DOCUMENT
(doc-u-ment)
Art from the blog will be on display at ALTR gallery from Friday, April 11th until Saturday, April 26th.
Opening events April 11th and 12th from 5-10.
Bright Sketch
(Digital)
Stuff like this, I have no idea where it comes from.
It’s like dreams. Last night I dreamt I lived in a pyramid, deep underground. This evening I realized I’ve dreamt of that pyramid many times before.
This strikes me as one of those topics that clearly illustrates a person’s essential temperament. Some people would have dreams like those and think they had once lived in Egypt in a past life. Good for them. Fancy bastards. Me? I just assume “pyramid” is shorthand in my brain for “secret,” “hidden,” and “safe.”
I don’t think the emergent drawings have a great depth of meaning either. I was recently discussing Miami and its lovely abundance of pink and green. Those colors are also complimentary. Sometimes it’s just fun to sketch without brainpower. If words could shrug, that’s what I’d make them do here.
There are plenty of art historians willing to make up a ton of shit about what art means based on its formal qualities and their projections of their issues, obsessions, and essential temperaments. It’s… I suppose more “too bad” than “shocking” how little art historians know about the actual process of making art. If they ever talked to living artists, the answer they’d get most often is, “I have no idea what this is or where it came from, I just know I HAD TO MAKE IT.”
I’m not saying dreams and art don’t mean anything. I love everything about dreams and legitimately want to stab people who don’t understand the holy aspect of all art forms (no part of that sentence is hyperbole). I'm just saying: it’s all complicated. From “the death of the author” (art historians fucking love Barthes for giving them this and I will most definitely revisit it) to the therapist who told me I only made art to avoid grieving for my dead father (a statement that divided my friends and acquaintances nearly 50/50 for and against but which resulted in my immediate abandonment of that particular professional), I have a lot of thoughts about these intricacies.
They’ll have to wait. Til then: enjoy this shiny, mindless, Miami-and-watermelon-summer-goals-inspired nothingness.
The Drowning Reflection
(Digital)
That title is extreme poetic drift. In reality, this is just what happens when you come of age reading Wetworks.
I was 14 when Image Comics was founded. One of the neighbor boys who lived on the street behind me lent me a few issues of Spawn (which, in retrospect, is kind of a gross comic to start reading when you're a 14 year old girl-shaped human; but wait, it gets worse!) and it was the first time I’d ever read an actual comic book. From Spawn I learned about Cerebus (See? Worse*). When I was 16, I learned that if you go to a comic book store, they'll just let you wander around and look at things and then put all the comics you want in a bag for you to pick up once per month. Because I was a teenager of taste, and because my wanna-be punk teen friends thought the comic store was dumb so I was rushed, I just picked out the shiniest shit on the shelves.
Hence: Wetworks. Not the most nuanced title in comics history, but if you wanna see extremely shiny violence, it’s the best bet. Teen me thought Whilce Portacio was a god among men. Adult me is still pretty fond of him.
I love comics, but I’m not very good at drawing them°. I’m also not good at collecting them, actually. I often buy things just because they look cool. I swear I’m not a shallow person and there are some things I do or love truly because of their meaning! I promise I contain untold depths! But not when it comes to shiny things and comic books. And when those two topics merge, my capacity for mindless, mouth-gaping adoration is of divine proportions. I’m fine with that. It feels nice to love things.
* Cerebus is written by Dave Sim, who is famous for writing, drawing, and publishing the longest running independent comic in history. He’s also infamous for hating women so much that an issue of Cerebus included a plot to kill all the women, except the hot ones, who were to be kept in a fucking zoo and it WAS NOT the most misogynistic shit he had written or would go on to write.
° Being not very good at drawing comics has never stopped me from drawing comics. I only pull it off when they’re little three-panel guys, and even that doesn’t have a high success rate. I don’t care.
Lindwyrm 2: The Rollypolly Crew
(Digital)
From the Wiki on Swedish Lindwyrms:
When fully grown, they can become extremely long. To counter this, during hunting they swallow their own tails to become a wheel and roll at extremely high speeds to pursue prey.
That is fucking ridiculous and I love it.