The Flexible and The Strange

The tag line of this blog: "Be Flexible.  Be Strange."  I like to imagine that as something of a life philosophy.   My interests are wide-ranging.  I like to think I can adjust to most situations.  And the strange part?  Well, that mostly happens without my attention or conscious effort.  Mostly, I mean don't be afraid of being strange.  Don't shy away from doing something just because it is not how others would do it.

That's not to say I don't learn from others.  That's not to say that doing things differently from everyone else is the only valuable way to be.  Trust me, I spend plenty of my life conforming.  But sometimes it's wise, productive, and best to heed to that inner voice that wants to go its own way -- regardless of whether that way is different or strange.

Probably one of the most frustrating questions an artist gets is "Where did you get that idea?" (or possibly, "Why did you do it that way?").  I put it right up there with the most annoying question you can ask a performer: "How did you learn all those lines?"  I guess the only way to really answer any of those is: it's just what I do.  This time, anyway.

If you find these cartoons cryptic, know that you are not alone.  I don't know what they mean.  I don't know where they came from.  I don't know why I did them this way.  They are largely unplanned.  Just ideas put to paper and then digitally processed.  All along the way, I let my interest and sense of the appealing guide me.  I break some "rules" here and there.  But mostly they are what they are -- me playing around.  Me stretching my abilities and interests.  Me courting the strange. 

Colorful, aint it?

 

Colorful Abstractions

I really only wanted one thing for Christmas: a little free time to draw and paint and manipulate pixels.  Now that the grading is done and the obligatory rituals of consumption are more or less past, I have some time to spend with art.  My big fear, though, is that absent my guilty escape from obligations, I won't pick up the pen or the brush.  And maybe that fear is enough to keep me in motion.  And maybe not.  Even prior to the "new" year, I feel this precious time slipping away, oozing down a winter wall.

So I turn to this relatively new practice of abstract comics.  "New" to me and, apparently, new as an emerging genre out of a confluence of various aesthetic and popular practices.  As with the related form of poemics (poetry plus comics), there is a productive tension in the hybridity.  Is this more abstract than comics?  Do these sequenced images rely on narrative too much?  Do I tip the balance too far in one direction?  Or are these questions really about my own identity?  Am I a comic strip creator first and a fine artist second?  Am I making do with one because I don't think I am very good with the other?  Poet, illustrator, artist, performer, scholar -- why do these roles struggle so much in the blend?

And then there's the personal challenge of color.  You may have noticed from the web site that I tend to work in black and white and shades of gray.  I guess that makes me a value artist (har har!)  The sad truth is that I am slightly red/green colorblind.  I work with color tentatively -- which is to say, boldly or not at all.  Perhaps I latch on to abstract comics because there is less need to match color with some representational analogue.  Even so, I am given to some fairly unusual color combinations -- or so I am told.  In my eyes, these palettes are quite pleasing.

Also, I think I harbor some suspicions that my work with digital graphics is its own cop out.  I am largely self-taught and rely a bit too much on Photoshop.  I've taken time today to try to teach myself more about vector graphics, and to try to get somewhere useful with Adobe Illustrator.  Boy, is that tedious!  These works are not done in Illustrator, but are a combination of scanned pen and ink work reworked in Photoshop.  Hey, it's what I know.

In the end, that's probably what really matters.  It's what I know.  It's what I do.  A true artist is an artist in his/her own way.  I never wanted to make a living with this stuff.  I have a job, and I am fortunate in that it so often intersects with these interests -- inspirations flowing together from unanticipated sources and producing odd and intriguing mixes.

So I end where I began, seeking in this time off for the holidays opportunities to do art -- and worrying that I won't.  Even as the evidence at hand suggests this is an unfounded worry, I think I realize work and art are caught in their own blend and flow.  The one with its obligations and time-sucks fostering the other, either with privileged access to time and tools or by providing provocations for aesthetic escape.  And the other both a deep wellspring of joy and its own source of abstract anxieties -- is it good enough, is it right, is this who I am?  And aren't those just the silliest questions ever? 

Crunchy

Crunchy

The theme this week over at Illustration Friday is "Crunchy." A lot of images come to mind -- many involving breakfast cereal for some reason.  But my mind is apparently still, um, chewing on abstract comics.  I am wondering if this is a little too concrete to be an abstract comic.  The image is not really representational, but the stylized decay seems a bit too much like a narrative.  And then there's that cheesy comics sound effect.  Ah well, whatever it is, it is also my entry for this week's illustration prompt. 

Stranger Phantoms -- An Abstract Comic

Stranger Phantoms

I've been enjoying the work and commentary over at Abstract Comics a lot this week.  As with probably all artistic practices, there's a certain amount of disagreement as to what does or does not fit.  Andrei Molotiu tackles this conundrum in the first paragraphs of his introduction to the anthology, Abstract Comics.  First, he defines the genre:  "sequential art consisting exclusively of abstract imagery" (1).  Quickly, though, he adds: "the definition  should be expanded somewhat, to include those comics that contain some representational elements, as long as those elements do not cohere into a narrative or even into a unified narrative space" (1).  Fair enough.

In setting up the framework for what will be included in the anthology, Molotiu then moves to firm up the definitional boundaries from the other side of the fence, identifying what abstract comics are not.  "What does not fit under this definition are comics that tell straightforward stories in captions and speech balloons while abstracting their imagery..." (1).  Got it?  Got it.

Still, disagreements at the blog continue to emerge, with the desire among some for a "unified rhetoric" and "clear definitions" that clearly mark what is and is not an abstract comic.  Apparently, it matters whether you consume your abstract comic fat end first or narrow end first.

Okay, I kid (and with allusions to Swift), but I also find the conversation fascinating.  I don't mean to disparage those who are working out the parameters of an emergent genre.  I also think there are several unremarked assumptions in the discussion.  For example, there is a kind of formalism at work here that wants to make these assessments of the work itself, but where are the boundaries of that work?  Does it include the frame(s)?  The title?  What the artist says about the work?  

Take the following work posted at the Abstract Comics blog by Rappel:

 

Seems to fit the definition, right?  But what happens when you learn that the title (at least in the blog post) is "natural sequence/river"?  Does that frame turn it from an abstract composition to a narrative of reflections on the water?  If so, that seems like a lot of power for a title.  Then again, George Lakoff has spent the better part of an academic career informing us about interpretive frames and how they guide our perceptions.

What Rappel's comic and the discussion that followed on the blog revealed for me is that the definition of abstract comics (and probably any art, for that matter) resides somewhere between the object/image and its reception (c.f. Roland Barthes distinction between "work" and "text").  If human beings really are the storytelling animal (Homo narrans), we will always at some level defy Molotiu's anti-narrative clause in the definition of abstract comics by reading narrative into the play of images, especially if they come in sequence.  Yes, there is a difference between the clear cues of narrative content and the reading practices of individual viewers.  Even so, the boundary between between those story-sources is murky.

I am not really invested in pinning (or penning) down a definition of anything.  For me, the practice of naming and defining is about what it encourages me to see.  In the art world, I think it is also a call to defy, to push at boundaries, to try something different.  And so this discussion has.  

Return to the top of the page and consider my abstract comic, "Stranger Phantoms."  I am sort of hoping you already have, because now I am going to add another interpretive frame to it.  This is a bricolage/collage piece, re-purposing and re-framing panels from classic "Phantom Stranger" comics.  In their original context, the panels were elements of fantasy stories.  Here, they have been reworked with more attention to composition and value progression than telling a story.  The Stranger's powers are mystical and supernatural -- he is not your typical superhero and is a quaint anomaly in the DC universe.  In depicting his stories, artists often rely on surrealist and even abstract representation.  By no stretch of the imagination do I posit these comics as originally presented as fitting Molotiu's definitions for abstract comics.  But in "remixing" the originals, I hoped to create a product that at some levels plays with process, with the idea of abstract comics as a way of viewing as much as a kind of art "thing."  I do not discount what my selection, framing, and positioning have done in the creation of an abstract comic.  On the other hand, I also note that the abstract qualities of this composition were, in part, always already available to me in the source material.

So, (how) did that paragraph change the way you view the comic? 

Abstract Comix

I call it, "Siphoning Gutter Blood."

I recently went to Chicago for a professional conference.  While there, I stocked up on independent and arty graphic storytelling.  Probably one of the more interesting phenomena I learned about is the realm of "abstract comics."  I was introduced to this practice briefly in a two hour "short course" on teaching comics as communication offered by Randy Duncan and Matthew J. Smith (based on their textbook) at the National Communication Association Conference I was attending.  I later picked up Andrei Molotiu's excellent anthology, Abstract Comics, at the Museum of Contemporary Art.  Since returning home to both my computer and my drawing board, I've enjoyed viewing Molotiu's blog, Abstract Comics: The Blog.  And of course, I've enjoyed trying my hand at the form.

My above foray into the realm of abstract comics is influenced somewhat by Andy Bleck's contributions to Molotiu's anthology.  I like the idea of making the frame in comics more organic, imagining each panel connected (like former AK Senator Ted Stevens's description of the Internet) by a series of tubes.    In the comics industry, the space between the illustrated panels is called the gutter.  Scott McCloud, the ultimate meta-guru of comics, considers at length the role of closure in "filling in the gaps" presented by the gutters between panels.  Here, I've offered a bit of plumbing for those gutters, albeit more like alien arteries than down spouts.

I'll probably keep playing with this format, so look forward to more abstract comics pages in the future.

I call it, "Texture with Ghosts."

Hmmm.  Have I found something on the boundary

between abstract and conceptual comics? 

I call it, "Movement of a Simple Thought."