Digital artwork by Janelle Lassalle

Manny is not an artist.

I’m sitting and staring at pictures of his work, the first of which I saw on Reddit. It depicts a strange looking medical scene arranged on the side of a rural road. There’s a black wall with the words ‘The Ether Bunny’ painted on it as well as an anesthesiologist and patient lying on a hospital bed with a tank marked ‘ether’. Both anesthesiologist and patient are skeletons, with the doctors in question wearing fluffy bunny ears.

The image can initially strike you as creepy, as the strange, macabre work of a madman, something doodled on a piece of notebook paper by a serial killer in training. Titled simply ‘a guy in my town makes these skeleton displays’, the image underneath the post seems to elicits a wave of strong emotion—chiefly, fear and horror—from whoever encounters it:

“CAN YOU IMAGINE BREAKING DOWN IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT, LEAVING YOUR CAR TO WALK AND FIND HELP, AND RUNNING INTO THIS?”

(Marmite_Badger)

“I’ve seen plenty of this guy’s work around town and call me a killjoy but I really wish he would stop. While I respect his right to create art I feel this sort of thing should be in a place where only adults who choose to see it can see it. My daughter closes her eyes whenever we drive by the “spooky skeleton guys”—I’m just grateful she isn’t at an age where I would have to answer questions about this topic behind the display.” (shittymorph)

“Has anyone checked to make sure they aren’t real skeletons and the guy isn’t a super delightful serial killer?” (Charlitos_Way)

Perplexed by this question, I sought out to learn a little bit more about the artist. It turns out that ‘the Ether Bunny’ was created by someone known as ‘ItSkeletal’. It isn’t the only piece in his repertoire, either: there are dozens of other scenes strung together in this playful skeletal fashion, each as phantasmagorical as the last. There are skeletons waiting at a bus stop, skeletons hunting for Easter eggs, skeletons swinging merrily on a swing set, even.

I wanted to get inside his brain, to understand the motivation behind creating such unusual art. Lo and behold, with a little sleuthing I was able to find him.

His name is Manny Julio, and he adamantly insists that he is not referred to as “an artist”.

“I AM NOT AN ARTIST, WRITER, POET OR PHOTOGRAPHER.”

Based in Fogelsville, Pennsylvania, Manny has been dreaming of skeletal art to put on display for the world to drive past since 2013, the year he would undergo an open heart surgery that would change his life.

“The past 40 years I've been a drywall contractor, alphadrywall.com,” he continues. “In 2013 I underwent open heart surgery and my belief is the drugs that were administered at the time opened up a more creative side.”

Manny soon started seeing strange new visions inside his mind’s eye.