Conversation Gardening 022-025

Conversation Gardening
(I'm not accepting new questions, by the way. I still have a big pile to do and am moving. pretty. slowly. through them)

An Interview

Last week an interview I did with Marc Sobel went up at The Comics Journal site. It's probably the most in-depth interview I've done to date. We talked for something like four hours on two occasions and covered a lot of stuff I care about, but don't have a chance to cover all that often... machines for making meaning, the nature of storytelling, Roy Lichtenstein. Here's an excerpt:

Sobel: What kind of religious upbringing did you have?
Nilsen: My grandfather – my mother’s father – was a Lutheran minister as was her brother, so she grew up in the Church. As kids, we didn’t go to church with regularity, but we would go occasionally. The thing is that my step-dad was an atheist, and my dad was sort of an agnostic with atheist tendencies, so we were always encouraged to think about and question things. None of it ever stuck. (laughs)
I am very interested in religion, though. If you read my books, it’s obviously a big part of my work. I think about what my grandfather did in relation to what I do, and I feel like there are actually a lot of similarities. Every week he got up in front of an audience and talked about stories. He retold stories, and talked about what they were about, why they were important, what we could take away from them, and about how we should live our lives and treat other people. I feel like that’s kind of what I do, too. I tell new stories, but I am also very interested in interpreting old ones and finding meaning in them, or playing with the meaning in them.

More here

Ex Libris

In addition to the show I'm curating at Light Grey Art Labs I am helping Kerry Morgan with a comics-ish section of Ex Libris, a book arts show she's mounting at MCAD during Autoptic. I just got a box of treasures from Mayumi and Raphael at Icinori, one or two of which will be a part of that show.

Sort of Like Christmas

 Last week a box came in the mail from an undisclosed North American publisher. I opened it up and found inside ten sketchbooks and one box of loose drawings all lovingly wrapped in brown paper and bubble wrap. As part of Autoptic and PFC this summer I am curating an exhibition of work by some of the artists of PFC at Light Grey Art Labs. Laura Park's sketchbooks and loose doodles are going to be a part of that show. In case anyone out there doesn't already know how amazing Laura's drawing is, here is a small sample of one of those notebook's contents.
     Also slated to be a part of the exhibition: Charles Burns, Dominique Goblet, Aidan Koch, Helge Reumann and maybe one or two others. The opening on Friday, August 7th will serve as the kick-off for Autoptic. Mark your calendars.

TCAF

I'm going to be in Toronto this weekend for TCAF, with super advance copies of Poetry is Useless (not in stores until July). I'll be on a panel on Sunday talking with Jason Lutes and Bob Sikoryak, and signing both days at D+Q.

Grand Canyon Sketchbook part 4

On Drawing

linesandmarks.com just put up some images as a teaser for an interview we're doing later this Summer, including a few newish things of mine, and a little preview of Poetry is Useless. If you haven't been over there, it's a beautiful new site about drawing. Their opening salvo also includes Albrecht Dürer, Julie Mehretu, Charles Burns and Marcel Dzama. Pretty fine company, and a really nice expansive way of looking at this art form which is so close to my heart. Sometimes I make comics, sometimes I do illustration, sometimes I make diagrams and sometimes I make 'paintings'... but everything I do is drawing. Drawing is everything.

If you click through to the interview preview page you get to move a little magnifying glass around on Adam and Eve Sneaking Back into the Garden to Steal More Apples. Most of my work is probably ripping off Burns a little bit, but here's a painting I did several years back inspired directly by Dürer's various takes on St Jerome and the Lion (which also might be the first time I depicted Adam and Eve – that's them by the tree).