Online Comics APATHY AND DESPAIR

HEY APATHY! ONLINE ALTERNATIVE COMICS

This little short entitled "APATHY and DESPAIR" was made way back in the winter of 2001-02. I wanted to do a corresponding artist statement in the form of a comic book for my first exhibition of the HEY APATHY! artworks. The auto-biographical narration follows my weird experiences upon my earliest ventures to the monstrous metropolis. Having suffered a bout agoraphobia enhanced by a fear of mass media manipulation and an overwhelming populace of apathetic denizens, I decided to eliminate all my personal possessions and hide in my basement apartment. In the strip the character uses his commercial and material articles to barricade himself underground.

Like wise I hid in my home turned studio for an extended period of time while I developed my earliest ink drawings. Upon completion of the exhibit I returned to the big city to show the work and continue to investigate the urban atrocity. This comic depicts those initial sensations of despair and the influential experiences surrounding my early creative processes.

I had actually intended to draw a second chapter to this story which would explain the invention of my nightmarish APOCALYPSE drawings. The first series of HEY APATHY! artworks had two parts to it, one representative of our current state of nihilistic conformity and the other a series of premonitions of the apocalypse awaiting us if we did not change our ways. The idea was to eventually film the narrative in live action and have the two part comic as a sort of program for the moving picture. Although I completed the APATHY! portion of the book and film (shot on 16mm staring Mike DeCrook as the artist) I sort of lost interest in the project and started working on a bunch of animations instead. Anyways I came across a photocopied magazine version of the story and thought it would make an interesting dream sequence in the online comic. Eventually I will also transfer the film stock to video because it is pretty weird. We did a nice job on the high contrast lighting and some cool experimental overlays with drippy black oozing ink.

more art at http://www.heyapathy-comics-art.com/

Online comic page 15

Online Comics page 15, another depiction of my early artistic processes. Way back in 2001 I started drawing large scale ink on paper murals as part of the first instalment of HEY APATHY! I spent the entire summer dividing my days between a job landscaping and my evening working on the murals. They where all drawn with black India ink and a hand carved bamboo pen. The general routine involved about 5 hours each night working on the insanely intricate and massive artworks. I completed 13 large works that summer so as to have them ready for exhibition before I returned to the Ontario College of art and design in fall. I didn't actually have an exhibition space yet, or even really any plans as how to get one, but I plugged away and made the murals any ways. When I started back to the college I started making smaller and more accessible artworks based on the themes in the larger drawings. The idea being the exhibition would include hundreds of pieces ranging in size from 5 x 7 inches to 12 x 15 feet. The creation of the little works was ideal for my commute as I generally had about 1-1.5 hours of travel time to kill. I think that I would finish 2-3 of these each day and often drew on the backs of the paper as well. I would go to the dollar store on the weekends to buy frames which I would then use as a palette to work on. The little glass and cardboard was perfect for portable drawings and when they were done they were already ready for the wall. It is actually creepy thinking about it now because all of these early processes are very similar to the kinds of techniques I would use later on as a street artist and performer. I actually never really realized how intricate and precise the connections were until I started recollecting my processes here. Damn I feel old thinking back to that little introverted, innocent, and unassuming hopeful of 22 years. I already knew back then everything that was going to happen, unconsciously that is, but for some reason I insisted on doing it all anyways. check out these early drawings at http://www.heyapathy-comics-art.com/drawings-art-comics-2001.html