From the monthly archives:

February 2008

Filling Tooth

A not-quite aside from the recent talk of poetry, Peter Blegvad‘s minicomic “Filling Tooth” has as much substance as books ten times longer. A small effort few have read, it starts with just “tooth,” punning and rhyming the word & image into far more than their sum. Each page holds one exhortation, starting with, “Say [...]

Keep reading →

comics, poetry (for Gary Sullivan)

I still haven’t received my comp copy of the new format Comics Journal, but poet-cartoonist Gary Sullivan has already written a couple of detailed responses to an essay of mine in it. The essay, a look at comics as poetry, takes a provocative Austin English piece as a chance to review the Poetry Foundation’s comics-poems.

Keep reading →

Every Good Thing to Rust.

My friend John Yost has completed his first feature film Every Good Thing to Rust, available online for free viewing. Congrats, John; you’re my hero. More so since your movie’s actually quite good. Imagine how awkward it would have been if it sucked like that unfinished cowboy movie I tried to make with Brian & [...]

Keep reading →

Crochet Reef

Rebecca was all lecturing me about how knitting ain’t crocheting– I listened, I swear– and it reminded me of the Institute for Figuring, those mathy artists out on the Left Coast. Heading back to their site, I recalled again this: The Crochet Reef, of course, defies description. Mine, anway. Just go look at it and [...]

Keep reading →

Best of 2007, part I

The Comics Journal has announced their Best of 2007.  My own contributions, in addition to my addendum, are: Red Eye, Black Eye by K. Thor Jensen (and Trains Are Mint #4, which may or may not be a “comic” but is a lovely collection of drawing by a young cartoonist) Elvis Road by Elvis Studio Powr Mastrs Vol. [...]

Keep reading →

Don’t Go Where I Can’t Follow

In a 2006 interview, Anders Nilsen recalled, “Cheryl used to say I had the Horror Vacui.” His fiancee Cheryl Weaver had teased him for his habit of filling the empty spaces in his drawings; an artist herself, she poked fun with a choice art history term. Earlier in the interview, he mentioned a book he [...]

Keep reading →

Act of Seeing With One’s Own Eyes

The first image, a dead man’s distended purple scrotum, put me off watching “The Act of Seeing With One’s Own Eyes” for a good three years. This second part of Stan Brakhage’s’s Pittsburgh Trilogy unfolds in a morgue. It is rough going. A friend who checked “coroner” on her grad school applications had said she [...]

Keep reading →

Happy Chinese New Year!

(apologies to Lynne Ramsay & the Criterion Collection, from whose film I have shamelessly thieved)

Keep reading →

Weight of the World at DAAP

I caught the tail end of the “Weight of the World” show at the University of Cincinnati’s College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning. Maiza Hixson and Ryan Mulligan curated the uneven show, but it has some gems.

Keep reading →

We’re talking about practice

Allan Iverson would be proud. Roberta Smith writes in the New York Times about the troubled language thrown around in fine arts discussion. Critical discourse– talk, chat, grousing– always seems to suffer from a lack of precision, which should come as no surprise. After all, the subjects are slippery, leaving critics to play catch-up. She [...]

Keep reading →