Maladjusted Magenta is a card-carrying malefactor, having graduated from the school of malefactions for the perpetually maleficent. Maladapted and malcontent, Maladjusted Magenta is both a true malcontent as well as an expert on all things malodorous—from rotten eggs to brackish water, to the butthole of her favorite Persian cat.  Maladjusted Magenta is a veritable Master of Mathematics, an expert at Mahjong, and identifying poisonous mushrooms. Mischievous and often merry, Maladjusted Magenta can be found scrawling obscenities into the margins of her Calculus book during lunchtime which infuriates Melanie McCorkle, her eight – five-year-old math teacher.

Maladjusted Magenta works at the municipal building in downtown Milwaukee where she regularly sorts through piles of hate mail for the district attorney. Occasionally she comes across a love letter which she secretly opens, pretending it was written to her from a secret admirer, auspiciously named Melvin Maloney. Often magnanimous, though sometimes quite moody, MM donates her time at the local aquarium where she volunteers as a docent twice a week, readily identifying marine life to sullen, vaguely menacing children who pick their noses with great abandon and have absolutely no interest in the Molly fish, Macmaster’s Dwarf Cichlid, or the Milksop Pygmy Angelfish. Still, this fails to quell her belief that human beings are essentially noble creatures who are sadly and often perversely misguided.

Little is known about the inner feelings, inspirations, and motivations of Maladjusted Magenta for whom the world is a constantly shifting and sometimes confusing landscape of vaguely purple and strangely red machinations – neither this nor that nor here nor there. Sometimes mercurial and, more often than not, magisterial, yet always and forever mellifluous and MELODRAMATIC.

  • Marino Marini, "Horse and Rider."

  • Jean Dubuffet, "La féconde journée," 1976.