ALTERNATIVE COMICS Street Art Chronology 2006 part 2.5

HEY APATHY! Alternative Comics

I’ve been posting this Street Art Chronology over the past couple of weeks as a first draft attempt to recollect my public performance artworks from 2004-2009. Basically I am running quickly through my documentation and memories in order to start to organize all these experiences which I will eventually edit, and catalogue on my website. So please forgive the rushed anecdotal an somewhat incomplete stories however they are proving themselves quite useful as a first stage sort of writing. Asides from certain articles being better written than others, I have also found some difficulty placing all the important events. In fact in yesterday’s post regarding the 2006 season, I forgot to include one of my strangest experiences.

During the early fall of 2006 I found my self over worked and rather stressed after numerous battles with the by-law officers, other artists and most fatally indestructible an onslaught of rainy weekends. The result left me far behind my regular quota for the season and the fear of a wet winter only exemplified my despair. I woke up early one Saturday to find yet another pouring storm and in my frustration I tripped on a smashed my acoustic guitar. The instrument was a hand made Seagull I had played on for years and in combination with all the other circumstances the incident caused me much grievance. Aggravated by my loss and the terribly wet weather I threw my fist to the wall in hopes of release. This was just about the stupidest thing I’ve ever done and though it took me three days to acknowledge the fracture I hand indeed broken my drawing hand. I received my cast the following Tuesday and was forced to return to the streets despite my condition. Interestingly enough I’d practiced many drawing techniques using my left hand and for the first time I discovered a wholly practical use for my ambidextrous experiments.

Although somewhat limited I managed to continue to produce and perform on Queen West a throughout my recovery. I was generally working on detailed comics pages during the fall but the accident forced me to make simplistic brush drawings like the character I had previously sold in 8.5 x 11 inch frames. Creatively stifled and obviously frustrated I had a rough time transporting my work to and from the streets and had too reduce my display to a 4 x 6 foot display for a couple of weeks. Oddly enough during this period of time, like any wounded creature in the wild, certain street predators took notice and actions against me.

Alternative Comics "The Epiphany!" Street Art 2006

There was another artist who had followed my example and started selling his drawings on the street. And like at least three other artists before him he had started to parody my drawings using similar black and white characters, phrases and drawing techniques. I’d let the incident pass for the most part as this imitator had set up a reasonable distance from my own display and had only a small and obviously incomparable display. However this relationship escalated following the casting of my broken right hand. Incredibly but not altogether surprisingly, as I set up my reduced display and sat down to work away with my left hand I looked up to see this other artist setting his drawings directly beside me. The sight was ludicrous and the people were making comments about who did it first and comparing us to each other in an unfavourable fashion. Right beside my image of a man’s head exploding with a comic world bubble stating “Not Again!” was almost an identical image drawn by the competitor in which his character said “This Keeps Happening!” . Another odd coupling involved two near identical images humanoid type creatures spitting flies. In fact I started to get angry as this was becoming a pattern and I was tired of street artists sitting in close proximity pretending to be me. At any rate my hand started to get better and before to long I was back up to my regular show. My drawings got faster and bigger again and amazingly the weather even started to pick up a bit.  Coincidentally at the same time that I was recovering the other artist was moving further and further away from my display until  he eventually  disappeared altogether.

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