So I want to share an insight that changed the way I live. Yeah, sounds like a cheesy infomercial, so here’s a caveat that it’ll probably revert back to normal mental cruising altitude (skimming barely high enough to avoid a crash) in a few more days, or hours update: too late. Something something mood swing? Reminds me of one of my favorite quips from an old dear friend Jeri (whom I still miss almost once a week): “when you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot, hang on, and SWING.”
Anyways I was recently interviewed by a student for a Communication class paper they were writing, and I talked AT them for a solid hour in my office, like a sourdough professor. But in all seriousness it uncorked something that was on the verge of being forgotten, a recent idea (one of a thousand this week) to resurrect the habit of taking snapshots of them drawing. But as opposed to the way I had traditionally (see here, here, and here) focused on – the range in diversity of their unique, individual grips while sketching – this time I wanted to include equal attention to what they were drawing, namely they’re all drawing comics.
 |
Because the specific epiphany I had was in realizing that all three of my current classes this semester at this exact moment in time were all simultaneously engaged in drawing comics. The awareness or inciting insight dawned on me after a sudden realization in the middle of one class that everyone was all actively and intensely engaged with their respective three-page comic (required in all my Beginning Drawing courses). Think of calm in the eye of a creative storm, leaning back at my desk in the center of the studio where I had been doing a demo, and looking around the room seeing such focused energy, let alone at 8am.
“Open studios,” which are relatively rare, means hands off the wheel, standing there holding a door open, and not getting the way: no lecture, no hovering (well, maybe a little whenever walking around checking in/checking up on works in progress). It was like a collective cocoon, a buffer zone against the cold + dark of winter hitting and the constant existential dread of current events. Put on some cool music, sip a cuppa coffee, and hang out and draw for a couple hours. How cool is that?
But wait: then the next morning, the very same exact thing in another class, with the added bonus of connecting even more dots realizing that later on that evening it would happen yet again in this semester’s Cartoon & Comic Arts course. Now I’m used to the creative oasis which that particular unit in all my drawing classes offers me every semester, but the convergence of all three of these classes was like a whoa dude, big picture, full circle, you have officially arrived moment. How humbling and so awesome to see what a special moment, like everything in life was leading to this moment.
Sure it surely had already happened last spring, with an identical schedule, but I was so consumed with the occupational stresses of a first-time full-time professor I hadn’t taken the time to reflect on such things. Acknowledgement of this Grand Confluence of Significant Events is a way to feel weirdly grateful for my wife, cats, friends, fellow faculty, staff and students, and know that nomatter how screwed up life has been, with so many bad choice and wrong turns along the way, if everything has led to this, than it’s all good, and I wouldn’t change a thing. Livin' the dream I tell ya.
All tolled that’s almost fifty students that, as of this writing, are all bent over their respective pages, inking away. Soon I'll scan and format over fifty-plus pages of their comics to get the class comic books – along with the few 420’s/Advanced independent projects published as well - and also hang over seventy-five-plus pages of the corresponding pages of original art in the hallway display cases, again.
In short, I am awash in a wave of comics. Reading them, teaching about them, drawing them, doing demos, critiquing them, piles and piles on every flat surface of the office and at home. Not to mention just a few weeks ago a wall of comics in the gallery as part of a student’s BFA thesis exhibit. So this is sort of a semesterly Cosmic Alignment of Harmonic Cartoon Convergence.
Stay ‘tooned for another (like last year's) really big data-dump – we’re talking wharrgarble caliber - where I catch up on samples of student works in all of the semester’s courses.
Especially the... you guessed it, comics.
No comments:
Post a Comment