Austin Kleon – Page 577

I TOLD THAT TREE AND IT DIDN’T LISTEN

Friday, May 26, 2006

Our man maintains that comics are a first-rate art form, Fantagraphics’ battle against lousy cartooning runs on 30 years, Michael Pollan and Meghan are in Texas at the same time, and the Walkmen rock out NPR.

Great article on LOST, and the inspiration for including OUR MUTUAL FRIEND in the plot. I studied O.M.F. in Cambridge and loved it. I drew these crazy maps of the “psychological geography” of the London in the book, which my tutor found far more interesting than any of the drivel I wrote up for him. Guess I should’ve known then that my pictures trump my words…

Anyways, my co-workers always ask me what’s my pet theory about LOST, and I always have to say, “I don’t have one, and really, I don’t care.” For me, it’s all about the ride of the episode, and the characters, and the great writing. And the pneumatic tubes! Sometimes I think I should get one of those: just roll up my latest sketchbook, stick it in a cartridge, and pop it in the pneumatic tube to nowhere…

THE BEAR ESCAPE

Thursday, May 25, 2006

Based on a true story we watched on the news a couple nights ago. (There’s also a plan out there to construct highway overpasses in such a way to make them safer for wildlife, and us.)

A full MP3 set of Van Morrison live at the Fillmore West, San Francisco, California, April 26, 1970. Unbelievably good.
The same blog posted Andrew Bird doing “Sovay” with My Morning Jacket.
Stanley Donwood’s linocut cover for Thom Yorke’s new solo album is fantastic. The original linocut is from a project called London Views. What is a linocut, you ask?
The audio for the Stuart Dybek reading and interview with Silverblatt is up at Lannan. Here’s a great quote about being a “regional writer.”
And here’s an article on how comics had a big presence at BEA. (Check out the Fantagraphics display!) This is really good news for comics, as is the addition of comics to the BEST AMERICAN SERIES, as is Kevin Huizenga’s new one, CURSES.

ABSTRACT ANIMALS

Wednesday, May 24, 2006

in my last comic (which I haven’t posted, because I want to send it out), i drew pigeons as triangles, now i’m experimenting with boiling other animals down to shapes. bears on the brain, right now.

Lester Bangs once said, “In the history of rock n’ roll, no artist has squandered his talent so completely as Rod Stewart.” (Bangs also wrote a mini-biography of Stewart that I’m trying to get my hands on.) I can honestly say that EVERY PICTURE TELLS A STORY is one of my favorite albums ever. Seriously. Get it.
The Walkmen are doing a live concert on NPR. Although I’m disappointed by the new album (the boring songs, the way-out-of-register singing…Pitchfork had a good review), I’m still looking forward to seeing them later this month.
Article in VQR on Little Nemo In Slumberland, a favorite read before bed.
Dancing On Fly Ash is two fellas who post daily 100-word stories. I like some of the stories a lot, and they post to some good-looking magazines I’d never heard of.

WRITING AND DRAWING, DRAWING AND WRITING

Monday, May 22, 2006

$If on a winter\'s night a traveler$

“Leonardo, “an unlettered man,” as he described himself, had a difficult relationship with the written word. His knowledge was without equal in all the world, but his ignorance of Latin and grammar prevented him from communicating in writing with the learned men of his time. Certainly he thought he could set down much of his science more clearly in drawings than in words. “O writer, with what letters can you convey the entire figuration with such perfection as drawing gives us here?” he wrote in his notebooks on anatmony. And not just in science but also in philosophy, he was confident he could communicate better by means of painting and drawing. Still he also felt an incessant need to write, to use writing to investigate the world in all its polymorphous manifestations and secrets, and also to give shape to his fantasies, emotions, and rancors–as when he inveighs against men of letters, who were able only to repeat what they had read in the books of others, unlike those who were among the “inventors and interpreters between nature and men.” He therefore wrote more and more. With the passing of the years, he gave up painting and expressed himself through writing and drawing…”

—Italo Calvino on Leonardo da Vinci, “Exactitude,” SIX MEMOS FOR THE NEW MILLENIUM

DON’T YOU WISH YOU HAD IT NOW?

Friday, May 19, 2006

Some links for your week-end:

We went to see ISLANDS last night at the Grog Shop. Big ol’ band. The sound wasn’t great, the singer needed a haircut, and the violin players looked like Martin Yip, but it was a good show. Great bass player. Get two tracks not on the new album: “Abominable Snow” [MP3] and “Flesh” [MP3]
David Byrne on packaging and music.
I got my In Persuation Nation fan kit in the mail from Riverhead this week. Check out the new goodies on George’s site: “I Can Speak!” [MP3] and “In Persuasion Nation” [MP3] read by him. ALSO: Here’s our man on Studio 360 this week.
Imagine no religion.
James Kochalka is reading Etgar Keret’s new one.
Tom on “Deal or No Deal?”
Backwards City turns two, and Newpages has a review that says for a lit journal, it’s “a different kind of read…[one that] knows how to laugh.” I have good news about those folks on the way…