Sad and Beautiful World

Sad and Beautiful World is the last in the 12 part comic series, Demo, written by Brian Wood. Each issue is a separate self contained short story in which Wood wanted to explore the experience of a group of ‘mutant’ youths, albeit set in a non-super hero setting.

Sad and Beautiful World is my favourite story of the twelve because the idea itself can be seen as an extended metaphor and brings a sort of poetic beauty to it. The story features a young couple who have over the years come to fall out of love, but cannot physically be apart from each other or their bodies will tear apart, literally. I love the fact that you can compare this to a modern destructive relationship that have learnt to hate each other through love but cannot bear to be apart.

The comic features beautiful repetition of the phrase: ‘And we healed’ showing the on going pain the couple face of having conflicting wants and needs. The style of the art work, by Becky Cloonan, is aggressive black and white panels, featuring thick black strokes which almost look like rips. I like how it feels like each panel is tearing out of the page at you, as though the panel itself wants to leave but can’t, the same as the characters.

The narrative style features both points of view, from the girl and from the boy, first person, though their stories don’t contradict each other. It describes the times they have tried to leave each other, gradually revealing the climax of their dilemma, and also the process of trying to live everyday life with each other whilst keeping a happy distance. Somehow one of them even manages to have an afraid despite their proximity issues.

My favourite part about this short story is the face that it can be seen as a large metaphor for life; learning to live with each other, how it can cause so much pain, but how you always heal.

If you haven’t read it already, do.

Writing without ducks

Morning. I've been away for the week and thought that I would have a quick catch up on here. I'm changing jobs, from one boring job to another, but the benefit is I've got a two week gap so I decided to go back to my mum's for a week. She has a long garden with a log cabin hidden at the bottom so I thought this would be the perfect place to try and settle into writing for a bit.


Despite being attacked by earwigs by nights and thunder fly's by day, it was the perfect place to write. The log cabin has a large veranda with big comfy sofas and a little table, so it was the perfect plact to set up my mini lap top and curl up. Also my mum has a new collection of mini ducks whose house is right outside the veranda, so watching little creatures chatter to each other and take baths was quite relaxing.

I've managed to write 40 pages of a 60 page script I am writing and multiple micro fictions which need to be edited. Although it is a bit worrying that the 40 page script has reached it's finishing point so I need to have a good look over and see how I can extend it by twenty minutes.

But now I'm stuck, because I'm back in the real world and there's so many more distractions. Out there it was hot, quiet, and distractionless ( other then the little ducks of course). But here, back in the real world, back in my flat, I struggle to concentrate. I always feel like there's something else to do. Worst of all, I put pressure on myself to find a better job, to get something I really want quick before I get stuck in something I don't. I also think more about other people reading my pieces and what they think, before I've even finished a piece. Those thoughts are distracting from writing.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is, writing is hard. You have to make time for it in your every day life and keep making time for it. Or it'll end up being a hobby you do when you're on holiday. I think what I need to do is have a move around of my flat and see if I can create a writing cubby, because at the moment it's nothing like curling up in front of ducks!

Artist interview: John Routledge - Images vs Words

                  John Routledge is an emerging artist, sculptor and photographer from Essex. He currently resides in The New Forest where he is completing a graduate internship with Artsway. He is the first to brave my interview to see how art uses storytelling and how storytelling is affected by images.

John's main work is based in sculpture. Since graduating from Coventry University with a degree Fine Art in 2008 John has taken part in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and had many exhibitions country wide for his sculpture and photography work. His most recent exhibitions includes: 'Encounters at Wheatley' at Wheatley Manor in Oxfordshire, and 'Making of Encounters' held at the John Radcliff Hospital in Oxford.

John's ambitions as an artists are quite modestly 'to be recognised as an artist.' His aim is to get his own studio and eventually work on larger public commissions. 

So, over to you John.

How would you describe your artwork?

There are many facets to my artistic practice, comprising of sculpture, installation, photography and drawing.
I am particularly interested in night photography, and will walk around the streets at night taking photos. On a personal level, I enjoy the solitude, but also the contradiction of a place being designed for the use and inhabiting of so many being so empty, it also allows me to concentrate on more formal elements to my photography - contrast, composition, etc – without interference. In a way I see this as a documentation of modern life, representing the new environments we have created for ourselves.

My sculptural practice is based around light, and I see my installation work really as an extension of this practice. I not only utilise light in my work, through the use of fluorescent tubes, but I also manipulate it through the use of highly reflective surfaces and mirrors. I don’t know why but I am a bit of a moth really, I am drawn to light, and I think there is an essential beauty and purity in there some where. I’m really interested in contradictions and hypocrisy, in an abstract sort of way, and really enjoy light as an example of this: it is an absolute, it is on or it is off; there is darkness or there is light. And yet in reality, there is never true darkness, even in the depths of space there is some form of light, however weak, otherwise we wouldn’t know anything is there. Without light we wouldn’t experience the world as we do, we would not be able to see, period. We couldn’t enjoy the beauty of a sunrise, or our partners, or the multitude of other amazing things we experience via vision.

In what capacity do you feel that art in general has the potential to tell a story?

I think art has great narrative potential, and one of the beauties of the freedom of modern art is that so many people are expressing so many things in such an astounding number of ways.

How does your work relate to this?

Whether we like it or not people will always try to read a story into your work, and subconsciously I think art always expresses something of the person who made it. In my sculpture and installation work I think this is ‘the story’ of what I have made, the story of me. I don’t really do this on purpose, but I think subconsciously it happens anyway.

As for my photographs, there are no real strict narratives, but I suppose you could see the images as a meta-narrative of contemporary life. In some ways I like to think I am telling the story of the city, without people it takes on a life of its own, it has its own character and personality completely separate from nature and us. But again I don’t really set out with a story in mind, I just kind of notice things afterwards which lend themselves to some vague form of story. Perhaps I have subconsciously done this as I’ve been going along, or perhaps it is just my natural desire to try and make everything make sense, have some form of order and logic, that means I try and imprint and force something upon it afterwards.

Do you have a specific piece which has a strong story telling element?

I suppose the one I’d most like people to make a story about is ‘The Mirror Room.’ It was one of my final degree projects and was a 6ft wide, 18ft long, 7ft high space with mirrors on all 4 internal walls. I customised fluorescent fittings to create a specific atmosphere and this was enhanced by a constantly evolving sound scape composed specifically for the space by composer David Loveless. It was a very contemplative environment, but also very visually complex, as the mirrors reflected themselves into infinity. The space ended up being almost another world, and I would like to think people imagined themselves in other worlds, dimensions, places.

In your opinion, can a piece of art tell a full rounded story or is it only once words have been added that it is complete?

I think it is possible to construct one without the other, you can create imagery with words, and you can create words with images, but I think really the two are more effective when combined, rather than used in isolation.

Do you think that images can be any more manipulative then words in terms of making the viewer feels something?

I think images evoke a much more immediate emotive response. For example seeing a photo of a dead body is far more potent and would illicit a far greater response, than a piece of text describing one. But I also think that used properly, words can go beyond images, and while they may lack immediate punch, I think they can create something far more affecting in the long run.

 

Which do you feel is a stronger storytelling tool between images and words?

I think images are the easier tool to use, as for stronger I’m not so sure. Recently I’ve attended a few literary events, including Bad Language events, which have really made me reconsider my view on this. There is a vibrancy and immediacy you experience with spoken word, that you just don't get reading a book, and I think this proves that when used properly, by a great writer, words have far more effect. But it seems to me that a far less proficient artist or photographer can achieve something similar. While qualitatively I think words have the edge, in the lazy, accelerated society we live in, pictures get the message across quicker with less effort.


Thank you John! You can view The Mirror Room video below and view more of John's sculpture work at: www.jwr-scrulpture.deviantart.com. 

You can view more of John's photography work at: www.johnny-r.deviantart.com.