fat kid kickball, 9/7/10-4/8/11

So, "fat kid kickball" was a picture book a 4th grader wrote at home and brought to school. I told him the title was inappropriate... but I wasn't sure. To make amens I drew this version of his kickball character and gave him a copy. Anyhow, these are a few pages from that time, where the drawing style took another turn, yet again. The pdf is here!

introducing Jambie

Jambie was inspired by the drawing style and sillyness of a 5th grade Somalian refugee from my first year of teaching. Around this time, the winter was breaking, and the promise of summer meant I had almost survived a year of elementary school. With a set of new pens and markers to experiment w/, it was a spring awakening! (yep, that's the .pdf) Enjoy :)

 It's true, I had been dialoguing with the fruit flies in my house, taking great pride in naming each one :)

I had woken up from a long after school nap, and wandered out of my Wash Park apartment into a strange and whimsical twilight. My phone rang...

It sounded like a fake call, but it was not. 4 season passes to Winter Park/Copper Mtn., worth basically nothing to me, since I gave them away... but reported on my taxes as about $5,000 worth of income (which was a mistake by the prize company, which tagged me w/ the value of all prizes given away in the whole sweepstake).

It was NOT only a dream! Which I was reminded of when I ended up paying about $1,000 in taxes, instead of receiving a $1,000 refund. Be careful what prizes you accept!!! And be kind to your Gnats, they can be great guides in times of solitary confinement. More Jambie to come. Take care :)

March - August, 2007: look in

This is the first comic I pulled together last year, gathering a series of non-narrative, semi-abstract/energy based comics. You can view/download the zoom-able .pdf here if you'd like to look closer: look in.  Thanks for looking :)

You know, there is still some tension around the idea of sharing this kind of work. Perhaps the lack of words makes this project seem a little less personal, and a more comfortable project to begin with. In any case, here goes!

"And WORDS, even these like boxes seem so destructive and futile at times! if instead of seeking FORM I truly opened myself to EMPTINESS might I become permeable, porous, at ONE with that perfect vibrating Negative Space?" 

**Between these two pages, the style changes a lot. I don't remember the exact date, but maybe 7.12 I went to see John Porcellino give a talk in Denver at the Double Daughters Tavern. I was totally inspired, and the next page I drew... I don't know, looks a lot more complex and interesting to me!

**In the print and .pdf version, there are two more pages here, tho' usually when I look through this, this page seems like the natural end. The following pages are a sort of afterword/reflection on how the drawing process helps me, well, cultivate self awareness(?), something... and then, the typewriter page was/is the back cover, and an example of the narrative comics I was drawing at the time.

Well, yes, I am proud of myself for thinking of this stylized perspective, and yes, you can beg, borrow, and steal this idea for your own comics, as long as you send me $500 US, non-sequential, and a full collection of the Harry Potter DVDs. XO

a foreword

  

Last night I dreamt I was on a passenger train with my students.	We were headed somewhere far away. But instead of going there
our train was circling around one city over and over again-- 20 times.	Later in the dream someone was talking about books of poems, and I asked them:
"Do you mean Transformaciones? The book with the Butterfly on the cover..."	"The book about the train that circles the same city 20-times on the way to somewhere far away?"

They said "No," and I tried to explain the significance and poetry of the train's orbit and our lives' repetitions...

12.21.09