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TABLE OF CONTENTS
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INTRODUCTION
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THE BEGINNING: THE DREAM, KINGDOM OF GOLD, AND ANXIETIES
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PLANNING: THE RABBIT
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UNPLANNING: WORTHLESS
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VERISIMILIUDE: THE TUMOR AND PORN
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EXPANSION: GALLERY INSTALLATION, LARGE FORMAT, AND PRODUCTS
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1. INTRODUCTION
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OVERVIEW The Book of Trash is a an experimental graphic novel / literature collection. It’s a series of short stories, and each work in the series tells the story behind a discarded object. Some pieces in the collection are formatted more traditionally–comic books or picture books–but others are more experimental in their design, mimicking found objects or pieces of trash.
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DESCRIPTIONS As it stands now, The Book of Trash Consists of seven books: The Dream: A square, twenty-eight page picture book printed on newsprint with a manila cardstock cover. The Dream is about the cyclical nature of relationships, enduring hardships throughout life, and cutting ties with toxic people. Kingdom of Gold: An eight-page mock religious pamphlet, about arrogance, addiction, faith, and penance. Anxieties: A Roadmap: A double-sided “road map,” with a “map” on one side and a “key” on the other. It’s about growing up and dealing with with anxiety and mental health issues. The Rabbit: A sixteen page comic on newsprint, designed to feel like an old comic that you loved but haven’t seen in years. The Rabbit is about responsibility, grief, and loss. Worthless: A stream-of-conscious narrative, illustrating the phrase “idle hands make the devils work.” A teenager hanging out behind Seven-Eleven gets a glimpse of Heaven, Hell, and everything in between. Forty pages on yellow construction paper. The Tumor: A twenty-page document designed to look like ugly paperwork, dealing with themes of isolation and fear. Porn: Sixteen pages on newsprint, Porn is about coming of age and the numerous conflicting emotions that come with the discovery of sex.
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INSPIRATION I always thought my strongest work combined my writing and illustration, so when I started making zines a few years ago, it clicked. These zines were small and cheap, but I thought they had a lot of potential. I wanted a chance to really push this combination to a more finished place, so I decided to base my thesis on writing and illustrating as many finished zines as I could. After objectively examining my background, personality, and interests, I realized I had a genuine interest in things that are overlooked, unconsidered, and mundane. I noticed that my phone was full of photos of bad design, like ugly signs, advertisements, and printing errors. I was always interested in abandoned buildings, train tracks, and hidden areas of the city. I liked things that were old, but not in a “beautiful, vintage” sense, but just very common old things, like magazines from the 80s, early cheap computer graphics, packaging from everyday objects, et cetera. In the first year of the program, we took a field trip to the Geppi Museum with our Critical Seminar class. I saw the old comic books and movie posters up close, and it was incredibly inspiring. The misregistrations, halftones, and cheap pulp paper, with the intense, saturated ink colors looked beautiful, and I wanted to make work that looked similar. After experimenting and tweaking my process throughout the first year, I finally developed a way of working that felt natural and unique.
Examples of the textures I use to make stripes of “bad” color. 14
A page from my first year independent project, PINK. This is when I began feeling more confident with my process 15
When I began working, it quickly became evident that it was important to vocalize this inspiration as a crucial area that my thesis would explore. When describing The Book of Trash, I thought my idea was pretty clear. Everyone was familiar with me and my work, so the thesis pitch went pretty smoothly. However, some of the first guest critics I met with just didn’t “get” it. I had to tweak my elevator pitch to make it clear that I was trying to push lowbrow material and aesthetics into a higher place. I didn’t want to use discarded objects as characters, or do heavy-handed “lesson” on disposability or environmentalism.
A sketch from my thesis proposal, visualizing the finished thesis at the end of the year. I’m proud of how close my work looks to my original vision.
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Thesis proposal cover
MARKET RELEVANCE After doing research, I consider myself very lucky to exist as a young illustrator in 2016. While “underground art” has always existed, with the advent of the internet, niche markets like zines and alternative comics have exploded in popularity. Through my online store, I’ve sold comics to people in Australia, England, and Canada, not to mention all corners of the United States. People from across the globe follow my Tumblr account, and I think this kind of worldwide exposure is incredible. Twenty years ago, even this small amount of popularity would be pretty rare. I won’t work under the delusion that I could live off The Book of Trash, but it’s exciting and encouraging to realize that people around the world are interested in something so personal to me. That said, it’s not impossible for something like The Book of Trash to exist in a mainstream market. I based the format of this project off of Chris Ware’s popular graphic novel, Building Stories. While The Book of Trash is much more personal and experimental than Building Stories, it’s evident that publishers like Pantheon, Fantagraphics, and Nobrow are taking more risks with the work they publish, and they’re doing quite well. In the same vein, I’m noticing more and more art directors of extremely mainstream publications like The New York Times and The Boston Globe working with younger, more alternative illustrators who push the boundaries of editorial illustration further past the more “unoffensive” or “normal” work commissioned in the past.
Revision notes from my thesis proposal draft
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THESIS GOALS First and foremost, I wanted to use this opportunity to push myself to make as much work as I could, so I could feel more confident in both my personal voice and my technical skills. To achieve these goals, I think it’s very important to constantly be working and producing as much finished work as possible. While I definitely would like to write and illustrate a longer-format graphic novel, I only have this one year of focused time, input from a wide range of critics, and access to resources like printers and computers. I wanted to graduate with a strong body of work that feels 100% true to myself, that I can use to promote myself and build a professional practice from. I think its important to develop a strong personal voice so I can tackle jobs with confidence and in a unique but approachable way. I wanted to experiment and fine tune my process, and creating a volume of finished work is the best way to do this. Lastly, I wanted to do research and find markets where my work can fit. This was what I discussed with critics the most: where does this work fit? Is it too “weird� for a commercial market? What kind of jobs could I get with this portfolio? I know making zines and comics will never be lucrative, but finding ways to translate my work into something more profitable would help.
Preliminary brainstoming notes and thumbnails 18
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2: THE BEGINNING: THE DREAM, KINGDOM OF GOLD, AND ANXIETIES: A ROAD MAP
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“The Dream” cover after many revisions and iterations.
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THE DREAM With my thesis goals in mind, I wanted to get a lot of work done right out of the gate. I did these three zines in about five weeks. The first, The Dream, was pretty challenging. It was my first experiment with not having the text fully written before I started the art. I hit a block about three quarters of the way through the book; I didn’t know how to end this narrative that was so cerebral and surreal to begin with. Meetings with critics helped me work through it, and I decided to bring this abstract journey back into the real world. I am very happy with the final, but I often forget this book compared to the others. However, during festivals and in my online store, this book is consistently the best-seller. Maybe its the small, square format with very precise, detailed drawings, coupled with the more abstract, simple pages that make it so appealing. It seems that, even though the art is black and white, it doesn’t feel like a “black and white zine.” The palette feels very intentional, and it lost some magic in the attempts to color it. Despite being happy with this book and it’s relatively high sales, I think this was a “learn from your mistakes” experience. Going forward, I always had text ready for my longer-format, traditional narrative work. The text can and should be tweaked as the art comes together, but the basic structures of each story have to be in place.
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After enlarging these scans, the artwork becomes more tactile than the original vector files.
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KINGDOM OF GOLD After learning that lesson, I took a quick break before starting my next longer book to do Kingdom of Gold. The art was so laborious in The Dream and I wanted to do something quick and dirty, just to stay fresh. I did Kingdom of Gold in a day. I wrote the text during breakfast, did half of the art work in the morning, then went to work. I finished the rest of the art at work. After work, I went to the studio to add texture to the vector files. I was really happy with Kingdom of Gold, and it actually remains one of my favorites in the collection to this day. I love the illustrations; they’re definitely bad, in a kind of utilitarian way. It looks like someone with a basic art skills did some drawings for a church or something. I have been meaning to make more shorter format zines like Kingdom of Gold, but I haven’t had the time. I really like the visual style, but I recognize that it’s pretty limited in it’s application. It’s something that can only work in a zine like this; a zine thats supposed to look ugly. Even if it were on a flyer for a punk show or something, it wouldn’t look “good bad.” It would just look like someone with no skills did a poster. Without the context of “zine elevating bad art,” it just looks bad. This style is combination of my more tight, descriptive line drawings, and the onehundred-percent, almost robotic vector style I developed over the summer, that I fine-tuned during my next piece, Anxieties: A Road Map.
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ANXIETIES: A ROAD MAP Anxieties was another piece that I made pretty fast. I did all the artwork and text in one sitting. This zine was supposed to resemble a road map: the “map” is on one side, with numbers next to different “attractions.” On the other side, each number corresponds with a description. I intended the viewer to flip back and forth between the two sides, reading the descriptions in whatever order they wanted. The text didn’t have to be read sequentially to make sense, but in the original draft, the text layout was hard to follow and seemed at odds with the art. I was using a simple sans-serif that didn’t match the artwork. I deleted some text, rearranged it with a different, horrible “futuristic” typeface, and it worked a lot better. This reevaluating of the final product was important, as it taught me to fully consider the whole package. I was pretty set using sansserif typefaces in a fairly structured way, but revising the text side got me thinking: if, in this thesis, I want to break design rules and make bad designs, then I have to really break those rules in earnest and make my designs really bad. This was an important lesson to learn. Using a typeface that was super ugly, that any designer would cringe at, took this project to the type of finish I had been striving for. As students, we’re always being taught the “rules” of illustration or graphic design. It’s really important to learn those rules, but it’s also important to break them. If you never experiment beyond what’s considered “the standards,” I don’t think your work will be as fresh. This will probably be something I struggle with for a while as I’ve always been pretty afraid of breaking art or design rules and looking stupid.
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3: PLANNING: THE RABBIT
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Original thumbnails for layout and characters
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CONCEPTUALIZTION After the first six-to-eight weeks of working fast and getting a lot finished, I decided it was time to settle into something a little longer and more detailed. While only 16 finished pages, The Rabbit, to me, definitely feels long. It’s inspired by traditional old comic books like the ones I saw at the Geppi Museum. The color is intense, the drawings are clean and descriptive but little weird, things aren’t registered correctly, there are weird ink runs. I wanted this to feel like a picture book you liked as a child, but you haven’t seen in years and it takes on an exaggerated, almost mythical form in your mind. I was originally going to make this much more “normal.” I was going to draw an actual, human boy in this forest with real animals around him, but after I drew one panel I was thought it was too boring, something that had definitely
This was about as detailed as my sketches were at first
been done before. The original text was much quieter, with less drama but I thought: why not make it weird? Why not make something more important happen?
The original text (l) versus the text used in the comic (r). Note the differences in pacing to accomodate the visuals.
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The beginning of The Rabbit, with accurate forest reference. I had only gotten two panels into the comic before deciding against more realistic artwork
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The first sketches for the main character. Creating this character was difficult, but his non-humanness was liberating
So rather than a traditional coming-of-age tale, I made this comic deal with losing your innocence, taking responsibility for your actions, and suffering loss. While all these themes can be found in a traditional coming-of-age narrative, I think The Rabbit is more raw and emotional. I’m really happy with the end product. It might be the “best,� technically, of the collection.
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SKETCHES Something interesting happened while
I don’t think this is a good thing, and I was
working on The Rabbit. For the first half
pretty upset when I came to this realization.
of the book, I didn’t do any preliminary
I was worried that, if I do ever get a book
sketches. I did some pencil thumbnails
deal, the publisher will obviously require
to figure out certain compositions, but
sketches and a manuscript. If I can only be
that’s about it. It was very exciting at first.
motivated by not knowing what will come
There was some mystery, some thrill in
next, how could I ever finish something
not knowing what was going to happen
in the “real world?” After thinking about
next. Halfway through working on it, we
this problem for a while, I came to the
went up to New York for Illustration Week.
conclusion that I only lost interest because
I did color sketches for the remaining eight
I didn’t do sketches for the first half. If I
pages, so I could show a full dummy book
were to sketch out a whole book from the
to my critics. After doing those pages, I lost
start, I don’t think I’d have this problem. I
a little interest in finishing. The work started
think I’d be really excited to start the final
to feel like a chore. It was like seeing the
art, and not worried about hitting a wall. I
end of a movie before watching the whole
will say that, despite losing interest, I did
thing, and then you don’t want to watch the
finish the book by my original self-imposed
movie from the start anymore.
deadline.
Process from start to finish. Sketches, with vector drawings (r) and final art 40
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4: UNPLANNING: WORTHLESS
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PROCESS During prep for the end of fall semester critique, I started making a comic of stream-of-consciousness vector drawings, just for fun and to relieve stress. I was originally drawing whatever came to mind, using only two very specific constraints: black and white artwork, and straight lines at 180, 90, or 45 degree angles. This just-for-fun exercise turned into a forty page comic that explored heaven, hell, the cosmos, and earth. It was very dense, almost psychotic, but extremely fun to make. It really helped me solidify my vector process, and I think Worthless is my favorite of the group. This was when I really threw all the rules away and did whatever I wanted, with no reservations. There’s a tongue-in-cheek humor in this book, different writing voices, and a loose but present narrative.
The originial vector art
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Then colored in Photoshop
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Sample spread of the finished art, printed on yellow construction paper 46
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PROFESSIONAL APPLICATION I would love to work in this stream-of-conscious manner for a lot of professional projects, but I understand a client’s hesitation about commissioning this kind of work. To work professionally this way, I guess I’d have to present something mostly finished, and then we could make changes. One thing I really like about working like this is that it’s super fast. This “style” could be used really effectively in an editorial context, I think; sketches would come much faster and the final artwork looks great printed.
Photoshop color test, to figure out palette
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AUTHENTICALLY BAD
Another fun aspect to this book was the introduction of advertisement pages. I did a series of advertisements for different fictional companies, modeled after the ugly ads in the back of church bulletins. I included my personal cell number on all of the ads, and people have been calling me to say they liked my work. Despite looking so bad, this was actually very hard to make. It’s hard to make something that looks authentically bad; often times, it looks like the artist is trying too hard when they work like this.
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5: VERISIMILITUDE THE TUMOR AND PORN
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VERISIMILITUDE One important concept I’d been wrestling for the duration of thesis is verisimilitude. That is, “the appearance of being true or real.” (Google Search.) So, in dealing with aesthetics of disposability, how close do I want the work in this series to resemble their sources or inspiration? For much of the work, like Anxieties and Kingdom of Gold, I used the physical format of the source material, roadmaps and religious tracts, as inspiration. From there, I made work that referred to the source, but ultimately transcended that source to be my own, unique project.
I decided to invent a fictional hospital for this assignment. I basically branded the hospital, including letterheads, logos, and paperwork formats.
I did a series of clipart-esque spot illustrations that appeared throughout the text. They fit the ‘paperwork’ theme well, but drawing these cartoony Christmas illustrations was very irritating.
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However, as we discussed The Tumor in
I remembered walking around Small
the final crit, it didn’t feel “real” enough.
Press Expo and seeing some work that
The Tumor was supposed to look like
looked exactly like religious pamphlets,
paperwork from a hospital that had
and it just looked corny. It looked like
been xeroxed a million times, but the
a cheap gimmick with no substance
original draft was almost over-designed.
backing it up. I wanted to make work
Real hospital paperwork would almost
that was wholly my own, that referenced
certainly be done by someone with no
these found materials but departed in an
graphic design or art background, and
unexpected way. That said, it was very
definitely not be executed in the Adobe
important that, if I wanted something
Creative Suite. This prompted me to
to look undesigned, it had to really be
evaluate my work and ask that question:
undesigned. It was hard to come to this
how close do I want this work to be to
realization, but after, I felt very thrilled
its source? After some thinking, working,
about the possibilities. I could break rules
and research, I realized I didn’t want
and do things that, in any other context,
my work to be too close. I wanted to be
would look horrible, but in The Book of
inspired by these objects, this trash, but I
Trash it really worked. I redesigned the
wanted to take it in my own direction.
cover for The Tumor and the second
Various iterations of The Tumor before settling on the “paperwork” format.
iteration was much more successful. I used some Google Maps images, xeroxed to the point that they were just black boxes, and cut the title and author credits off the top of the page. This looked very cool when it was finished. 55
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Some of the many photos and design elements I collaged into the text. I had taken a lot of photos over the years, of places and objects in the hospitals I worked at. I was excited to finally use them in my illustration practice.
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The original cover (l) versus the revised cover (r) 59
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MAKING PORN While making Porn later in the semester, I really wanted to go as far from the source as possible. I took the inspiration from situations like finding an old dirty porno magazine on the train tracks, or seeing some back pages from the Philadelphia City Paper laying around in the street. I didn’t want to use nudity, because I thought it felt too obvious. I wanted to examine the circumstances of going through puberty and discovering sexuality and pornography and being simultaneously curious, terrified, excited, ashamed, and secretive. I had a really hard time with both the text and the artwork. I knew I wanted to make this book, but I didn’t know how to treat it. After a ton of sketches and notes and cutting a six page story into one page and experimenting with collage in my elective, I decided to work with collage, photo, and televisions. I sat in my office with the lights off and found an old cathode-ray tube TV in the storeroom. I cycled through the channels taking pictures of whatever popped up for collage material. I even included some hand drawn elements, as a nod to a bored adolescence. I programmed the TV to display the title and author credit. It was really exciting to get out of the illustrated elements and more into photography and collage. It feels like another facet in this project. I did a lot of photo zines before coming to MICA and I think its a very natural way to approach the combination of written work and image.
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6: EXPANSION: GALLERY INSTALLATION, LARGE FORMAT, AND PRODUCTS
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When I finished Worthless, I felt like I had partially reached what I set out to do: I felt confident in my voice, narrative, and process. I had made some work that I was really proud of, and for a minute I thought: now what? Some of the first guest critics of the spring semester gave helpful advice, and I had a range of exciting new areas to work in: large-scale work, products, and installations.
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THE BOOK OF TRASH READING ROOM In March, I focused on the thesis exhibition. I always thought that interactive work in a sterile gallery environment was intimidating. Even if I knew the work was made to be picked up and experienced, I’d feel reluctant to actually touch it. Since my work is so tactile, and the act of reading it is so important to it’s success, I wanted to create an environment that allowed the viewer to feel relaxed and open to interacting with the space.
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A preliminary scale drawing of my plan for the space. When measuring and ordering materials, I forgot to account for two false walls at the entrance of the room. They made the space bigger, and I had to frantically order more materials halfway through installation
INSTALLATION PROCESS With this in mind, I decided to make a
First, I wallpapered the walls. Then I stuck
“reading room,” where the viewer could
the tiles down, put the rug on top of it, fixed
take a stack of zines, sit in a comfortable
moulding along the walls, and arranged the
chair, and dive into the work. I wanted
furniture. After that, I hung art that I made
the room to feel like my thesis: everyday,
specifically for the installation. The frames
often ugly materials, elevated to a more
were awful, ugly, and broken, and they
significant place. I used mismatched
were exactly what I wanted. Finally, I filled
furniture, with hideous wallpaper, a dirty
the space with knick-knacks from the thrift
pink rug, and floor tiles to make a fully
store, hid objects in the end table drawers,
immersive room. I described the aesthetic
and put little stickers and magnets on the
as “Grandmom’s basement bathroom
walls. I would say this is my favorite art
meets an unused conference room in an
piece I’ve ever done, and I was upset when
empty bank.” Despite a few minor setbacks,
I had to deinstall.
setting up this installation was an absolute blast. I was thrilled to really focus on details and make this room feel complete.
A photoshop mockup, visualizing how I wanted the space to look. While I was able to save a great deal of money ordering materials online, it was hard to account for how they’d look together. I made this very rough mockup, just so I’d have a visual collection of my materials to refer to.
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The installation and the finished room
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I made ten peices to hang on the wall. Concieved as diptychs, I wanted these pieces to be in conversation with both the gallery space and each other. These peices were fairly large, tiled together with masking tape, and shoved in cheap, wrong-sized frames. These prints, formatted in their frames, became art pieces themselves.
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While I’ve become pretty confident about drawing directly in Illustrator, more complicated forms, especially figures, need to be hand drawn. In this case, I sketched them in Illustrator, drew the environment, deleted the figure sketch, then printed the environment so I could hand draw the figures. Finally, I traced over the drawing with the pen tool. 78
PRODUCTS I started thinking about products during the fall of the first year, and I had a hard time finding applications for my work. This year, however, I felt less apprehension about dimensional work, and did a line of devotional candles for December’s Art Market. Each candle had a front with an illustration, and a back with a prayer-like poem and branding elements. They were fun to do, and their success opened more avenues of working for me.
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Finished artwork that was then printed on sticker paper and stuck to the candle.
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LARGE FORMAT Lastly, I wanted to go large. I was happy with my down-and-dirty comics and zines, but I wanted something bigger, something that would fill up a wall. In my elective, I made a sixty-eight-inch-long accordion book, based on the neighborhood I grew up in. While not expressly for thesis, seeing my work finished at this scale was exciting. I contacted a blueprint printer and began working on a one-hundred-inch-long, stream-of-conscious vector drawing called The Benediction. I consider this piece to be a kind of bittersweet “farewell,” to my time at MICA. I’m excited for what the future holds, but I will definitely miss working in such an incredible environment, surrounded by some of the most talented artists I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting.
The Benediction in it’s half-finished state.
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The finished accordion book, Houses of Whitaker Avenue, 19111 takes up almost the whole fabrication table (l), with the finished artwork below.
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CONCLUSION Thesis year was thrilling, to say the least. I feel confident that I achieved the goals I came here to accomplish. The Book of Trash definitely did what I wanted it to, and I owe a great deal of thanks to my parents, Whitney, the guest critics, and my classmates for their support and guidance. My voice, skills, and process are much stronger than they were when I first came to MICA. Only two short years ago, I was cleaning hospitals, and feeling like I hit a dead end. Now, I feel ready and excited to begin working in “the real world.� While I will not have nearly as much focused time as I do in grad school, combining my illustration with writing and design will always be my number one passion, and I hope I can continue to work like this until the end.
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