This kind of thinking goes all the way back to art school for me. Eg combined physical a digital elements in the final comp. II made the ceramic version as a class demo.Same for the underglaze/adding color for a second firing in the kiln. But that gave me an idea for how would papa sweets look if this was where he lived and how he got around. The blue backgrounds are the isolations. Then I designed the world around the ship.

There’s a snake in my boot…and….I started drawing when I was 4. I could draw a 3dish house when I was in kindergarten. I never really gave up on drawing/art making. It’s something I always did. I remember trying to make comics and failing a lot as I got older. I also painted, made sculptures and tried lots of other media. My grandma was an artist and when I was 12 she told me I wasn’t serious about making art. I just kept doing it. I had stretches with no jobs out of high school. I worked with some folks on an underground/public access tv show for a year. Got my first paid gigs.I remember going to Denny’s and drawing with the late night crowd. It wasn’t until I was 23-24 that I had a switch flip and headed toward turning pro. I was drawing 20-40 hrs a week when I applied to art school. I had been working in tv production, and had gotten as far as I was going to get at that point. I thought I was going to go to art school…then LA wasn’t going to work, I would go back to Anchorage and start a small studio and do more commercial production. LA wasn’t working out, I was getting pitch meetings, but never got a green light. My lady and I were going to have our first baby, So back to Alaska. I was working in TV again, but this time it went about a year, and hit a wall, the station was super toxic. So back to school for art education. At first it was one class…and that was cool…and I went for a Masters. I’ve been teaching k-12 for 7 years and I taught college for 3. Covid has been a roller coaster. I guess I’m at the mid way point career wise and approaching middle age... Things have changed so many times and I’ve moved and moved my family a bunch of times. It’s been a wild ride…but I still keep plugging away at my world building and comics, the occasional poke at politicians etc. Really I still just want to make art, spend time with friends and family hunt and fish…KISS. And because I’ve stayed teaching I’ve had to constantly re-up my basic skills…and work in different mediums that are outside my comfort zone. Trade Unions non-contract unions are the best chance we have to fight the fash and make our lives better, fuck political parties…and KEEP MAKING ART KIDS!!!

Digging through the archives…This is from 9 years ago.

Last Year I did a bunch of these neo-cubist experiments. That brown pencil is 20+ years old…lol

Our first load of ceramics. I'm so outside of my comfort zone here. But thankfully I had a good teacher to work with on my student teaching to learn ceramics with. Big ups to Kelly Hebert.

From somewhere in the illusion fields…on the world of Nemos.

https://www.anarchistfederation.net/an-anarchists-sketchbook/ I saw this Anarchist website reposted an interview I did last year. Def put a smile on my face.

I think this was from a few weeks ago now. I was watching an interview with Herzog. I think my favorite film I have seen from him was A Year in the Taiga, about life in rural Russia. Some overlaps in culture with rural Alaska where I live. I have done some subsistence hunting, but I cannot say it has ever been my full time life style.

Where as Herzog puts an emphasis on doing everything outside of the computer, I don’t have this same kind of Luddite view. I do like going back and forth, and I value all of my experience I have gained in nature. Love him or hate him, Herzog is a man of experience who lived very fully.

The grizzly man picture also sticks in my head. Where as the man in the film depicted himself as breaking free from the system.,.and protecting the bears. 1st nations people from the area thought what he was doing was disrespectful to the bears. Anyone from Alaska I knew thought it woudn’t be a good idea to set up a tent where he did on Kodiak island. It would be like pitching a tent in someone else’s living room and declaring “I’m one of you now!” If someone did that in my house I would ask him to leave, and if he didn’t…well I could empathize with the bears anyways.