About PopWater Studio
Cincinnati is a weird place.
We have a frogman. A giant Jesus. Flying pigs. A theme park where blue ice cream is basically a food group.
And somehow, this all feels completely normal.
That's the stuff PopWater Studio is interested in.
I started PopWater because I wanted to make art about the place I actually live in, not some generic version of "Cincinnati" that could be printed on a souvenir mug and sold anywhere. I wanted to draw the landmarks I drive past, the stories people tell, the things that make locals laugh when they see them, and the weird little pieces of home that you don't realize are weird until you try to explain them to someone from somewhere else.
So I started drawing.
The Roebling Bridge got a little more monstrous. The Loveland Frogman found new places to lurk. Touchdown Jesus got abducted. Cincinnati landmarks developed eyeballs, tentacles, teeth, and occasionally questionable motives.
It turns out there was a lot to work with.
PopWater art is quirky, colorful, and comic-book-inspired, but the real inspiration is local. Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky have an absurd amount of personality packed into a relatively small patch of Ohio River valley. The neighborhoods, the landmarks, the folklore, the inside jokes, the strange roadside stories, the places you remember from being a kid. Even something as simple as blue ice cream at Kings Island can become part of the mythology of growing up here.
I want to make art that gives those things a little more life.
Not polished-until-it's-generic local art. Not "here's the skyline, again." And definitely not just a parade of chili references.
The goal is the feeling you get when you see something and immediately think, "Oh my god. I KNOW that."
That's who PopWater is for.
The lifelong Cincinnati kid. The Northern Kentucky person who is technically from Kentucky but has Cincinnati opinions. The transplant who has finally learned what everyone means when they say "across the river." The person who moved away and still gets a little homesick when they see the skyline. The person who wants something on their wall that reminds them of a specific place, not just a city name.
And maybe the person who has never been here but sees a giant frogman hanging around a local landmark and thinks, "Okay, I need to know what the hell is going on in Cincinnati."
That works too.
PopWater is an ongoing love letter to this weird little corner of the world, drawn one monster, landmark, cryptid, eyeball, and questionable alien encounter at a time.
Come see what's lurking around the next corner.
Local art for local weirdos