local man collects dirt

Of course. One of my biggest influences is the cartoonist B.Kliban. While best known for his distinctive cat drawings, most of his cartooning output was single-panel work.

Much of it is easily understandable language or visual puns, but many of his funny works are just unusual situations, with no obvious meaning:

(I think that "Household Hint" could be considered a spiritual forerunner of Tiktok ragebait food videos.)

In his 1975 collection titled "Cat," among many funny cat comics, there are several pages which are just drawings of his beloved cats.

I feel a strong connection to Kliban's approach: Direct contour-line drawing, mostly anonymous characters in novel situations, and few traditional long-term narrative stories. And yet, there are recurring visual trends. (Have you noticed that he only draws one kind of cat?)

It is said that we train our audiences, in form or content. Over time, the reader knows what to expect from an author.

I think that a lesson can be derived from this graphic design manual.

(from Notes on Graphic Design And Visual Communication by Gregg Berryman, 1979.)

I believe we can draw a correlation between broadly-defined "art" (comics, painting, drawing, sculpture, video, etc.) and logo design:

With low "abstraction" (depending upon references that many people will get, explaining things in extremely explicit terms), material will be readily understood, but it is hard to separate this material from other stuff out there. It's harder to have your individual voice known.

With high "abstraction" (sharing weird comics, but consistently over a long period of time with many people,) an artist can have their message understood- or at least received enthusiastically- even if they're weird.

I drew this yesterday. It is probably understandable as both a humorous criticism of gamer-centric marketing and also as a visual-verbal pun to most English speakers under 40. I'm not sure if "Gamer Butter" would be accepted readily without people being familiar with other drawings I've made which lampoon consumerism and gadget culture.

This is the control room, and if you look closely, you'll see a dark stripe in the carpet running the perimeter of the room. This was referred to as the "velvet rope," and absolutely NO ONE was allowed to cross it without authorization. It was under constant observation from an adjacent office, and I was told that if someone did set foot inside without permission, things got VERY serious VERY quickly.

This is one of the computer stations, and to me, it's such a gorgeous encapsulation of its period of technology, the sort of aesthetic that shows like Lost will bend over backwards to recreate.

As I was scouting, I noticed the day calendar had last been torn off about when the plant closed for good...

Then we went into the nuclear reactor, and the whole damn thing was just so spooky.

Looking back, I think it came from an overwhelming feeling of utter insignificance in the face of the sheer power this colossus was designed to produce.

The scale was just so out of proportion to every day reality, the sort of place where a weight of "46000 LBS" is just casually noted on the side of a part.

Peering into where the core would've been, all I could think is that I'd never want the job where you have to climb down that ladder on the left while this thing was in operation.

If you're interested in seeing more, you can find my full tour here!

https://nickcarr.com/scouting-a-decommissioned-nuclear-power-plant/