Dino Diner: Equal Parts Jurassic and Juke Box

Kitsch, nostalgia, and absurdity come together over cheeseburgers and milkshakes, as each tiny time-traveling dino navigates the oddities of the modern world.

When creating these playful mixed-media collages on canvas, I start with found/stock diner images—a chrome counter, a steaming cup of coffee, a neon-lit burger joint—to which I add plastic dinosaurs, snarky speech bubbles, glitter, etc., to create a chrome-trimmed, ketchup-bottled world of the classic 1950s American diner scene. Viewers are invited to imagine a world where dinosaurs never went extinct, they just discovered coffee!

I’m always fascinated by how humor, absurdity, and nostalgia can coexist in a single image. These tiny, ridiculous dinosaurs—caught in moments of confusion, conversation, and cosmic mishap—become stand-ins for all of us trying to make sense of our daily lives. After all, who hasn’t had a “How did I get here?” kind of day?

A collision of epochs, they're campy and caffeinated. “Check [them out], please!”