Herding Cats: Chasing (and Catching) One's Mental Tail

So much for spring break: it was neither spring, nor a break, as evidenced by the backlog of drawings I had to catch up on cartooning with this year. In answer to the requisite water-cooler query "what'd you do over break?" I'll be answering with: This week went on a walk in the winter with new ice cleats, experimented with different kitchen timers, graveled the cabin walkway, drank whiskey with a Kentuckian, read some Reader’s Digests, ran the Iditarod, went combat fishing, visited Brooks Falls in Katmai National Park & Preserve, played on a carousel, watched a nuclear explosion, attended a 12-step meeting, rewatched An America Werewolf in London, The Return of the King, and Game of Thrones. I hung out with my wife, porcupines, sled dogs, a giant garden gnome, a couple old timers, a few grizzly bears, and some salmon, moose and beavers. ("So, ah... you stayed home and worked").

A snapshot of the accumulating compost heap inside my sketchbook, nevermind the mental mulch-pile. Sometimes when asked "where do you get your ideas?" I'll answer with the candid observation that it's more like just remembering to take lots of notes. This then is an example of when that process goes off the rails, and the blizzard of little scraps of papers starts to coalesce into deeper drifts. One of the rituals I really miss this semester has been the habit of hanging out with my sketchbook at a local cafe. If I put it off for a while, the scraps of paper just multiply exponentially, unless I slow down > stop doodling and/or coming up with ideas. This slow suffocation of the creative drive is an inevitable side effect of having a full time job (aka paying the bills), and leads to a lot of existential stress, that feeling of always being behind, of never catching up. Or, as is often said to me: "You're always working." Actually this semester saw the occurrence on at leas two distinct occasions that I had to make the conscious, deliberate decision to put down whatever I was working on and instead attend to my student's work. That hurt, but there's really no second thoughts at all when confronted with the choice. Much as I retreat into the buffer zone of my art when confronted with the pressures and demands of being a grown-up, I try my best to not shirk the duties of being full-time faculty now. Suffice to say I have a keener appreciation of what one of my students has to endure when, presumably, they have to juggle other classes, a job and a relationship ie a life, and all I ever ask is to make drawing their priority. Yeah, ask me how well that works out.

As a result of teaching the new Pen & Ink class (some spectacular samples coming sooner than later) I've been exposed to a slew of comics that are currently the favorites of a few students, and a bunch of relatively new-ish classics that I've been meaning to catch up on - this seems to now be a habit in-between semesters and over any "breaks." Big shoutout as usual to all the awesome folks down at the Comic Shop of Fairbanks! The current reading list: Junji Ito’s “Uzumaki,” Milburn’s “Lure,” Liu/Takeda’s “Monstress” Omnibus 1 (“If you try to draw to impress people, you will end up drawing boring art. All you have to do is to demonstrate all you have!” ), Tradd Moore’s “Doctor Strange,” and Ryan North/Erica Henderson's “The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl.” To be sure, a lot of the recent acquisitions have been with an eye on expanding my semesterly tabletop display of sequential art in the classroom to include more diversity, namely works from female artists and creators. Maybe a third of the comics class is now women, but the samples on the roster for pen & ink class was all men (ex: "King" Kirby, Bill Watterson, Maurice Sendak, Walt Kelly etc. etc.)  again, until I realized how I was unconsciously participating in the exclusion that is a hallmark of institutionalized patriarchal systems.

Speaking of systems, as a side-note to the big ol' stickers I slap on all the books in my studio stash, now everything's adorned with my chop logo. That's a call-back to the bookplates meticulously applied to every single one of my books as a child, courtesy of my librarian mom. Nowadays it's meant to be a deterrent to the occasional borrower that sometimes takes years to return, and usually a title I haven't read in a while but sure enough soon as it disappears I'll need something from it. As another collector once said all I ever worry about is what I've bummed from someone else, and let the rest take care of itself - there's a lot more worrisome things to try and stay abreast of these days, and books on loan are the least of 'em.