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long-arm-stapler · 4 years

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S2 EP1: Miquela Davis

Maira (00:00):

Hello! Uh, welcome to Long Arm Stapler, a podcast about zines, back with season two, after a long hiatus. Today, I am joined by Miquela Davis and I will let you introduce yourself.

Miquela (00:33):

Hi, I'm Miquela Davis and I'm super excited to be on this podcast with you today.

Maira (00:40):

Awesome. I'm really looking forward to starting to record again. Um, like I mentioned, I took a 16 month break from recording just because the world was a lot and uh, yeah, February 2021 back in action. Yeah. So I have with me, um, two of, one of your, your book, pup provisions, a copy of Miq's mix volume two a music themed zine. Do you want to talk about either of those or anything you've been working on lately.

Miquela (01:21):

Um, I actually liked those choices that you already have, um, because those are actually my favorite things that I've done. Um, the, the favorite things that I've published at least, um, which is funny, cause I also make a comic called cool dog that some people may have picked up, at like zine fests, but I really loved the Miq's mix. Uh, I made two of them, but the second one is my favorite because it features a bunch of like music themed comics and illustrations, and just has the loose theme of music. And then put provisions is the most recent thing that I made and that's like an actual book. Um, and it has illustrations of different dog breeds, um, in alphabetical order, along with snacks that start with the same letter as the dog breed, if that makes sense. Yeah. So that one took me. How long did it take me to draw? I think I did like a drawing every day for that. And it started as a drawing, um, exercise for me. And then I decided to compile it into a book because people wanted it. And then, um, I wanted to kind of get back into zine making, but it ended up being more of a like actual published. It's more nice looking.

Maira (02:34):

You have like a hard cover.

Miquela (02:37):

Yeah. I just, I just went on like Shutterfly and got it published that way. Oh, so it's still DIY, but it's it's way nicer quality than my like Xerox stuff.

Maira (02:47):

Yeah. I have not ventured into the world of anything but Xerox, but it's exciting. Yeah. What do you, I remember seeing your daily drawing challenges and I was like, Oh, this is really cool. I love dogs. I love snacks. Um, and then you were like, I'm going to make a book. I was like, all right, I'm going to get a copy. Um, I think my favorite is D for docs and I'm a little biased because I have a dachshund.

Miquela (03:17):

Yes. And your dachshund is adorable.

Maira (03:20):

and she's very much like your dog. Yeah.

Miquela (03:23):

Yeah. I feel like our dogs are such kindred spirits and like they've never met, but I feel like they have a connection it's like weird.

Maira (03:32):

Yeah. They would probably hang out in the dog park. Yeah. So, so far I've only ever interviewed people in the Bay, in my living room. Um, so this is exciting because obviously we're not in the same place right now. Um, you are based in Southern California yes. And pre COVID. Or can you talk about like the zine scene pre COVID?

Miquela (04:00):

Yeah, definitely. I could talk about the zine scene pre zine scene here. Really? How far back do you want me to go? I'm sure. I remember growing up and like I heard about zines through a book from my uncle when I was like 16 and he went to school with Mark Todd, um, who wrote, co-wrote a book called what you mean? What's a zine? Um, so they were like college buds and Mark Todd is I think still based in LA and he's an artist there with his partner, Esther Pearl Watson. And so they're both zine makers. They decided to make this book about how to make scenes. And so, because I heard about it that way, there was like nothing in orange County that was Xen based. As far as I saw at the time I had to go to like LA I saw some zines in like some record stores every so often, but it wasn't really a thing here.

Miquela (04:58):

And I gravitated towards Portland, Oregon because of that, I was like, Oh, I'm going to get out of orange County. I'm going to get out of Southern California and head towards where I saw zines being made at the time. And this was like early two thousands. Um, so then when I came back from living in Portland, that was around 2014, 2015, and I don't know how the orange County zine Fest came to be, but it popped up, I believe in 2014, I wasn't at the very first one and the very first zine Fest. I don't even remember where that was held, but then I found them and I applied to the second one, I believe in 2015. And I've been involved with the OC zine fest ever since. Um, I participated in it that one, uh, and the long beach one. And I sort of just found that there were a bunch of zine Fests popping up and I was able to find them through social media. Uh, social media was like a huge player in me getting involved in it. I don't think I would have been able to find it otherwise.

Maira (06:04):

Yeah. I have a similar experience with social media. I got into zines through tumblr and I really wasn't able to find zine fests nearby until, I mean, obviously I started looking for them and we have a few in the Bay area, but like Instagram and back when I used Facebook were very helpful in like finding zines.

Miquela (06:31):

Yeah. And the Bay area too was like one of those places when I was like a teenager or a young adult, like now I'm 30. So like I'm talking like, you know, 10 years ago, I feel like 10 years ago the Bay area had more, but you probably would know that more than me, but I, I feel like, you know, 10 years ago there was at least that community there.

Maira (06:53):

Yeah. I mean EBABZ, um, the East Bay alternative Book and zine Fest that I helped organize. This was our 11th year. And so, and I didn't even start getting involved in that until 2014, I believe. Um, that was the first time I ever tabled. Was at EBABZ 201- It doesn't sound, it doesn't sound right. But I think it's true. Yeah. Yeah. I, I'm learning more about the Bay areas and seeing more and more like every, not every day, but every time I go looking for stuff and it's really cool that there are so many zine fests everywhere. Um, and a lot of them have been able to pivot to online, which I think is really cool over the last year.

Miquela (07:42):

Yeah. That's been really cool to see and you're right about like these zine scenes that have been around, but then you just find out more about them. Like I found that too. It's like, Oh, you really stayed underground. Like, I'm only hearing about like these scenes that have been in existence for a long period of time, but it's like, we're only really hearing about them through like the internet and then word of mouth. Once you get involved, you're like, Oh, there's been like a zine Fest in the inland empire for years. I had no idea. It's cool. I like it.

Maira (08:15):

Yeah. zines, I think has always been very word of mouth for me. Um, and I liked that about them. Just, they're not super commercial. I mean, I, I feel like nobody's really in zines to make money.

Miquela (08:31):

No, it's for the love of them for sure.

Maira (08:33):

Yeah. And so I like the they're still predominantly, I don't know if they're still predominantly underground events because you know, they do get publicity, but I like, I love actually just how DIY things have stayed.

Maira (08:54):

Yeah. Even in the internet age with social media and then also like even programs where you can make, zines more digital. I love seeing artists make zines, still this kind of like old school Xerox machine, um, the risograph, like that's become super popular. I've seen with zines and that's kind of like an older art form, but it's become new again.

Maira (09:20):

Yeah. There's a lot of, um, riso like presses in the Bay area and it all looks so cool. I don't make art zines, so I guess, or at least make zines aren't predominantly like featuring art. And so I haven't kind of dipped my toes into that yet, but it seems like a really cool process. Just you have to like separate the images by color, I guess.

Miquela (09:50):

I'm not that familiar with it either. So I think you're right. Yeah. You have to separate it and you have to have them like, it's, it's kind of like, screen printing from my understanding and I, I don't even understand screen printing. I'm like very basic.

Maira (10:04):

Yeah, same. I don't, I feel like I don't put enough thought, like, I don't think ahead enough when I'm drawing to separate things by color. It's just like

Miquela (10:15):

Same.

Maira (10:17):

Let me take a Sharpie to a piece of paper. Yeah.

Miquela (10:20):

Yeah. I'm like, I just got a pen and a paper and that's usually how I make all of my zines. I just like sit down and I, I just draw and then I will compile it together later on. Um, you know, maybe I'll cut out like a page or two, if I'm like, nah, this doesn't really work, but it's just like pen paper. Don't really put much thought into it. And then bam just release it.

Maira (10:41):

Yeah. Sometimes it's best to like, not put that much thought into it in my own experience.

Miquela (10:47):

It's raw!

Maira (10:47):

Yeah. It's, I mean, I've definitely made zines where it's very, like, I don't know. I made a zine once that was writing. I did for a creative writing class. And so that was more polished, I guess, than anything else I've done. But it's usually just me kind of sitting at my computer, treating it like a live journal entry and just printing it out, stapling it together and letting people read it.

Miquela (11:17):

That's so cool too. Like just letting it be this like free flowing thought process. And like, I've always admired like the way that you make your zines because like, they're just so personal too.

Maira (11:31):

Yeah. I, I got started with perzines and I didn't really venture into like fanzines or anything with like drawings of my own until the last few years. But perzines are really like where I got my start, I guess.

Miquela (11:49):

Yeah. And I think that's how we met too, was like, I was drawn to your more personal zines and I was like, that's really cool. That's cool of you to like put yourself out there, like that.

Maira (12:00):

Yeah, I love to overshare on the internet, so why not do it with paper and some staples?

Miquela (12:06):

Exactly.

Maira (12:07):

Yeah. Because we met at a zine Fest. I think. I don't remember which one

Miquela (12:12):

I don't remember either. I was like sitting here and trying to think I'm like, I know it was at a zine fest. Like that's how we know each other. That's how we ended up here. But it's been, it's been a while and it's like one of those things where like, I've seen you now at so many, I feel where I can't remember like the first one either.

Maira (12:29):

And I remember the last long beach zine Fest that was held in person. We, it was like a power block of my table, my friend Andi and then you. And that was fun.

Miquela (12:42):

That was so much fun.

Maira (12:45):

And then my car broke down. So it was like fun up until heading home. Um, it was a disaster and I was like, wow, I wish I could just stay in Long Beach Zine Fest for a little while longer and not be living a nightmare. But

Miquela (13:00):

Yeah, I remember that too. I remember like seeing your Instagram posts and I was like, no, we were having so much fun.

Maira (13:10):

Yeah. Um, but you know, shit happens. Um, my car works again, so it's all good. Yeah. What else you've got, you've got an art show coming up that you're curating.

Miquela (13:24):

I Do. Yeah. Speaking of like zine fests and stuff. Like I miss them so much, but yeah. I curate an art show every year now since 2018. Um, I used to have a space that I could do it out of that my friend ran called riff mountain. And, um, I would curate art shows there every so often, but this crushes one is the one that I've done every Valentine's day for the past, like four years now. And the one coming up is the first virtual one, just because I was like, you know what? I've been wanting to get an art show together somehow during this whole COVID time period. But this one is special just because I was like, I can't not have crushes happen just because like, it means so much to me personally, the first year I did it, I co curated with a fellow artist. Uh, Meg Gonzalez, who is a local, you know, Southern California artists. And I think they've reached, you know, further than just Southern California. Like they're, I don't know. Like they just seem like a really, uh, poppin' artist, like more and more people are finding them. And I, I love that for them.

Maira (14:34):

Bug Club Supreme. Yes.

Miquela (14:37):

Yeah. They're, they're super cool. And so we co curated the first crushes show together. And then the second one I did myself last year I did with another artist, uh, Chantal Elise, who's just under like Chantal Elise art on, uh, Instagram. And then this year I'm just doing it myself and I'm doing it virtually. So like, it's going to be interesting. I'm super excited to see what happens, but we're basically going to do kind of like a live stream. I asked other artists to make like short videos of themselves and talk about themselves in their work. I only got one so far, so I might not be like super prevalent throughout the show, but my whole idea is that because we're going virtual, I would like to showcase artists more than you can do at a traditional art show. Like usually you're there and you're looking at their work, but you don't really get to know the artists behind it and like the story behind the work or the deeper meaning of it, like, you're just getting your own interpretation. So I was like, what can we do differently? Because it's going digital this time. And that's why I tried to include that in the like submission form.

Maira (15:50):

Yeah. It seems like it's going to be really cool. Um, what are you like hosting it on a specific platform or

Miquela (15:59):

I think we're going with youtube. I say we, because my roommate is helping me out with it. Um, we've been testing out different forms of software and I think YouTube might be where we end up. I initially was thinking like just a zoom call and I would like put together some sort of like, um, a slideshow or something, but that's, I don't know if that's really gonna work out. Um, so I actually don't know yet. We're still working out like, which one's going to be the best one for the whole show and for people to participate in, but also kind of be like an audience because the whole idea is like, we want it to be participatory, but also like where you're kind of watching a show happen, but have it partially recorded and partially in real time.

Maira (16:49):

Okay, that kind of Makes sense To me.

Miquela (16:51):

Yeah. I'm like, it's, it's a lot, like, it makes sense in my mind, like the recorded part would be, we have images of people's artwork and we would be, you know, showing that for like a few minutes at a time. And then maybe between each piece, like visual piece, we would have a recording of an artist talking about themselves and their work, kind of like an introduction to their work before we show it. Um, I know we have a couple live readers of poetry. We don't have a confirmed DJ set yet, but we have some recorded music that we can play. And if anybody during the show would like to, you know, maybe do any sort of live reading or live music or something, we're open to that as well. So that's the mix between like the recorded and then the live stuff.

Maira (17:38):

Oh, cool. Um, and so that's gonna be on Valentine's day, correct?

Miquela (17:42):

Yes. On Valentine's day still don't have a time sorted either. Like a lot of this happened now looking back and like, Oh, I kind of did this last minute. I wasn't really thinking of like a lot of the work that's going to go into making it digital because I'm so used to like doing it in person and kind of like winging it, you know, like day of it's like, all right, well, I know that I have all these artists signed up and I've done it for a few years now and everything's kind of just worked out, but now with the digital aspect to it, like I'm not super technologically, like I'm proficient, but I feel like a lot of these programs that I'm looking at, I'm like, I don't understand like this whole like live feed and putting in microphones and all this stuff like having, um, you know, the screen switch between one from another, like, it's, it's a lot, it's pretty daunting. So we also have a lot of artists tuning in, or like submitting stuff from other parts of the world.

Maira (18:39):

Oh wow.

Miquela (18:39):

Like that part has been really interesting to me this year. I think, because it's been opened up to being like, Oh, this is online. I don't have to like ship anything. I just have to send an email with some photos of my work. If I want to, I've gotten people from like the Netherlands. I've gotten people from the UK submitting work. So that's been really, really cool. And I want to make sure that they're included too, as part of like the little live stream that we do. So I'm trying to figure out like a good time for that and see if we can like record something for people to view later on if they can't make it

Maira (19:14):

Cool. And people still have time to submit, um, To that, correct?

Miquela (19:21):

Yeah. As of recording this right now? Um, yes. So the deadline is February 10th.

Maira (19:28):

Okay. Yeah, I can include, um, cause it was like a Google submission form. Yeah?

Miquela (19:35):

Pretty much. So the way that the submission process is working right now, like that's basically how I get people's names and then information. And I make like a spreadsheet of what they tell me that they're going to submit. So then that way I can keep track of it. But then to actually submit after that, they still have to send me like photo either photos of their visual work, or if they want to take a video, maybe you made a sculpture or something and you want to show it off. Like you can just take your phone out and like walk around the sculpture and get all these cool angles on it. And just like send me a video clip. Um, I'm really open to like any medium. Cause it seems like any one is possible. So yeah, people can just still submit that then to my email. And then my email, I don't mind giving it out. It's just MIQ U I D e [email protected].

Maira (20:24):

Cool. And yeah, I will post that in the show notes as well. Um, so if people are interested in submitting, they can, I am excited about it because I have, I've made a sculpture sort of thing, which I haven't really done before. Um, but I submitted it and it's really cute and I'm excited for other people to see it.

Miquela (20:48):

Yeah. I'm very excited for it too.

Maira (20:52):

Yeah. I just haven't like made, I haven't really done any art stuff in the last year, so I've, that's, I mean, that's not true, but it feels true. Like, I haven't, I don't feel like I have much art to show for the last year, but it was really cool, like working with my hands again and just gluing all of those tiny hearts. I was going to sew them, but I was like, that's so much work.

Miquela (21:20):

That's so much more work. Wow. Yeah.

Maira (21:23):

And I have a crush on hot glue. So I was like, okay,

Miquela (21:27):

There you go. It's perfect.

Maira (21:29):

Yeah. It's a good tie in, um, for those of you wondering, I made a Crunchwrap Supreme filled with hearts.

Miquela (21:35):

It's incredible.

Maira (21:37):

Yeah. I'm really excited. I submitted something to the show last year too. And it was one of the first times I've ever like submitted my art anywhere.

Miquela (21:48):

Really? I didn't even know that. Yeah. You've submitted last year and I was like super excited about it. Cause you like mailed me your work.

Maira (21:54):

Yeah, that was, I think aside from the long arm stapler show that we did in September of 2019, that was like maybe the second or third time I'd ever shown my work in like a show setting. And so that was really exciting. And I remember you posted like videos of the show in person and photos. And I was just like, I think it was, it was on Valentine's day again. And I was just on my phone, like kind of ignoring my boyfriend. And I was like, look at my work, look at my work. I was really excited about it.

Miquela (22:31):

I love that! Oh my God. That is so cool. Yeah. I was super happy to have you participate, but I had no idea. And I had also seen that show that you did up there. Um, the long-arm stapler one that looked super cool too.

Maira (22:45):

Yeah, that was my first, uh, time running a show and also being in a show, I guess, we recorded, the last time we recorded this podcast actually was like at the close of that show. So it's been an interesting time to like think back on it and really reflect on how cool it was. And like we had, it was mostly people from the Bay. Um, we had someone from, I can't remember where they live, but they're on the East coast. They submitted work two people from Southern California submitted work. And one of them was actually came up with their kids to see the show opening night. So that was really exciting too.

Miquela (23:30):

That's so cool.

Maira (23:31):

Yeah. And like I had just recently started at my current job and some of my coworkers came out and my like family came and it was, it was really cool.

Miquela (23:42):

That's awesome.

Maira (23:44):

I can't wait to be able do that again.

Miquela (23:47):

Yeah. That's been a major thing and like, yeah, once you do that, like, cause you said that it was your first time, like being in a show and then making a show, like putting on a show. That's why we started even doing crushes like that. I think that was my first time to like showing my work in a sort of like not gallery setting. Cause like I wouldn't call it necessarily gallery. It's like a DIY space, but having like an art show sort of feel where it's like, all right, I'm putting a bunch of things on the wall and showing off people's work and it's hard to get into like galleries or I don't know, just like art shows in general. I feel like don't really happen much. How is it up there? Like, are there more art shows that happen kind of similar to the one that you put on?

Maira (24:32):

Honestly, I don't know. Just cause I'm not like super tuned into the art world, I guess. Um, just cause I mostly like my, my medium is predominantly zines. Um, so that was another cool thing about the show was it was all zine themed. Um, but my friends are opening a gallery in Oakland actually, um, called crisis club and they're going to do shows there once it's safe. And I'm really excited about that because I feel like in the last few years, the amount of DIY spaces in the Bay has kind of dwindled. Um, it's exciting to like see that revival happening, even if it's slow going. And even if we can't have access to these spaces for awhile.

Miquela (25:30):

Yeah. Like I'm hoping after this is all over, we see kind of like a Renaissance in a way of like artistic expression, you know, having these sort of DIY spaces and um, cause yeah, there's at least down here they're really non-existent. Um, but I know like in the Bay area, like I would hear about them either growing up or like even recently, like I saw your friend's space, um, just through your Instagram and I was like, Oh, that looks cool. So yeah. I'm just hoping that we see more once this is all over.

Maira (26:06):

Yeah. And I think especially because people would just been sitting at home making art or at least I hope they've been sitting at home making art.

Miquela (26:14):

Yeah. The sitting at home, especially.

Maira (26:16):

Yeah. If you're making art good for you, but like please sit at home. Um, but yeah, I'm really excited to kind of see what art, like physical art spaces are like in a post COVID society.

Miquela (26:33):

And I think too, we're going to be starved for socialization. So it would be interesting to see like art shows become more of an inclusive thing.

Maira (26:42):

I agree. What else? Uh, are you working on anything else right now?

Miquela (26:47):

I have a lot of ideas floating right now. I know that's like, that could mean anything. Um, I do want to make more cool dog, but I'm just kind of like, he's an interesting character for me. I sometimes will get ideas for cool dog and then sometimes there'll be like, I want nothing to do with cool dog. I want to like work on other stuff, but I know that he's what the people want. Um, but I find it hard, harder and harder now just because I'm like, what is cool? Like, he's kind of like a weird problematic character because like a lot of times like his coolness is, is like something that I don't necessarily agree with. Um, like he, I dunno like the fact that he like smokes cigarettes and like seemingly doesn't like care about other people. Like he just cares about the sake of being cool. Like that's not actually cool. So there's like lots of questions like surrounding it. Like it's very like philosophical for me now. Whereas like it just started as like, this is a stupid comic thing that I'm just going to do for the hell of it. And then it like turned into like this character that I have to actually think about. And that's what makes me be like, I don't even want to think about it. I don't even want to make it, but I can't let him go either. So that's a long way of me just saying like, yeah, there may be more cool dog in the future. I definitely want to work more on zines but yeah, quarantine, you know, I'm just kind of taking a break, especially after making pup provisions that took a lot of energy, but I also would really like to make a memoir like graphic novel about the early two thousands and like my first year of high school. So that's been something that I've been working on slowly.

Maira (28:31):

Oh cool. We're the same age. So that was probably what like 20, 2004.

Miquela (28:35):

Yes, exactly. It was. So I'm thinking like, yeah, like 2000. Yeah, actually it would take place in 2004 because I was going to say the end of eighth grade, beginning of high school. So yeah, 2004.

Maira (28:49):

What a time to be alive.

Miquela (28:49):

Yes. And especially now, like I think like I've revisited that time period a lot and I'm like, man, what a great time. And I'm thinking of actually ending it when I discover zines, which was when I was like 16, like 15, 16. So I think it would be cool to make like a zine about my life, like discovering zines.

Maira (29:10):

Oh yeah. That sounds really cool.

Miquela (29:13):

Yeah. Like I would want it to eventually be compiled in a graphic novel, but I'm thinking, yeah. I might just start out doing like short snippets of stories in zine form, but then they could be, uh, combined together into like, I don't know what it's called. Just like a graphic- Yeah. Yeah. Like an anthology of like all these collected stories that take place during that period of time.

Maira (29:36):

Awesome. Uh, you have a Patreon.

Miquela (29:39):

Yes.

Maira (29:40):

You do like monthly stuff with.

Miquela (29:43):

I do. Yeah. So that's another thing that I've been consistently working on. I started it, I want to say in the beginning of 2020, I can't even remember now. Um, but then it's kind of evolved into now. I've gotten into a groove of like I send out monthly, um, things through the mail depending on like what tier people are on. Um, so I send out like pictures of my dog. Um, all the tiers are like named after her. Uh, so she's got like pegs pen pals. I send out clay pins that I make, I have yet to send out any zines, but that's just because I'm like, uh, what kind of zine should I make and send out? I don't know. I find that I like hold myself back from like making zines a lot because I'm a little bit of a, like a perfectionist when it comes to them, but I just need to do it. I just need to like make a little like one page zine or one piece of paper. So it'd be like six pages and like mail it out. But yeah, people get stuff in the mail if they want or they get access to like exclusive sketches and drawings and like random things that I'm doing. Kind of like, uh, a little bit of a journal. And then now I have a podcast where I talk about music and that's like exclusive to my Patreon for now.

Maira (30:54):

That's exciting.

Miquela (30:56):

Yeah. Thanks.

Maira (30:57):

I started a Patreon. Apparently I tried to make one in June of last year, but did nothing with it. Um, so in preparation for, cause I, I really want to just dive back into this podcast and kind of do more with it than I was before. Cause I think it was like one, every couple of months when I felt like it, I would just have people come over to my apartment and shoot the shit Essentially. I started listening to old episodes and transcribing them cause I wanted to make them more accessible and.

Miquela (31:34):

Oh that's cool.

Maira (31:34):

That was a very time-consuming process. Um, but I am still working on, uh, months later. Yeah. I remembered just really enjoying like the, the word that's coming up for me is prescribed hanging out time.

Miquela (31:51):

Oh yeah.

Maira (31:53):

Like it's a good way to like ease back into socializing because the only person I've really seen in the last however many months is my boyfriend. Um, because we live together and so it's like talking to people is hard?

Miquela (32:09):

Yeah. Talking, talking to people is hard. And I think too, like podcasting it's like, you kind of have a theme, like you have something to already talk about, so you're not sitting there like, well, how's it going with you? It's like, I don't know. I've been stuck in my house for 10 months. How's it going?

Maira (32:25):

To be fair I've done that also this episode.

Miquela (32:27):

Yeah.

Maira (32:30):

But it's fun. And I forgot how fun it was. And so I made a Patreon. I don't know what I'm going to do with it yet. Cause I've already, you know, I've got an Etsy where I sell my zines and stuff and I've got like a Ko-Fi, um, that I.

Miquela (32:44):

I haven't heard of that one. What is that one?

Maira (32:47):

It's just like a, it's a cute little site where you can buy someone a coffee, um, and just send them like three bucks and.

Miquela (32:56):

That's cool.

Maira (32:56):

Yeah, it's, it's cute. I was using it a lot at the beginning of last year because I was, I kind of realized that like I was putting in a lot of time to like zine stuff and it was kind of becoming a full time job, just, you know, organizing fests and organizing the art show and doing the podcast. I was already working a full-time job. And so it was just kind of draining and I was like, you know, it'd be really cool if people wanted to buy me a coffee for this. And so I found this website and it was cool. It's a nice way to like, I think it's kind of like Patreon and you can connect with other creators and uh, do like tiered stuff. It's I think it's basically the same. Yeah. You can do like one-off payments instead of like monthly.

Miquela (33:52):

That's cool. Yeah. That's like the one thing about Patreon where I'm Like I don't, I don't know, like I don't expect people to like want a monthly subscription unless it's for like, you know, the monthly mail outs. Like that's really the only one where I'm like, yeah, if you want something mailed to you every month, that's cool. But it would be cool if Patreon could also have like a one-time payment, which I guess you can do it just feels weird, you know?

Maira (34:19):

Yeah. I, at this time don't feel like I do anything monthly enough to warrant a Patreon, but that's also me kind of trying to kick my own ass into doing something monthly, I guess. I don't even know.

Miquela (34:38):

It's a lot.

Maira (34:38):

Yeah. I, I mean, cause you make all these things out of clay and take photos of peg and send them out.

Miquela (34:46):

Yeah. And I make, uh, usually I've been making, um, what is it called? Oh my God. I'm totally blanking on it. Block printing.

Maira (34:54):

Oh cool.

Miquela (34:55):

So I usually do like a, uh, at least original piece of art included too. And then if I include zines in the future, like yeah. Like I try to have like a few pieces of art within each package and it takes like days for me to do, like, it does become like a job. So I get totally get what you're saying. Whereas like, if you're doing these things, just for the love of it at the same time, you're like, Oh, I'm using my time to devote to this thing where like, it's hard because we live under capitalism and we're like, how can I pursue this? And still feel like I'm not, I don't know, like accomplishing something is the wrong word, but like it's hard. It's hard when like it becomes like it when it feels like a job.

Maira (35:36):

Yeah. And unfortunately It's also, like I feel as artists, we feel under capitalism, we feel inclined to like monetize our hobbies in order to get by.

Miquela (35:51):

Oh totally.

Maira (35:52):

It sucks. We want to just make art for fun, but it feels like all my time has to go into like hustling.

Miquela (36:02):

Oh totally. Like that was my whole thing with like even getting into zine making and getting into all of this is I was like, Oh, I already make comics. And this is just a fun way for me to distribute them, to like my friends and like get my work out there and just make people laugh. But then it turned into something as I got older where I was like, but this is all that I love to do and all that I know how to do. And like, guess, I've got to make money off of that somehow. So yeah. It definitely sucks.

Maira (36:32):

Yeah. At this point I'm just trying to pay for paper and ink.

Miquela (36:37):

that's the whole thing is like materials too. It's like, yeah, it would be cool to have like one of those fancy like risographed zines, but it costs money for materials.

Maira (36:46):

Yeah.

Miquela (36:47):

I could totally see you doing like a, I mean you could do like stickers monthly or something like included with like a mini zine that could even be just like a monthly thing for Patreon.

Maira (36:58):

Oh yeah. I love making those one sheet zines. Um, I was looking at- so something I've been doing lately for the past month or so is I've been looking at photos from that specific day in my phone. So from like years prior.

Miquela (37:16):

Oh, that's cool.

Maira (37:16):

And the other day, a few years ago, um, there was a zine library opening at the Oakland LGBTQ community center. And apparently I made a zine of just drawings of animals in cowboy hats, which.

Miquela (37:33):

That's amazing,

Maira (37:35):

Yeah it was super cute. I took pictures of some of them. And I think that zine, I didn't make any copies. So it only lives in that library. Um, if it's even still there, but I love making one-offs and I actually made one during EBABZ. Um, I was feeling really discouraged about selling my art and making art. And so I made one that was like, even if no one buys your art, you're still an artist. Um, and it was, it was nice. It felt good to just get things out onto a little sheet of paper. And I just bought a scanner and color printer for cheap, but now I have my own next to my desk. So.

Miquela (38:19):

that's a life changer.

Maira (38:21):

Yeah. There was a time period where I was like, okay, I can't make anything because I cannot copy it. Um, but now I can.

Maira (38:31):

That's so cool. Yeah. Like, and that alone, I mean, I know we were talking about how like it's hard right now to like create stuff, but like you're at least building up to like having a bunch of things where you're like, all right, well, I'm prepared to create now. Just got to feel like creating and not be crushed by like having to monetize it. And I think like returning to just like creating for the sake of creating is like so hard.

Maira (39:00):

Yeah. I bought a bunch of colored paper. Um, that I'm determined to do something with, but I also don't want to force it because like, like we've been saying it sucks to feel forced into creating art for money.

Maira (39:15):

Yeah, artist problems.

Maira (39:19):

Artist problems, truly, I am taking a block printing class on zoom tomorrow though. Um, which I'm pretty excited about because it's not really something, well, that's not true. My friend Kristen taught me how to carve stamps, um, with like easy cut rubber a few years ago. And I made like a taco bell stamp, which is pretty on brand for me, but I'm taking a class tomorrow and I'm excited to like, have someone show me how to do it. And I got a bunch of speedball ink and yeah, I'm excited to have that space to like make stuff that doesn't feel, it's kind of forced because I signed up for it. But,

Miquela (40:06):

But sometimes like, Oh, sorry,

Maira (40:10):

No go ahead.

Miquela (40:10):

I was going to say like, sometimes like, you know, that sort of force where like it, but it's more community built. It's like, okay, I'm kind of forced to do that just because I signed up for it. But like for some reason, taking a class like feels different than just like, alright, I feel forced to do this because like I have to do it for monetary gain or like, I need to feel like I'm being productive. And it's more of like a societal pressure versus like in a class there's like that community sense of it where you're like, Oh, that's so cool. I get to be like taught this by somebody who knows a lot about it. And that's been one of the like greatest things about this period of time, like during COVID and all the lockdowns and stuff is like being able to take classes online still is, has been like a godsend.

Maira (40:58):

Yeah. Are you still teaching the zine making class?

Miquela (41:02):

Um, I'm teaching, Well, I had a couple of workshops, um, where it was zine making. And then right now it kind of transferred into I'm teaching. I am still teaching, but it's like an afterschool program where we're making these like little animal field guides. So they already had like a pre-made book. Um, and then they fill it out with like animal drawings that we do each week and it's been so much fun. And then I'm taking a class through my work, um, with a different artist who's doing just kind of drawing essentials and just having that like set aside time each week to devote to art is like major

Maira (41:40):

The animal guide sounds cute as hell.

Miquela (41:43):

It's so cute. Yeah. But my students are like a huge thing that's been like keeping me creative. Um, cause we also do, I do a weekly thing called doodle hour and that's actually, uh, open to anyone and it's free. Um, it's all ages, but for the most part I have like kids in the class and I think that like deters adults, like I've had some adults pop in, but like I try to really make it for everyone. And it's just a fun time to be like goofy and imaginative. And I try to come up with like silly prompts and stuff. Like, you can just draw on your sketchbook, um, and be around like a bunch of fun kids that come up with like really silly things. And so like, that's been major too, for me. It was just like, I feed off of their like innate creativity sometimes. Cause I'm like, you haven't been ruined by capitalism yet.

Maira (42:34):

Stay that way, please.

Miquela (42:35):

Yeah. Yeah. That's like one of the hardest things being an art teacher is like seeing these kids and just kind of like realizing like as an adult so much is beaten out of us. Like not to get like super depressing, like as an artist, like looking at them as artists and like remembering back to like when I was their age and I felt like there were so many more possibilities and like I would just make for the sake of making, um, which is something that we've already like kind of talked about, like we're struggling with, but then like these kids, it's like, you give them like one tiny crumb of something and then they just like run with it. And I'm like, how do you do that? Like please, how do I tap into that resource again?

Maira (43:21):

It feels like something that needs to be like relearned.

Miquela (43:25):

Yeah. So like taking a class, that's all going back to like you taking a class. Like I was kind of saying like, that's so cool that you're doing that because like giving yourself that time, like hopefully that will get you into more of that mindset, a little, or like kind of retrain your brain to be in that creative mode

Maira (43:42):

In the same vein. I took like an art 101 class at my local community college last semester. And that was, it was the same thing where it like put me in a mindset of like, yes, it was for a grade, but it felt very like, because it's not, I'm not working towards a degree right now. I'm just kind of taking it for fun. And so it was really cool to just kind of get loose and like make stuff. And so I'm taking another art class through the same community college this semester and it's a site-specific installation,

Miquela (44:17):

Woah

Maira (44:19):

But we don't really have any sites. Uh, cause.

Miquela (44:22):

that's fascinating.

Maira (44:24):

Yeah. I'm really excited to see how it's gonna play out. And like I'm really excited to make Stuff.

Miquela (44:30):

Sounds like that's cool. Like that's totally something you can use too for putting on shows.

Maira (44:35):

Yeah. That's I think what I'm most using it for gain down the road, but definitely just like farming ideas at this point, which I'm really excited about.

Miquela (44:46):

That sounds awesome. And that's just through the local community college there.

Maira (44:50):

Yeah. Uh, shout out to Ohlone College, uh, their art department.

Miquela (44:56):

That's rad.

Maira (44:56):

Yeah. I'm excited. Uh, do you have anything else that you want to plug or talk about?

Miquela (45:05):

Um, no, that's pretty much it. I feel like, yeah. Talked about the art show. I mentioned like the class I'm teaching, but I didn't even mention like where it is, but I guess you can put that in like the description.

Maira (45:17):

Yeah. Thanks so much for doing this. I know it was like really short notice. Um, and technology is weird and kind of hard, but it's been fun.

Miquela (45:29):

No, this was awesome. I loved, uh, you know, catching up with you a little bit and like yeah. Hearing about the things that you're working on too. Like it's nice to just sit and talk like with a fellow artist who just gets it. Like, I I've been very isolated away from like any sense of like an art community. So like this was really cool and I, yeah, I really loved talking with you.

Maira (45:52):

Yeah. And it's, it's also just a very different vibe from like seeing something on Instagram and being like, all right, I like this, but it's cool to like interact on a different plane, I guess.

Miquela (46:05):

Totally.

Maira (46:06):

Yeah. Well again, thank you. Um, this was great and yeah, stay tuned for more long-arm stapler, uh, more often this year and that's all for me.

#podcast #podcast transcript #miquela davis #long arm stapler #zines #zine

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orbyssarchives · 6 years

Text

A Brief tl;dr

This is probably a lot to say for 20 unfinished webcomic pages and I know I can be fairly long-winded so if you just wanna skip ahead and click through the pictures I’ve put up, I understand.

The TL;DR is

Hello and welcome to Mage Punk Archives! My name is Tables and this is some of the work that I’ve done over the last few years and what I’ve been up to in my little corner of the world. This is the third and last of a series of posts, outlining a number of updates that I completed on the site.

Included are some of my inspirations and a little of what I’ve learned so far about myself as an ever growing artist up to this point.

After this, I want to keep the content more focused on the actual art and story.

I’ll post to this site as often as I am able.

Thanks for reading!

***

Long Ago, Before the miracle of handheld internet searches and Instagram

When I was but a young, internet webling, I was heavily into shitty online flash games and looking for anything even remotely related to my interests at the time. From Mario and Sonic to various comics, videos games, anime and things never to be said aloud (pornpornporn). My love of the likes of Super Mario Bros and Sonic the Hedgehog (big fandoms for me at the time) would later lead me to sprite comics. Today, my feelings for the little hodge podge collage strips of old video game sprite sheets and backgrounds are a little mixed.

(They were beautiful and I’m gonna make one someday)

Then, in Highschool, I took a basic Web Design class. It was a VVoid World Web of Notepad and Internet Explorer where a kindly old crone passed on to those of us there, some knowledge of the ancient runic language which forms the foundations of the World Wide Web: HTML. Tables, frames, css, oh my! This knowledge would eventually prove invaluable.

Throughout our studies we were occasionally allowed to venture out into the Wider World Web. It was during these little adventures and travels across the Web that I happened upon the magical land of Webcomics. It was also during this time that I began break free of the enchantment of sprites. Even though I would probably never return to them, they would always hold a special place in my heart.

The Internet is for [Comics]

Webcomics – Synonymous with “Masochism”

At first, I had no idea just how grueling webcomics could be. Most webcomic artists pump out pages one to three times a week. At the time I got into them, MegaTokyo, then still partially a video game webcomic, was just releasing its third printed book; 2-3 updates a week with a loosely set schedule. Evan Dahm was wrapping up his surreal fantasy epic, Rice Boy; with updates consistently going up Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. The various sprite and drawn webcomics that I was following at the time were updating all the time. Seeing all the great work going up, I felt encouraged to try it myself.

I drew these closer to the end of my junior year of high school.

Desu

Taking major inspiration from a lot of the manga and anime that I was enjoying then, I used pen and ink to make my comic pages. I liked working in black and white because it felt direct and skipping on color made it easier to finish faster. I figured I could work faster if I didn’t have to worry about the extra step. When I did want to use color, as is typical for the early pages of a new manga, I used markers.

At the time, I had no idea that mangakas used assistants. That’s messed up.

Not to say that it was completely unrealistic, but back in the real world I could only average one black and white page a week. If even. The spider webs I was drawing all over were so that I wouldn’t have to use a ruler to draw my panel proper borders. I thought it gave the comic an “old archive”. In the end, I concluded that the spider webs should have their place and not be all over.

This time, I decided to work a little more carefully and deliberately.

Moving Forward

It was going pretty well but by the time page 7 rolled around, it was time for midterms and I had become too self-conscious and uncomfortable with the way I was drawing my comic pages then. Then, it was time to take finishing high school seriously and before I knew it, I was a freshman at The Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale. I did a lot of growing in the next four years that I attended there. Unfortunately, I never revisited those pages. Instead, near the end of my sophomore year, I took a Sequential Art class where the Final was a full-color, 5-page comic.

These are the ink-wash versions of the 7-page Final that I submitted. I’d originally colored them digitally to meet project requirements but I don’t want to post those just yet..

In the End

I wasn’t satisfied. The truth was that I waited until the last minute, rushed it, and over-reached on a re-draw that wasn’t much fun for me to work on. During the course of that Sequential Art class my professor turned my attention to artists like Moebius and Mike Mignola. I also came across Katsuya Terada’s stuff around this time.

And school went on…

I worked on Mage Punk when I could between assignments.

Between thinking I could possibly work on a for-print comic…

…and a webcomic at the same time.

The End was Near

Most of these were actually made towards the end of my four years at Ai. Those of us graduating were tasked with compiling our work from the years past in accordance with the requirements for obtaining our degrees. I believe that we were given two semesters to gather our pieces and do any revisions to previous works to get them up to date with the rest of the portfolio piece. Illustration Graduates at AiFL were typically required to gather a required selection of their work into an on-demand printed book. The year that I graduated, my department decided to change things around a little. Specifically, we were given the option to collect the requirement work into a plain black binder portfolio and make the printed book more geared towards our pursuits. I opted to make a Mage Punk/Orbyss Archives “Zine” as my main portfolio piece.

And Then College was Over

I drew a few more pages of the comic until I became employed full-time. These days, there aren’t enough free hours in my days for me to keep up with any typical webcomic’s update schedule so for a long while I stopped working on the comic altogether. I’m squeezing as much work out of every second that I’m not there; with whatever energy I can muster. This includes planning, writing, sketching and drawing. Before I got back to work on the site, I was posting fairly regularly to my Twitter and Instagram; those posts took time to do as well.

Most of this post was written in separate sessions on my commutes to work.

“Shortcuts”

Even though I always wanted to present Mage Punk as a webcomic, I always worked on it like it would go to print eventually. This created a confusing mindset for me when working on the comic, where I had to work on a whole book, but I have to rush to finish every page. If I wanted to put out pages more frequently I took shortcuts at any point I could to be done with them. Even if I created a good buffer of finished pages, I’d still run into that same pitfall eventually. I wasn’t enjoying my project because of a pressure I applied on myself to finish it in a way I wasn’t necessarily comfortable with. I didn’t even get that much done in the end.

It’s important that I work on it at a pace that lets me show the best of my ability. I would love it if I could be properly finished with the pages before I post them but if I wait before it’s all good and done I’ll just never get around to posting anything, forever floating, aimlessly, throughout creative internet limbo.

Instead, if I have to work on my comic in piecemeal, I’ll just post it up in piecemeal. Mage Punk will still be presented as a webcomic but, until the end of the book is done, certain changes are still a possibility. Editing is an important part of producing any book and I’m going to make its presentation reflect that.

Cue Rhidiculous shouting “I told you so!” from some nearby bushes.

A Webcomic in Presentation Only?

Those Two Images are the Same Page

Instead of trying to finish things at breakneck speeds, I’m going to work on the comics at a more reasonable pace. I’ll try to work on it mainly Chapter to chapter instead of page to page like how a webcomic normally is done (buffers aside) This gives me the opportunity to take a step back and get a broader look at the story while still putting out content in enjoyable chunks.

It’s difficult for me to wrap my head around drawing a comic on a start-to-finish, page-by-page basis. While I was working on the later pages in the chapter I kept finding myself jumping around and making changes to previous pages to make some things more consistent with later parts of the story. Instead of working page-by-page, I was editing the chapter as a whole to try to strengthen the narrative I’m trying to tell.

To that end, I still want to present it on this site as a webcomic; if only in name and archive.

The Process

At the VERY longtime behest of my editor, I’ll be presenting the comic as a work in progress at various points in the following production stages.

Writing

I’ll post dialog excerpts here and there. Nothing that can spoil the story too much.

This step will be kept largely behind the scenes.

Thumbnails

I do these on index cards in ballpoint pen to figure out the sequence of events that I most prefer.

This is the step where I’m prone to overloading a page with information.

First Drafts

Full size roughs of the earlier thumbnails. This step helps me get a better sense of how crowded or unbalanced a page might be early on.

This step also helps to prune out any strenuous scenes or dialog that could otherwise have their own pages.

If it isn’t working visually at this point, it’s not going to work in the next step.

Pencils

This is where the real drawing happens. Drawings in this step are made by either digital or traditional means depending on when or where I’m working.

Inking

This step is exactly like the drawing step but in pen and ink. Despite my affinity for real pen and ink, I’ll mainly be working this step digitally.

Color

This step is wrought with indecision but it also one of the faster, more fun steps to do.

Lettering

I’ve removed the dialog from all the pages currently up, opting to keep that out until a chapter is completed; it’s the thing I’m likeliest to change the most frequently until the end.

All lettering is currently done digitally but I’m considering the possibility of hand lettering.

Drawing dialog can be quite fulfilling but it takes a lot of practice.

Editing

This part will be happening all throughout. Page re-orders, panel redraws, changes in dialog.

Until the book is done.

Here We Are

I’ve already made some revisions to a handful of the pages that are already up; if you browse through the comics you can see the revisions noted in the comic descriptions. I’ll make blog posts for any major revisions or series of revisions that I do. I have a few ideas for some smaller projects that I can work on while I work on Mage Punk. Whether they be illustrations, stories, or even mini-comics like this silly thing down here.

Moving on

I might have also mentioned before that I have a few other drawings that I wanted to make for the site. In particular I have a neat idea for some social media icon illustrations. I wanna make something that takes advantage of what I’ve learned with using CSS. It’s nothing too fancy.

All that said, future posts will be a bit more brief than these last three were. I’d much rather write and post about the work itself, but I feel like I’ve hit a personal milestone and felt the need to ramble on about it a little.

Until next time,

Thanks for reading!

The Big Site Update (Part 3) A Brief tl;dr This is probably a lot to say for 20 unfinished webcomic pages and

#Comics #Process #Social Media #Website #WIP

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tncts · 7 years

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Hey Olivia, I am thinking of applying to FIT for the Fall 2018 school year as an illustration major and I was wondering how do you like it so far? I am an older student (25y/o) and it's taken me a while to decide what I want to do with my life but I am 100% certain now, that I want to major in illustration. Do you have any things you do not particularly like about the school? Things you love about it?

Hello! First off, congratulations for figuring out what you would like to major in! I hope all work well for you. And apologies, but I have actually transferred out of FIT and am currently attending SVA in pursuit of my bachelor’s degree in illustration. However I can still speak to my experience earning my Associate’s Degree.

I spent my time at FIT as a fashion illustration (FI) student. As a freshmen, I started it what is known as the general illustration (GI) block. GI is more technical and involves more of the fundamentals of illustration (i.e., perspective, rendering, etc.). So we were all taking the same courses until the second semester of my first year. It was then that I was presented with the opportunity to switch into the fashion block which I feel is a (bit) more individualistic. We were encouraged to explore stylization all while keeping the basic techniques of illustration in mind.

There was definitely a lot of freedom to draw how we wanted compared to the GI block. I heard from my peers (since most of them were in general) that they did not get to draw the figure as much moving forward in the program. However, I feel like figure drawing is an integral part of illustration, so that fact seemed counterproductive? Also, there were more technique-based projects in GI that could be useful for some but not for all. For example, I mentioned rendering before because FIT’s illustration department put a lot of emphasis on realistic illustration. But personally, I do not see myself creating realistic renderings of animals or people. There are courses that suit a certain type of illustration, but what about students that want to focus on characterization or visual development? Instead of focusing on one, it would be better if they implemented more than one type of illustration so it was more well-rounded and helped students explore other types of illustration they might not even know they like. I feel like this is also why the programming could be improved. If they condensed courses down to 4-5, there would be more opportunity for students to do this type of self exploration with their artwork if the school cannot provide them with the means to do it.

Unfortunately, my year was the last to have FI offered and the FI block no longer exists at FIT. So now I think it’s all GI from associates to bachelors! My overall feeling about FIT’s education is that (as previously stated) it is very course heavy when it does not need to be! Coming into the school all the way to my fourth semester (the end of sophomore year) I was taking 8 class or so at a time. This made it almost impossible to do anything else besides focus on schoolwork for the majority of the semester. With such a busy schedule, I did not have time to explore illustration electives or work in other courses related to my major. At the same time, some of the courses were a breeze to get through because the material came easily to me.

The illustration department seemed to have a rigid definition for what is considered an illustration course and what is not. If you wanted to explore some of the modern forms of illustrative mediums (i.e., apparel design, zine making, etc.) there were no options for such courses. At the same time, the course requirements for FIT illustration seems to change every year. Like I previously stated, the fashion block no longer exists at FIT. My year was the last it was offered, although I feel like I got a lot out of the experience. There are also courses my friend who is an illustration major a year under me took last year that I did not have to take when I was freshmen. So it is hard to pinpoint a single expectation when everything keeps changing. If you have not already, I would highly suggest looking at the curriculum and course descriptions for illustration. It is important to get a sense of what you will be learning beforehand as well as knowing your options!

There are some courses I have taken that felt like they were just repeating themselves. This is another part of FIT that can be limiting at times, especially if it is with the same professor. There is a certain technique or medium or aspect of art that will be focused on and then practiced again and again in the various levels of the course. What is frustrating about this is the fact that there is nothing I can do since the courses are required to graduate. Even if it feels like I am taking the same course multiple times in a week, I have no choice but to take it. It is hard to benefit from taking the same course where I am only exploring a certain technique every time I take it.

Because FIT is a SUNY school, we also have to focus on fulfilling general education requirements (i.e., math, science, english, etc.) so that is the other part of our schedules. There were some courses that I felt were helpful to me (i.e. Fiction Writing, General Psychology) and others that I knew I was only taking for the credit fulfillment which is unfortunate...but this goes into programming.

Programming can be a subtle bump in the road sometimes when it comes to FIT. Students do not all register for courses at the same time, and some are allowed to register before others. Depending on when you have registration time, the classes you want to put into your schedule could be filled to capacity by the time you have the opportunity to select it. So you have to make sure you know what you want before your time to register! Make 2-3 backup schedules and register as soon as it is your time!

I think the first year felt easy because it's the beginning of your college career, you're taking the introductory courses and just getting adjusted to everything. After you find your footing and get used to the school, it picks up speed a bit faster. Most of the classes I had didn’t really relate to what I want to do in the future (if you don't know what specifically you want to do either, that's fine as well!) but they have been helpful in enhancing my skills and teaching me new techniques! I did not let my situation stop me from trying to be the best illustrator I could be. I just tried to make the most out of it in any way I could!

The best part about FIT was without a doubt the Comic Arts Club! It was a nice space that gave students from all majors the opportunity to do the kind of work I see myself doing in the future. We made illustrations, comics/zines, and other projects together. We also tabled at MoCCA for the past two years which was the greatest experience for me. It was a short term goal of mine to table and sell my work, and it would not have happened so soon if I had not become involved with the club! There are a bunch of other clubs, activities, sports teams, etc. to do at FIT too if you're interested. But I feel like that's what really made my experience the very best. Unfortunately, the club disbanded Spring 2017, but I mention it because it was one way for me to make the most out of FIT.

So that’s basically it! I know this was a very long-winded answer to your question, but I wanted to provide enough insight to help you make a better decision! But please keep in mind that this is only my experience, and others may feel differently about FIT. If you know other people in the program, I would highly suggest speaking to them about the illustration department. Also, please visit the school if you can and speak to students and professors! If you have any other questions or concerns, I will do my best to answer them as well! :0

#asks #long post #Anonymous

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houseofvans · 7 years

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SKETCHY BEHAVIORS | Heather Benjamin (RH)

Through her dense and detailed packed line drawings to her more focused ink brush pieces, Rhode Island based artist Heather Benjamin’s work is visceral, cathartic, and autobiographical. It offers a completely unapologetic and unflinching look into an artists’ own struggles with life, body image, self confidence, and sexuality. We find her and her art to be inspirational, honest and badass.

We recently ran into Heather at her booth at the LA Art Book Fair and caught up with her a few months later to ask about her art, her experiences at RISD, her influences, and her thoughts about her work and her life.

Photographs courtesy of the artist.

Introduce yourself.

My name is Heather Benjamin, and I’ve been living in Providence, Rhode Island for the last few years.

Tell us a little about your drawing background? When did you first find yourself doodling?

It sounds corny, but I don’t remember a time when drawing wasn’t the thing I loved doing the most. I was like that as a little kid, as early as I can remember. I don’t have any concrete memories of being intentionally exposed to a lot of artwork as a child, but I definitely had a lot of visual stimuli from really early on - my dad papered my crib and the ceiling above it with M.C. Escher drawings and pages from Magic Eye books and similarly intense geometric patterns printed out from his computer, I think he read that it was good for babies to be looking at complicated visual stuff like that while your sight develops - and I feel really lucky to say that my parents were always really nurturing and encouraging of my interest in making artwork. They are both musicians, so even though neither of them had a background in visual arts, they were of a similar mindset and psyched that that’s what I was into.

What were your early drawings as a kid revolve around? When did you start to discover zines and printed matter?

The first artwork I got really, really obsessive about was Sailor Moon and Revolutionary Girl Utena, the original manga versions, when I was in fourth or fifth grade. I started drawing tons of fan art inspired by both of those, and from there eventually started developing my own imagery. I didn’t know about zines or weirdo/art comics until I was in high school, when my friends started to have cars, which made us all more mobile, and I was able to start going to punk shows and hanging out at DIY spaces and learning about places like art book stores and infoshops. I just didn’t know those things existed before that. The first zines I saw were all kind of anarchist zines, written about things like how to make your own tinctures and kombucha, telling stories about hitchhiking, or how to build your own screen printing setup.

So your first exposure to zines were mainly political or DIY style zines.

That was really my first exposure to seeing the book format/self-publishing being used as a way to disseminate information easily and cheaply, and I was really psyched on that. Then, when I went to Printed Matter for the first time - an art teacher recommended to me that I should check it out - I think I was around 16, was when I learned that people used self-publishing and the book format not just to spread anarchist or punk rock literature, but to bind together little books of drawings or prints or comics. And that’s around the same time I started finding out about the Fort Thunder scene of the 90s in Providence, and all the amazing zines and booklets and comics that came out of that, and came before that. All those things tied together were super influential and made me want to start making little books and zines of my own work.

When did you first find yourself making a zines and/or being deciding to self publish?

I made my first zines, the first two issues of Sad People Sex, when I was 18, as a freshman at RISD. I had interned at Printed Matter during my year off between high school and RISD, which was when I really was delving into the world of zines and self-publishing and art books for the first time, and I’d been wanting to release a zine of my own but just hadn’t made it happen yet. The first two issues of that zine were folded pieces of 8.5 x 11 white printer paper with photocopied black line drawings of people having sex and crying, that was my concept. No backgrounds or embellishment, just hairy people having sex and wearing socks and crying.

How did the idea for Sad People Sex become a zine?

I was going through a breakup, was feeling very teenage and depressed, and horny, but wasn’t getting any. I was wrestling having uncomfortably strong angry feelings towards my friends who were in relationships, just because they were in relationships, and then consistently getting into extremely masochistic and unhealthy situations with men myself. I was getting cynical about relationships and sexuality but simultaneously feeling hurt and wanting intimacy. So the drawings were basically me wrestling with those opposing feelings for the first time. As that series continued - I made ten issues from 2008 until I think 2012 - it stayed loosely around those ideas, but the drawings and treatment changed with the stages of my life and relationships I was going through. Towards the end of the Sad Sex series I had started making some other zines too that weren’t under that title, and when I decided to stop that series at the tenth issue, I kept going with other self-publishing projects, and I still do.

When did you decide that you wanted to attend an art school or even consider the idea?

In high school, I was constantly going back and forth between whether I wanted to go to a straight up art school, or go to a liberal arts college and major in English. I’ve always really enjoyed writing, and for a long time was super interested in Linguistics, I really thought that might be my, I don’t know, career path. I was confused enough that I took a year off after high school instead of going right to college, which honestly I think everyone should do. I didn’t feel like I figured too much out during that year as far as college and career paths, actually most of it was just spent really dicking around a lot and doing all kinds of bad kid stuff that I couldn’t pull off in high school, haha,

When did you decide to apply to RISD? And what was that experience like?

I guess I was “figuring out” some other stuff - but during that year I applied to colleges again, and decided to apply to RISD. I hadn’t applied there when I was a senior because I thought it seemed too straight-laced, I felt like, if I was going to go to art school then I didn’t love the idea of having to choose a major and stick to it, I wanted to be able to be more interdisciplinary than that seemed like it would allow me to be. But I opened up to the idea and applied and decided to go, half because everyone said it was “the best”, half because I had a super romanticized idea of Providence after being so influenced by and enamored with so much of the artwork that’s come out of Providence, some of my favorite artists ever. So I wanted to be a part of it and be around it. I had a weird rollercoaster of a time at RISD - my freshman year, I still don’t think I was ready to be in college.

What did you find that was super difficult for you at the time?

If I could go back and do it again, I probably would have taken another year off before starting school. I was really depressed and having a terrible time, in my personal life and in school. I wanted to drop out after that year, but I gave it another shot and stayed for my sophomore year. By the end of that year I was really miserable, in so many ways, so I left. I ended up moving to Brooklyn and stayed there for a little over four years, and basically spent all my time on my artwork, aside from working tons of random Craigslist odd-jobs to pay my rent - doing flower arrangements, figure modeling, catering, all across the board.

But you ended up returning, and finishing? And how was that experience different from your previous one?

I really didn’t think I would go back to school, especially back to RISD, but I guess you can never predict what’s going to happen in your life and how your mindset might change, cause by 2014, I was feeling stagnant in my work, and kind of wishing I could have what I by that point viewed as the luxury of being able to choose from tons of amazing classes, work with incredible and influential teachers, have group critiques, all the things I took for granted a lot of the time when I was in school before just started to seem like they would be really good for me. I guess basically it just felt like I was finally ready for school, because I felt this really strong desire to learn, in the specific format that being in school offers you. So I went back, which is one of the reasons I moved back up here a few years ago.

Were there other reasons as well?

The other reason was I didn’t totally want to be in Brooklyn anymore, I needed more space - physical and mental - and, this was a big reason, I couldn’t afford to live there anymore without having to work so many hours at a day job that I wasn’t able to work on my drawings as much as I wanted to, and that seemed like a huge waste, to not have a real workspace, barely be able to afford my room, and spend most of my time waiting tables, which I am truly terrible at, to pay for that tiny room. But in any case, I moved back up here and finished undergrad, and it was a funny experience because I was older than everyone in my classes and all my friends were gone, kind of felt like a ghost town to me in a weird way, but it was an amazing experience.

What do you think was the difference for you at RISD after a few years break?

Being in school when you actually really want to be there, and are soaking all the information and feedback up and just feeling inspired and challenged, feels so good. I’ve literally never had that feeling before; I think up until that point any time I’d ever been in school I just hated it. I even felt like, at the end of my most recent two years there, that I didn’t want it to stop! I was ready to keep going. It made me start thinking about grad school, another thing I never would have imagined I’d ever consider.

Who have been some of your early and persistent artistic influences?

In my year between high school and starting at RISD, I got totally obsessed with all the artwork that came out of the Fort Thunder scene in Providence in the 90s/2000s. And as a result of learning about some of those artists - Brian Chippendale, C.F., Mat Brinkman - I learned about and became interested in other artists who worked with them or were influenced by them, like the Paper Rad collective, as well as other artists involved in making weird art comics as a whole, like Gary Panter. Basically, finding out about the Fort Thunder scene, and subsequently doing research into the artists who grew tangentially out of that as well as those who influenced the people involved in it, opened up an entire world of influence for me - it was around the same time that I found out about and became obsessed with Raymond Pettibon, especially his older zines.

Oh the good stuff!

I found out about the now-defunct publishing house PictureBox when I realized that a lot of the formally released book projects from the Fort Thunder affiliated artists who I loved had been released by the same publisher, so I decided to look into the other artists that PictureBox had produced books or prints for, and found out about even more artists who ended up being influential to me just by looking through that catalog, like Frank Santoro, Julie Doucet, Charles Burns, King Terry. And at the same time, I was dipping further back into weird comics/art history and learning about R. Crumb, Aline Kominsky-Crumb, Wimmen’s Comix, and really the Last Gasp catalog as a whole.

How did all this research into the underground comics and artists of PictureBox influence you at RISD?

All these artists played a huge part in me beginning to make my own content in my late teens, when I was starting at RISD, and made me think about my linework and my content, as well as format and self-publishing, in different and super influential ways. I definitely would not be making the kind of things I make right now if I hadn’t followed this trajectory of finding out about all the artists and kind of work I just mentioned.

When did you start mainly working w/ pen and paper?

I’ve always been a compulsive doodler, I got in trouble for it in school and had issues studying for tests, because when I’d open up my binders, my notes from class were just completely covered in whatever I had been absent mindedly drawing. So I’ve always been really comfortable using pen and paper, I just gave myself so much inadvertent practice for years.

When did you go from compulsive doodler to kind of the work you do now?

I didn’t ever take that seriously as a medium until I was in college, though. I made my first zine, Sad People Sex, when I was a freshman at RISD, I was 18. I drew it with Micron pens on printer paper and photocopied it. I think the main reason I used pen to do it was not just because I was comfortable with it, but because I knew it would photocopy well, which was important. The original drawings didn’t even really mean anything to me, it was all about how the zine would look once the images were reproduced. I’ve had that mindset for a long time now, making things only with the intention of them being reproduced in some way, and have only recently started to try to open up a little more out of that, and make some work that’s meant to exist only in it’s original form, not made to be reproduced to the point where the original is almost inconsequential.

Why were pens your favorite medium, you think?

For years I was so into using tiny pens for everything, because I loved getting hyper detailed in my work. I still do, but in the last few years I’ve been moving away from using pens, and have instead been trying to teach myself to get the same level of detail using a brush and ink instead. I’ve always loved painting and have been trying to move more in that direction - for so long, I worked in a pretty traditional “cartoonist” style, pencilling things out on bristol board and then inking them with pens, then going back in and erasing the pencil. I got really tired of that - it really is only good for something that’s going to be reproduced in some way, printed or scanned, because the originals end up getting really smudgy, the erasers pick up so much of the ink as you go back over it - it has it’s own charm, it’s it’s own thing, but not what I’m doing now.

Interesting, so you moved away from the hyper detailed drawings?

More recently, over the last year, I have been really enjoying challenging myself by not only moving into just using brush and ink instead of a pen, but also not pencilling anything, so eliminating the steps of doing a lot of planning things out in pencil and then a lot of erasing after the inking is done. I guess it’s more of a painterly thing - I’ll make a really quick pencil “study” in my sketchbook, just a vague outline of what I want to make, and then go straight to a larger sheet of nice paper, directly with brush and ink.

How do you think this process of brush and ink compares to your “tiny pens”?

It makes me work slower, think more deliberately about each line in the moment, because it’s so unforgiving. And it also somewhat decreased the element of total control in my work, which feels hard for me, but good. If a weird proportion or line happens, then it happens. I can’t just erase it and draw it again until it’s perfect like I used to. I’ve also become so attached to the fluctuations in line weight that happen naturally when using a brush, to the point where the uniform thickness of a 005 or 01 Micron or Prismacolor pen seems boring to me a lot of the time now! That said, I will never totally move away from using pens, they’re great for certain things, and I totally still doodle with them in my sketchbook and on all the scrap paper I have lying around the studio. But I am more all about using brushes these days.

There’s an energy to your work and compositions that exudes an endless and obsessive creative energy. Some of your work is almost entirely covered and packed with details, textures and background. Were you always drawing this way or was it something that developed for you?

This is something that has changed a lot for me over the last five or six years. For a while, I was totally obsessed with making super detailed and dense work, there was almost no open space left on the page ever, and that was how I liked it. Then, I felt like I went through a period where I was upset with that, and I wanted there to be more compositional balance in my work, leave some open areas that felt like they were supposed to be open, but I couldn’t figure out how to do it and just by default would end up filling every inch with linework, then I’d sit back and look at the piece and be so angry with myself for being so stuck in that loop. I guess to some extent I’m still struggling with that!

It’s pretty amazing how much you packed in your pieces. Why do you think you were making such such detailed drawings and compositions?

These days, I don’t enjoy having quite as dense of compositions as I used to, but I do still love detail. I guess I’m still working it out. But I can say, during the time when my work was the most dense - like the middle of the Sad Sex zine series, around issues 6/7/8 where every single inch is just covered in linework - that was a period of time where I was doing so badly mentally, felt completely manic, was taking tons of adderall, and spent all my time alone in my room drawing. I would sit at my desk for 14 or 15 hours a lot of the time, only taking breaks to go to the bathroom, chainsmoking at my desk and working on those drawings.

In retrospect I can see the density and manic quality to those drawings as a reflection of my mental state at the time. I gave myself carpal tunnel from how long I used to sit and just work without any breaks at all. I lost tons of weight, wasn’t eating, just coffee and cigarettes and adderall. It was so bad! I have a completely addictive personality and that was the worst it has ever been. My process now is totally different - I will still work for hours, but not 14. Usually the most time I’ll spend consecutively in studio is 8 or 9 hours. And I don’t take adderall anymore, haha. That was.. not good. I went through kind of an enormous lifestyle upheaval after that period of time, like four years ago, and my style of working changed along with it, since the two are so tied together for me.

How has your process changed now for the better?

My process now is basically that I’ll make vague little pencil sketches in my notebooks for ideas for pieces, and then once I get into studio, I’ll cut a big piece of paper - I’ve been just using this one kind of paper lately, a nice off-white shade of Ingres - and just go straight at it with brush and ink. I love, love, love this way of working. It feels super meditative and precise and slow and fulfilling. I end up with way less finished pieces that I like, because they’re so unforgiving, and I work much more slowly than I used to because of how much more time I’m spending figuring out my next move, but I like it so much better this way. Even though I’m working slower, though, I still can’t sit with an unfinished piece for more than about a week. If something’s hanging on my wall unfinished for more than like, six or seven days, I definitely lose interest in it. It’s hard for me to go back into things that aren’t at least somewhat fresh.

You make some powerful images and fairly graphic ones too, involving pleasure and pain, the body, and/or involving predominantly a female character who is not to be messed up. Your process and art has an intimate and very personal aspect – how autobiographical is it?

My work is very, very autobiographical. I love when people relate to my work, there’s basically nothing more fulfilling than someone having a very visceral and personal reaction to something that I drew. But the reason for that is because when those connections happen, they make me feel less isolated! My work is so diaristic, everything I draw is coming from something I’m personally feeling or thinking, I’m not trying to speak for anyone else. Even though I think sometimes this ends up happening, I’m never really intentionally trying to make work that speaks to women’s experiences a whole. I just think that’s too lofty and assumptive of a goal. I’m expressing my own experience, and when it does align with other peoples’ and they tell me that, it feels amazing, that’s huge for me. But it is all totally autobiographical.

What type of personal issues do you find you are addressing in your work?

I’ve always had a very complicated relationship with my self confidence, my perception of myself, my body image. Almost my whole life I’ve felt like I just bounce between the two extremes of feeling totally confident and proud and beautiful, sometimes to a point where I worry that it’s egomaniacal, and then feeling like total fucking shit, so disgusting, hating my body and my mind. Obsessive compulsive, body dysmorphic, manic and embarrassed or livid and insane. Then add a heaping dose of the yin/yang thing that happens where, in the realm of seeing myself as a sexual being, I’m ricocheting between shame and trauma, and joyous or animalistic raw sexuality - actually, not usually ricocheting, it’s kind of just always both at the same time. It’s super confusing, it’s overwhelming, and I constantly feel bogged down by it all. I don’t feel like I”m good at putting this into words - one of the reasons why I make work about it. It’s a better way for me to articulate how I feel, the bouncing back and forth between extremes or the coexistence of all those opposing feelings at the same time.

Sounds like making art and the process of making art helped you immensely?

And the process of making work about those feelings is cathartic to me - aside from things like, doing breathing exercises or yoga, it’s basically the only thing that centers me. Because the giant swirling mess of all those mixed up and messed up feelings is always roaring in my head and causing all kinds of unintended and stressful consequences, and I can never completely make sense of it. But being able to take a big handful of those feelings, translate them into some symbols and imagery that make sense to me, and turn it into a picture that, even if it contains graphic or lewd or unsightly content, is hopefully, when you step back and look at it, a beautiful picture, that’s my way of making sense of it. Maybe it’s hard for me to really take a step back in my life and in my mind and tame all the beasts, but if I can articulate it all into pictures and physically take a step back and see it all at once forming a narrative that way, and creating something pleasurable out of all the crazy or shitty or confusing pieces, even if it’s just aesthetic valueand feel other people relate to it too, that helps me.

You mentioned that you often keep a sketchbook. Some artists keep sketchbooks and some don’t. What about it do you find helpful?

I keep a sketchbook, which I think is really important for me. I just jot down ideas in there when they hit me, or write down things I want to check out later, whatever I just need to make a note of. And do quick little super vague drawings of things that maybe would end up in a finished piece.

When I go into the studio, I either know what I want to work on - in which case I work from the quick pencil drawings or studies that I have, and just go straight to brush and ink on paper using them for reference - or if I’m not sure where I’m going yet, I’ll look through my sketchbook to try to piece together a few ideas, or look at some of my books, or at stuff on the internet for some inspiration for a jumping off point.

Where do you find inspiration if you’re feeling “uninspired”?

I try not to look at the internet too much for content or inspiration, but when I do, I usually look at one of a few blogs that I follow on blogspot where people post Pre-Raphaelite paintings and drawings, or a couple that I follow who are like, old dudes in the midwest that collect weird old printed ephemera and photographs of belly dancers and porno magazines that they scan and share. But if I’m working from reference, I really prefer working from printed materials that I have on hand. I collect a lot of old magazines, like old playboys or gardening catalogs and romance comics that I find at flea markets and antiques malls. Usually if I’m feeling a block, I’ll pick up one of those and use it as a jump off to start doodling, then close it and keep going with the drawing myself. That usually helps! If it doesn’t, and I’m having one of those days where everything just looks like shit, I try not to beat myself up too much, and go expend the creative energy elsewhere, like sewing or cooking, so I don’t end up feeling completely pent up. I definitely have a complex, or something, where I am super self-critical if I’m not productive every single day. I get really mad at myself if it “just isn’t working” in the studio, so the least I can do is try to spend that energy on another project, even if it isn’t art related, just so I don’t lose my mind.

I recently ran into you at the LA Zine art book fair. How was that event for you? What do you love about a zine fest? Anything you picked up you’d recommend?

LAABF was amazing! I’ve never been to LA before, so that was huge. So many people I know have been moving there over the last few years, and I didn’t really get why, since I hadn’t been there. All it took was going there for a week to get it, haha. I really get it now, I loved it there. Aside from being psyched on being there, the book fair itself was awesome. I’ve been tabling at the NY art book fair, which is basically the exact same event but at P.S. 1 in New York, every year since 2010, but I could never make it out to the LA fair. I was always either too broke, or in school. Or both. But I could finally swing it this year, and I’m so glad I did. There were a lot of the same exhibitors as there are in New York, and there were a ton of new ones too, people who don’t make it out to the New York one, so that was great. And even with the people who table at the NY fair as well, everyone always puts out new publications and editions to debut at the fair, so it’s just an amazing environment of everyone showing each other all their new work, tons of creative energy and enthusiasm. I’ve tabled at a lot of zine and comics fairs, but the Printed Matter book fairs are always the most exciting, by far.

Could you describe your current surroundings and/or studio? Do you have a favorite object in that collection?

I just moved into a new studio in the last month and I’m so psyched on it. It’s by far the nicest, and biggest, workspace I’ve had. It’s a little standalone building, actually a converted garage for the house I live in, that’s in my backyard. It’s got a bunch of big windows and a woodburning stove, it feels very New England which I love, ha! I’m still setting it up, but I’m in love with it. My last two studios were much smaller, and even though the rooms themselves were private, they were in buildings that were shared with a ton of people, so it was always noisy. Especially my last studio, which was in a warehouse building where a lot of bands in town have practice spaces. I think I was the only person renting space in there that wasn’t a band or someone using really loud machinery. I never really got completely used to that, so having this completely isolated, private, quiet space feels so luxurious now. I’m so into it. My favorite thing in here is probably my collection of old romance comics. I’ve loved the aesthetic of these for years now, but only started sort of collecting them in the last year or two. I don’t buy them online or anything, I just wait to come across them at flea markets or antiques malls, so the collection is growing slowly, but I kind of like it better that way. I know I could find a bunch of amazing issues pretty easily on the internet, but I like collecting the ones that just make their way to me. I use them a lot for reference for my drawings, but also just love reading them and having them around.

What are your top 5 artists at the moment?

Paul Delvaux, Leonor Fini, Rossetti, Pettibon, Virgil Finlay

Favorite Vans?

Definitely my first pair ever which were the red and white checkered slip ons. I finally convinced my mom to let me get them in seventh grade. I wanted them so bad, I think she just thought they were too crazy, but she finally gave in. And I got them just in time to wear them to Warped Tour in Asbury Park. I can’t remember what year that would have been.. maybe 2000? or 2001? All I know is I was wearing my red and white checkered vans and tons of rubber bracelets and watching Rancid play for the first time and in that moment I could have died happy.

In a parallel dimension, what would you be doing (job wise) if you weren’t an artist?

Probably teaching! Which is still something I hope to do, I’d like to be an art teacher to little kids, I’ve done a little volunteer work in that area. We’ll see how that goes, I might have already put the nail in the coffin of that dream when I started posting drawings of swollen bleeding vaginas on the internet. But maybe I’d be teaching something else, like English or Feminist Literature or Linguistics.

Ask and answer a question you never get asked.

(I am totally stumped on this one but will let you know if i come up with something, hopefully I will!!)

What’s the best advice you’d give someone struggling with his or her art?

Keep a sketchbook and draw something in it every day even if you hate how it comes out. Look at tons of other peoples’ art, new and old. And not just on the internet; buy art books. Ones that have writing in them, about the artists’ process, essays, and read them. Buy them used, it’s cheap! Soak up tons of information, think about it and react to it. And be hard on yourself, but don’t be unhealthy about it. You have to take care of yourself. Now I just feel like I’m talking to myself here, haha!

What do you have coming up for 2017?

I’m doing a residency in Brooklyn for the month of September, and tabling at the NY art book fair this Fall. I have a few group shows lined up through the end of the year, too. Aside from that, I’m really focused on trying to make a new body of work, and larger paintings, and hopefully find somewhere to show them early next year!

Follow Heather Website: baby-fat.net Website Store heatherbenjamin.bigcartel.commy Instagram @heatherbenjamin_

#VANS #VANS ART #HEATHER BENJAMIN #Sketchy Behavior #interview #artists #RISD #Providence

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eriknebel · 8 years

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(here is an excerpt from an interview that i did for a french magazine called fluide glacial, which is one of the most famous magazines in the history of comics!! such an honor. thanks to yassine for interviewing me.)

This Portland artist has been active in the American underground scene since 2002, when they began publishing zines. Since 2012 they post on their tumblr Well Come, a strip a day. Strange, strange stories that spread widely in the networks of fans of alternative comics. In 2014, a collection of their strips was published at Yéti press. Their surrealist creations deserve some explanation. Hoping for a bit more resonance in France for their work.

- Where does your desire to make comics come from?

The first time I ever tried to read a comic, when i was really little, I made the discovery that if you look from one image to another, it looks like the images are moving. I thought, "I can do this!” Make these magical images come to life. It became an obsession.

- Does there rest upon your work some trace of your childhood reading of comics?

I spent part of my childhood in Italy. My mother was Italian. My cousins had houses filled with comics. One of my favorite comics was Geppo. It depicted life underground among a society of demons. The comics I draw now depict life in what could be interpreted as a society of demons or monsters, creatures that are a bit scary, but also sympathetic. So maybe this is the influence of the Italian comics.

- What is your path? Have you been to art school?

I did not attend art school but I took drawing classes in college, and I was hugely influenced by my art teachers. They taught me a lot about clarity of design and composition.

- You post a comic every day on your Tumblr. Do you feel connected to the tradition of the daily comic strip in the newspapers?

Yes, I love the tradition of the daily comic strip. Also, it forces me to be more productive. "You need a new page for tomorrow! Do it! Another one!”

- Are your comics improvised or do you make sketches before? They seem instinctive.

Most of my comics start out where I turn off my brain and I just let my hand draw whatever it wants. Then I look at what I drew and think, “This looks like that, and that looks like this,” and I start to have the idea for a comic. So I draw a sequence of pictures, and then I keep drawing the same page over and over again until it feels just right. Sometimes I’ll draw the same page 20 times until i’m happy with it.

- There is a feeling of kindness in your work, but sometimes it is also violent. What emotions do you want to bring into your stories? Is it connected to your mood of the moment?

It's funny, a couple weeks ago, I was really stressed out, and I thought, “OK, the strip I'm going to do tonight is going to show the turmoil inside of me.” But then the strip I drew was gentle and reassuring. As if a part of my brain was trying to calm me down.

- Your comics have what I want to call micro sequences. Your way of managing time is special. It's very unique. Can you tell me a little about the time in your comics.

Some of my strips are just playful drawings. But I do try to create a sensation of timelessness. A moment that doesn’t begin and doesn’t end. I want my comics to be a portal into eternity.

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megacircuit9universe · 5 years

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What Will the 2020s Be Like?

DEC 13 2019

I focus a lot in this blog on technology, because it’s something I understand, and also because it does very much transform society and civilization. The cotton gin made slavery sustainable, and the Civil War, therefore, inevitable.

Tech made WW1 the deadliest war ever, and many believe that the advances of tech in the 1920s (radio, telephone, automobiles, etc) was so disruptive, it made the Great Depression inevitable.

WW2 wasn’t so much brought on by advances in technology, but more than any other event before it (or arguably since) it catapulted technology forward. From the first rockets and computers, to the first atomic bombs.

I grew up in the 1970s, which was the peak of the analog world... the world of newspapers, and three-network broadcast TV. There was an antenna on every roof... a pay phone and a mail box on every street corner. Cameras used film, recorders used tape, and electric typewriters had ribbons.

Your watch and your clock were analog, as was your record player. Your electric guitar had pick ups that fed an analog signal to an amplifier with a tube inside it. And your car... well all the gauges on your dashboard had needles. Any feedback systems it had, such as the automatic transmission, power steering, or the carburetor, relied on fluid dynamics or vacuum pressure.

Tech-wise, the 1970s wasn’t much different from the 1960s or the 1950s, other than doing all these things more cleverly... as one would expect after several decades of honing techniques.

Politically, however, the 1970s was a lot different from the 1950s, because of all the upheaval and transformation that happened through the 1960s. Civil rights were finally being taken seriously. The Draft had disappeared in favor of an all volunteer military. Social conformity was out the window forever. Secularism was on the rise, abortion was legal, and divorce was becoming more common and more acceptable.

Conservatives have never gotten over these political changes, which is why they have, in every succeeding decade, fought dirtier and more desperately to regain control of society... still dreaming to this day of overturning Roe V Wade, for example, but also longing to bring back racism, the subjugation of women, the persecution of gays, and state sanctioned Christianity to the exclusion of all other religions... and of science.

Not that I want this entry to be a screed about conservatism... so let’s just acknowledge that they’ve always been out there, through the 1960s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s, and teens... struggling like hell to claw us all back to the 1950s any way they can... and move on...

Having grown up in the 1970s, I became of teenager of the 1980s. So I can recall clearly that what made the 1980s different from the previous three decades was the advent of, “electronics.”

I put that word, “electronics,” in quotes to emphasize that this was still a world that did not have computers as we know them now, and nobody thought of their electronic devices as being, “digital”.

Yes, home computers existed in the 1980s... for hobbyists. I even had a very crude home computer, the Timex/Sinclair 2000 in the early 80s, but there wasn’t much you could do with it, and after it flopped, all support for it vanished.

This was the story for a lot of home computers in the 1980s. If they were useful for anything, it was teaching you how to program in BASIC, and learn the fundamentals about how these analytical engines worked, but many people saw them as kind of a fad.

Only super hardcore computer geeks really stuck with them through the 1980s. The rest of us just kind of lived our lives, knowing they were out there, but not really thinking they would ever matter much.

Electronics, on the other hand, was seen as a different kind of tech that really did revolutionize our everyday lives in this decade before the World Wide Web came into its own.

The term, “electronic,” was for any device from the analog days, that now had a circuit board inside it... with transistors on it... maybe a chip? People didn’t talk a lot about chips in the 80s, even if they did exist inside our devices.

A Telephone, for example, was an analog thing in the house, with big curly cords. In the early 70s, they still all had analog dials on them. By the late 70s, they all had all become, “touch tone,” with a keypad that sounded, “electronic,” tones to do the “dialing.” But the first truly electronic phones, were the magical cordless phones... with the stubby antenna on the handset that you could amazingly take all the way out to the front stoop!

This same kind of transformation happened to everything... from digital clocks, to electronic tape decks, cameras, speedometers, and even typewriters with little LCD screens on them, that could save what you were writing to little discs... which they called, “word processors.” :O

There were a million hand held devices... I remember owning an electronic dictionary and thesaurus, about the size of a small tablet today, and twice as thick, with a tiny LCD screen. It allowed you to play a few shitty word based games like hangman. It seemed like a modern marvel.

Video arcade games, of course, had a massive impact on our lives in the 1980s, as well as the first home game consoles, for those who could afford them... usually the upper middle class families that also could afford cable TV.

And after video games, the other huge tech that really transformed our lives was the video recorder. Again, you had to have some money to own one back then, but those giant, klunky camcorders of the day were a massive improvement over the old Super8 film cameras that only recorded video, with no sound.

With a camcorder, you not only could capture both video and sound, but on magnetic tape, rather than film... which meant you could watch it immediately. No need to have it developed... or rent a projector!

I could go on, but the point here is that the 1980s was a time when the analog world of the 50s, 60s, and 70s, was being magically transformed by electronics, and we really felt like electronics were going to allow us to do anything... and yet nobody imagined home computers, networked together, would be a part of that.

The original Ghost Busters movie from 1984 is a wonderful example of this, because it’s set in the real world... which is beset by the supernatural problem of ghosts, spirits, vengeful gods that range from nuisances, to existential threats, but heretofore have never been tangible, touchable, or provable.

But three, clever, modern men of the 1980s have developed an arsenal of electronic devices to deal with these ghosts. They can detect and analyze them, track them, attack them, trap them, and hold them in a containment grid... all with state of the art transistorized tech.

The movie really captured the feeling of the times, like no other... that we can use electronics, here on Earth (rather than in a galaxy far far away) to deal with problems in our everyday lives (rather than hacking into NORAD to teach an AI that nuclear war is pointless) and be heroes in our home town.

Young people did take that message to heart, embracing electronics to do what young people like to do... create stuff. In 21st century parlance we would say they were creating, “content,” but at the time, the big problem was in publishing said content.

Garage bands recorded songs and albums. Others recorded videos, both long, short, and very short form videos. People wrote poems and prose on their word processors... started, “zines,” which were published using photocopiers, in stapled booklets.

All this stuff we attempted to shop to big publishers, who’s gate keepers ignored it, so we tried to sell zines, and indie tapes in local record stores, or showcase local videos at get-togethers in coffee houses. We developed an, “underground,” of indie music, video, writing, comics, etc... which relied on a network of high school and college students disseminating copies of content from hand to hand, throughout the country, and across the pond.

Most of the greatest musicians and other artists of the 1980s... the ones who did get signed to indie studios to produce more professional material... were never acknowledged by the mainstream media... which by the 80s was under the control of 30-something baby-boomers whose only agenda was to celebrate their own youth, and crank out cheep garbage pop for commercial consumption.

So, when the 1990s arrived, and the World Wide Web came into being, with cheep, but reliable home computers that had dial up modems to get anybody with a paycheck online... that underground movement from the 80s took it over immediately.

Most of us had at least some prior experience with BASIC, as mentioned above, and knew the fundamentals about computing... even if we hadn’t used that knowledge much for several years.

Now, those skills were suddenly relevant, and most of us were still young enough (in our twenties now, rather than our teens) to take on the learning curves necessary to do everything from code HTML, JavaScript, and CSS, but learn how to work on and upgrade our machines, how to master operating systems and all the big applications... the word and graphics processors, the animation tools, the video tools, the audio tools... how to get freeware... how to make freeware... you name it.

The teens of the 1980s, including those hard core computer hobbyists mentioned above, who helped build the primordial backbone that would become the WWW a decade later, built the internet. We pioneered it, formatted it’s culture... of memes, piracy, boundless creativity, and the free sharing of ideas and technology.

And we did it all in the late 1990s and early 2000s before the mainstream media had any real clue that this silly internet thing could be come kind of a threat to their carefully curated analog kingdom.

Flaming and trolling were things back then... conspiracy theories, fake news, and disinformation were problems back then... but they were manageable. Nothing like what they are now, at the end of the twenty-teens.

The problem there, is that in the twenty-teens, the old conservative farts finally left the safe confines of AOL and began to slowly populate places like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter... as did all the AM radio shock jocks they listened to.

At the same time, “Big Media,” began to take the internet seriously as a threat, with YouTube and Netflix stealing so many of their captive eyeballs and earlobes, and launched a hostile takeover of the internet that continues to play out to this day... with Disney buying up every franchise and attempting to shut down Netflix, and net neutrality itself having been destroyed by the Trump administration two years ago now, allowing ISPs to partner with big media outlets and throttle competitors content, as they all attempt to stamp out independent, original content altogether.

YouTube’s on life support, for independent creators. Tumblr is a zombie husk of what it was just two years ago. Twitter is a hellscape. Facebook is for lifeless mannequins. Vine is dead. Blogger and LiveJournal are forgotten to time. MySpace, Geocities and AngelFire... all ashes now. All destroyed by blind corporate greed and the same army of bigoted killjoys we’ve been trying to beat back since the dawn of civilization.

Still, technology continues to evolve, and the internet of 2019 is not the desktop computer based internet of 1999. Twenty years later, it’s become a wireless internet that’s expanded to include very powerful handheld devices which can do everything every, “electronic,” device of the 1980s did, and much more... all in a thing that fits in your shirt pocket.

This changes the game going into the 2020s, as smart phones settle into their final form factor... and slowly begin to assume their ultimate role as the, “mission brain,” for an individual’s life.

In the 2020s, my phone will not just bluetooth to my watch, and be the thing I bank and shop with, as it is today. It will talk to my car, if I still own a car. It will talk to my house, if I own a house. It will talk to my smart glasses, overlaying my view of the world with augmented reality. It will be even talk to me... and work with me to solve any problem I might have... from finding a dog walker, to complex legal and financial issues.

From a political perspective... it will represent me in polls... the way today’s smart phone and land line phones have never done. And it will register me to vote, remind me when to do it three weeks early, and clear my schedule, and get me a ride if necessary... meaning voter turnout will be far higher than ever before among the younger demographics... from 18 to 55... or GenZ up to GenX... with aging Boomers still sitting on Facebook at their desktops, paying their bills with paper checks unable to understand why even primaries and midterms are largely decided by the time they show up in their walkers to vote straight Republican down the ticket, like what’s worked in their favor for many decades.

The bigger picture here, if you zoom back... is that, with the form factor of smart phones having been worked out in the twenty-teens, the big advances in the 2020s will be in the AI those devices have.

And that coming level of AI, will allow individuals to continuously circumvent any roadblocks the corporate and political behemoths of old try to lay down for us... from bureaucratic red tape and voter suppression, to monopolization of media and markets, to censorship and the moderation of free speech.

I know all of that sounds idyllic and Utopian... and loudly echoes the original view of what the internet was gonna do for humanity, back in the 1990s... but much of what we have today would have seemed overly-futuristic and impossible just twenty years ago.

I’m sure there will still be a dark political backdrop to deal with, as today’s upsurge of racism and fascism around the world struggles to stay relevant.

And the effects of climate change through the 2020s will be another big source of darkness and drama like we are only beginning to see at the end of the teens... which will trigger major transformations in the way we all live.

Homes will get smaller and more efficient. Car ownership will dive to new lows. Families will get smaller, and suburban sprawl will ebb backward, creating, “ghost subdivisions,” haunted by the spirits of Karen and Craig.

They will follow the trend of today’s abandoned shopping malls, which will also only get worse.

Meanwhile, weed will come to be legalized nationally... as it is already doing state by state, leading to an eventual end to the War on Drugs, and much of the gang violence related to drug trafficking... as well as an influx of tax money, even before we’ve figured out how to tax the rich at a fair rate.

The 2020s will not be without their tumult and tribulations, but I believe that on the whole, compared to the twenty-teens, they will be a lot less crazy, and a lot more hopeful.

Time traveler traffic... also... won’t be nearly as heavy.... which will ease the craziness considerably.

As for aliens?... well... Trump might just get his Space Force so... they will probably be taking the brunt of the trolling from the aliens, rather than the Air Force... for whatever that’s worth.

Time for bed.

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comicteaparty · 5 years

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June 8th-June 14th, 2019 Creator Babble Archive

The archive for the Creator Babble chat that occurred from June 8th, 2019 to June 14th, 2019. The chat focused on the following question:

What was the original incarnation of your current comic? What has changed over the lifespan of the idea, and what has remained the same?

Nutty (Court of Roses)

My comic, Court of Roses http://courtofroses.thecomicseries.com/, was originally built around my first D&D character, a half-elf bard named Merlow the Rose. The comic was going to be strictly based on D&D, but as I started going gung-ho on the worldbuilding I started deviating away, making my own variations on races, making my own pantheon, and even formulating different magic rules and creatures. It's still largely inspired by D&D, and other fantasy works like Lord of the Rings, Elder Scrolls, etc., but I'm also trying to make the world my own, too!

Pencilz

My comic the Caraway Crew https://tapas.io/series/The-Caraway-Crew was originally based on my childhood friend group. Actually the very first incarnation I had with the Caraways was where we were all self-inserted into some large crossover fanfiction... it was pretty bad aha.(edited)

I just realized I said that twice oops

Draco Plato

The first incarnation of my comic....world was a Sailor Moon parody I believe. There was a boarding school and magical boys and girls that fought aliens or something. Firosofi was the "priest" of water and Affinity was the "priestess" of light (ironically her character hasn't seen the light of day in years). Apus was still around in that incarnation since Firosofi and Affinity were affiliated with it there too I think The initial premise still makes up the core of the Apus ideology I think; people fight in pairs against forces that threaten Earth. The focus since shifted to be much more character focused and on characters who were made much later (Damon and Lyall primarily). http://khyatix.com/

ErinPtah (Leif & Thorn | BICP)

But I'm A Cat Person http://bicatperson.com/ basically sprang into being (heh) fully-formed, but I pulled a bunch of the characters from earlier fanfiction incarnations. Jany and Kara Lynn got started in a Neopets RPG; Timothy was created as an OC member of Section XIII in Hellsing; Reseda and Cybele were from the same Sailor Moon exoplanetary team.(edited)

Leif & Thorn http://leifandthorn.com/ started as Colbert Report fanfiction XD It was so far removed from the source material that I spent years thinking "I should file off the serial numbers and try to publish this as an original work"...but it didn't click until I got away from the idea of doing a 1:1 adaptation of the fic's plot, and just used it as the foundation of a world where I could set all kinds of other stories.

AntiBunny

My comic AntiBunny http://antibunny.net/ started out as an all pencil sketchy comic about depression. It experimented a lot early on artistically as I tried to tear down my old style and build a new one. As it's changed over the years I've built up a new art style, and as I've changed as a person I'd say it's become its own story driven by the characters. The protagonist's depression and anxiety is still important, but I think the significant thing is that I'm seeing depression from the outside rather than the inside, and my writing has changed a lot as a result.

mathtans

Interesting topic. I might be unique in that my math comic started as a web serial (though I didn't know that's what it was at the time). Meaning text, but supplemented with drawings, because the point was that the graphs were character hairstyles: https://sites.google.com/site/taylorspolynomials/series/openbar

I gave it up after several years due to lack of interest, then brought it back as a web comic with many of the characters redesigned (parabola having twintails instead of bunny ears, for instance). http://mathtans.ca/ It then crossed over with the serial, meaning both sets of characters are canon and take place in the same universe. https://mathtans.blogspot.com/2017/04/math-character-bible.html

So the more it changes, the more it stayed the same? (As to plot, that tended to be whatever math concept I thought would be interesting, from archaic trig functions to fractals... I never knew where that'd be going.)

kayotics

The original incarnation of Ingress Adventuring Company https://ingress-comic.com/ was, like many other fantasy comics, derived from a D&D campaign I played in. I really loved the character I played (Toivo), and the campaign had finished, so I decided to keep using him in more stories. While the basic idea of the character is the same, I completely removed him from the campaign that he was in so I wouldn't have any issues with having to ask my friends to use their characters. Toivo has essentially remained the same, but large parts of his backstory and the entire setting has been changed from the original game I played him in. And, since I'm no longer tied to D&D with a comic, the rules of magic are a lot more vague. Similar to what Nutty said above, my comic is still largely inspired by D&D and other fantasy staples, but at least I can deviate from them as I continue to make my comic.

MJ Massey

Black Ball http://welcometoblackball.com/ is a much more recent idea of mine and hasn't really changed too much in terms of the overarching story, though minor things have shifted such as Maude becoming more of a main character, giving her a brother who is also getting more involved in the plot, and changing the role of a future character. But it's always been Emily and Chester solving a murder mystery.

MJ Massey

The shifts have been so minor and over time that it's hard to find where the "first draft" ends and the "next version" begins. But I've been mentally shifting things as I go along and see that certain aspects of the story need more attention for the ending to pay off or for the character to get well developed

Who the murderer is has stayed the same and how it happens and why. Just the circumstances around it have been smudged and fixed

Tuyetnhi

The OG plans I had for https://oiydcomic.com/ occurred after I was fiddling with twine to make a one shot short story, and an illustration series/zine project after having an intense dream. At first, I initially wanted to create it into an ero-romance comic about a woman having a one night stand with her dream lover, eventually living together after seeing each other for a few weeks. After thinking about it further (and some beta readers later lmao), I decided to develop into a romance-focused drama about acceptance and making life more than what is instilled in our dreams. I fleshed out Cara's (main character) modivations, her background in regards on courtship and romance somewhat seen in the asian-american experience (specifically Vietnamese-american rituals; some that retained after viet dispora came to the US in the late 80's - 90's and the effects on their children). Basically, from intense escapism to a general exploration on romance. With some common themes I've liked in 90's shoujo with some criticisms here and there.(edited)

Respheal

Galebound (http://www.galebound.com/) started off as what was going to be a short story. I posted it up on deviantART just for fun, and I was totally pantsing the plot xD I had an idea of a magician who for some reason couldn't ask questions, and the stablehand he kidnapped when he wasn't getting a horse fast enough. The original idea was that Din was on the run from something? And Conan was that hapless stablehand the protags burst in on like "I need a horse!" before escaping $antagonist or chasing someone. Originally Din was supposed to be a good guy, for real, just...more of a trickster to Conan's straight-faced act(edited)

Since its inception, the plot got way deeper and a gazillion times more horrible I think at one point an Obligation wasn't necessary for magic, and probably wasn't even totally compulsory But then the Pascal Incident happened and making the Obligation compulsory suddenly became much more integral to the plot and world. And once that happened, Din's backstory got more fleshed out and his character got darker. I still really wasn't sure what to do with Conan at that point, though. That didn't hit me until like seven years after the original five chapter draft going up on dA, and knowing Conan better changed everything It's fun :'D

snuffysam

Super Galaxy Knights Deluxe R (http://sgkdr.webcomic.ws/) started off as a short film I made for an introductory film class in college (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibRdxNLd3Q4). The film is about a fan of a really bad anime forcing his boyfriend to sit through an episode. The production quality of the film is honestly really bad in retrospect (still got an A though lol). At around the same time as I was making that film, I had just watched... I assume Food Wars, and I was on a real "you could make a battle series out of anything" stint. Like, I would just have a notes document full of ideas like "a shonen series about math olympiads". One idea I really liked was "a shonen series, but it's actually just The Wizard of Oz". After I had finished the short film, I wondered what the actual series that the "anime" took place in would be like, so I decided to build out a comic. I outlined five books, the first being based primarly off the Wizard of Oz. And... the rest is history.

deo101

The first incarnation of millennium (http://millennium.thecomicseries.com/) was pretty much a "chosen one" story where the main character had to go kill an evil space queen and was the only one who could do it. I made about 6 more stories that I later decided I could put together, and the easiest way for me to combine them all was a highschool space story, which I developed for quite a while... Later I changed them all to be adults and started building the current iteration of the story (which has also changed a ton)

Desnik

My WIP comic (which has an ask blog: http://ask-a-warlock.tumblr.com/) started out as a video game idea incorporating Banjo Kazooie collectathon platforming with Ace Attorney trial mechanics....obvs I'm not much of a programmer or 3D modeler, so I went with skills that I actually know how to do: Write and draw(edited)

It had one incarnation where the characters run around all of Europe but it was much too much to develop within 250 pages so I scrapped that and focused on one standalone story, which I'm thumbnailing now and I'm hoping to get into the art stage by the end of the year

and now the page count is about 170 so hopefully that's an easier project to wrangle, when it comes down to it

#ctparchive #comics #webcomics #indie comics #comic chat #comic discussion #creator interview #comic creator interview #comic tea party #ctp #creator babble

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obsidianarchives · 5 years

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Ajuan Mance

Ajuan Mance is a Professor of African American literature at Mills College. A lifelong artist and writer, she works in acrylic on paper and canvas, ink on paper and, for the 1001 Black Men project, ink on paper and digital collage. Ajuan's comics and zines include The Ancestors’ Juneteenth, A Blues for Black Santa, the Gender Studies comic book series, and 1001 Black Men, featuring images from the online portrait series of the same name. Ajuan has participated in solo and group exhibitions from the Bay Area to Brooklyn. Both her scholarly writings and her art explore the relationship between race, gender, and representation. Ajuan is partly inspired by her teaching and research in U.S. Black literature and history. Her most recent scholarly book, Before Harlem: An Anthology of African-American Literature from the Long Nineteenth Century, was published in 2016. Her art has appeared in a number of publications and media sites, including The Women’s Review of Books, Cog Magazine, The San Francisco Chronicle, The New York Times, Buzzfeed.com, BET.com, SFGate.com, and KPIX.com. Her comics have appeared in the Alphabet and We’re Still Here anthologies, from Stacked Deck Press and the upcoming Drawing Power anthology, from Abrams Press.

Black Girls Create: What do you create?

In my work as a Professor in the English Department at Mills College, I describe myself as a literary historian of the Black nineteenth century. This means I teach and write about U.S. Black writers of the 1800s.

In my work as an artist, I create comics, paintings, drawings, and illustrations that use humor and lots of bright colors to explore the complexity of race and gender in the 21st century.

BGC: Why do you create?

In all honesty, I create because it's what I've always done. Some of my earliest memories are memories of making art. I've often said that I've been an artist almost as long as I've been Black; and when you've been drawing and painting for that long, art simply becomes part of the way you experience and process your world. I don't think it's an exaggeration for me say that art helps me understand who I am.

BGC: Who is your audience?

There are two answers to this question. The first is that I create the art I want to see in the world, and I hope it resonates with other people. That said, while my art is really, truly for all audiences who find it compelling, I feel especially accountable to the people I depict in my work; and those are, for the most part, Black people and communities of color. In my comics and zines, I also depict the experiences of queer and trans folks of color, and I hope that these communities find my works relatable and reflective of some of their experiences.

BGC: Who or what inspired you to do what you do? Who or what continues to inspire you?

I take a lot of inspiration from people who are thriving in their art practice and who are creating work that I love. I try to learn from those who are doing some of the things I want to do. I am very much inspired by those artists who are doing interesting figurative work, as well as those who are using comics and other visual media to tell stories that center the experiences of people of color. Some living artists whose careers I actively follow are the visual artists Kerry James Marshall, Kara Walker, Iona Rozeal Brown, Paula Scher, and Mickalene Thomas. I am also very much inspired by the work of the comic creators John Jennings (co-creator of the graphic novel version of Octavia Butler's Kindred), Thi Bui, Jimmie Robinson (some of whose work is set in the Bay Area), Spike Trotman, and Jillian Tamaki. I could list a whole lot more, but I'll stop there.

By the same token I don't know if I'd call it inspiration, but I was very much motivated as a developing artist by the support of my mom and dad. Even as an elementary and middle school student, my parents took my art as seriously as I did. I grew up in the New York area, and they took me to museums where I could study the work of others. They also took me to buy my supplies at the same stores where art school students shopped. All of this helped me to think of myself as a professional, even at a very young age.

BGC: What inspired you to become an English professor?

As an undergraduate, I was very much focused on earning an MFA and becoming a professor of creative writing. One day, though, one of my former advisors, Suzanne Woods, pulled me aside to discuss my plans for graduate school. She encouraged me to apply to PhD programs in English and to become a literature professor. She even told me where to apply. I changed course (away from the MFA), and I've never looked back.

BGC: Is there a connection between your work as a professor and your work as an artist?

There is a definite connection between my academic work and my art. Both forms of work revolve around the experiences of people of African descent. Also, in some ways, I use art as a research tool. I use art to explore issues and questions about Black life, Black history, and Black futures. My research in early African American literature and history has taught me a lot about the depth and breadth of Black creative experience (literature, art, and activism), and this directly feeds and informs my art. This knowledge of our long history of using creative work as a tool of resistance, celebration, and exploration has strengthened my sense of entitlement to a public voice.

BGC: How do you balance creating with the rest of your life?

I prioritize my art and illustration work, in order to make sure it doesn't simply fall prey to the myriad other tasks demanding my attention. I think of the common financial advice that you should, "pay yourself first." Prioritizing art is my way of doing that — of prioritizing the art practice that sustains me and helps me navigate my world.

BGC: You recently completed your 1001 Black Men Project. What inspired you to create this and how did you decide who to sketch?

The 1001 Black Men Project was inspired by my concern that even those Black-owned media outlets that seek to celebrate Black men seem to depict only the narrowest vision of what Black manhood and masculinity can be. I wanted to try my hand at creating a body of portraits of Black men that was truly representative of the full diversity of Black men's experiences, aesthetics, classes, and identities. Initially, I started by drawing the men I noticed when I was out and about in the Bay Area. I drew the security guard at our local grocery store, the men I saw during my regular trips to the public library, the people seated near me during my annual trips to San Diego Comic Con. Then, around my 300th drawing, I started to use each century point (300 drawings, 400, 500, et cetera) as a check-in, to consider which constituencies I'd somehow left out, which groups of Black men seem to be over-represented, and why. Over time, I became more aware of my own biases and more intentional about depicting those Black male populations I'd somehow seemed to overlook.

BGC: Why is it important, as a Black woman, to create?

As Black women our lens on the present, the past, and the imagined future is critically important. Everyone benefits when a broader range of perspectives is represented, and the constellation of identities and experiences that shapes each of our lives as Black women gives every one of us a unique vision and creative imagination. In addition, art in any form — performing, visual, literary — can be a wonderfully sustaining and affirming practice, and Black women deserve to access every available avenue for affirmation, sustenance, and creativity.

BGC: Advice for young creators/ones just starting?

My advise for young creators is to commit yourself to your creative work. Do it every day, with little attention to what others might think. By the same token, pay attention to the work of others, learn from other artists, and allow their work to inspire you. Go to gallery shows, museums, and comic and zine fests. Be open to community and connection with other artists. Also, set goals and work toward them — a drawing each day, a finished comic, a collection of short stories, etc. Then celebrate with friends when you've reached that milestone. And celebrate yourself whenever you've created something new, something you like, or something that was hard for you.

BGC: Any future projects you’re working on?

I enjoy long-term projects that I can manage to sustain in 3-5 hours a day. I'm currently developing three projects. One is, Bay Area Heart and Soul: Black Artists in a Time of Change (with Filmmaker Pam Uzzell). I am creating a series of portraits of Bay Area Black artists (visual, performing, and literary), and I will be posting them on a website, in much the same way as I did with 1001 Black Men. The difference is that these portraits will also incorporate the words of the artists themselves. Pam Uzzell is creating short video interviews with roughly one in every 5 of the artists I'm drawing. Check All that Apply is a web-based comic strip about life as a Black nerd, and it's inspired by events in my own life. I'll be launching that project in early April. In addition, I'm working on a bi-monthly web comic about time travel. Stay tuned!

#Visual Arts #Art

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megwaldzarchive · 5 years

Text

3.26.19

February and March flew by! I’ve learned and processed a lot and have come out on the other side of Pisces season alive. I thank everyone that has helped me get to where I am and am sitting right now. Thank you thank you thank you.

This Aries season is all about securing my mental health and healing myself in order to be a person for my last year of college. I’ve been learning a lot about what I want to do and the person I’ve become and want to be going forward. I’m in a weird time right now where I’m kind of going through the collapse of a career dream I thought I always wanted… This is more than a career collapse. Honestly, I’m living (and trying to break out of) the loops I’ve been obsessing over. My life was routinely shitty because I was not taking care of myself. I am still learning how to do that. I’m learning how to keep to myself. I’m learning that my ideas aren’t that good and that’s okay. I’m learning how to spend my emotional labor. I’m learning how to conserve my energy. I’m reminded that my time and energy are valuable and need to be nurtured constantly. I’m learning how to prioritize not only myself, but also the well-being of those I care deeply about. I am learning to recognize the harmful ways that capitalism has invaded my conceptualization of my being. I’m learning to undo that when I recognize it. I’m learning to put words into action. I’m trying to put down my phone and pick up a book. I’m trying to learn.

Although animation is fun and rewarding at times, I’m not sure if it is something I want to commit to. It’s so much time and energy and I don’t think my heart is in making things move all that much. I enjoy the medium of animation because it completely shaped who I am and how I perceived the world; Animation gave me people to look up to, songs to sing, and friendships with strangers in large amusement parks. Animation also ingrained me with racist imagery and songs, sexist values and aspirations, and the ever growing need to escape from seeing my reality and the reality of others. I was/am living in a fantasy world. I am learning to look at my reality more honestly.

This is not necessarily an experience I want to give to people, especially impressionable children. I do not need to impact the masses. Disney is not the end goal. There are people who would care about my ideas and are much smaller and more fulfilling. I am not my work/artistic output. I am more than that, but more importantly I feel like I have nothing to say right now.

I am truly uneducated. I will graduate from my school, with an art degree in hand, feeling more confused than when I walked in. I see more, now, than I did at 17, but I don’t understand it still. I didn’t take my education seriously until maybe last year, in part because of my immense privilege and my lack of self confidence. Education environments have always been confusing and invalidating for me. I have been in service of the institutions I participate in for so long, starting in fourth grade in Student Council. When I entered college, I joined a sorority, took classes I thought were cool and now am an art major. If that’s not the most privileged stumble through college then I don’t know what is. I got a few cuts, scars, and bruises (and will continue to) but this tiny 4 year blip in my life timeline will blend into the rest of my life.

I don’t understand what “portfolio-level work” means or what are even necessary components of a portfolio. I can’t draw things off the top of my head. The art world is so confusing. I have no idea what my place is beyond the walls of this college; I am just trying to live as a person not so deeply in service of institutions. As much as I’m itching to get out, I am afraid to leave these resources and spaces behind without a sense of self. I have been a student for 20 years. I’m ready to be a person. I’m ready to be a person who cares about their art practice and themselves. I want to understand what that feels like.

I know I have it in me. It takes time, and is a muscle that needs to be worked like any other. I am ready to be on a new journey of life. Welcome to your 20s, bitch.

As for my independent study this semester, I have fallen off the wagon with creating a character. Creating a character doesn’t feel right or complete right now. I am basically making myself, from silhouettes to music to clothing. I’m pulling from my own experience (necessary) but I don’t really have an interest in creating “fake” people anymore. I have always wanted to tell stories, but these stories should be my own for now until I have access to more resources and brains that want to create together. I think I’m selfishly interested in the things that make me, me. For right now. I am clearly going through changes and it would be awesome to capture that in more comics or creative outlets. I would like to look back on this time in vignettes, of what made me, me. It would be awesome to see other people’s creations of this or have me try and capture other vignettes of experiences. I enjoy trapping time and playing within that time. I think a zine format would be amazing for this. Something small, handheld. Possibly mixed media? Not all illustrations, but more of a magazine. Some writing, some pictures, some photos. Etc. A video game/choose your own adventure but there’s only the next option would also be fun.

How do we represent our lives? What makes us human? What is proof of life/ how do I know I’m living right now [read more on race/class/gender/ability/location discrimination and grievable lives (Frames of War, Judith Butler] ? How can I represent this visually? Who is “deserving” of representation of life?

#journal

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solangessparklyassinbinz · 5 years

Text

3.26.19

This is not necessarily an experience I want to give to people, especially impressionable children. I do not need to impact the masses. I have nothing to say right now.

I am truly uneducated. I will graduate from my school, with an art degree in hand, feeling more confused than when I walked in. I see more, now, than I did at 17, but I don’t understand it still. My immense privilege and my lack of self confidence have not allowed me to take my education seriously. Education environments have always been confusing and invalidating for me. I entered, joined a sorority, took classes I thought were cool and now am an art major. If that’s not the most privileged stumble through college then I don’t know what is. I got a few cuts, scars, and bruises but this tiny 4 year blip in my life timeline will blend into the rest of my life, like the pale pink marks on my skin.

I don’t understand what “portfolio-level work” means or what are even necessary components of a portfolio. I can’t draw a duck off the top of my head. The art world is so confusing. I have no idea what my place is beyond the walls of this college. As much as I’m itching to get out, I am afraid to leave these resources and spaces behind without a sense of self. I have been a student for 20 years. I’m ready to be a person. I’m ready to be a person who cares about their art practice and themselves. I want to understand what that feels like.

I know I have it in me. It takes time, and is a muscle that needs to be worked like any other. I am ready to be on a new journey of life. Welcome to your 20s, bitch.

As for my independent study this semester, I have fallen off the wagon with creating a character. Creating a character doesn’t feel right or complete right now. I am basically making myself, from silhouettes to music to clothing. I’m pulling from my own experience (necessary) but I don’t really have an interest in creating “fake” people anymore. I have always wanted to tell stories, but these stories should be my own for now until I have access to a large team and more resources and brains that want to create together. I think I’m more interested in the things that make me, me. For right now. I am clearly going through changes and it would be awesome to capture that in more comics or creative outlets. I would like to look back on this time in vignettes, of what made me, me. It would be awesome to see other people’s creations of this or have me try and capture other vignettes of experiences. I enjoy trapping time and playing within that time. I think a zine format would be amazing for this. Something small, handheld. Possibly mixed media? Not all illustrations, but more of a magazine. Some writing, some pictures, some photos. Etc. A video game/choose your own adventure but there’s only the next option would also be fun.

How do we represent our lives? What makes us human? What is proof of life/ how do I know I’m living right now? How can I represent this visually?

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houseofvans · 8 years

Photo

Sketchy Behavior | Hellen Jo

Never afraid to speak and/or draw her mind, Los Angeles based artist and illustrator, Hellen Jo and her characters can be described as rough, vulgar, tough, jaded, powerful, bratty and bad-ass - AKA her own brand of femininity. Known for her comic Jin & Jam, and her work as an illustrator and storyboard artist for shows such as Steven Universe and Regular Show, Hellen’s rebellious, and sometimes grotesque artwork and illustrations are redefining Asian American women and women of color in comics. In fact, that’s why Hellen Jo was a must-interviewee for our latest Sketchy Behavior where we talk to her about her love of comics and zines, her antiheroines, and redefining what Asian American women identity is or can be; and what her ultimate dream project realized would be.

Tell folks a little about yourself. So is it Helllen with three “l”’s? Mainly because your IG handle and website has a whole lot of extra “l”’s?

Haha my actual name is Hellen with two L’s. All my emails and urls contain a different number of L’s to confuse everyone. My grandfather took my American name from the Catholic saint, but he spelled it wrong, and now I share the same name as the mythological progenitor of the Greek people. But I like it better than my Korean name, which literally means, “graceful water lily” HAHAHA. I am an illustrator-slash-painter-slash-I-don’t-know-what living and working in Los Angeles.

Let’s talk about your early childhood / background. I read you’re from San Jose, CA and both your folks were professors, which is really cool!! How did you end up making art instead of teaching a room full of students about Hotel Management or Medieval History? Just curious where you got your “creative bug” and what early comics, arts, and/or influences led you down the road to becoming an artist?

I grew up in South San Jose, and yes, both of my parents are professors, of finance and of applied linguistics. A lot of my extended family are professors too, so I grew up parroting their desire for academia, but really, I started drawing when I was a wee babe, and I’ve always wanted to be a cartoonist. When I was really young, my parents drew for fun, really rarely; my dad could draw the shit out of fish and dogs, and my mom painted these really beautiful watercolor still lifes. I was fascinated, and I’d spend all my time drawing on stacks and stacks of dot matrix paper by myself. My parents also had a few art books around the house, and I remember staring so hard at a book of Modigliani nudes that my eyes burned holes through the pages.

What was the first comics you came across?

The first comics I ever got were translated mangas that were given to me by relatives when we’d visit Korea. I remember getting Candy Candy, a flowery glittery shojo manga for girls, and I was mesmerized by all the sparkly romance and starry huge eyes. I was also enthralled by Ranma ½, a gender bending teen manga that was equal parts cute art, cuss words, and shit too sexy for a kid my age. However, I was mostly thrilled that I could understand the stories with really minimal Korean reading skills, thus cementing a forever love of comics. In junior high and high school, I read a mix of newspaper strips and some limited manga, and I was enthralled with MTV cartoons “Daria” and “Aeon Flux”, but I wasn’t exposed to zines or graphic novels until I moved to Berkeley for college.

Did you have a first comic shop you haunted? What did you fill your comic art hunger with?

Being a super sheltered teen with not-great social skills, I was lonely my first semester, so I would lurk at Cody’s Books and Comic Relief every single day after classes. I read the entirety of Xaime Hernandez’s Love & Rockets volume, The Death of Speedy one afternoon at Cody’s, and it literally made me high; I was so hooked. I amassed some massive credit card debt buying and reading as many amazing comics as I could those first (and only) couple years of school: all of Los Bros Hernandez’s Love & Rockets, Dan Clowes’ Eightball, Julie Doucet’s Dirty Plotte comics, Peter Bagge’s Hate series, Chris Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan, Charles Burns’ Black Hole, Taiyo Matsumoto’s Black and White, Junji Ito’s Tomie and Uzumaki volumes… I could not believe the scope and breadth of the alternative comics genre, and the stories were so insanely good; they literally mesmerized me. I was so obsessed; I even skulked around the tiny comics section at UC Berkeley’s Moffitt Library in search of books I hadn’t read, and amid the fifty volumes of Doonesbury strips, some sick university librarian had included an early English translation of the Suehiro Maruo collection, Ultra Gash Inferno. That book blew my tiny mind about a hundred times; it’s totally fucked up erotic-grotesque horror porn, but the art is unbelievably beautiful. I read that entire thing sitting on the floor in the aisle, feverishly praying to God to forgive my sins after I finished the book, because I was way too ashamed to check it out of the library.

How about zines? I imagine a comic devouring ….

I devoured zines at a nearly equally fervent pace, including those by Aaron Cometbus, Al Burian (Burn Collector), Doris, John Pham, Jason Shiga, Lark Pien, Mimi Thi Nguyen, etc. I had never seen a zine before in my life, and suddenly, I was living in a town full of zinesters. I was drowning in inspiration. I tried to copy the art and writing of everything I read, and I spent a lot of my time making band flyers, trying to pass off zines as suitable replacements for term papers (this worked just once), and making monthly auto-bio comics for a few student publications. Eventually, I dropped out of school, then dropped out of school again, and I made my first published comic, Jin & Jam; then it all became real.

What was your early works like? and how did these become fodder for your self-published stuff later? What about your own experiences did you feel needed to be expressed in your own comics and artwork?

As a kid I was mostly copying sparkly girl manga and Sailor Moon stickers, and I don’t think I’ve really strayed all that far from that. My first few zines were cutesy autobiographical comics about crushes and falling asleep at the library; incredibly dull stuff. I made a super fun split comic/ep with this band I loved, The Clarendon Hills, but after that point, I was tired of drawing cute, goofy shit.

I had also really been obsessed with Korean ghost horror movies in high school, and I wanted to make comics that reflected more of that kind of coming-of-age violence and rage, so I made a couple standalone horror comics, Paralysis and Blister. These were longer than anything I’d ever done (forty to fifty pages each), and I felt like I was finally figuring out how to write interesting stories. I eventually dropped out of school and made Jin & Jam, based a bit on growing up in San Jose and on other kids I had grown up with.

At the time, there were still relatively few Asian American women in comics, and I was tired of whatever hyper-cute, yellow-fever, Japanified shit we were being pigeon-holed into, so I reacted by writing and drawing vulgar girls who started fights and didn’t give a fuck. I went to art school for a few semesters, got better at drawing people, and went on to draw nothing but mean bad girl ne'erdowells. I’d never been a very strong or defiant personality outwardly, but I’ve always been a pretty big fuckin bitch on the inside, and I just wanted to draw how I feel, in the most sincere way possible. And naturally, over the years, as I continued to develop this attitude in my art, I was able to express it better in person as well. Self-actualization through making comics!

For folks who don’t read comics, can you explain why they are SO AMAZING and moving to you! What about the format, art and overall genre makes them so great and not just your typical “funnies.”

I truly believe that comics are the greatest narrative format and art medium of all time! They are completely full of potential; you can draw and write whatever the hell you can think of, there are no real rules, and you as author and artist can create a deep and intimate experience for your reader. You can bare your vulnerabilities or yell at the world or create a visual masterpiece or inform people, visually and narratively. I don’t even believe that good art makes good comics; writing is king, and the art should really serve to further the story. Some of the worst comics I’ve ever seen had the most amazing art, and some of the greatest comics I’ve loved have the plainest, most naive, even ugly visuals, but those authors were able to finesse a symbiotic relationship between the text and the images to tell a compelling story. People are already so drawn to images, so it makes sense to me that they can enhance a reader’s literary experience so much.

I read that Taiyo Matsumoto is one of your all time inspirations. Most folks probably don’t know much about this master of comics, heck my knowledge is limited, so what makes his work speak to you so much? Perhaps it’ll encourage folks to venture into a new world of art exploration through visual comics.

Taiyo Matsumoto is the all time master of coming-of-age comics. I worship at his altar, for real. He is a Japanese artist, so technically his work is manga, but his masterful storytelling and singular visuals are so different from most manga, beyond categorization. He writes quiet, powerful stories about boys, girls, and teens who live in uncaring worlds surrounded by unfeeling adults, but they rise to these challenges and thrive in spite of themselves. The characters feel deeply, and the reader can’t help but ache and rage and celebrate just as fully. The drawings are beautiful and sensitive, with rough, loose artwork consisting of scratchy lines and cinematically composed shots.

What were some of your first memories with his work?

I remember buying the first two Pulp volumes of Black and White (also published as Tekkonkinkreet) at Comic Relief, reading them both at home that day, and then, covered in tears, literally *running* back that evening to buy the last volume before the store closed. I probably cried a dozen times while reading it; it’s a story about two orphan boys who protect each other in a neo-Vegas-like city of vice, but the characters were so brutal and brilliant and poignant. I had never read anything like that before, and it literally made me sick that, at the time, none of his other works were available in English. Eventually, I figured out that he was more widely published in Korea, so on every family trip, I’d run away from my folks for a day and buy as many of his books as I could carry back to the US. I made my way, slowly, through the Korean translations of Hana-otoko, Ping Pong (another incredible favorite!), and Zero. A beautiful collection of short stories, Blue Spring, was published in English, and then VIZ began translating the series No. 5, but they abruptly stopped mid-series due to low book sales. I was so starved for his work that at that point, I’d ebay his art books and comics only available in Japanese and just stare at them. Eventually, Black and White was made into the anime film, Tekkonkinkreet, and Ping Pong was made into an anime mini-series, and his rise in popularity ensured a wider English availability of his work. His current series, Sunny, is being translated and published here, and every volume breaks my heart a million times.

I’m sorry, this just turned into a gushy, gross fan fest, but Matsumoto’s books really changed my entire perspective on how comics can be written and paced, how characters can be developed fully, and how important comics really are to me. I love them so much!!!!!

You’ve worked in so many cool fields such as a storyboard artist and designer, and on various cartoons, such as Steven Universe. For folks who are interested in those fields, what can you tell folks about that? I’m sure like most artists, you’d rather be spending those long hours working on your own personal art, so how do you balance them? How did you move from a comic artist to working as a storyboarding artist?

I stopped working in animation about a year and a half ago, but the transition from indie comics to storyboarding was rough one, for me. I got into storyboarding at a time when a lot of kids’ animation networks were starting to hire outside the pool of animation school graduates and reach into the scummy ponds of comics. In my case, the creator of Regular Show, JG Quintel, had bought some of my comics at San Diego Comic-Con from my publisher, and he offered me a storyboard revisionist test.

Some cartoonists, like my partner Calvin Wong, were able to transition wonderfully; cartoonists and board artists are both visual storytellers, and once they’d learn the ropes, many of them thrived and succeeded. I can’t say the same for myself; I have major time management issues, I draw and write incredibly slowly, and going from working completely alone to pitching and revising stories with directors and showrunners was just a real shock to my system. For most of my time at Cartoon Network and FOX ADHD, I wasn’t able to do much personal work, but I crammed it in where I could.

Storyboarding also requires a lot of late nights and crazy work hours, to meet pitch deadlines and to rewrite and redraw large portions of your board. I just couldn’t deal. I lost a lot of weight, more of my hair fell out, and the extreme stress of the job put my undiagnosed diabetes into overdrive (stress makes your liver pump out sugar like crazy, look it up, people!) I realized that this industry was not meant for lard lads like me, and when the opportunity came to stop, I did. I could never figure out the balance between my job and my personal work, and I finally chose the latter. Now I’m trying to figure out the balance between making personal work and surviving, but I’ve yet to crack that nut either!

From your art I get a sense of rebellion and angst, how did this morph into an outlet through comics, cartoons, and illustration? Some aspects of your work that are so cool is the fact that your characters are female and women of color and in a completely new way. Asian characters definitely get stereotype in art and comics, so when did you consciously start to create these awesome antiheroines and redefine what Asian/Asian American women/girl identity is or can be?

A lot of the seething rage bubbling behind my eyes has been simmering there since childhood, and a very large portion of that anger comes directly from all the racism and sexism I’ve experienced as a child and adult. I’ve been treated patronizingly by boys and men who expect an Asian girl to be frail, demure, receptive, and soft-spoken. I’ve experienced yellow fever from dudes who are clearly more interested in my slanted eyes and sideways cunt than in whatever it is I have to say. Even in comics and illustration, people constantly tell me I must be influenced by Japanese woodblock print (pray tell, where in the holy fuck does that come from???), or they’ll look at a painting I’ve done of a girl bleeding from her mouth and dismiss my work as “cute”. I despise this complete lack of respect, for me and for Asian American women in general, and I’ve made it my life mission to depict my girls as I would prefer to be seen: fucking angry, violent, mean, dirty and gross, unapproachable, tough, jaded, ugly, powerful, and completely apathetic to you and your shit. Any rebellion and angst in my work comes directly from my own anger, and in my opinion, it makes that shit way better. Girls and women of color get so little respect in real life, so why not “be the change I want to see” in my drawings?

I think I was always aware of this lack of respect, and the “othering” of Asian American women, but once I got to college and learned to put a name to the racism and xenophobia and sexism and fetishism that we experience, my heart burst into angry flames, and it exploded into all of my art. I’ve never been able to hold that back, and I’m not interested in doing so, ever.

Talk about your process and mediums and process. Are you a night owl or an early bird artist? Do you have stacks of in-progress works or are you a one and down drawing person? Do you jot down notes or are you a sketch book person.

I am a paper and pencil artist all the way; I do work digitally sometimes, to make gifs or to storyboard, but I hate drawing and coloring on the computer. I’m terrible at it! I draw everything in pencil first, erasing a hundred thousand times along the way toward a good drawing. For my paintings, I’ll then ink with brush pen and paint with watercolor, all on coldpress Arches. For comics, I ink with whatever, brush pen or fountain pen, or leave the pencil, usually on bristol board. I’ve also been keeping sketchbooks more recently (never really maintained the habit before), where I like to doodle fountain pen and color with Copic markers. In sketchbooks, I’ll slap post-its on mistakes, a trick I learned from paper storyboarding on Regular Show.

I am a total night owl and a hermit; I have to be really isolated to get anything done, but at the same time, being so alone makes me crave social interaction in quick, fiery bursts. I’ll go on social rampages for a week at a time, and then jump back into my hidey hole and stay hidden for months, avoiding everyone. It’s not a very productive or healthy way to be, but it’s how I’ve always been.

I have great difficulty trying to juggle multiple tasks; I tend to devote all my mental energy and focus into whatever I’m working on at the time, so I need to complete each piece before I can do anything else. It’s an incredibly inefficient, time-wasting way of making art, but it’s also the only way I can produce drawings that I am satisfied with.

If we were to bust into your workspace or studio, what would we find? and what would you not want us to find?

You’d find an unshowered me, drawing in my underwear, which coincidentally is also what I do not want you to find!

You’d also find a room half made into workspace (more below), and half taken over by boxes of t-shirts and sweatshirts (I do all my own mailorder fulfillment, like an idiot!) I also like to surround myself with junk I find inspiring, so the walls are covered in prints and originals by some of my favorite artists, a bookshelf along the back wall is filled with about a third of my favorite comics and books and zines, and every available non-work surface (including desk, wall shelves, and bulletin boards) are covered in vintage toys, dice, tchotchkes, bottles, lighters and folding knives, weird dolls and figurines, a variety of fake cigarettes (I have a collection…)

Work-space wise, I have two long desks placed along a wall; the left desk has my computer and Cintiq, as well as my ancient laptop. Underneath and to the side of this desk are my large-format Epson scanner, fancy-ass Epson giclee printer, and a Brother double-sided laser printer. The right desk has a cutting mat, an adjustable drawing surface, and a hundred million pens and half my supplies/crafts hoard. I have a giant guillotine paper cutter for zines underneath this desk. I’ve got two closets filled with button making supplies, additional supplies/crafts hoard, and all kinds of watercolor paper, bristol paper, and mailing envelopes are crammed into every shelf, alcove, gap. This room has five lamps because I need my eyes to burn when I’m working. Also, everything is covered in stickers because I am obsessed with stickers.

What is something you’d like to see happen more often if at all in the contemporary art world? How’s the LA art scene holding up? Whaddya think?

As an artist who adores comics, I have a deep affection for low-brow mediums getting high-art and high-literary respect. Not that a comic needs to be shown in a gallery to be a valid art form, but I am so excited that comics that used to be considered fringe or underground are gaining traction as important works of art and literature. I wish this upward trajectory would continue forever, until everyone understands the love I feel for comics, but who knows what the future holds: the New York Times just recently stopped publishing their Graphic Novel Best Seller lists, and I think it’s a damn shame.

The LA art scene is really interesting to me, because it embraces both hi and lo brow work so readily; fancy pants galleries that make catalogues and sell to art dealers have openings right alongside pop-art stores that sell zines and comics, and I enjoy having access to both. I will say that I think LA galleries are a bit oversaturated with art shows devoted to television and pop culture fan art; yeah, I get that you loooooooove that crazy 70s cult classic sci-fi series and you want to draw Mulder and Scully and Boba Fett in sexual repose for the rest of your life, but I’m more excited about seeing new and original work from everyone. I know you have something to say, and I want to see it.

Mostly, I’d obviously love to see more women of color making art and making comics; we’ve come a long way since I started making zines in 2002, and there are some incredible WOC cartoonists making amazing work right now, but we need more more MORE!

What would be your ultimate dream project? What is something you haven’t tried and would love to give it a go at? Dream collaborations?

My ultimate dream project is the Great American Graphic Novel, but I am so shit at finishing anything that I have not been able to even approach this terrifying prospect. But I figure I have until the day of my death to make something, so … one step at a time?

As far as something I’ve never tried, I’ve been recently interested in site-specific installation; I’ve always been a drawer for print, confined to the desk, and I’m in awe of cartoonists and illustrators who have transitioned to other forms of visual media, whether it be video, sculpture, performance, whatever. I know my personality tends toward repeating the same motions forever and ever, and I hope I can break out of that and make something really different and challenging for myself. I also secretly want to make music but I am the shittiest guitarist ever so maybe it’s better for the world that I don’t!

The dreamiest collaboration I can think of is to illustrate a skate deck for any sick-ass teen girl or woman skater. Seriously, if any board companies wanna make this happen, EMAIL ME

Give us your top 5 of your current favorite comic artists as well as your top 5 artists in general.

Top 5 Current Favorite Comic Artists:

1. Jonny Negron 2. Jillian Tamaki 3. Michael DeForge 4. Ines Estrada 5. Anna Haifisch

Top 5 Artists of All Time

1. Taiyo Matsumoto 2. Xaime Hernandez 3. David Shrigley 4. Julie Doucet 5. Daniel Clowes

What are your favorite style of VANS? And how would you describe your own personal style?

My favorite VANS are the all-black Authentic Lo Pros, although I have a soft spot for my first pair of Cara Beth Burnsides in high school (they were so ugly and I never skated, but I loved them).

My personal style can be described as aging colorblind tomboy who dresses herself in the dark; my favorite outfit is a black hoodie with black denim shorts and black socks and black sneakers.

What do you have planned for this 2017? New shows? New published works?

I’ve got two group shows with some of my favorite artists in the works; I’m so excited but I can’t share any details yet. I’ve also been writing a new comic, but don’t believe it til ya see it!

Best bit of advice and worse advice in regards to art?

Best Advice: Never be satisfied; always challenge yourself to make your art better than everything you’ve done previously.

Worst Advice: Make comics as a stepping stone towards getting a job in animation. When people do this, you can smell the stink of insincerity a mile away. Fuck you, comics are a beautiful medium, and every shitty asshole who does this, I hate your guts!

Follow Hellen Jo

Website: http://helllllen.org Shop: http://helllllen.bigcartel.com Instagram: @helllllenjjjjjo

Images courtesy of the artist

#vans #vans art #hellen jo #comic #cartoonist #indie #zine #sketchy thursdays #interview

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