Jeff Vrabel: Now there's DNA art - yes, DNA

I think we can all agree that if the world is short on anything, it's art. Well, it's also short on movies about car racing, NCAA pools, people who go on television identified as a "commentator" and people posting photos of their kids in St. Patrick's Day hats Facebook. (Related: I'm a huge hypocrite, sorry about that, People Who Have Yet to Hide Me on Facebook.) But art is definitely up there. I mean, it's 2014, and it's been a long time since the Renaissance and pointillism and whatever they called what Monet did (I believe it was "pointillism"), so it was only natural that, at some point in the history of human development, we'd start running low on pictures.

If there's one thing we have plenty of, though, it's DNA. Seriously, there's tons of it just walking around everywhere — on the subway, in Subway, in churches, schools and car washes. You literally cannot swing a dead cat without hitting some DNA, which makes sense since you are ALSO SWINGING DNA. Kind of a twist ending there, I should have warned you about that.

Happily, a company in — sigh, I bet this is gonna say New York City — New York City has begun to address the world's surfeit of genetic material and shortage of visual imagery by making the second thing out of the first thing. Genetic Ink is out to produce art made from your DNA. But not just your DNA, because what if your DNA is boring? Lots of people having boring DNA! You can't have art made of boring DNA, that will end up looking gross and probably like pointillism. So Genetic Ink all address the low artistic quality of your genetic material by making art out of the DNA of your pets.

Here's how this works, I think: The company will ask customers to collect DNA from their pets, which involves getting a cheek swab, which I think we can all agree is one of the best possible ways for that sentence to end (I don't know about you, but I was thinking there was no way we were getting out of this without a stool sample). From there, the company will do something computer-y with the DNA using an algorithm and some sequencing and genetic modifying and probably a little of whatever happened in the first "Jurassic Park" and voila! You've got something you can hang on that weird open spot in the bathroom.

Total cost depends on size: The company offers 17 different colors and four different sizes. A small 12-by-16-inch canvas will set you back $200, while a larger 3-by-4-footer is $700. Your genetic material, luckily, is free.

Listen, I'm no art critic, though I have been known to occasionally wander around unfamiliar museums and point at things and say, "This sucks!" so who knows, maybe I am an art critic. But I can't speak to the artistic worth of something like this. Besides, people like weird art. My mom has like 12 pictures painted by dolphins and I think a penguin in her house. Who am I to gauge a penguin's artistic merit? (I do know this: That thing was not very good at pointillism.)

But if you thought it was annoying to walk into someone's house and see framed pictures of their kids' classroom art hanging everywhere. Now you have to walk in and see the genetic map of their entire being, prominently displayed so you HAVE to ask about it. You can't just ignore a 3-by-4-inch map of the human condition hanging over the TVs next to the DVD rack. Bet they wish they'd have had that in the Renaissance.

Jeff Vrabel is actually an art critic. He can be reached at http://jeffvrabel.com and followed at http://twitter.com/jeffvrabel.