz Reed: Yes.

Jo Reed: …which is a thin smaller taco, completely rolled.

Liz Reed: Yeah. I grew up in Texas. So we ate a lot of Tex-Mex. And sometimes I'm surprised in Maryland when people are like what's a taquito? I'm like oh, well, let me tell you. It's a delicious treat.

Jo Reed: What's your background?

Liz Reed: My backgrounds is in film and digital media.

Jo Reed: A-ha, okay. I see said the wise woman.

Liz Reed: <laughs> Yeah. I originally wanted to be a documentarian. And so I love finding out people's back stories. But when I was in school they didn't really teach you the business side of it. So taking that leap into making my own documentaries for the long-term proved to be very challenging.

Jo Reed: Yeah. It's a hard, hard business.

Liz Reed: Yes.

Jo Reed: But, of course, the world of cartooning and making dioramas now that is an easy business.

<group laughter>

Liz Reed: Well, the beautiful thing is that you can pick it up anywhere. Like sitting outside for this interview, I could be sitting down drawing a comic and use it later. Or the thing about animation that I've been thinking about a lot lately is, yes, it's hard to make an animated short film but if you have the software on your computer you can stop and pick it up later. You don't have to have a whole crew out there with you. And you don't have to like set up schedules for everybody else. It can be just a nice solo show that the project can go on forever.

Jo Reed: How do you come up with your ideas which is an impossible question, but one I'm asking anyway. Just take me through your typical process of creating a diorama, say.

Liz Reed: Sometimes it is driven by the props we have. So a good example there is I found a miniature chainsaw and I was just so amazed because there was-- pulling back a second. There are these really cool things called miniature conventions where everybody comes out with their miniatures and you can kind of shop around.

Jo Reed: And miniatures would be miniature sculptures.

Liz Reed: Yeah, like dollhouse props. It's a lot of dollhouse people that are there. But I go there with the intent of trying to find props for our dioramas. So I got this miniature chainsaw and I really wanted to do something with it. And I thought, well, what works well with food and a chainsaw? And every time I try and cook butternut squash it is so hard to get through and just to cut it open.

Jo Reed: Oh, you mean the initial cut?

Liz Reed: Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if you’ve had the same experience when you cook butternut squash.

Jo Reed: Well, that's what Jimmy’s for.

Liz Reed: <laughs> I have muscles, too.

Jo Reed: No, I have muscles too, first of all, I'm inpatient. So I find with butternut squash -- it's less strength. And the patient partner is the one that needs to do it.

Liz Reed: Yes. Yes.

Jo Reed: Because I find that I have the butternut squash, I look like a serial killer.

Liz Reed: <laughs> Yes.

Jo Reed: It's connected to the knife and I'm just banging the whole thing on the counter.

Liz Reed: <laughs> Yes. Exactly. And that's why we almost need little many chainsaws to make it easier. And so for that diorama I just had this scared butternut squash with this chainsaw coming down on it. So yeah, sometimes the props tell the joke. Or sometimes it's just a feeling or an emotion. One of our early dioramas was a donut, very sad just picking the sprinkles off of himself. And it’s just kind of like when you're nervous and you feel helpless and you're just kind of picking at yourself. You know, it just depends on if the joke comes first or if the prop is something that we really want to use.

Jo Reed: Well, back to Dr. Taquito now you have individual cartoons. You have a Dr. Taquito book. But you also made a couple of videos with Dr. Taquito. It's an animated video of Dr. Taquito. What made you decide you were moving in that direction with this character?

Liz Reed: It was really the encouragement of our friend Seth Unger. Seth along with George Motz who is a food celebrity--he hosts a Travel Channel show and has a really great cookbook about hamburgers--they put on this festival called Food Film Fest that goes on around every October in New York. And we told Seth about our picture book that was coming out with HarperCollins. And was like "Hey, we’d love to get the word out about this." And he was like, “Well, why don't you do an animation for the festival? And we can help promote the book there, too.” So since the festival is more adult--there's like beer and excellent food there--we wanted to do a cartoon that was a little bit edgier and less focused on our picture book at that time. So that's where Dr. Taquito, he's a character that's been with us from the start. So we were like, oh, we're going to animate Dr. Taquito. And it turned out to be this wonderful, amazing experience and so much fun to see a whole theater full of foodies just cracking up at him like suffocating Avocado and slicing Cake.

Jo Reed: And, he also won an award.

Liz Reed: He did! He did. With our second short film we took home Best Super Short.

Jo Reed: Which is the three-ingredient pancake.

Liz Reed: Yes, it was delicious. And the cool thing about that festival is that while you're watching the film the audience is being served the food that you see on the scene. So a lot of times we hope to make the audience feel kind of uncomfortable because they're having to eat the food that Dr. Taquito is poking and stabbing at on the screen.

Jo Reed: And that you've given little personalities to.

Liz Reed: Yeah. Exactly. Exactly.

Jo Reed: How do you and Jimmy divvy up the work? Does one person write? Does one person draw? Does one person sculpt?

Liz Reed: We both write. And we both come up with ideas together. And we both draw. Jimmy does more of the concept art. And then I go back and kind of do it digitally in my own style. You'll sometimes see some of his stuff on the website as well. But mostly, for consistency, I do the drawing. And the sculpting I mostly do the sculpting because at one time-- I changed my clay--but at one time he was allergic to the clay. <laughs> So that made it a little bit hard. But now that I've changed my clay he hops in and helps me form the pieces and then I go in and add the details.

Jo Reed: And what about the music?

Liz Reed: Oh, that's all Jimmy. He was in a lot of bands when he was younger and has always had a passion for music. And we are huge fans of John Carpenter. And so a lot of music for cooking with Dr. Taquito came from him, the inspiration, pulling that synthy the kind of horror noise in there.

Jo Reed: Do you have a day job? Is this your full-time job now?

Liz Reed: This is my full-time job, now. Jimmy still has a day job.

Jo Reed: But still one of you can devote yourself fully to this.

Liz Reed: Yes. And we are so thankful to that. It's been a crazy experience. When I left my job working in television…

Jo Reed: What were you doing?

Liz Reed: I was working at Science Channel. I was a production coordinator. I loved that job. I got to work with some of the smartest people. And it was really hard to say goodbye to a job that itself was also creative. Like I felt creatively fulfilled in that role. And then also coming home and creating comics at night. But you only have so much of your little creative bank that you can tap into. And it reached a point that we had to make a decision to do we take this leap into doing Cuddles and Rage full-time and see where we can take it? And it just seemed like the right timing to do that.

Jo Reed: And I don't mean to pry, but I'm sure that meant a certain amount of tightening your belt.

Liz Reed: Oh no, absolutely. And that is what I tell people all the time, when they’re like, “How do I quit my day job?” Because that just seems like everybody wants to quit their day job. And the thing that you really have to understand is that there are huge sacrifices to that. And you don't really notice all of them. You can plan as much as you can and budget. But just crazy little things like we are huge cinephiles and we couldn’t go to the movies anymore. And we couldn’t go out to eat anymore. We’re, obviously, huge foodies and I had to learn how to cook lots of things. And it's neat in a lot of other ways though, too, because I'm a sucker for soft pretzels. So I had to create my own movie nights of making soft pretzels at home. And then you have your popcorn and then you give yourself the theater experience. That was hard for bit. And when you can't go out to social gatherings because you can't afford to go out sometimes that even means that you’re sacrificing some friendships. But we understood that we were following our dream. And that this was really important to us.

Jo Reed: That's something that is so easy not to recognize that's so much of our lives take place in restaurants.

Liz Reed: Yes. Yeah, exactly.

Jo Reed: And then you can't.

Liz Reed: Yeah. And a lot of people don't necessarily want to always have your baked lasagna at your house.

<group laughter>

Liz Reed: And sometimes you don't want to cook the simple homemade dish. And going out is a nice stress reliever. So we decide to find other avenues for that.

Jo Reed: Well, as long as I am prying, I'm just going because I want to talk about working with your husband who is your husband but is also not only your creative partner but also your business partner.

Liz Reed: Yes.

Jo Reed: So I'm sure there are many things that are wonderful about that. But I'm sure there are many challenges as well.

Liz Reed: Oh, yeah. It can be a beautiful synergy between us. We both work really differently. We both have different approaches to our business. But the thing that really brought us together and made us decide that we can work together is we worked together professionally before Cuddles and Rage and we both saw in each other that we get stuff done. Like we know how to finish a project. And I think that's what's really hard with a lot of initial partnerships is that you try and take on a project with your friend and you realize that your friend doesn't have the same level of determination as you. And that just ruins everything. So we went into it knowing that we both want to make this work. And I think, at times, we differ a lot when we’re kind of planning out a story and sharing our creative ideas. When you’re being creative with one another you’re also being very vulnerable. So sometimes it can be challenging when you're trying to give creative criticism because we both believe in being honest with each other. We don't want an idea to make it through to the end if the other person doesn't believe in it. But we know that if we get to a certain point our relationship comes first. Our marriage is always first. One argument-- we were arguing over a pancake if it should have a mustache or not. That is not worth losing your marriage over like a mustache on a pancake. So we know what our priorities are. And I think that's what kept us together working hard on Cuddles and Rage for the past eight years.

Jo Reed: Let me ask you this. How did you get your arms around the business aspect of this? Because it's one thing making comics. And then, okay, moving to dioramas and then moving to videos. But on the other hand, you need to also have a kind of business acumen and also a PR acumen that you bring to it, as well. I mean it's a lot to be able to do. And you're creating this out of whole cloth. It's not like you can point to something and say, “We’re like this.” It's unique.

Liz Reed: Yeah. Yes. It is hard to explain what we do sometimes. The best way to describe it is mixed-media storytelling. When it comes to the business side and for a lot of artists who are trying to pursue that path you have to make money. And that is the unsexy part of art that people don't realize. That no matter if you quit your day job at some point the art that you create may feel like a day job because you have to pay your taxes. And you've got to make sure you're doing everything appropriately. So our approach to that is just to make sure that we have time set aside for us to feel creative and to explore and to be innovative. But also make sure that in our day to day we’re also trying to get book deals or get commissioned to do pieces of art. And just putting our brand out there so that-- you know, we feel very fortunate that we’re not just comic. We can also go and sell our sculptures at craft shows which gives a lot of diversity. So I think that people have to find all these little pockets that they can utilize and have income coming in because even if you're a writer you can't always know that next year you're going to get the same amount of money or the same book deal that you got the previous year.

Jo Reed: Yeah. When you were a kid, did you read comics? Did you draw? Did you write? Or none of it?

Liz Reed: I always wrote stories. And I know for Jimmy he wrote his own little stories, as well, and he wrote his own little picture book stories. I had a fascination with comics. . I grew up reading a lot of “Far Side” so I pulled a lot of inspiration from that because I just love those comics to pieces, and I just read the books over and over and over again. My whole bedroom was covered in X-Men images and Lady Death. But the actual reading of the comics that didn't interest me as much. I liked watching the X-Men cartoon. So there was an appreciation for the art there but not necessarily going along with that format. But Jimmy did read comics. And so I think that was more part of his life at a younger age. And then after reading Jimmy I started reading comics more and exploring indie comics through Webcomics and self-published work.

Jo Reed: Yeah. And I thought of the “Far Side”, too, which I also I loved so much. I had a daily “Far Side” calendar. And then I realized I would rip the panel to go-- you know, rip the page to go to the next day but I couldn't throw the old day out because I liked it so much.

Liz Reed: Yeah, of course not. And it's art.

Jo Reed: And it's wonderful. Yeah. So I would make these “Far Side” scrapbooks. It was crazy. But your stuff does remind me of that. You and Jimmy have written two books that were published by HarperCollins. The first was “Sweet Competition” and the second "Sweet Success" is going to come out in early summer. But interestingly, even though they're still part of your food universe, these are picture books for children. How did you get into writing books for children?

Liz Reed: Yeah, well it kind of goes back to having a table at MoCCA Fest. In New York, that's where all the publishers are. So on our table we would have our own picture books that we made ourselves and self-published. And we had one picture book called “Dras [ph?] Can Do” and then also an edgier book called “My Husband Hates Cats.” <laughs> So we had books that we’re like a mixture, one for children to show that we were open to doing children's books. And one for like kind of edgier coffee book table stuff. And then we also had our sculpts laid out. And editors and art directors would come to our table. And they would see the diorama work we were doing and I think they would see the picture book that we self-published and say, "Hey, did you ever think about doing a picture book in this diorama style?” To which we said, of course, we would love to. And so over the years we talked to a few editors but we didn't have an agent at that time which makes it really difficult to land a book deal. I only know one person that's been able to do it without an agent. So when I left my day job we got an agent and we were able to get this wonderful two book deal with HarperCollins. And so to answer your question kind of about the picture books and with our comic and how it all comes together, it was hard for us-- well, hard for me specifically to transition my humor into not being so dark for children. There's a fine line between there because I grew up on a lot of Roald Dahl and his work is very, very dark.

Jo Reed: Very dark, but I love it.

Liz Reed: Yes, I know. It's so good. But you have to look at the picture books that are being written today. Even though we grew up on Roald Dahl and we love him so much. And the picture books today, you know, there’s a different vibe to them. They have this fun, quirky, happy sense of humor. But when it came to our own book talking to our editor, some of our ideas we had to work on to make sure that with “Sweet Competition” specifically we have two cherry twins who are attached at the stem that compete over everything. And they sign up for this competition and they’re on two different teams. And so, inevitably, you think that they'll need to split up. And so how we handled that scene of them possibly going away and splitting up was definitely a discussion because my approach to it is a little bit darker than what we ended up doing. And understanding the difference when you write a picture book a kid sees himself as your main character. And you have to really keep that in mind when you're trying to put humor in there because you don't want it to be so scary. You want it to be enjoyable for the child and learn something from it in the end.

Jo Reed: I just want to emphasize again that the books still center on food as characters and they're created in the clay figures that you use in dioramas.

Liz Reed: Yeah, it's all food theme.

Jo Reed: So that's one connection.

Liz Reed: Yeah, exactly. So it still pulls from our world of food that we've created. And just the really-- you know, when you do a picture book we really lean into the cute side of Cuddles and Rage. It's really like all cuddles. And there's not really too much rage in there. But we’re totally okay with that because that's what works for picture books.

Jo Reed: And then you can always just go back to another video of Dr. Taquito

Liz Reed: Right after the first picture book that's when Dr. Taquito came about. It was like, okay, we did this super cute. Now, let's go in the totally opposite direction.

Jo Reed: What's the most challenging piece you’ve created?

Liz Reed: I think the most challenging piece that we've created was for an exhibit in the National Building Museum. They had this show called “Small Stories” where they commissioned a bunch of artists across the nation to take this empty box and build a room inside of it so that they could put on display for people going through this exhibit that featured these Victorian dollhouses. <laughs> So, for us, we decided to put a naked banana in a very fancy museum because our story there was this banana is waking up and he's about to take a bath in this delicious bath full of Froot Loops with all of this milk in it. He's about to get into the bath so we had to figure out how to have this banana sculpture strong enough that he can kind of stand on one leg and not break off because a lot of the diorama parts like it's engineering. You want to make art that can actually hold up. So you don't want to put a pressure point on a weak spot. And the other thing with that diorama, in particular, it had to be sturdy enough that it could ship to someone because at the end of this exhibit the boxes, the dream room they were calling them, were going to be auctioned off. So we had to really work with a different type of clay which is called Magic-Sculpt. It's a very strong clay. It's a weird clay to come across because a lot of taxidermists use it. It's not really something you find in a craft store. But it is so strong and it worked for this purpose. So that kind of took us out of our element, a bit, trying to figure out how to make a diorama that we could actually transport.

Jo Reed: And you made this elaborate bathroom that the banana was and for his morning bath.

Liz Reed: Oh, yes. In the diorama scenes we try to tell the whole story. Like we have the magazines that he would read in the bath. We had his little toothbrush and his little mirror and made like a little toilet for him at the door. We tried to make it as detailed as possible because the goal is to get somebody to really lean into your scene and to want to look at every little bit of it.

Jo Reed: As I said, you created this, you and Jimmy out of whole cloth. And you created a comic and a diorama and videos and a world. You created a world. And from that world you’re able to build a business. What advice would you have to somebody who wanted to do what you were doing or a version of what you're doing?

Liz Reed: I think the biggest thing to know is that it's not going to happen overnight. It might not happen after one year or five years or ten years. You know, it's a really long journey. I've seen a lot of people who we started making comics at the same time that have kind of given up on their hopes and dreams and focused on something else which I completely understand that. But getting good at your craft takes time. Building a community of people-- like we couldn’t be where we are today without people helping us along the way and giving us inspiration. And building those connections takes so much time and staying connected with other people. So I would definitely say be patient. And don't give up on your hopes and dreams. It just might take a little longer than you expected.

Jo Reed: And finally, what's next for you?

Liz Reed: Well, gosh our second picture book, “Sweet Success” comes out July 3. So we will have a lot of readings and parties to promote that book. And we’re currently working on our next animation which we hope to submit to film festivals later this year.

Jo Reed: Oh and I look forward to that. Thank you for coming I really appreciate it. It was a pleasure taking to you and entering your world.

Liz Reed: Thank you so much for having me.

Jo Reed: You're welcome.

That’s Liz Reed; she and her husband Jimmy are the creators of Cuddles and Rage. You can find their cartoons, dioramas, and other work at cuddlesandrage.com and if you go to arts.gov and click on Liz's podcast page, you can see the award-winning video featuring the cold-blooded Dr. Taquito. You’ve been listening to Art Works produced at the National Endowment for the Arts. You can subscribe to Art Works where ever you get your podcasts—so please do and, if you are inclined, leave us a rating on Apple—it will help people to find us. For the National Endowment for the Arts, I'm Josephine Reed. Thanks for listening.