One Month Later...

Funny how I thought the summer would come with more time for blogging.  Well, technically, I guess it has, but summer also comes with more ways to spend one's time.

I am sort of recently back from a trip to North Carolina, where I combined some professional work with a visit to my folks.  Both went exceedingly well, and the visit with my parents sparked the creation of a 12 page comic titled, "Vacation on the Moon."  Not sure what I am ultimately going to do with that, but here's a page from it:

I'm working with influences from Abstract Comics, poemics, and asemic writing in this comic -- and I mean "influenced by" rather than trying to just do any of those.  I am less interested in capturing what happened on the trip and more interested in an open narrative of possibilities and the phenomenological experience of interpreting confusing messages.  Formally, I am interested in working with abstraction without leaving behind recognizeable representation.  Elements (some of them, anyway) may be recognizable, but their relationships aren't necessarily clear. I think (although I could be wrong) that this approach in some ways captures more of the feeling of the trip (ambiguous as those sometimes were) rather than the facts or a unified narrative of it.

Whether or not it "succeeds" as a comic (abstract or otherwise), at least the trip and the week or so after it resulted in some creative expression. I think I needed that!

And in this case, it was work generated significantly away from digital graphics software.  Okay, what's attached here has been processed, but it started out as pages in a journal, scanned and cleaned.  It felt good to work "old-school" with paper and pencils and pens.

This has not been my only work.  I still post work at the Abstract Comics blog, including the opening image of this post and the following: 

I also continue to be interested in asemic writing, and post the occasional work at Satu Kaikkonen's collaborative blog, foffof: AsemicWritingsLettersAndMarks.  Some of my recent contributions there:

So, in other words, I've been keeping busy.  Just.  Not.  Here.

And why is that?  Reluctance to post smaller offerings through more portable technology?  I guess, yeah, a little.  Or maybe a little uncertainty about what this blog is really for.  Ah yes, "purpose."  Well, have no fear on that account.  I am cooking some ideas to give this blog a little more direction -- a project, perhaps.  More to come.  But for now, let's just say I am checking in with interesting art and reassuring you all that more will follow.

Until then, enjoy your summer in the Northern Hemisphere.  Don't be afraid to put down the internet and go outside and enjoy a bit of it.