I was pleasantly surprised this afternoon to find a yard sign I designed used as an example on the Walker Art Center’s blog. The sign is for a project here in the Twin Cities to get some citizen voices heard during the Republican National Convention in St. Paul this year. I haven’t lived in St. Paul for very long, but even I know that this is a Democratic town (the Minnesota Democratic party is called the DFL for Democrat Farm Labor, and St. Paul is historically a strong labor town)– it’s no wonder they’re having trouble finding volunteers to work at the convention.

You do us proud, Al. And to the UN team making up the rest of the recipients: keep up the good work!

Just as I stumbled onto Tintin this evening, my introduction to him was similarly accidental. One of the people who happened to live in my dorm my first year in college was from rural Indiana, and he often wandered toward a bit of a fantasy world that was inspired by the things he read and the movies he watched. He had even given himself a new name when he got to college, perhaps inspired by Hergé who was born Georges Remi. He was the first person I had met who was really into comics and manga and Miyazaki, and his passion for those things was fundamentally influential to me and the career path I am now pursuing.

Anyway, much like I am stunned when a bookstore employee hasn’t heard of the Caldecott Medal, this guy couldn’t believe that I– an art major interested in children’s books– didn’t know about Tintin. Of course, the reason I was an art major and interested in children’s books had a lot to do with his passion for both subjects, but instead of recognizing his influence, I dismissed him as a bit of a zealot.

It wasn’t until several years after we had graduated that I first read any Tintin books, and then it was because I was waiting in a bookstore to meet up with someone. At the time I was still heavliy into children’s books, but not yet looking at comics very seriously. As I was waiting, I was done looking at the new children’s books, so I wandered the store and ended up by the graphic novel section. I didn’t know what I was looking for, but the encounter with my college friend had implanted the name “Tintin” in my head, and there on the shelf was a whole row of these stories. When I pulled one down and flipped through it, I was immediately astounded by the detailed artwork.

Hergé is known for his skilled combining of detailed, hyper-realistic backgrounds with these wonderfully caricatured characters. But my criteria when looking at children’s books (and now comics) is that is okay to be seduced by the art, but I won’t buy it if the story isn’t compelling. To shorten this lengthening story, I walked out of that store with three volumes of Tintin stories.

It’s funny to me when I think about the sequences of events that lead me from one point in my life to another. Even more interesting to me are the triggers that get me to think about those paths. As much as I have grumbled this past year (not here, I guess) about my graduate school experience, I am getting a lot of mileage out of the introspection it has imposed. Don’t be surprised to see more coming out of both the experiences I am recalling, and also the meta-experiences of how I came to recall these events. It’s all fodder for the paintbrushes.

School is winding down, and I am on to thinking about summer plans. So far I have a show at the end of June to plan for and work towards, I am working on pulling together the Lions, Tigers, Bears, Etc. show at Wootini for July, and I will be attending a week-long workshop regarding the life of a university professor in May. Otherwise, I am looking for freelance work in web programming or illustration and design, so let me know what you got.

Needless to say, grad school has been all-consuming, so this summer I should feel a little more available to the world. I’m really excited about the artwork I am planning on pursuing, so that should help me keep things rolling through my solo show this fall and beyond.

Speaking of inspiring art work, I just got back from Minneapolis where I saw two amazing shows. At the Juxtapoz anniversary show, up at OX-OP and Soo Vac, I got to see a lot of my favorite artists’ work in-person for the first time, including people who I have invited to the Lions, Tigers, Bears, Etc. show. This is going to be good! I also went to see the Kiki Smith show at the Walker Art Center. Just amazing! It was great to see another artist working across so many mediums and still stitching a central idea thread through all the works. Something to aspire to, for sure.

Anyway, there is much to catch up on, in life and here on this site. Expect to see new work up in the coming weeks, and possibly even a new look for the Bunch of Monkeys Workshop…

Basically New Orleans is built on sediment. LOTS of sediment. And the deeper layers of the sediment are compacting and eroding as groundwater flows through it over time. They said that over the past century, New Orleans has sunken about two feet, but that the rate of the erosion has been accellerating, and the city may sink as much as a yard or a meter over the next century. Obviously that’s not good, since much of the city is already below sea level.

The natural course of things, had people not interfered and dammed and leveed the river, is that the Mighty Miss would overflow its banks, bringing with it a huge slug of sediment to replenish the deeper layers that are constantly eroding. The sand and soil would get layed over the top of the land, the relative height of the land would stay about the same, and, most importantly, it would stay above sea level. But once we began to build on top of this land, we didn’t want it to flood, so we protected our property with the levees and dams. And now we are witnessing why that isn’t sustainable in the long-term.

Now this isn’t new information. People have known this was happening for a long time, and some people even wrote about it a year ago in this little magazine, called National Geographic. In fact the opening paragraphs of this story are so eery, they may as well have been written by Nostradamus.

But the truth is that the story was written by well-informed scientists who have been studying the problem for years. After the hubbub about who knew what and when regarding the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center it will be interesting to watch the finger-pointing and the “special investigations” (Ooooo!) and see who ends up the scapegoat for this horrible natural and unnatural disaster.

Personally, I don’t think it matters much why or how it happened that “better” plans weren’t made for this hurricane, or more proactive steps weren’t taken to stop the hijackers four years ago. What matters to me is what plans we are going to make for the next potential hurricane or for whatever psychopaths might decide to do in the future.

To (roughly) quote a good movie I saw recently, “We can’t change the past, and we don’t know what’s going to happen in the future. All we have is now.”

To Wisconsin:
I am proud of you today. Not only did you support the efforts of Russ Feingold, and his lone vote against the so-poorly-named PATRIOT Act, and Tammy Baldwin, our progressive, lesbian representative, but you came through for John Kerry, too. I’m proud to call you a blue state, even if it was a squeaker.

To Illinois:
My birthplace. I can hold my head high today because my childhood homestate handed Barack Obama a landslide and gave John Kerry a decisive victory. Mr. Obama, we’ll be watching you these coming years. Do us proud, as I’m sure you will.

To Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, and Utah:
Shame on you. You have actively denied a significant portion of our populace the right to wed. These people are my friends, your colleagues, our doctors and grocery clerks, mothers, sons, and siblings. You’ve encouraged the right wing’s drive toward a Christian theocracy: the polar opposite of what our founding fathers set out to create when the United States severed its ties with England, its King, and its Church. This is the 21st century. Learn your history. Catch up.

To Ohio and Florida:
I wish I knew what drove you to it. You could have been my friend, but now I just don’t know what to think. It seems like you wanted to do the right thing, but you just couldn’t bring yourself to do it. And now look what you’ve done. I hope you’re satisfied. In fact I hope we all will be satisified by the end of these next four years. Frankly, I’m skeptical.

And to all of you out there who voted on senators and representatives, especially South Dakota:
I am frightened by the new less-balanced balance of power in the Congress. Bush & Co. have some hare-brained ideas, and you’ve handed him a rubber stamp. I’m not sure the taxpayers, the veterans, the nation’s public lands, parks, and forests, or the international community can really take another four years. How many wars will have to be fought? How many nations will we offend? How many schools will we close? How many firehouses? VA hospitals? These problems will have to be solved by ALL of us.

And instead of ending this post on such a desperate note, I want to appeal to all Americans:
The campaign trail was bitter and divisive, and the nation has told us that while we are going to give President Bush another chance, it wasn’t an easy choice. So now we need to do what we do: continue fighting for what we believe in, and help make sure our elected representatives are still listening to us. Just because the election is done, the country moves on in better or worse directions. We don’t have a ballot in front of us anymore, but you know you can still do it. Speak up and let your voice be heard: write to your senators and representatives, and tell the administration what’s on your mind.

UPDATE: Here’s a nice, optimistic viewpoint from Howard Dean.

GET OUT AND
VOTE!

And for anyone who does not live in the United States of America, do your best to cheer for your favorite candidate. We’re going to need your support, no matter which way things go.

Here’s a little story of how my vote went.

To continue down a slight tangent, the more people vote, the more likely it is that Democrats will win. That is the way our two-party system has worked itself out: the Republicans get a steady base of vocal (and wealthy) supporters, and the Democrats rely on the numbers. But when voter turn-out is low, Democrats do poorly. So, I don’t care who or what you vote for (yes I do), but let’s get people out there and voting!

To this end, the smart kids over at Hot or Not have set up Vote or Not, where you can easily register to vote from right where you are sitting right now. AND as a big mega-bonus, if you do it through their site, you can sign up for a $100,000 drawing. In fact, if you sign up through my link here, and you win the $100K, I, too, will get $100K.

So if, for some reason, you are not registered to vote, GO DO IT NOW. You get to take full advantage of your paid membership in our American society, and at the same time, you (we) might get paid, too. Actually, even if you are already registered to vote, you can still sign up for the sweepstakes.

Oh, and I am not very original, but I love Matt Haughey’s style. Thanks for the idea, Matt– I hope we get us a winner.

MoveOn.org is asking for everyone to pledge to go see Fahrenheight 9/11 next weekend when it opens. The idea is to show the theaters that there is a great demand for showing films like this, and that they will make money if they do so. It looks like it isn’t opening here in Madison right away, but I will be first in line when it does.

So take your blood pressure medication and go see it. And once you are good and angry, go do something about it.

The American public needs to know the true costs of war. Aside from the growing billions of dollars that we will spend in Iraq, lives are being lost. While the number of U.S. casualties is reported, it is against administration policy to photograph the caskets that are sent home to the U.S., as this woman found out when she lost her job.

Not to mention the fact that we are never told how many Iraqi lives have been taken by this whole operation. I’m sure that number is out there somewhere, but it seems to be treated as a non-issue in the major media outlets. There are consequences to war, and not just on our side. We need to pay attention to that fact.