Monday, August 29, 2011

post five

If you had to spend the rest of you life illustrating one book, what would it be? Why? lord of the rings, because of it's breadth, imagery & timelessness. after reading other tolkien works, (leaf by niggle,  father christmas letters etc) i feel as if he has a similar aesthetic to mine, expressed in different mediums; or conversely his influence on me was just that great. for what seems my whole childhood i would read the trilogy --or have it read to me, when i was too young-- once every year.  i could never get sick of trying to illustrate the tree whose roots tried to eat merry and pippin. it's modern mythology, too complex to be easily dissected & tapped, & i could trust it to keep me drawing.
If you could go apprentice with any two artists in the history of the world, who would they be? Why? beatrix potter, for her humility, frankness, & pets. maurice sendak, (i read caldecott & co last week), for his analytical perspective, sense of purpose & intense respectability. not to mention my eyes eat everything he draws.
If you were banned from the art world, but could have any career you wanted that wasn't in art, what would it be? Why? comparative mythologist/anthropologist because, socio-philosophical travel writing. what could be more engaging & adventurous & my own. & when i'm not doing that, i would be lying around in overstuffed chairs smoking my grandpa's old pipe & reading important stories all the time. for my job. 
Describe the project you would propose under the following circumstances. Describe the project in detail: what would it be, how would you spend the money, how would you schedule the time alloted, and how would the work be presented upon completion? 
1.) You have one month and one thousand dollars (all of which must be spent on art expenses). i would revisit the lemniscate island book i made over the summer for the horn island exhibition & make it something truly publishable, enlisting the paid help of friends for binding & professors for advice & hiring a professional to help me get it somewhere.
2.) Six months and ten thousand dollars. i would buy a flatbed cylinder press, a laser-cutting printer (used) & self-publish a three-part series of silhouette books based upon a mythologized childhood story of my own & the ones belonging to my two best friends, told with subtle magical realism with few words & visually evocative of a distant memory/clinical testing facility posters. it would be made up of white ink on black paper, glimpses of raven-wing colors, pure & innocent through & through. i would plan two months for each book, though more likely it would mean starting slow & revving up as i became familiar with the equipment & the deadline.
3.) One year and one hundred thousand dollars.  in the first seven months i would do the above projects, then build myself a roving library of other artists' similar works that i could hook up to the back of a shiny new red bike & tour the country with, looking all squeaky clean & muscular in the legs & charming parents everywhere, saying my own name a lot. 
i figure the rest of my career could just take off from there after all that, but if it didn't, really, who cares.

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