Sharpie on paper. That's it. I don't want to get carried away with colors and canvases and specialty drawing tools. Stuff turns into more stuff, art gets overly stuffy, and nobody can relax. I want people to relax. To feel air, space, and comfort.
Keeping my drawings simple is one way to say, "Hey, you don't have to have a lot to be a lot." http://www.flavors.me/wavular
I've been making four-page zines for about two years now. I had started mostly because I missed working in publishing, but didn't want to be online too long. I didn't want to start overworking all the details. I just wanted to enjoy the process.
My materials were simple:
Glue stick.
Scissors.
Tracing paper.
Sharpies (in various widths).
Sometimes I would find some paper, sometimes I would just use whatever was around. Normally, I'd take myself out of my studio for these kinds of four-page adventures. Wrapping into the piece whatever I noticed, heard, saw, or felt around me at the time started with my very first zine, Cup of Tea: Why and How I Weaned from Coffee and Seattle.
The curator for this show was Shana Garr, who invited Wavular along to be part of the daylong interactive event.
For Float, I asked people to deposit items onto my table, and then sketched them into the page. Interactive. Process. Super fun.
When my baby was born, my parents couldn't comfort him at night. They came to take pictures, then they had to get back to work.
When I was an infant, someone I don't know and never will fed and changed me for long hours. My mother and father had to work. "Work is worship," my father likes to say.
When my brother had a high fever, my parents called a sitter because they had to go to work. "We had no choice," my mother later said. "We were immigrants."
When my baby began to toddle, my parents couldn't watch him unless it was on their schedule. Even in their sixties, yes, they chose to work.
When I grew accustomed to my child's constant needs and tired of my parents' inattention, we moved to the other side of the world. My boy was bigger--schoolage--and I felt good knowing as a parent, I'd done my job.
--Dipika Kohli, October 2011
It's been a while.
I've been doing a lot of thinking.
About "The Next Thing."
This is how it started.
I was sitting there, just looking off into space, with my pencil and a new notebook. I am often like this, with my papers out and thinking without solid threads, just beads percolating, running round and round. I was like this. Pensive, you could say. Or just quiet, looking for the in-between space that would make it clear what it is I had to do.
A young man and woman approached. They were sprightly, I noted. Agile. They sat down at my table.
"Hello," said the woman.
"Hello," said the man.
"Hello," I said. I thought it was the right thing to do.
"What are you doing?" said the man.
"I'm waiting for The Next Thing."
"The next thing?" he repeated.
"The Next Thing."
The woman looked at the man, and the man looked at the woman. They studied me, but not disquietly. "We know what you mean," said the man. Something in his demeanor suggested yes, he did.
"You should go to Georgia." The woman now leaned forward, and her lip jut a bit.
"Georgia?" I said. "Must The Next Thing involve travel?"
They looked at me with square eyes. "You know it must," said the woman.
"Indeed," said the man.
Without travel, you stay in the same place. If you stay in the same place, your eyes and ears don't hear the different. They get lazy. The tools of observation, of taking it in, become blunt.
You have to sharpen them, from time to time.
The man and woman said this very clearly.
They gave me an address, a name, and a telephone number. This is how you know you've hit upon The Next Thing you have to do. It never makes sense. Nor does it not make sense. It is perfectly clear.
I fold the paper twice, then push it into a deep pocket of my jeans, so no one will know it is there.
