Art Attic Studio Notes

Current state of art desk:

 

 

Weather: 🌞

Mood: 🤧

Listening to: Silence.

Watching: This animation I can’t stop thinking about.

Reading:

Field Guide to Graphic Literature. Even if you’re not an artist, Kelcey Evrick’s Substack is worth following. Her illustrated stories might just inspire you to go make some doodles!

Blood in the Machine by Brian Merchant. I stumbled across Brian’s work via Matthew Butterick’s newsletter. Matthew wrote the book on typography for lawyers, and is co-counsel in class action lawsuits against AI products. I spent the past year playing with and studying generative AI, since it’s something that will likely replace many aspects of my paralegal work. Blood in the Machine is for modern day Luddites, or those aspiring to be one (like me!).

The Edge of the Sea by Rachel Carson. A couple of weeks ago I got to spend some time in Bar Harbor, Maine, and Acadia National Park. Beachcombing is one of my favorite beachy pastimes, but I got curious – what are all of those little creatures moving around in the tide pools? What do they do when they’re underwater? How do they not die when they’re basking in the sun?

Relatedly, snails move much faster than their reputation suggests they might. Did you know their mouths are on the bottom of their head and as they move they’re just munching along with tiny little teeth, kind of like little algae lawnmowers!

Cultivating: Creative routine. Listening.

Abstaining: Uncomfortable shoes. Complaining about colder weather and shorter days.

Tarot Card: Strength, reversed.

Creating:

I’m experimenting with some of the things I’ve been learning in Field Guide to Graphic Literature. Art + words have long been a favorite exploration of mine. I’ve always thought of myself as a writer first, and words seem to tiptoe into everything I create.

 

 

As a self-taught artist and a writer who learns by writing, my vocabulary for what-I-do has always been shaped by the information I had access to/knew to look for. For years I’ve thought of myself as an art journalist or visual journalist who sometimes creates collage poetry. It doesn’t quite fit, but I wasn’t sure what the heck else to call it – that’s what everyone else around me was calling it so I tucked myself into that little box.

 

 

I rarely feel like I fit into art world, even when I’m showing my work. I write in fits and starts, with no real sustained discipline, because it cuts into my art time…in the same way that art cuts into my writing time! It’s only occurred to me over the past couple of years that maybe there was a way to combine them. I’d long thought that if I wanted to write about art journals it would need to be a how-to book, which I’m not interested in creating. But what if my art journal was the book?

 

 

Field Guide to Graphic Literature won’t change much about the way I create. But it’s so helpful in providing a deeper understanding of the rich and varied history of graphic literature and a new vocabulary and context.

 

 

An experiment: what if I turn paper collage into a digital comic?

This has some precedent! I’ve experimented with making digital comics in the past. My inability to draw frustrated my efforts.

 

 

I often write stories about my art for social media captions. Why not break that story into something that resembles a comic, or expand it into graphic literature?

The problem is, I can’t draw, and I’ve got it stuck in my head that being able to draw is like…an artist requirement. When I stumbled across these gems last month, I had an idea to turn my working through the lessons into a series of videos.

That project seems less interesting now that I’m off social media, and also because right now I’m choosing to embrace the things I can do.

So I decided to try to make a comic with some pieces from my Animals Wearing J. Peterman collage collection.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Whether it’s any good is beside the point – I’m thoroughly entertained, and that’s the entire point of making art and writing.