company

what is maartje doing up this time of night you wonder? i am trying to finish some large scale drawings for the lamb's conduit street takeover, which will run more or less from 21 july till 5 august to coincide with the iapf. the lovely bikefix will be host to a short, but by my and my 0.3 lead's standards big, narrative. exhibiting in a space that isn't a gallery is a good excuse to make something site specific, so i have delved into my family's sordid cycle history for the occasion. 

the excellent company i will keep on lamb's conduit street includes: organiser tanya meditzky, barnaby richards and ellen lindner. 

happy days

today was one of those days, i came home after a long day's work, dog tired and ready to collapse. anticipating bills and bank statements i opened my letterbox only to find the long awaited dog comics anthology that rose robbins put together recently.

jon mcnaught

such a beautifully made little book. and full of dogs to boot. i have wanted a dog for a long time, maybe a little sausage dog or a whippet or a labrador or an american foxhound...but who needs a dog, when you can come home to a comic about one? although nothing can beat this canine.

joff winterhart

you can buy a copy at arnolfini or here gallery in bristol and at gosh! or extra bones in london. should you reside elsewhere, you can also buy directly from the editor herself.

me

for my own contribution i spent a holiday in shanghai taking photos of man's best friends wherever i could.

rose robbins

i love rose's graphic style and the simplicity of a story that is moving and true.

rip and gosh!p

first of all rest in peace jean giraud aka moebius.

panel from 'suster bertken'

mike medaglia and mark haylock of thinking comics host a monthly comics discussion group called gosh!p at -you guessed it- gosh. this wednesday they will be discussing david b.'s epileptic and the first issue of the strumpet, the ellen lindner edited anthology that features my short story 'suster bertken'. i will be there to take part in the conversation. come along for what promises to be an interesting evening.

brancusi

earlier this month i spent the afternoon sitting on a bench in brancusi's studio next to the centre pompidou in paris.

towards the end of his life brancusi considered his sculptures and the way they were placed in his studio to be one holistic work. individual pieces worked together to create a greater whole. he became reluctant to sell anything and plaster copies replaced any work he did have to part with. when he passed away he left everything to the french state on condition that it be displayed exactly the way it was in his atelier.

the studio had grown organically with brancusi acquiring three spaces adjoining it over the years, two of which became the area where he displayed his sculptures as a large constellation. the other pair functioned as workshop and storage. although he thought of the larger space as the actual work, i was almost more intrigued by the rooms he worked in. 

plaster heads were strewn across shelves and surfaces, waiting to be animated. his tools were arranged across the walls, almost tiny statues themselves. in contrast to the static beauty on the other side of the wall everything here seemed ready to be moved around, embraced or discarded.

i had been working on a one pager for the upcoming third issue of the comix reader, but was struggling to find the right way of rendering it. visiting atelier brancusi made me approach the page as one large panel and also to eliminate the bodies of the characters. i applied a wash of blue-grey watercolour over the entire page and then removed areas of paint to create faces.

short stories suit me well at the moment as i study 2 days a week, work 3 days and have a placement the sixth day. a single page is exceptionally short however and i wasn't sure what to write. i am always on the lookout for narratives, sometimes only realising i have one when telling a friend an anecdote i never even considered rendering as a comic. and that is how my contribution to the comix reader was born.

to pick up a copy or just to have a drink join us at gosh! for the launch party from 19:00 to 21:00 on friday 2 march. an exhibition of original artwork from the comix reader will also be on display.

dogs comic

rose robbins has been working on an anthology of comics on dogs, which launches tomorrow night at café kino, 108 stokes croft, bristol. because it is a week night unfortunately i won't be able to make it there, but i am sure it will be a great evening, so if you're around go have a look.

dogcomic is also the debut publication of often and mistakes. 

a dog from my contribution

tom and anders

there is something about attending signings by people whose work you respect. although in many ways you may feel as if you've out-grown teenage awkwardness, when facing some artists you turn into a bumbling 15 year-old, or even an over-eager pup. in theory there is nothing that should cause this unease: on paper you share a taste in comics, philosophy, music and sense of humour. in the flesh however things work differently.

here is someone who has been on the road for weeks, stuck behind a table, signing and drawing and having to be pleasant to every single person that shows up in front of them. a queue of forced conversation and small talk. and as a punter you queue, sometimes for a very long time, to try and connect with someone who you might feel you know, but who of course you don't.

it is a very peculiar power balance. there are difficult to meet expectations, because how much can you say in the two or three minutes it takes to sign a book and make a doodle? if you haven't brought along your entire library of course, something i'd be embarrassed to do. and who cares about a signature, really?

tom, anders, the millenium falcon and a redhead

tom gauld and anders nilsen were at orbital tonight as part of paul gravett's comica festival. the conversation didn't quite flow the way you might expect between friends, but i found myself taking notes. they discussed influences in comics and in literature: chester brown, john porcelino, jason lutes and pär lagerkvist (barabbas) and c.s. lewis (till we have faces) for anders. for tom it was edward gorey, john le carré and magnus mills. the latter for the flatness of his writing and his 'confused men doing pointless things'. they also spoke about the act of drawing, something which was of particular interest. anders mentioned the 'faking' that can creep into your drawing when you've been drawing as long as he has. he regretted not having drawn an actual type of plane in big questions instead of the more generic plane he drew or 'faked'. then there were the birds in his book, which he kept purposefully simple. he experimented with different details to distinguish them from each other, but decided that details were too much for such simple drawings. tom said he does a lot of visual research, but he uses this as inspiration. what interests him is drawing what something does rather than what it looks like. scientific and anatomical drawings were mentioned and so were the lewis chessmen at the british museum. i have lots more notes not to mention thoughts on everything that was discussed, but the word picture ratio of this post is already lopsided. if you're still hungry check out some interviews here and here.

detail from suster bertken

i also attended anders' signing and talk at gosh on saturday and unfortunately acted as described in the first paragraph of this post. after tonight's talk all i did was push some comics into his hands and legged it. i managed to finish my story for the strumpet today and quickly made it into a stand alone mini too, so anders may be the first person to read it.

suster bertken-mini mock up

in spite of all the weirdness that seems part and parcel of signings i had a wonderful time at both tonight's and saturday's events. anders and tom were lovely. and on both nights i bumped into or met some great people: morgan omotoye, rose robbins, barnaby richards and jessica penfold amongst others. 

strumpets and anchorites

ellen lindner has kindly asked me to contribute to the first issue of whores of mensa’s new guise the strumpet. the theme for this issue is ‘dress up’.

 sketch for 'suster bertken'

for many of us how we dress is a large part of how we define ourselves and others. suster bertken, the subject of my contribution to the strumpet, was not defined by what she wore (‘rough hair cloth’, barefoot) but by the space she inhabited. in 1457, when she was 30 years old, bertken had herself enclosed in a cell attached to the buurkerk in utrecht. she spend the next 57 years, until her death in 1514, confined there, accepting food (no meat or dairy) through a small window and following mass through another small opening looking into the church. she used her time to write religious prose, poetry and songs, to pray, to meditate, to counsel and to craft. she was dependent on people for food and for the disposal of waste, but in turn the local community sought her out for counsel and they adopted the songs, prose and poetry she wrote.

sketch for 'suster bertken'

suster bertken’s choice to confine herself allowed her the freedom to live a life of devotion. devotion to a god maybe, but maybe more so to herself and to her works. it is a choice i have always admired. as i admire it in those around me who are able to choose their art above most (if not all) else.

the dutch composer robert zuidam has written an opera using some of bertken’s poetry.  

go here to listen to extracts from the opera.

if you are so inclined (and i hope you are) you can pre-order the strumpet on kickstarter.

buying? selling

julia homersham selling the comix reader at port elliott festival

artists julia homersham and gareth brookes took a whole load of comics to port elliott festival a couple of weeks ago (photos courtesy of them). julia and gareth are probably the most talented comics couple i am aware of and i was happy to be included in the selection for their stall.

julia and gareth's stall at port elliott

i always find it difficult to write about other people's work. it is so easy to use empty language. or to get lost in words that end up possibly meaningful in themselves, but which say little about the work at hand. and, although i do think work should speak for itself, leaving it at that can also be a cop out. especially if you're trying to persuade people to have a closer look at something. some work however is perfectly capable of drawing readers in, just with one image or page. to me both julia and gareth's work does that.

from julia's 'chuckle sandwich'

you only need one look at either of their work to see the attention to detail and the sense of humour that has gone into it. gareth's work has been laboured over, but in no way feels over-worked. he uses any medium that suits the story. 'the black project', which chronicles a boy's descent into diy love, echoes the crafting skills of the protagonist in its use of print, embroidery and even paper.

julia makes gag cartoons, but the clarity and elegance of her lines invites you to look a little longer than you might normally look at a cartoon. what could be a simple pun is transformed by an understated rendering that manages to capture exactly the feelings of her anthropomorphized objects and animals. and the gags are often dark or melancholy.

from gareth's 'the black project'

to me the quality of a comic is defined by its story as much as it is by its art or writing, something which is sometimes overlooked by creators over-eager to make something. both julia and gareth have stories to tell, whether it is about the (mis-)adventures of baked goods or the dreams and desires of a boy. and both their stories have a sense of innocence and foreboding.

at the end of the month these artists will be taking to the road again to set up their stall at the west dean festival from 26-29 august.

the art of running without pictures

one sunday morning last july my friend anna came over for brunch and on a whim we decided to work up an appetite by going for a run. the last time i had run was 7 years earlier and even then i lacked conviction. that sunday morning in july i was out of shape, but we continued to meet up for conversation and runs around haggerston park.

haggerston park was created in 1956 on the site of derelict housing, an old tile factory and gas works. something about the park feels slightly older though, and i always assumed it was laid out in the 1930's. the area of the park i ran in is surrounded by a wall, which gives it an intimate and timeless feel. the people who come to the park seem to have a purpose, they are there to exercise, walk their dogs and occasionally to shoot up. there is less of the sauntering that goes on in nearby london fields.

summer drew to a close, anna left london and i was still running only 2 or 3 rounds of the park at a time. then came along my friend flip, who works for the nhs (that beautiful thing the tory government is trying to disassemble). flip is fit, she runs effortlessly and although she managed to build up her routine without it she recommended the nhs couch to 5k podcast.

the podcast does exactly what it says on the box: it takes you from your couch to running 5k or 30 minutes continuously. someone called laura talks you through every podcast, accompanied by the best soundtrack the nhs could buy. laura's voice is soothing and calm and without her i may not be running now.

haggerston park started getting small and soon flip, laura and i found ourselves running around london fields. london fields' claim to fame is its mention in the song being a dickhead's cool, and although there are still plenty of dickheads there, if you're nimble enough they are easily avoided. however when it comes to parks and running size does matter and since finishing the nhs podcasts i have graduated to victoria park.

victoria park was created in the 1840's after 30,000 people petitioned queen victoria for a park in the area. the park was supposed to increase the quality of life of the local working class population. to call myself working-class would be a stretch, but a loop of the park is about 6km, and the effect on the quality of my life is larger still. the increase in my lung capacity has been accompanied by an expansion of the space i have to think in.

and after listening to 9 weeks of nhs classics perhaps the biggest reward is to run to your own playlists. my current list looks something like this:

• the seed - the roots
• i saw her standing there - the beatles
• my sharona - the knack
• where is love - eldridge holmes (featuring the lyrics: here i am, but where is love?)
• e-pro - beck
• kom in de cockpit - spinvis
• this charming man - the smiths
• don't mess with my man - irma thomas
• warsaw - joy division
• i need a dollar - aloe blacc
• paarse overall - het klein orkest
• via con me - paolo conte
• wolf like me - tv on the radio
• isla de encanta - pixies
• i wanna be your man - the rolling stones
• lapdance featuring lee harvey - n.e.r.d.
• posters - jack & jeffrey lewis
• dom, lomp en famous - the opposites featuring diwa
• evil - interpol
• seven nation army - the white stripes

when i was very little my best friend's mothers played paolo conte. run, dance, eat; there is very little you cannot do to his voice.

bruno

the german based mexico born artist erika medina asked me to contribute a drawing to her thesis project 'many brunos'. she invited people from around the world to interpret a character called bruno, a detailed description of whom she provided. if you are in need of distraction from failed new year's resolutions, or if you need to be newly inspired to keep one, why not spend some time with the many faces of bruno.

beauty

last week i walked past a car. a bmw, it's engine running, a man behind its wheel, head tilted back, eyes closed, mouth ajar. i peered through the window and saw the gentle rising and falling of his chest; alive.

since 2004 i have tried to spend a bit of time in new york every year. and every year i try to visit the american museum of natural history there. although the entire museum is full of delectations the akeley hall of african mammals is part of what draws me. the diorama's are startling; they make it that much easier to agree to pretend the animals in them are somehow alive in death. mr akeley did his best.

half a floor up however just behind the mezzanine overlooking mr akeley's work there is a small corner dedicated to american or maybe new york state mammals and birds. suddenly gone are the beautifully painted backgrounds, no more skins stretched over anatomical casts shaped just so you're not quite sure what stage of life or death you're looking at.

nowhere has the term 'stuffed animal' been more thoroughly done justice. the birds in this forgotten corner of the museum look as if modelled on those in anders nilsen's 'big questions'. however nilsen animates birds, these animals are dead, and they will not pretend otherwise. and you are alive and looking at them. somehow the matter of fact manner of their display makes them look all the more vulnerable. there is an exhibit simply titled 'carnivores', but these beasts harbour no blood-thirst. they're tired and are waiting to catch their breath. i made a drawing of them for a comic.

whilst working for an artist i did some taxidermy on insects. relaxing their limbs and then pinning them into positions they normally would only ever have held for a fraction of a second. if a leg snapped off it could be superglued into place.

the amnh research library has put their photography collection online. the exhibition preparation is a particular treat, no superglueing there. and no need for further elaborations, just look.

although better in print, you can find some of hiroshi sugimoto's interpretations of the amnh dioramas here.

and if what people do to dead animals still interests you after all of the above here's a great article my friends mary and kramer wrote and photographed for last exit magazine.

enjoy.

feeling aimless?

feeling a little aimless? not sure who you see when you look in the mirror?

come give your life some meaning today by protesting the proposed government cuts to higher education. go here or here for more information.

i am a slow cyclist, but yesterday i got stuck behind a cyclist even more laid-back than myself. a big man, wearing a business suit and a black woollen cap on a black bike was slowing me down. efforts to overtake him were in vain as he aimlessly veered from right to left and back again. at long last we were both stopped by traffic lights. moving up alongside him i glanced over and realised who i was waiting next to. it was boris.*

'morning, boris!' i said, 'morning' said he with a sad look in his eye. and as i cycled off it struck me that boris doesn't really want to be london mayor. it's a respectable job, but what boris really wants is an allotment, a glass of wine and to vote green.

* boris johnson, london's conservative mayor

site cite

just to let you know i have finally finished my website, with the kind help of hin chua and the feedback from friends whose opinions i respect (not that i keep any other kind).

a selection of my work is on there, some of which i feel a little ambivalent about, but we all need some skeletons in our closets to keep us running towards the light.

i don't always manage to work on my stories consistently, a lot of brooding and mulching and passing of time goes on. and it is necessary to create a rhythm, some times that means drawing every day for an hour before work, other times it means every sunday for as long as the local coffee shop will have me. i don't know what it'll be now, maybe straight after school for as long as i can muster. whatever the rhythm slowly everything reveals itself. above is one of the images i've been drawing for the story i am currently trying to figure out.

business

who hasn't been busy lately? i worked six day weeks from mid july till last week. both my waking and my dreaming life were consumed by my source of income.

since this week i am studying 5 days a week and working one. doing a post graduate diploma in (paper) conservation at camberwell college of art. today is a self study day, and i finally have a moment to write about some of the other things that have been and are going on.

firstly: the whores of mensa launch party, which was held at my flat on thursday 9 september. ellen lindner took care of every conceivable bit of organisation from booze to bogroll and of course the first copies of 'whores of mensa 5'. i didn't count (it's impolite) but i estimate we were graced by the presence of 50 or more able and less able bodies, and as far as i could tell they all had a good time. thank you all for coming along. and ellen, another big thank you for all of your hard work!

exhibition view

what's next? a chicks on comics exhibition in buenos aires! it opens tomorrow and features guest appearances by ole otero, ale lunik, camila torre notari, daniela kantor, ernancita, elene, julieta arroquy, keki, maría alcobre, ol díaz, sophia pankenier and tita.

the beginning and the end

the inimitable ellen lindner has been labouring on the latest issue of 'whores of mensa'. the theme of which is 'parties'. to make sure this anthology sees the light she is asking people (that includes you!) to pledge any amount of money you can spare here at kickstarter.com. please go have a sneak peek at the new issue and pledge a dollar or two or ten or twenty-five. the issue will feature stories by lots of great artists as well as a 5-pager by yours truly.

unfinished page 1 'found'

my contribution is a story chronicling an encounter i had last summer on the streets of london.

the drawing style i chose is quite simple, i couldn't really draw it any other way. less straightforward and more time consuming was the end of the story.
using mainly stories based on true events i usually know how my stories end. the points of a story can some times be harder to figure out, but in this case they were relatively clear to me too.

studies for 'found'

what troubled me was finding the right pace and carrying this through consistently. i decided to use a map as the lay out for the story and this limited me to 5 pages. as it turned out i could have used an extra page..or two. initially i solved this problem by upping the pace from slow to high in the last page and cramming a lot of information into the running commentary. an obvious mistake.

there was no time to alter the format, so i had to edit the ending itself. because the story is based on true events this meant using a bit more artistic licence than i am used to. i had to re-examine what events were important and which were less so. some elements could fit into dialogue but other information still had to be conveyed through commentary. i ended up taking out a lot of detail which was important to me, but which i realised the reader could live without and material which told the reader more about me than it did about the story.

it isn't yet possible for me to tell whether i managed to make it work. get your hands on an issue of 'whores of mensa 5' when it comes out at the end of the month and maybe you can tell me.

harvey pekar

harvey pekar has passed away.

goodbye, harvey.

clowes, niffenegger, ware

chris ware, p. 52 from the

acme novelty date book volume one

tonight was the night: dan clowes and chris ware were in town in honour of clowes new book 'wilson'. the talk was chaired by audrey niffenegger, whose work i am afraid i am only familiar with from film posters, but who apparently also writes comics. something to look up.

it took a while for things to get going and i couldn't help wondering if the evening could have benefited from a different mediator. audrey might have seemed an interesting choice because of the various links between her, chris and dan (chicago, comics, film) but she was a little too timid and it was difficult to tell how familiar she was with chris and dan's work. maybe chris and dan would have been fine without a mediator or maybe paul gravett (who organised the talk) himself could have taken audrey's place.

audrey wisely opened up the talk to questions from the audience early on and things warmed up. although it would have been nice for the talk to have gone on a little longer and maybe for some of the questions to have been taken more as conversation starters.

i don't know what it is exactly that i look for in these talks. maybe it is just to turn the abstract ideas i have of these artists into something more real and three dimensional. for all his self-deprecation and self-consciousness chris ware came across pretty self-assured and witty at times. and i had imagined dan clowes as someone out of one of his own comics, instead he reminded me of frank mandersloot, a tall bald man with a sense of humour who taught me at art school.

chris ware for 'this american life'

different artists are important to you at different stages of your development and for me chris ware more or less kicked things off. when i first read it around christmas 2004 'jimmy corrigan' showed me that a comic can take its sweet time telling a story and that the idea of what a comic is or can be isn't static. comics have only just begun.

dan clowes

i didn't bring any books to sign but after the talk i queued up to give chris and dan copies of some of my comics. one on one contact during signings can never last long, but the very short chats i had with them made me leave (to meet sarah mcintyre down the pub) with a smile on my face.

to see that both authors really look rather human in real life have a look at gosh' blogpost on the talk.

a friend

panel from just friends/love stories 2006

as an awkward 16-year-old i met brink scholtz, equally awkward and similarly aged. i had spotted her before, walking the stretch between our two school buildings in a leather jacket whose original owner might have been a middle aged man. she seemed more out of place than other schoolmates. i don’t remember exactly how we became friends, but i do know that meeting her changed everything.

in a small attic room underneath a window in the roof we sat and sipped rooibos tea and spent hours together talking. with every cup of tea i understood more that life didn't have to be governed by the rules of my lovely but claustrophobic dutch grammar school surroundings. that there were people who lived differently and that they were fine, happy even, just as i had hoped and suspected.
at the end of the year brink left utrecht to return to south-africa with her family.

i once took the bus from amsterdam to heathrow airport, london, with my mum to see brink there for 12 hours whilst she and her family waited for a connecting flight. we met in south-africa twice and after i finished art school we worked and lived together for some time at garvald, a residential day care centre for adults with learning disabilities in scotland. then at the end of 2004 she had to return to south-africa again and i left for a three-month stint in new york.

last week we were in utrecht again sitting next to each other on the couch sipping tea in an apartment she was staying in as part of a 6-week cultural program organized by de buren and vrede van utrecht -for which she is writing a story that mentions utrecht. outside the sun was shining.
i came back to london last friday and -ash clouds allowing- today she’ll return to grahamstown,

listen to the beautiful story brink scholtz wrote for radiobooks here.

interview at avoid the future

judith and martin at avoid the future asked everyone at chicks on comics to answer some questions a couple of weeks ago. saturday and sunday they posted our answers.

also take a look at their archive of posts including reviews, interviews and reading lists.

thank you judith and martin.

post for chicks on comics by anna bas backer

dan clowes and chris ware

dan clowes and chris ware are coming to town. see you there.