I got some devastating news today- my college Graphic Design professor, M. Wayne Knight died from the H1N1 virus early this morning. He was only 60, and had been perfectly healthy otherwise as far as I know. I haven’t had much contact over the last few years- the thing about graduating is that you tend to go off and  live your life, but because I still live and work so close, I always had it in the back of my head to drop by sometime and say hello. I thought I’d have more time.

The last time I saw Wayne was just 6 months or so after graduation, when I was working at Target. I actually ran into him while he was shopping and I was working on a particularly bad day, and I broke down and cried right there in the store. He was kind enough to stand around until I got myself together and gave me a pep talk, telling me that where I’m working right after college is no indication of whether I’ve succeeded or failed. Find the lesson, he said. Find the thing to learn here and now, and learn it, and then move on when the opportunity comes.

One of the last lectures he’d give to his graduating class was about the same thing. Keep learning, keep thinking, keep writing. He was very honest with us- we didn’t choose art school, we chose public university for any number of reasons, and we could very well be less prepared to find and get the jobs than our art school peers, whose education includes a built-in network and overall more time and individual attention. He said to think of it as putting Sweat Equity into our education, keep seeking opportunities to learn and grow and get better.

I remember visiting him in his office hours often (he was also my academic advisor), and once I mentioned that I felt like my work- all of my work, not just for his class- was really hit-and-miss. He agreed, but he also told me the hits were more important, and the best thing to do is keep doing it, and eventually I’ll miss less. I always appreciated his honesty, and his encouragement, which he somehow managed never to  have contradict one another.

I got the word rather abruptly- Wayne is the second person in the county to have died from H1N1, which makes it news, and somebody asked me while they were preparing for the 5 whether I knew him. I’m still pretty shocked- it just doesn’t seem right, but when can something like this seem right? I’m so sad for his family, and for his current students, and for the program at school which he built from the ground up. It was a privilege to be his student, especially there at the beginning (he started at HSU the same year I did), and there are lectures and conversations that I carry with me every day, things that changed my technical and philosophical approach to my work then, and new understanding of those things as my career progresses and I get older and braver.

Thanks, Wayne.

Tags: art, good influences, h1n1, HSU, M. Wayne Knight, mentors, professor, school, teachers

I met my Rockstar Deadline back in March when I turned 28. There are a lot of celebrated musicians who died at 27: Robert Johnson, Kurt Cobain, Jimmi Hendrix, Bob Marley, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison. The joke is that if I made it to my 28th birthday I knew I’d never be a rockstar. Is that dark?

I went to school with Kazu Kibuishi back at UCSB. I think he graduated my sophomore year. We never had any classes together, but I followed his cartoons in the Daily Nexus. And I had some vague notion that I ought to be doing something similar (that vagueness is the subject of a whole ‘nother blog post, but I digress).

Sometime that year I remember distinctly being impressed that Aaron MacGruder got The Boondocks syndicated when he was 25. Because that seemed old to me. I had this sense that there was a very short window to launch and achieve a successful art career, and that I didn’t get something accomplished before I turn [however old I was at the moment plus two years], I would never make it.

I have spent a tremendous amount of time- years!- convincing myself that I missed the boat. I’m too old to get anything published. Rockstar Dead. I’m 28. Seriously, there’s still time.

I caught myself doing it just the other day. 30 is the new marker, and this is my last chance. (Incidentally, my last chance has passed me by a number of times over the last ten years or so.) Excuses, excuses. Just start doing something, already, and quit worrying about missing chances you’ve never taken!

Janiva Magness has this great song called You Sound Pretty Good. As in, you sound pretty good, but you’re just too old to sell records. It’s an infectious, bouncy tune, and she’s so smug about it- ’cause here’s the record they said she couldn’t sell! I love it.

Changing things around has given me a chance to reflect. When I re-did my blog template last month, it was because I was bored with the design, but it was also because I knew it would help me re-focus and re-evaluate what I want to be doing here. I thought a lot about what I’m doing with the blog, my career as an artist, and in my life in general, and started listing things. I do this sometimes- just make some critical impressions about a particular subject. I ask questions, and answer them, to work through a complicated problem or issue. Here it is:

• I want this blog to be useful and interesting
• if not to other people, I at least want it to be useful and interesting to me.
• Useful means there needs to be something a reader (or writer!) can walk away and do something with
• interesting means I should talk about myself less and…stuff? more
• What’s “stuff” and why is talking about myself not interesting to other readers?
• Easy one first: I’m not a celebrity, so my day-to-day minutiae is not interesting
• I’m not learning anything, so I have nothing useful to share. Therefore, boring.
• Therefore also, “Stuff” is learning and teaching
• Which I need to be doing in order to write about it.
• What do I want to learn and what can I teach?
• I want to learn- and teach- more about my craft.
• Which means I need to practice it more, actively seek out things to learn, and share them here.
• Here’s a big one: Why aren’t I practicing my craft more????
• I don’t think this is just about art.
• Learning to let go of anxiety and stress, and just work, and be joyous in that work, is what I want to be doing.
• Being fearless is huge. Because to make it work and not a hobby, it has to go out into the world and do something (earn me a living as well?).  I need to send it there.
• So I want to become that person. I’m not there yet.
• Maybe nobody’s ever “there.” Like how you always expect you’ll “grow up” and you never do
• So if I never arrive then I can only ever talk about becoming.

So, “becoming a working artist.” Developing as an artist, professional and better person. An exercise in character building. Not being so damn grumpy and dissatisfied all the time, because there are always new, interesting, and exciting things to learn and do. That’s what this blog is about.

(UPDATE May 30, 2009: I realize that after I wrote this article, I turned around and started working on a lot of so-called “purposeless art.” This article sort of represents the last death throes about my old opinions about art, and the last time I use this argument as an excuse not to work. I still hold the premise- that there’s nothing wrong with pitching a concept, getting paid for it, and THEN developing it; but there is also and equally nothing wrong with drawing for yourself and wasting materials and NEVER getting paid for it. And so, I give you my whiny rant:)

Neil Gaiman posted a link to a review of Coraline on his Twitter feed on Sunday from what looks like a conservite Christian blog of some sort. I have a fundamental disagreement about how the reviewer read the film (which makes sense, seeing as how I’m not a conservite Christian, but there are plenty of Christian reviews who disagree with this one as well), and there is already a discussion in the comments of the article.

But I’m deeply offended by the suggestion that Coraline is not a cohesive story with a moral because the development process went from concept to contract to outline, and then to finished novel, rather than having the story finished before he tried to sell it. Here we go again with the very foolish notion that art must be done for its own sake, and getting paid for it must always be incidental to its creation for it to count.

Art has deep roots in business. The art of the rennaisance exists largely because rich patrons paid people to make it. My favorite example is that the Sistene Chapel was a commission, and I like to think that Michelangelo had a contract in hand before he had the final sketches down, if not a nice fat advance.

I don’t particularly like being called an artist because of the image it conjures of being some flighty, flaky, beret-wearing, loft-living, starving waif. I’ve setteled on “illustrator,” or “designer” because at least there’s an implication that I’m a businesswoman there. At one point I wanted “art mercenary” printed on my business cards, but a buddy of mine who is better at marketing than I am talked me out of it (“I don’t care how cool is sounds, you say ‘mercenary,’ and people think Blackwater”).

The point is that I have skills and I’d like to be paid for them, thank you very much. And I think that people who have skills; artists, writers, carpenters, tapdancers, whatever; should expect to be paid if people want to continue consuming what they put out. Neil Gaiman is a “brand,” as the article says so callously, because he has a record of producing something that people want. It’s simple supply and demand. Just because there is money involed doesn’t give a project any less soul.

Tags: art, business, contracts, Coraline, Neil Gaiman, work