epiphanycast

Susan Blackmore’s The Meme Machine is very good and has stimulated much thought. I am the loyal servant of the memes. I take ‘em in and I pump ‘em out.

But it hasn’t been my own memes at all, lately (if anyone can claim ownership of them, that is, and unless you count the idea of a fringe festival, which I don’t). Mostly facilitating other people’s. I’ve been really busy organising Oxfringe, especially the art exhibitions and the stand-up comedy. I used to paint - yeah, and even write and make comics - back in the mists of time. I might again, soon, in that fabled future time known as After The Fringe. See you then.

This thing is made out of waste bits of paint left behind on my palette after painting sessions. I thought they looked cool and started saving them in a bag. In further proof that it never rains but it pours, due to a complicated and rather dull series of events it’s ended up hanging in the Jam Factory, near the railway station. It’s a bit rubbish in the photo, but it looks much better if you see it in person.

The Jam Factory are having an exhibition with no selection panel, catching the overflow from the Oxford Open. I’m there now and they still have lots of wall space - so if any artists are reading this and fancy hanging something up in public for a month or so, you still can.

It’s interesting seeing what pitches up in an exhibition with no entry criteria except that your stuff should fit within a metre cubed. There are paintings there I actually yearn to own and can’t take my eyes off, like Emma Fordham’s lovely rich mysterious collages of photo cutouts and paint. Sebastian Humphreys’ picture assembled entirely from coloured matchsticks laid out in a herringbone pattern is cool too. Then there’s the installation of six iBooks hung together to make a sort of six-pane window showing a static picture of a girl in the shower, with a sound file of running water playing. I ought to like something like this but it leaves me completely cold; it must have taken a lot of expense and effort to say… what? I’m not sure it says anything. But I have the nasty feeling that if I saw it in the Tate Modern I’d cut it a lot more slack.

Then there’s the ones that are too messagey in a stating-the-blindingly-obvious sort of way, like the plastic bottle with “You are looking at a suspended sentence” written on it. Why not just leave it blank and name the artwork “Suspended Sentence”? Gah.

This is probably unfair - at best, if you stretch, all my own painting says is “w00t! Pretty colours! Plus, recycling is good m’kay?” But this is a blog, not a livejournal, and I seem to think bloggers are obliged to be opinionated.

Thanks for the link, Bugpowder!

Maps corner
Originally uploaded by bluedevi

I had a fantastic evening. Thanks to everyone who came along, chatted and drank and bought paintings and joined in the mapping bee - people gathered round a big round table with their heads bent, drawing features in on printouts of the maps: magnetic anomalies, pterodactyl, wee boats, a series of tubes, spiral towers, panicked pigs fleeing into the sea, an island of surprisingly pleasant exile, a BMX park, a town called Peristalsis…

I’d filled a folder with blank maps so café-goers could draw on them and post them in the box provided throughout the month of the exhibition. But you guys almost ran me out of maps. There were only three left at the end of the night. I’ll have to go back with another sheaf of them tomorrow. I am not complaining; this is a very good thing.

Come to the opening night! There will be mulled wine. Failing that, just wine.

I have an exhibition coming up soon. My paintings will be on show at the Magic Café on Magdalen Road in East Oxford from the 4th to the 31st of January, and among them will be these two:

See, all this year I’ve been dreaming of maps, and I’ve always found maps fascinating to look at. So I thought I’d try to paint some. I started with no plan in mind and a random wiggly line for the coast and built the contours up from there. Of course, they’re not remotely as cool as the ones in my dreams, which are part map, part blueprint, part weird schematic diagram. But I have a plan for them and I’m going to need your help.

There are no people on these maps. No towns, no roads, no names on anything. They’re empty landscapes. I was going to see what they suggested to me and draw cities and roads and stuff on with a marker, but then I had a more interesting idea. I want you to populate them for me.

All contributions will be welcome. No matter how small. No matter how mundane or fanciful or frivolous. Anything from a one-line comment saying “I think there’d be a bridge there” right up to an extensive treatise on the history, culture and economy of the land. What I’d be especially happy for you to do is to download one of the large images behind the thumbnails, draw features on it and mail it back to me at: maps [at] epiphanycast [dot] dreamhosters [dot] com. Or just comment on this post – though if you do, I may save and delete it because I don’t want people’s ideas to influence each other. What I hope will be really interesting about this is what different people will see in the same image.

For the exhibition, I’ll compile everyone’s contributions and map images into a booklet which will be displayed alongside the paintings. (Let me know if you want to be credited by name or left anonymous.) Images of the blank map will also be available there, so people at the café can add their own ideas. It might be part of my website eventually. I’ll be doing my own take on the maps, possibly more than one, but my contribution is no more important than yours.

Some questions to kickstart the process: Where are the cities/towns/villages, if any? What are the names of the landscape features? How do people travel around? What sort of culture(s) live there? Are they high-tech or low-tech? How do they make their living? What do they do and where do they go for fun? Are they indigenous people or recent settlers or a mixture of both? What’s the history of the area? How about the politics?
Are there ruins of past civilisations? Sites of past battles? If so, why were the battles fought? Do they all get along or are there tensions between different areas? Are there legends or old stories related to the landscape?

…basically, anything whatsoever that occurs to you about what might go on in these landscapes. There are no rules or constraints. I’ve posted this over on Livejournal and people have asked me whether their off-the-wall idea is OK; the answer is invariably yes. The colours are only supposed to indicate contours, not necessarily climate. The two maps may or may not be part of the same world. You tell me.

If you like this, please spread the word – I want to get as many contributions as I can. Please get it in by 20th December, to give me a chance to compile it all into a folder, though if you send me stuff before that I’ll appreciate it.

Happy cartography!

I shall be attempting a live performance of stuff from my comics today, at the Port Mahon pub, St Clements, Oxford from 9.15 to 9.45 as part of the Oxford Arts Festival. (I know, no one’s reading this yet, but this is as much to have a record of it as anything else.) Half an hour, it turns out, is an awful lot of talking. But I have a data projector to project comic frames on the wall behind me. I have my big heavy-duty water bottle with the spiral patterns on, which I got so as not to die at Burning Man and has now become a sort of talisman. I have throat lozenges and I will travel.

I’m also reading at World Writers 10, an event at Blackwell’s bookshop, at 6.30 on Tuesday 2nd October. Just prose stories this time. Rains, pours etc. I’ve spent so much time getting the slide show together for the Arts Festival that I’ve hardly thought about this event at all, so… anything could happen.

Up till now, apart from a few sold at conventions, my comics have been posted out free to online friends. But some of you have been asking if you can contribute something towards stamps, printing costs, etc. (Thank you for thinking of that.)

So, until I get a proper shop set up, here’s a PayPal tip jar. All contributions will be gratefully received, and will probably make me all misty-eyed and renew my faith in human nature (admittedly it doesn’t take much). I feel a bit grubby asking for money in only the third post, but blah ever-growing print runs blah penniless blah.

There are a few copies of Wasted Epiphanies 1, 2 and 3 for sale at Gosh Comics, 39 Great Russell Street, London (opposite the front doors of the British Museum!). Gosh is my favourite sort of comic shop - lots of zines, small press and arty books as well as the more traditional stuff, and the staff are friendly… and it’s clean. I highly recommend it. (Plus, if my comics get sold out it makes me look good.)

Okay, so, proper blog then. In particular, a blog about art and comics and writing and general creative stuff. New issues of my comic Wasted Epiphanies will be announced here, and you’ll also be able to buy comics and subscriptions, if I can navigate the complexities of PayPal shopping carts. I’ll post when I have comics on sale in shops, and I’ll also be announcing spoken-word performances (since I seem to be doing quite a few of those lately, eek), art exhibitions and so on.

If you’ve found your way here via the web address on the back of an issue of my comic, or via one of my MooCards, and through the wreckage of my previous rubbish site: firstly, congratulations, it’s not like I made it easy for you. Secondly, please do leave a comment! Feedback is great, but even if you have no feedback to give, I’d love to know where my comics have ended up. Thirdly, if you want to buy other issues or you’d like to subscribe, and the PayPal thingy isn’t working yet, comment to let me know and I’ll make more haste - or subscribe to the feed, because when the shopping cart’s done I’m sure to crow about it.

I has a blog. Hee!

D x