#about ip

This week has been more fruitful and inspiring than expected! I began the week unmotivated and not very put together, not even having a finished timeline in my exhibition plan proposal, and ended it with four pages of a comic inked. I don’t know how happy I’m going to be with those pages when all is said and done, but this intuitive kind of making (making because it has to get done, no thumbnails, no storyboards) has at least given me the opportunity to get out my head a little and just start making these comics. Right now I’m working on one of the frame stories within my comic, a story about my grandmother’s death and the weird way it seemed to be surrounded by cowboys and cowboy culture. 

This opening story will be about my history with the musical “Oklahoma”, a cheesy cowboy musical I never really understood but hated nonetheless, and how I had to get over my hatred of it while visiting my grandmother in rehab/hospice care, as it was one of her favorite musicals to hear us sing from. I’ve been a little nervous about writing these autobiographical/magical realist frame stories as I’m worried about misrepresenting my family or trying to tie together these story pieces that feel a little disparate from afar. I was recommended the works of Mary Karr from Stephanie this week to use as a reference in memoir writing without fear and it’s been helpful so far. But i think the biggest hurdle was just starting without fear. I don’t know how much I’m going to get done by the end of February (when I want to have all my comics done so I can have time to print them and fix up my studio space/make extra pieces for exhibition) but I feel much more ready to face the music now than I did even three days ago. 

Weekly Post!

Week 7 Posting

My woven blanket order just came in! I’m really excited about it, it’s turned out exactly how I wanted it to. I faced a little bit of a crisis about what else I was going to start doing/what thread I was going to follow for the rest of my project. During ideation, I became intrigued with a few drawings I had made of the minotaur and medusa as western figures. Both characters are kind of tragic monsters in Greek mythology: the minotaur was born from a cruel joke, medusa was changed from a cruel retaliation on her assault. I was thinking of ways to fit these characters and other famous tragic Greek theater figures (Medea, Phaedra, Jason) into a western context. I’m not sure how to relate this new idea to queerness and western aesthetics, but it’s something I’ve been thinking about.

I’ve found that collaging helps me to explore some of my ideas and make art from my notes. As seen above, I’ve photocopied some of my notes and have colored, changed and arranged them in new ways. It’s helping me figure out what I want to do, and It makes a really interesting piece on its own!

Weekly Posting

New Post!

This week was a little slow but still pretty productive! I’m nearly halfway through my script for my prologue/frame story, and I’ve began storyboarding/thumb-nailing another (possibly wordless) comic to be featured in the collection. I’ve also been slowly but surely getting to work on those blanket designs, I have one idea pretty solidly worked out (another “bull dyke” character, see above) and I’m starting the process of creating a lineless color design for it that complements the design of my last blanket. By next week I want to have a script finished and a drawing or two started for these comics! I still feel confident re: the direction of this anthology, (well, as confident as I can be) but the calendar is reaaaallyyy very effective in scaring the daylights out of me. Well, we’ll see how this whole thing goes soon. 

Weekly Post!

I finished my first cowboy comic and I’m now trying to turn it into a part of an anthology! Which means I’ve gotta start thinking of more ways to play with these cowboy stories and my theming. I feel much more pumped up and ready create today than I have in a little while, I think I have to deal with some fallout of my emotional stagnation in my art which is...troubling (I already have a lot on my plate comics-wise for some of my other classes, but I think I can still make some original stories here) but I’m excited to make good work on the other end of it. I also started thinking more about making objects as sort of set pieces/a context to read my cowboy stories in, and I definitely want to make some more ceramic pieces and get back in the studio already. 

IT’S HALLOWEEN!!! I received some interesting feedback from my instructors today that made me reevaluate some of the ways I had been working in class. I’m going to have to rethink some of the ways I had been approaching this project, and also think about perhaps ways to incorporate the creation of more physical objects (products?) into my work. I don’t know how much this has to do with my project but. I really want to make a calendar. I lost my journal recently, so I may have to start from scratch re: certain ideas until it is found. On the flip side, working narratively has been really inspirational and productive for me so far! I hope to continue that and explore it in new ways. I don’t know what people want from me but they’re getting comics. Sorry i guess??? Fuck. 

Anyway Happy Halloween!!!!