Seeing Calvino

“So he climbed up the knobby old tree, moving his arms and legs along the branches with the sureness and speed which came to him from years of our practicing together... Our father leaned out the window. “When you’re tired of being up there, you’ll change your mind!” he shouted. “I’ll never change my mind,” exclaimed my brother from the branch. “You’ll see as soon as you come down!” “I’ll never come down again!” And he kept his word.” The Baron In The Trees Gouache and colored pencil on watercolor paper April 18th, 2017 Artist: Joe Kuth

artist: Matt Kish

artist: Matt Kish

“[H]ere, now, my choice is made: I shall implode, as if this centripetal plunge might for ever save me from doubt and error, from the time of ephemeral change, from the slippery descent of before and after, bring me to a time of stability, still and smooth, enable me to achieve the one condition that is homogeneous and compact and definitive . . . Sometimes, of course, I do seem to hear a voice from the furthest galaxies: ‘It’s me, Qfwfq, I am yourself exploding as you implode: I’m splashing out, expressing myself, spreading myself about, communicating, realizing all the potential I have; I really exist, not like you, introverted, reticent, egocentric, fused in an immutable self . . . ‘” Cosmicomics Old and New: Implosion Ink on watercolor paper August 17, 2016 Artist: Leighton Connor

- Joe Kuth

“If I tell you I remember it - began Qfwfq - you will object that in nothingness, nothing can remember anything, nor be remembered by anything, which is one reason why you won’t be able to believe so much as a word of what I am about to tell you... All I can tell you is that the moment there was something, there being nothing else, that something was the universe, and since it hadn’t been there before, there was a before when it wasn’t and an afterwards when it was... No, I’m going too fast; or too slow, I don’t know: because this expansion of the universe was infinitely fast yet started out from a beginning so deeply buried in nothing that to push its way out and peep over the threshold of space and time required a wrench of such violence as not to be measurable in terms of space and time.” Cosmicomics Old And New: Nothing And Not Much Gouache and colored pencil on watercolor paper August 10th, 2016 Artist: Joe Kuth

"Now it is clear that the construction of time consisted precisely in the very defeat of our attempts to construct it; except that we had not worked for ourselves but for you. We molluscs, who first had the intention of lasting, have given our kingdom, time, to the most volatile race of inhabitants of the temporary, namely humanity: had it not been for us they would never have thought of it. It needed the cross-section of the Earth’s crust to throw up our shells, which we had abandoned some hundred, three hundred, five hundred million years before, for the vertical dimension of time to open up to you and release you from the continual cycle of the stars’ circuit in which you continue to pigeonhole the course of your fragmentary existences.”  World Memory and Other Cosmicomics Stories: Shells and Time Ink, tape, and printer paper on watercolor paper July 27, 2016 Artist: Leighton Connor

“What we call the Sun is nothing but a continuous detonation of gas, an explosion that’s been lasting for five billion years and still hasn’t stopped spewing up stuff; it’s a typhoon of fire, shapeless and lawless, threatening constant aggression, totally unpredictable. ...Of course, the amount of matter that the Sun chucks down here - particle fragments, shattered atoms - arranging itself along the lines of force of the magnet that passes from one pole to the other, has formed a kind of invisible shell enfolding the Earth, and we can even pretend that ours is a separate world, where causes and effects answer to certain laws, which if we know them we can master them, safe from the maelstrom of chaotic elements whirling around us.” World Memory And Other Cosmicomics Stories: Solar Storm Gouache and ink on watercolor paper July 20th, 2016 Artist: Joe Kuth

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World Memory and Other Cosmicomic Stories: The Stone Sky Ink on watercolor paper July 5th, 2016 Artist: Leighton Connor

“According to the most recent theories, the Earth was originally a tiny, cold body which later increased in size through the incorporation of meteorites and meteor dust. At first we were under the illusion that we could keep it clean -- old Qfwfq said -- since it was really small and you could sweep it and dust it every day. ...Later I often asked myself whether I was wrong not to tell Xha that another person had landed on the Earth that day.” World Memory And Other Cosmicomics Stories: The Meteorites Gouache and colored pencil on watercolor paper July 6th, 2016 Artist: Joe Kuth

artist: Matt Kish

“For Bm Bn, finding himself there was simply an opportunity for new acts of piracy, poaching and destruction. The wave of granite continued wiping out the world, ruthless and impassive; but over it now reigned a mind that turned this destruction to his own profit. I was no longer the victim of a blind, telluric upheaval, but of that pirate; what could I do to halt those two unstoppable forces?”  World Memory and Other Cosmicomic Stories: The Mushroom Moon Ink on watercolor paper June 14th, 2016 Artist: Leighton Connor

“From my cell, I can say little about the construction of the Chateau d’If where I have been imprisoned for so many years... The walls are so thick they could contain other cells, stairways, casemates and powder magazines, or else the fortress could be all wall, a full and compact solid, with one live man buried in the middle... I prick up my ears: the sounds describe variable, jagged spaces and forms around me... At night the sounds become more distinct, but more uncertain in marking places and distances: somewhere a rat is gnawing, an ill man groans, a boat’s siren announces its entry into the Marseilles roads, and Abbe Faria’s spade continues digging its way among these stones.” Time And The Hunter: The Count Of Monte Cristo Gouache and colored pencil on watercolor paper June 8th, 2016 Artist: Joe Kuth

artist: Matt Kish

“For example, let’s suppose the car pursuing me has behind it a chain of pursuing cars: exactly one second after my pursuer shoots, the pursuer of my pursuer could overtake him and kill him, saving my life. But if two seconds before that happened the pursuer of my pursuer were overtaken and killed by his pursuer, my pursuer would then be saved and free to kill me. A perfect system of pursuits should be based on a simple concatenation of functions: each pursuer has the job of preventing the pursuer ahead of him from shooting his victim, and he has one single means of doing this, namely by shooting him.” Time And The Hunter: The Chase Ink and color coding labels on watercolor paper May 24th, 2016 Artist: Leighton Connor

“I have the impression this isn’t the first time I’ve found myself in this situation: with my bow slackened in my outstretched left hand, my right hand drawn back, the arrow A suspended in midair at about a third of it trajectory, and, a bit further on, also suspended in midair, and also at about a third of his trajectory, the lion L in the act of leaping upon me, jaws agape and claws extended. ...So many and so complex are the factors that condition the parabolic movements both of arrows and of felines that I am unable for the moment to judge which of the eventualities is the more probable.” Time And The Hunter: t zero Gouache, colored pencil, and ink on watercolor paper May 19th, 2016 Artist: Joe Kuth