cheech

I Love Artists Part 2:

First off, someone I have BOUGHT ART FROM, both a framed print and compilation books, was written up in this week's Washington City Paper. Rosemary Feit Covey. She does woodcut prints that are, at the risk of sounding very 1983, awesome. Check her out at www.rosemaryfeitcovey.com
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Second, a good night at work is one where I read 90% of the time. Aside from the City Paper, I was reading more Publisher's Weekly stuff. There is a charming interview with children's book artist Jon Agee in the Feb 10 issue. I've never read his work, but he is endearing. Here's some quotes:
"There was a point in college where I was painting and also doing animated cartoons and writing comic strips. I found a lot of joy in creating a story line, and after a while the idea of doing a picture without any narrative or sequence-- of just an individual image-- dropped away."
The defining moment in this process, Agee recalls, was his senior exhibition. "I could have shown my paintings or my films, but I had these little yellow sketchbooks-- actually they were yellowed newsprint pads of waiter's slips I had bought at a second hand place-- filled with cartoons and narratives. All my friends were fascinated with them. So instead of exhibiting paintings, I ended up showing about 500 of these things push-pinned to a wall."

After graduation, Agee moved to Brooklyn, got a job at a parking garage and began making the rounds of publishers. "I was clueless," he says, shakinghis head in mock chagrin. "I went out with this big portfolio of all thes cartoons, thinking that someone would publish a collection of them. The hubris of youth!"

[but one of the editors did end up helping him out after a few months]

Agee grows reflective when talking about developments he has perceived in his chosen genre over the past couple of decades. "It's a strange little visual medium," he says. "They don't have shows of picture books at MoMA."

[that's really too bad-- good picture books exhibit extreme skill...and as vaj would tell you, Maurice Sendak smokes Mark Rothko, or even Picasso in my book. I was copying parts of a Maurice Sendak book to make CD covers. The looks of mischief and bored sadness conveyed in the Wild Things faces are art.]

Time for reflection is important, he says. "A friend of mine calls it 'l'area de pensee'-- the room to think. he told me that Titian would work on a painting, then put it against the wall and not look at it for a year."

[hmmm; thoughtful creativity, or procrastination? You make the call!]
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For Dune fans (I've never read em myself) there's a very interesting bit in an interview with Brian Herbert about his new biography of his dad...

Q- Was your father joking when he used a lie detector on you and your brother?
BH - Never a joke! My grandfather was a police officer. He taught my dad about lie detectors and police interrogation methods, so dad got this old WW2 lie detector and used it on us regularly. he was obsessed with the truth. It always happened when mom was at work.

Gooooodnight, what a kook...