Interview: Jeff Thompson

I did an interview with Jeff Thompson last month, which is up at Curator magazine. Officially he’s the Assistant Professor and Program Director of Visual Art Technology at Stephens Institute of Technology, but what that means is that he’s an artist who prefers to mess around with computer code. He does fascinating work. We talked about abusing Photoshop, Twitter bots, Andy Warhol, and why Nokia will probably never hire him to write a ringtone. Check it out!

Street art, part 2

I recently did a short interview with Franki Elliot, who often does sidewalk poetry (meaning while sitting on a public sidewalk, not writing poems about sidewalks) using a typewriter. It’s performance art, in a way, without the safety nets of AutoCorrect and, you know – being able to be at home without strangers staring over your shoulder. The horror! But she’s the real deal. The interview is now up at Curator Magazine. Check it out!

Cats on Cat Cartoons

A friend of mine observed recently that I’ve had a number of cat cartoons published in the New Yorker, so I decided to do some market research. I invited several cats over and had them give their feedback on some of my drawings, figuring I might be able to sell more cat cartoons if I nail the target demographic. What follows is some exerpts from the conversation.

Maurice: Cats who hunt don’t read The New Yorker.

Ella: Is this me? The one on the left looks like me.

Roger: I thought these would be animated. They’re kind of boring.

Carrot: Ha! I don’t get this one, but it’s funny, because dogs are stupid!

Roger: I don’t get this one, either. But yeah – dogs are stupid!

Carrot: I don’t understand the humor, but I can see why people love these New Yorker cartoons. So fascinating to look at. This one really has everything.

Ella: Is this me again? I used to be a model for art classes. I could pose for a long time.

Roger: A better caption for this one would be “Aren’t dogs stupid?”

Phoebe: There are no cats in this one, right? Can you really call this a cat cartoon?

Maurice: This seems too political.

Carrot: Dogs really are stupid. They chase those round things. They don’t even have to be shiny and they still run after them!

Ella: These chairs are really comfortable.

Roger: You know who is even stupider than dogs? People!

Frances: They’re just standing around doing nothing!

Carrot: A person probably drew this. It doesn’t even make any sense. A real cat would be ruling a jungle or capturing an eagle or something.

Roger: Hey, do we get food during this thing?

My Conversation with Bill Murray

DD: Hi there. Thanks for taking the time.

BM: Sure.

DD: Do people always make tiresome jokes about how you have the same name as the other Bill Murray, the famous SNL alum who also starred in such comedy classics as as Caddyshack, Ghostbusters, Rushmore, etc.?

BM: They do. All the time.

DD: Okay. I won’t do that!

BM: Thanks.

The Hall of Infamy

Was Jim Rice too black for Coca-Cola? Is A-Rod a cyborg? Why is Cal Ripken wearing dreadlocks? And did Gary Allenson ever exist? If you’re interested in the answers to these and other questions about the awkward greatness of baseball card design in the 1970s and 1980s, then head on over to the piece I wrote for Print magazine online. Then follow the link over to Imprint (the Print blog) for the interview I did with author Josh Wilker, who wrote the terrific Cardboard Gods, a memoir told through the lens of 1970s baseball cards. Unfortunately, a stale stick of chewing gum will not be included.

Interview: Kayt Hester

A self-portrait of Kayt, with "Pixie"

When I first moved to Hoboken I read a blurb in a local magazine about a woman who was creating art out of masking tape. It sounds like a novelty idea, but “Tape Girl” Kayt Hester is actually a terrific artist – and, like my last interviewee, is doing great things with everyday objects. She painstakingly creates her work by ripping the tape into pieces with her bare hands – no scissors or Exacto blades are used – and assembles them into images which are striking for both their roughness and their precision (in particlar, I fell for this Lady of Guadalupe). Kayt’s compositions are innovative and unpretentious, and she was kind enough to answer some questions for me before the opening of her new show at LITM in Jersey City on June 2.

DD: I’ll start with the most obvious question. Why tape?

KH: Why tape? Well, I had a lot of black darkroom tape left over from my days as a professional photographer. When i retired from photography (more like lost my job) I sold most of my equipment but had all this tape. One day I picked it up and just started playing around with it, ripping it up and making little pictures, then slightly larger pictures. It took on a life of its own. It just grew.

What was the first work you did where it was more than just playing around, where you said to yourself, “yeah, this is a legit thing”?

Its funny because it took other people to make me see it was legit. In 2005 I had decided I wanted to try my luck at getting a photography show somewhere in Jersey City, so I took my portfolio to LITM and met with Jelynne Jardiniano, the owner. Somehow there were a few of my small tape pieces randomly tucked in my portfolio, which must have been an accident. I did not intend to show them to anyone; I think I had only stuck them in there to keep them flat. Jelynne liked my photos, but she was much more into the tape work, which was surprising to me, because I had not looked at it in a serious way. She told me to go home and make more, and if they looked good then maybe I could get into a group show. I went home and got to work, and she eventually gave me a spot in a group show called “Elecktra Complex.”  Jelynne could have easily just closed my portfolio and said “no thanks” and I would have gone home and watched Law and Order instead of diving into the box of tape. But the show went really well and other offers for shows started to just roll in. She lit a fire under me and changed everything that day.

Interview: Austin Kleon

A couple of years ago, while staring at my magic glow screen, I stumbled upon a cartoonist who was creating experimental poetry by attacking a page of the New York Times with a Sharpie and blacking out all but a few choice words. Little did I know that this magic glow screen was actually called the “internet,” and that this multitalented “writer who draws” would soon be launching an entire book of these winsome poems, created by subtraction rather than addition.

Meet Austin Kleon, whose Newspaper Blackout was published this month by Harper Perennial. The technique of “finding” a hidden text within a text is not new, as Austin will tell you, but his approach is. He has liberated it from the left-field manifestos and postmodern posturing which have usually accompanied it, and has created work which is direct and accessible. These poems are as sweet, poignant, evocative, and funny as anything written by the “traditional” method, and definitely worth reading. One might even find them addictive. At Austin’s prodding I decided to try one of my own, and then I had the pleasure of talking to him about his book. Here’s some of the back-and-forth:

DD: Michelangelo reportedly said that “I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.” What made you first discover the blackout poem?

AK: A nasty case of writer’s block. I was twenty-two, right out of undergrad, trying desperately to write short stories. (Short stories are what they teach you to write in college, and so I tried to write them.) I’d sit in front of the computer screen, and the Microsoft Word cursor would just blink and blink and blink. Like it was taunting me.

One day, I looked over at our recycle bin stacked full of newspapers, and I thought, I might not have any words, but right there next to me are millions of them.