Glastonbury 2011: fashion in illustration

So, I did warn you that I spent a lot of time sketching while I was at Glastonbury, right? Well, just like last year and at at last year's London Gay Pride, I spent a lot of time looking at what people were wearing and thinking about the different characters and different lives they all represented. I'm prepared to admit that because I was sketching people as they walked past, some of them aren't exactly accurate, more that they're what I could remember of people rather than exactly what they were wearing, so if you're, say, the woman who was wearing a hi-vis jacket with a frilly skirt and MC-Hammer pants underneath and wellies, I apologise now if I got your hat wrong or if you've wound up wearing your friend's hat. I've tried to capture people as best I could, though, before we get into a Hari-gate Spa of accusing me of going off to make these up from look-books.

There are more people I drew, of course, and hundreds of thousands of outfits I couldn't manage to draw. The man dressed as a horse who got his cock out to piss in the middle of the field at West Holts was just too grim to deserve any more attention than he was getting, for instance, but I'm sure that those of you who were there have your own stories to tell of amazing outfits I've missed.

I'm vaguely tempted to get some cards or prints or something put together of these, like a little zine of sketches of people from different events I've just sat at and been looking at people at. Really foolish idea? 

--

Don't forget: my comic, The Lengths, is out in your local comic shop now. Issue two comes out on the 6th of July. It's also available by mail order from http://www.thelengths.com - Cheers, ears.

Glastonbury 2011: Lost Boots

Abandoned Boots

Wellie Graveyard

A footprint-shaped spot of untouched grass.

----

Don't forget, you can get my comic, The Lengths, in your local comic shop or from www.thelengths.com - cheers ears.

Glastonbury 2011: Body and Soul

Lizz is the Queen of Fire

Last year, when I went to Glastonbury, I think my sense from it was that I could quite happily ignore all the bands and still have an amazing time, so when Caroline sent me her clash diary and asked what I thought, I replied: "I think clash diaries are anal."

To be fair, she can be forgiven because she has to let the people at Deafzone know where she wants to be so there can be sign language interpreters in place, so she's forgiven. Plus, really, all in, it's not like any of us can really say, hand on heart, that anal's not something we wish we all were getting a bit more of in our lives.

Speaking of things I think we all wish we had more of in our lives, I think that part of the surprising appeal of Mumford and Sons is the poetic and spiritual content in their songs, which marks them as quite unusual for a band that could fill the field in front of the Other Stage with everyone chanting along with every word to songs about awakening their souls and asking for some power to keep the earth beneath one's feet.

To me, this just reminded me of something I think I've talked about before in this blog - the sense I get that it's not the literal truth of a religion that actually matters, but that the mythology of stories has a different kind of truth - the difference between mythos and logos in philosophy, I suppose. The time at Glastonbury made me reflect quite a lot on this and how important the truths of mythology are to me as an artist and as a writer.

On the first night, I watched people gather at the Stone Circle, where almost everyone was drunk or on drugs, there were naked women dancing in the mud and the rain, people smeared in earth and paint and blood. Drums and brass bands led people in song and dance as the sun fell in the sky and there was a wild edge to the night that always seemed to be just one step away from descending into total carnage. In the crowd, robed figured patrolled with their tall staves in their hands, looking pleased at the chaos around them at the party. Midsummer is, I suppose, a reminder that what you have is about to slip away, so you should enjoy it while you can; it's about to disappear from you.

On the second morning, I talked to some of the people who ran the Common Ground Café. We talked about how ill-prepared many people were for the weather; how odd it seemed to come to the festival without any notion of how enormous and powerful nature would be compared to you, and what kind of pride you were showing to come along in flip-flops and no waterproofs. They talked about how they had formed out of a group of drug addicts who found a a faith in God and began living as a religious commune in the seventies and had stayed together since then. They seemed one of the most genuine, kind and friendly sets of people at a festival where those traits were pretty abundant anyway, so I enjoyed my time with them, and the people there would always make time to talk to me about what I was drawing and to chat about other things.

Common Ground was one of the few places to eat where you could get food for less than seven pounds, so Lizz and I found ourselves more than once in the Hare Krishna tent where they offer food to those who need it. It was a painfully humbling sense to be taking food, knowing that their charity was making a very genuine difference to me. I wasn't sure how to react. There was an odd moment where I was sat next to Lizz and we both had drinks next to ourselves. I couldn't remember where I'd put down the drink I'd been given and I almost said, "Which one's mine?" which suddenly made me wonder at what point I'd started to think about something that I'd accepted as charity as belonging to me and not to anyone else. Had someone else taken it, could I have felt affronted? On a wider level, I started to wonder about why we feel that way about any thing we buy or sell or give or accept - so I suppose the charity of the Hare Krishna tent gave me an interesting insight into one of the tenets of their faith.

I spent some time in the Healing Fields, getting reflexology and osteopathy, both of which were fascinating and helpful - the reflexology was particularly surprising because of how emotional it was. She pushed at two points on my feet, then started, saying, "I'm going to stop that - you're holding in so much pain; I'm sorry - I think I might have nudged at something there." She was right - a flood of thoughts I'd not even realised I'd been avoiding had pushed through into my conscious mind out of nowhere when she touched my foot. The osteopathy was a similar thing - he said that there are two points that are commonly related to seizures - one at the neck and one at the base of the spine. He then touched the two points where I've been having loads of back and neck pain. We looked at each other, both said, "oh..." He said he was going to try to relieve the point in my neck, but not go further in because otherwise I could well have a seizure, but when he went near it, he kept finding that I was unconsciously trying to protect it from him.

I said I wasn't in a rush; he gave me a grimly serious look and twisted my head around with some firm force. I felt a flood down my spine, felt for a moment as though I was going to go, then I was ok. I found I could move more freely than I had in a long while. We chatted for a little while, then he and the reflexologist sent me away with a very warm farewell. As I went to pick up my bag, I realised that I could feel the fingers on my right hand that I've not felt properly for years. That was almost as emotional as the mental block that the reflexologist had nudged. When I returned to London, the pain returned within a couple of hours, which is making me quite seriously wonder what's really causing all this.

I also spoke to a dealer about near-death experiences, a Christian Monk who left because he fell out with the church over its views on homosexuality, then returned to his Faith after falling in with a tradition of Druids and realising that their values wound up within British Christianity, and a former sex worker who talked about how she's now married and raising a child with her husband and has almost finished a PhD because she wanted to make sure she gave something back to society.

When I spent a week seeing so many different expressions of faith and worship, I can't help but think it's such a shame whenever people start to think that believing in one thing devalues others. Why some might say that the prostitute's devotion to helping others (throughout her life) might be seen as less spiritual than the monk's life in the order. Why people consider the Hare Krishna people risible, but accept a dealer talking about drug experiences in which people die and come back and think that's cooler than sharing food with people who need it.

Whether it's dancing in a stone circle around a fire to drums or to cheesy disco with a topless go-go dancer smeared in paint and glitter and a cute guy in the NYC Downlow (yeah, I did that, then kissed him goodnight after walking him back to the VIP areas, unaware that it had turned into a crime scene while we were dancing); whether it's cracking backs or rubbing feet; whether it's chanting Hare Rama to a group of unappreciative kids coming down from the night before who could easily afford their own food or former addicts building a café in a field - the way I see it, its all different jigsaw puzzle pieces in different streets and that's exactly how I love it.

Block 9

Glastonbury 2011

Why, yes, it was muddy, then it was hot. On the first night, the crowd was grumpy and drunk in a grudging way, all snarls and bad moods. When I was walking back to my tent, I overheard a group of men shouting at a woman for not joining in with their impromptu Oasis howlalong. One said to her, "Fine! Don't sing along, you stuck up bitch. I hope you drown in the mud in your sleep."

I almost packed my tent up and left then - I couldn't see where this conversation had been, nor could I see what happened next, but it was typical of the kind of atmosphere we'd walked into on the first evening while everyone was getting their bearings. I remember thinking to myself that I wouldn't wish that kind of thing on anyone, and that I hoped he learned a bit more respect for other people in case some kind of karma came back to bite him quite soon.

Who'd have thought that only a couple of nights later, I'd be kissing a fit guy just outside the gates to the VIP camping grounds at the very time they were turning into a crime scene? Not me, in so many ways.

There are so very many thoughts I want to share about all the things that happened at Glastonbury but I think you'd probably hate me if I piled it all into one big post, so I'm going to try to be a good blogger and spread it out across the week. For now, though, here's a picture of the lovely legion of litter pickers off doing their work. Given the amount of stuff they must be dealing with today, I salute them.

 

What Kind of Artist Are You?

I've been thinking lately about the different ways that people seem to make and build careers as artists and of the things I wish I'd had explained to me a bit more clearly when I was at art school first time around. Now, this is very broad-brush stuff and I'm quite sure that there will be so many exceptions to these that it'll all fall apart if you want it to, but I'm finding that this is quite a useful way to be thinking about approaching a career in art if you're just starting out.

It strikes me that there are three general ways of being an artist as a job, to the point where I wonder if we could do with slightly different words for each to differentiate between them, because most people when they know that they are artists start out not quite knowing what type of artist they want to be and get tied up in knots trying to work out why or how they will express their vocation as an artist.

I use that term very deliberately, because in my view, artists (be they writers, performers, painters, poets, educators or however it manifests) occupy a very similar social niche to the one that has in the past been occupied by priests, shamen and the like. I'll explain a little more at the end.

As I say, I think there are three main ways of approaching a career in the arts, and although there's some room to move from one to another, it strikes me that you can only really do that with any success once you've achieved some mileage along one path first. Let me have a go at blurting out what those three paths seem to be before I go way off track though.

Option 1: Objects of Desire

This would be the artist we most commonly think of when we imagine an artist, so someone who sells a painting or a sculpture for a large amount of money that's more than the material worth of the object itself, so what people are paying for is the idea of the object as much as the object itself, and the status of owning it. The painting, the sculpture, the installation is rare or unique and the artist makes few works, which enhances their value and they're kept by their buyers for the possibility that they'll increase in value in future as often as being bought out of love for the object or the idea behind it. The artist is not the focus of their public's attention, but the work is and both the artist and their work has a mystery to it that enhances that sense of it being more than its physical reality.

I know that I sound like I'm being a bit cynical about this kind of work; I'm not - I think there's something truly magical about this kind of art when it works, and the reverence and awe with which it is treated is well-deserved and it's largely because of those moments when this kind of art really excels that I'd say I think of art galleries as being the closest experience I have to what others would find in a church or other place of worship. That sense of a power and a beauty that's beyond you and moves through you.

Option 2: Project and not Object

The artists who work like this are the kind we hear the least about, because if artists are moved by a vocation of mystery and faith, then they are the nuns who study their scripture and then work selflessly in the community as an act of faith. This kind of work is the type where the artwork is not the physical object or the performance that's produced, but the manner in which it happens or the interactions that create it. It's the work of theatre in education projects, it's the work of the participation producer projects at the South Bank Centre that make large-scale art by involving hundreds of people who otherwise would not engage with art. It's the work undertaken by artists who use their talents to share their passion to educate others and to share their faith in the power of art and stories on a human level.

Yes, it's a little hard to reconcile this with the traditional model of how we see the work of an artist, but when you think about how many artists live, doing artist in residence projects where they directly share their passion and knowledge and don't live for the celebrity status or the sale of the object they create, but for the process of sharing the journey along the way, you realise that many fine artists, performers and writers work in this manner and that it's a brilliant way to be an artist.

Option 3: Accessible and Multiple

This kind of artist is someone who makes art which sells for less money but to many people. Print-makers who do large editions, craftspeople who set up shops on etsy or wherever and, yes, comic book creators would all fit into this category. Where the Option 1 artist makes few works that sell for larger sums of money, these artists make more and sell to more people. While it sounds like this is a more straightforward route to get into, it's surprising how many art schools seem to discourage it, perhaps because they're themselves wanting to get the status of scoring the big name artists who'll get gallery careers.  Where Option 1 artists have a high status of mystery and allure to them and Option 2 artists are often invisible behind the effect their work has, these artists build an audience to whom they must remain directly responsive and accountable, and there's a lot to be said for making friends if you're this kind of artist.



Right...


Now, I said I wouldn't witter on too much, but I think one of the difficulties I think I've had and that a few people I know face, too, is that if you're trying to move down two or all three paths at once, you're going to be spread too thinly and you're going to impede your chances of getting anywhere with any of them.

If you're selling cheap prints of your work on a shop online, a top-end gallery might be less inclined to take you on as their next big project, because the exclusivity of your work is compromised. Similarly, if you're trying to maintain the intellectual mystery of an Option 1 artist, then project work won't come your way. Similarly, if you're building up project work in residencies, the friendly relationship you'd need with audiences for doing option 3 can suffer if you're not careful.

That's not to say you can't do more than one - if Grayson Perry can do projects with families in the Foundling Museum, then obviously you can do Option 2 work when you're an Option 1 artist, but you need to be set up in one field before you move into another.

I don't know how useful any of this stuff might be, but it's a bit of a brain dump for me about some things I've been mulling over for a while about getting a sense of who and what you are as an artist.

What kind of artist are you?


-----

Quick last-minute reminder: I've got issue 2 of The Lengths available to pre-order ready for its release on the 6th of July. Head over here to order your copy: http://cutebutsad.bigcartel.com/ Oh, I guess that makes me option 3. Rah!

MCM Expo, The Lengths and More

Well, there's a lot of stuff to catch up on at the moment! I had an utterly amazing time at the MCM Expo, of course. You know it was awesome because I was there. Duh, it's a no brainer, really. Add to that the sneaky preview that I brought along some copies of issue 2 of The Lengths and that there were some amazing people like Lizz Lunney, Becky Cloonan, Timothy Winchester, Marc Ellerby and blah blah namedrop namedrop I'm such a celebrity I was drinking whiskey with... oh yeah, that's just insane. I'll stop. Suffice to say, the stupid cavalcade of what the actual fuck aside, it was actually incredibly humbling to be feeling like I actually belong at that place and that there were people who made a point of coming over to find my work and to talk to me about my comics and the characters in them in a way that made it seem that Eddie, Dan and the others are as real to them as they always have been to me.

That, to me, totally outranks any pissing contest of which big name comics person I got to talk to, in the end. The person who looked to my friend Sarah and said "I'm actually quite nervous" before pouring telling me about how much the comics I have been making have meant to her was a timely and humbling reminder of why I want to tell these stories in the first place, rather than getting caught up in how busy the day was with selling. It's what those sales mean that matters. Of course, the fact I can now pay off some of the printing costs isn't something I'm turning my nose up at at all, either.

All the busy in the actual show meant I didn't have much time to shop for comics of my own, sadly - I pretty much only managed to pick up Becky Cloonan's Wolves, Kate Brown's Fish + Chocolate (which possibly needed a trigger warning about how sad one of the stories in it is - oof!), the newest book from Tpcat and Tom McNally and the amazing Giant Days book. I think there were other things, but it's only been a few days. You don't expect me to have unpacked yet?

I got interviewed for a couple of comics podcasts, but I'll let you know when they're up. Mainly though, it was the usual mad cavalcade of cosplay and chaos interspersed with beautiful moments of friendship, art and tenderness that make the whole scene great.

But enough of sticking my entire arm down my throat to make myself vomit all over you! Here's a picture of Sarah, reading Issue 2 of The Lengths.

It'll be coming out in shops, like real actual real shops in the beginning of July. Insane. I will be updating the online shop to make it so you can order yours so you can get it on the day of release. In the meantime, if you've not got issue 1 or the ace poster, you kind of need to get your fucking act together and sort that out. Forbidden Planet says so. Issue 1 is in shops already. Isn't that mad? Shops! Actual places you can go into and talk to people about what things you might like? Mad!