Where do you get your ideas to create art? For editorials, it’s when I have to put up with hypocritical, ignorant stupidity."ĥ. Making money and earning a living at what I enjoy doing helps too. Making people laugh - oftentimes the power of a single-second smile or a quick giggle can turn a whole day around. "Doodling while bored or when I’m supposed to be paying attention to something else and I'm totally ignoring reality (not really - just paying extra attention to a different one). "The Nuggets weekly feature that’s been published in Fairbanks for 25 years (also in Anchorage for the past couple years now) is mostly a single-panel gag of random topics loosely dealing with Alaskany material." About highschool was when I first started getting seriously into cartoons and comics, but I had always been reading and drawing them since I could hold a crayon.(though nowadays I’ve graduated to Sharpies)." "It never was a deliberate, conscious decision: kinda like getting older, or putting on a little extra weight - it just sorta happened, sneaks up on you. "Originally from Upstate and Western New York."Ģ. And that's what being a part of this community means to me - keep chuckin' 'em in. At any rate, when you toss in a pebble eventually a wave will reach the shore, something like that. Another example is getting all the students to submit work to the local paper or school newsletter, or even starting one of their own, maybe putting together a group comic-book. And I also think the very same self-perpetuating motivation for teaching - when that connection is made and maybe a difference made - in turn inspires a corresponding confidence when one sees a teacher learning something new and trying out what works. Also another example would be almost every time I crack open a good book it feels like I'm being given something just as valuable: what's priceless is passing it on. I think that's been probably the single greatest gift: not only being able to draw comics but to help in any way to give whatever you got away. So I always try and encourage anyone who might be interested in this to go to the library, drop by the Literacy Council of Alaska, take a class, come to a jam, visit the Comic Shop, hang out whenever or wherever there's something related going on (like this weekend's 24 Hour Comics!). Nothing leads like example, teaching too - all the best people teaching comics are big fans and if not talented to some degree themselves. Not to mention the proclivity of the whole species to overlook the fact there's a lot more going on with the entire planet than the human drama, we tend to forget that it ain't all about us.Īnd as with most presentations, nomatter how much time I have, I alway seem to forget something important, and the big one here was to reaffirm how crucially important it is to have fun doing all the different cartoon and comic-related activities yourself first. Old people might have the experience but they still manage to screw shit up all the time. Their perspective is equally valuable and we should hear what they have to say. And even though these kids might be too young to vote, I always maintain that they still have a voice. Fostering civic responsibility means at the very least instilling some connection with the community - upholding the democratic principles of an informed citizenry aside, it's a a rewarding exercise in participating and in the debate. When it comes to what's really important, the big issues, pulling any punches never does anybody any favors, and probably more than a few kids could benefit from seeing somebody get passionate about not just what they could or should do but also about things that are going on in the world and all around them. Still, out of respect for any teacher who was gracious enough to invite me into their classroom I try and restrain myself to a diplomatic degree of discussion. After re-edited this particular presentation several times, oscillating back and forth on a few images, I balanced everything out with the overall fact that shying away from controversy completely negates the point of editorial cartooning. I had some trepidation over the content of my own work and spent a lot of time scaling it down to (what I thought was) age-appropriate material. Mature topics and unflinching honesty can still be taboo subjects in public education, and careful review helps prevent any minefields of potential problems. Comics are still somewhat dangerous territory for teachers - there are wonderful books out there that inevitably contain that one page or one single panel of something that will get the entire work kicked out: a bared breast, a middle finger, a swear word, a violent scene etc.
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