Art comics people need to start making very different looking things as opposed to very similar looking things. I feel 'backed up' by everyone, like everyone's huddled together, but I would rather see us fan out like internet seeds. I like the idea of 'creators as nomads' living in different nodes they can successfully adapt to.
In their review of KE7, The New York Times uses the phrase "art comics" This sort of diction seems to be approaching the alt mainstream.
"Art comics." I am happy with this term, it has the right number of syllables. i'm a little nervous applying the word 'art' to comics but 'art' has become such a silly/confused word that it doesn't seem threatening. 'art' is a word which I guess each creator will have to decide whether or not it's worth attaching to.
In theory a move 'forward' (meaning making more money) would be a move into the art world (or literary/etc) where there is funding (meaning more than one foundation giving grants) for nonnormative expression. there is financing attached to the word "art" whereas there is none to the word 'comics'. (Not that 'art comics' will necessarily confuse anybody into thinking of them as 'art', but it's an interesting signifier to choose.) Japan and Europe, by contrast, do consider 'comics' a form worth investing in. In the future it's entirely possible/likely that the 'art' paradigm will lose favor for other paradigms, maybe even a "comics" paradigm.
Is this the other option? Building a new paradigm? Seems like no one builds paradigms anymore. Better to adapt.
Pictures from Seattle
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but new paradigms happen whenever anyone 'creates' anything. is it better to invest in your own self (your own paradigm) or invest in other existing paradigms? or both?
no matter how you work, you'll probably be "investing" in the paradigms that have formed you, consciously or not, right? and contributing to those yet to come, whether you like it or not. the whole funding issue could cause longevity of certain forms through support, which might increase future "investments" on the part of creators, directing fresh branches of aping and influence. then again, lots of good work goes un-funded for decades, and still holds great weight once exposed to the light.
but i worry that this kind of thought and analysis can get in the way of sitting down on a daily basis and drawing. it's interesting, but it seems like paradigms develop naturally in accord with the work. not that we can't talk about them, even within the work.
but so doing the work would be the true pickle, or more so, having fun doing the work, or enjoying the work once it's been done, regardless of paradigms that form and flutter. or just enjoying your life! kissing babies, signing contracts. you know the deal.
hey when is there gonna be a post about pen nibs?
do i have to write that post? i draw with a brush!
i'll settle for a post on the fragile veracity & dull velocity of sharpie markers.
actually i would rather discuss those lovely cow-head pictures you gathered in seattle, blaise. they really toot my horns! they really yank my udders. the milk is spewing, folks. i hope austin is reading this post from stockholm and grinning all the way down his spine.
i'm sorry, please continue your discussion of forms. at least i have a table and my damn feet on the floor. cripes almighty, comets. look how i've disgraced my family name, on the internet.
as if i didnt have enough reason to check this blog, now it has heavy duty jesse m comments! my cup runneth over.
hi austin! *waves*
jesse, i agree with all you've said about paradigms (really agree) except the part about 'enjoying it all', which i used to agree with, but now i don't understand what that means. i guess it's a paradigm that i've withdrawn all my money from, and now that account is closed.
'fragile veracity & dull velocity of sharpie markers' please write about this jesse, i love this.
hummm, well, sir.
"enjoying it all"
i certainly don't mean to have thrown a gauze of positivity over the creaky difficulty compounded by, inherent to any variety of art-making processes, embryonic and aged paradigms abounding. the shit is tough! i guess i think i mean that toughness is also fun.
I have a great confidence in a certain powerful, mysterious potential, that being of the intense reactions I had the first time I saw a lot of comics and art I love, and have had upon return visits to individual works. The fact that making stuff is difficult is often squashed, or embraced or transcended, after a taste of this feeling (often had doing new work), or is weighted down under the lack of it, this feeling (often in tandem with not doing new work, hum).
I wonder how closed your "account" could be, blaise, as you continue to pour out chunks of lovely work and maintain a daring, revolutionary, potent and virile blog devoted to similar subject matters. sorry to be so personal, but the cold philosophy you espouse is hardly what i get out of your production. maybe i'm missing your point. but hey, the input can always differ from the output, and that is duly interesting.
Lately I myself have done a bulk of work out of a spirit of desperate exploration towards better feelings, all the while feeling numb. Yet I could learn from the work I did, see what I saw as numbness more objectively, and that seemed like a reward as well; spoils I could drain onto the next blank page (wailing badly from a slack surface nearby, a healthy table, with a slight slant, like a filthy, dented pillow).
also, i'm sorry for being so personal as well, on this brittle, evil, foldable glowing screen. i am responding to kind voices, but the internet is full of cold breezes. i will start on my sharpie marker essay POST HASTE. i promise to cite all my goddamn sources you savages.
jesse,
'see what I saw as numbness more objectively'
i like this a lot. i think maybe that's what i'm doing. so odd though. 'catharsis', yeah?
'the input can always differ from the output'
totally. funny, this paired with the other quote, it reads as a different sort of catharsis, like an unintentional catharsis. expelling something different than what you're intending. i love that. i love the idea of 'not having control'.
btw i was using sharpie markers last night! i love how poisonous they are. sharpies and white out.
yeah man! catharsis...bleeding out the fury!
rarrrrr arr
but, uh, yes...i think there's a "lack of control" leading to great work in many "art comics" as well as the old newspaper strips. but this seems necessarily tied to a constant workload and especially an oft -under-appreciated love of real storytelling. this applies, in my mind, to everyone from brinkman to burns to bushmiller to bud fisher.
a necessity to get something done with strength and speed, for whatever reward (maybe a paycheck from hearst in the '20s? sweaty joy in the 00's? fury unrelenting in '09, perhaps, hmmm).
i think of herriman, or ware mentioning in a walt and skeezix book how king's original pages looked kind of off-handish or sloppy. not that i don't enjoy a well-rendered strip. but it's cool that drawing-catharsis can be born of pure desire to move the characters and situation along, semi-conscious of the actual mundane brain/heart/gut benefits of the creator, barfing it out.
also, i was at my job at a bookstore today and got really dizzy off a big-sized sharpie marker and a fluorescent light unintentionally set on "strobe." it kind of made me hate that scent, that situation. so maybe i wont write the veracity velocity article. maybe i will. i'm still delirious from the whole debacle.
brinkman, chips and BJ rule the sharpie, i need not comment further. BJ in particular. Austin doesn't believe me. BJ's sharpie comics, that I first saw on the catastrophe shop, and the paperrad site, a la 2003 or something, were so, so, so inspiring.
the animations of Jim Trainor out of chicago are also prime examples of sharpie excellence, but he doesn't put them on the internet. he draws interesting comics in sharpie, they are loaded with lore from the oceanic cultures. he was my teacher at the art institute in chicago:
http://www.sunshamesheadhuntingmoon.com/
i'll try to do an art supply post or something if it bursts out of me, but i still have to write a 20 questions for austin, and much will be taken care of in that particular forum, bless you all.
i wonder if anyone gives a shit. i know there are a couple of good friends though, scoping this terrain. i don't mean to make too much a fool. i try to remember, it's good to speak of these things, because as a lad, crouching in my room, laden with inky pages, it was comforting to see people speak about these things from afar.
i think the whole goal of this blog, and that zine, for me, is to create the illusion that people give a shit. to talk 'as if' they did, and then see what happens.
i feel like i've been creating like jtm lately, with the sharpie, and it's good. i like taking other people's memes and running with them.
i would love to see bj's sharpie comics. i can imagine. i almost feel i don't even need the actual comic. but then i won't get the jokes. thanks for the link to your old prof, jesse, that kind of narrative is really nice and relaxing to read.
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