Narrative / Zine: In-depth - Box, Objects, Zine

The Existential Crisis Box

(the back of the zine that doubles as a poster)

(front & back of zine)

Narrative: In-Depth - Container Proposal

Narrative: Outside Visit - Miami Book Fair // Art Spiegelman

   I saw the presentation "Celebrating Si Lewin with Art Spiegelman and Charles Kochman". Art Spiegelman is best known for his "Maus" comics, and he was great, he was really funny and casual about the whole presentation. He talked about Si Lewin's "Parade" which talks about his experiences with the war in a book that contains no words, only drawings made by Si Lewin himself. During the presentation they pulled out a copy of the accordion style book and asked two volunteers to come up and hold the book open, and of course they broke the book in half *spiegelman proceeds to make joke about breaking the book*. Spiegelman also talked about Si Lewin's other art which was very deep and dark, he also mentioned that he developed severe arthritis and attempted to cut off his right hand. Lewin survived the attempt and continued to make sculptures, one of which was a bunch of hands rising up out of the ground. Once the "Parade" book was finally finished Lewin was so happy with how it turned out and then just 10 days later he passed away, it's as if he was waiting for the book to be finished.

Narrative: Outside Visit - Miami Book Fair // "Short Stories, Big Ideas"

 
 I saw the presentation called "Short Stories, Big Ideas" featuring Leela Corman, Drew Weing, and Frank Viva. Leela Corman did most of the talking and she talked a lot about she's an American belly dancer and how she spent some time in Egypt taking notes for her stories in "We All Wish for Deadly Force". She said that being a dancer in Egypt is looked down upon even though it is something that is commonly associated with the culture. She also touched on the topic of sharing information via comics or cartoons and how it is perceived differently through different cultures and people.
   Drew Weing talked about his online comic called Margo Maloo that focuses on the main character moving to a new city and he is scared of his new neighbors and sees them as humanized monsters. He said that this comic was ongoing and intended to keep working on it.

Narrative: Small Works - Mood/Action/Topic

Contemplative / Stargazing / Outer space 

(scanning these diminished some of the neon colors) 

Narrative: Small Works - Sequential Art

Explanation:  

    With these pieces I really wanted to set the mood of what was going on in my poem, and I did that in a more abstract way by using collage to create various compositions in these frames that go with different parts of my poem. I wanted to stay away from "traditional" comics which is why I chose to not have any characters and just have the words under the image narrating the scene. Basically the idea was that in the first frame everything looks "calm" & "organized" but then as you move on to the second and third frame things begin to get more chaotic and overwhelming. This comes to a close in the last frame where the "bird chirping" brings you back from the chaos and to a more collected state like in the first frame.

(I took some inspiration from Aidan Koch's work 

and some others that were in the link under it) 

Narrative: Readings - "what is comics poetry?"

What is Comics Poetry:

An Essay By Alexander Rothman

 This readings uses tons of rhetorical questions and Rothman starts off by asking "so what is poetry?" he says that it is the purest form of language and he goes on to talk about the history of poetry and how the earliest poems came from oral traditions. He then says that he doesn't think there is one standard "correct" definition of poetry and that it is very broad. Rothman says that he has a similar difficulty in defining what comics are, he refers to it as images in a form of writing. He says that both poetry and comics are similar in the fact that the most basic form of each is juxtaposition. 

   I found this reading very helpful in describing what exactly comic poetry is and Rothman also asks the reader tons of questions about why and how we express the things we do in a piece of work, which I found very helpful. Some things that Rothman said that I really enjoyed were "broad definitions let more work in" and "the more one engages art, the more one inhabits different perspectives and subjectives". I enjoyed these quotes because they are things that I really agree on with Rothman. He also says "poem is a map to a poet's thinking" which really got me thinking about different ideas to incorporate into the next small work. Overall I felt like this reading was very helpful in giving context and insight into the new topic.