A puppy, a bird, a cat and a fish all like to play with different things.

Over the past thirty years, Jim Shaw has become one of America's most visionary artists, moving between painting, sculpture, and drawings, while building connections between his own psyche and the larger political, social, and spiritual history of America. Shaw's imagery is mined from comic books, record covers, conspiracy magazines, obscure religious pamphlets, and other cultural refuse to produce a portrait of the American subconscious out of his personal obsessions. Shaw, along with fellow Michigan native Mike Kelley, moved to California in the 1970s to attend Cal Arts and was one of a number of notable artists to emerge from the school in the early 1980s. Shaw's work is distinguished by rigorous formal and structural analyses of neglected forms of vernacular culture. Accompanying a major exhibition, this is the first major monograph devoted to the entirety of the artist's unique, multifaceted career.

Two years out of college, Julie Spencer is realizing that her life isn't turning out exactly how she had hoped it would. After four years and $150,000, she has a college degree that hasn't gotten her anything more than administrative work, and she's stuck in some sort of love polygon that's better suited to high school than adulthood. Greg, the man she's been with for almost a year, is still in love with his ex, Chloe. The man perhaps she should be with, Duncan, lives six hours away, so she only sees him when he's in town on business. And her friends aren't any help. Tess is relationship-challenged, and Brian is in a long-distance, open relationship with a hook up buddy, and is-more than likely-also in love with Greg. Lost in a quarter-life crisis, Julie is just letting life take her where it will, while she tries to figure out exactly what she wants. But is putting off making a decision taking her just where she doesn't want to go? Don't Ask is the story of a new generation suffering from being caught somewhere along the edge of adulthood in a world that looks nothing like what their parents' knew.