ALTERNATIVE COMICS Committed Myself to Asylum today....

HEY APATHY! Alternative Comics

After many years of constant internal chattering, an incompatible disposition, and perpetual deliberation, I finally committed my self to the asylum today. However the strange impulse inciting the occurrence differed drastically from any which I had imagined. I never once attempted suicide, or took arms nor acted violently. In fact it were almost as if I'd never left my senses at all. It was actually the revelation of the utmost clerical, mathematical, and quantifiable of revelations which induced my resignation and the drug addled state of being I feel grower stronger in my blood with each word  I am now typing.

Fortunately, as my time is running thin, the explanation of my position happened very quickly. I had left my home early, as I do everyday. Nothing peculiar happened, and all my routines were in order. Over breakfast I was irritated by the flimsy sound bites on the radio news. During the morning traffic I became aggregated at the music, not only on my radio but from the pounding bass amps in others. I was pushed and shoved through the subway and finally arrived at the office to listen to people talk about dreaded reality shows from last night. My office was in shambles and with my desk top in the shop my boss knew nothing better but to embarrass me with menial chores.

After work I went to the book store and was hideously appalled. Worthless words on every self and the most ludicrous propaganda as the window display feature! The film began at 8 and as usual I was home by half past. I've grown sensitive towards movies customarily walking out nauseated. Then at last I reach my home computer and the web. I search and search every night for some worthy entertainment. I search in vain. It's even worse in here than it is out there! All sorts of miniscule languages have irrelevant conversations about all the things the news, radio, TV and pictures showed us! Thus every night I fall asleep in anger at the ignorance of the world!

But this morning when I awoke, I had the most insidious of notions. I tried to deny it and ignore it, but the mathematical skills of even my untrained feeble mind had finally done the calculations which sent me to this cell. I finally realized that so infuriatingly out numbered, it was mathematically impossible for everyone else to be insane. Therefore as I peered out from my bedroom window I realized the truth. My perception of reality, one were people might remain polite dignified , educated, and creative, was a delusion. Every moment of aspiration and inspiration I'd ever felt was entirely an hallucination and not of right mind.

Unfortunately as clear as the truth is now seen, I cannot bring my insane suggestions to silence. I still firmly believe in them despite factually knowing otherwise. I still dream of a powerful novel like those of times long past, or for a musical innovation that actually involves music, and of a cinema filled with unbelievably photographed narrations regarding topics of importance, and of a place where it is uncommon to find aggression as a regular part of life. Since I cannot separate these wild fantasies from the world in which I must function, I have decided the only sane thing left to do was to see if any treatments or prescriptions can help me someday retrieve my sanity and return to society.

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ALTERNATIVE COMICS at Wizard World

HEY APATHY! ALTERNATIVE COMICS at the WIZARD WORLD COMIC CON

Wow am I ever tired. Stayed up way to late reading some Lovecraft and was up and at it since 7:30 this morning. The first day of the comics con was really fun but exhausting. I almost suspect to having had passed out at my table, however the amount of drawings I completed and people I talked to suggests otherwise. I met tonnes of folk and although they were primarily locals and Americans, they were most certainly of all sorts. Instantly I can recall discussions with people from almost every age group and of numerous cultural backgrounds. Moved some books (every comic in such a sea of mainstream is a tiny triumph!), told some stories and witness many strange and fictitious characters inhabiting our plain. (Vador, Electra, Wrestling Stars and Capt. America just to name a few) I was really happy to be out in public again, it has been a long and secluded winter for this little story teller. Anyways I posted the Sound of the City drawing here because it was one of the most well received of my collection today. I finished some cool monster drawings and cityscapes today but left them erroneously behind. I'll scan them tomorrow and add some photo. Now I sleep ... visit http://www.heyapthy-comics-art.com/

HEY APATHY! Street Art, a brief history...

HEY APATHY!  For many years I have hauled my shopping cart full of artworks and supplies all over the city in order to set up shop and perform. My full scale concrete assault includes live 10 x 15 foot ink murals ( the above still is of a completed 3,5 hour study, Queen St. West, Toronto) and full line of prints and t-shirts, comic books, small paintings, an umbrella attached to a bamboo rod, and never ending conversations with strangers from all over the world. However, the study and perfection of these renegade interventions developed slowly, yet naturally, ove a five year duration. This week asides from some online comics panels, my primary goal is to write up a 500 word artist statement discussing my overall practice and plans for the future.Of the sort who prefers images, I sorted through my files in hopes of stringing together a visual chronology to help me organize the text. The following pictures narrate a breif history of my progress as a stret art performer.

I started drawing in the streets of Toronto in 2004. Having met some vendors who had been selling jewellery and pipes illegally from their small carpets, and after experiencing difficulties mingling with the social politics of the local galleries , I decided to take my investigation to the street. The early 5 x 5 foot display featured pins, some cardboard sketches, and photo copied zines placed on a black cloth, depicting characters from my Monster (http://www.heyapathy-comics-art.com/MONSTERComics.html )and Diamonds ( http://www.heyapathy-comics-art.com/monster-comics2004.html )drawings. The whole thing fit in a small tool kit and I started off making roughly $25 dollars a day. The above photo is probably from late 2004 as it shows a very primitive black cloth display but has a large performance drawings above it. I didn't any live painting until late 2004and was still using a handmade bamboo quil to do the slow and tedious work.

In the spring of 2005 all of the jewellery and artison vendors that I had worked beside the previous season were replaced by a large group of artist. Joining me in my subliminal protest were numerous multi-diciplinary creators including painters,photographers,print makers, and illustrator and Toronto's Queen Street West was almost instantly transformed. It strange how a place can be a person, many people would stop and tell us pf other artists who used to work here dating as far back as the 70's but how it has been along time since anyone did it. The weird looking guy sitting on the left hand side is Neil Gibson, psycadellic artist extrodinaire. Neil makes the craziest black light installations I've ever seen and has been travelling the world showing his art for the past 5 years. 2005 was a wild time, I began painting 30 x 40 inch monsters with brushes and started to get really fast at it.

 

However, the more my display grew, the more difficult the streets proved to be. This picture shows Julii saving my display from a vivatious gust. One of many spontaneous and exciting occurences which differentiate the street from the studio. Did I mention bird poop? 

To combat the wind, and step it up a notch as I gained more attention, I started matting my display with various framed art works in 2005. These were all little hand painted creations that I would do as a morning chore, and then ,as the streets got busier, I would do live drawing in the afternoons. At this time things really started to pick up. My little black tool kit was replaced by a large shoulder sack that I would fill up with frames each morning before setting up.

At the end of the 2005 season I made my first large scale public ink drawing. The entire work took me three days to complete. "THE DEATH OF A HERO" shown above featured a strange looking figure dancing with a ballerina in the sky above of Toronto . Below them a full scale military attack assembles to assassinate the flying dancers. Inspired by Vonnegut’s short story "Harrison Bergeron", the artwork measured 10 x 12 feet, and was drawn with brushes and bamboo using black india ink. By this time I was frequently taking two bike trips daily to collect frames for my display and eventually had to switch to using milk crates and public transit to keep stock on the small artworks.

In 2006 I did my first  large scale live painting performance at the Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibiton. Following the success of this event I returned to the streets, but replaced all my small drawings with prints, published a new comic book, and started a regular line of HEY APATHY!  t-shirts.

By 2007 I was able to create large street drawings, similar in size and intricacy to the 2005 work "THE DEATH OF A HERO" in under 3 hours. The streets were busy, the art was flying and I was having the time of my life, produced another comic book and new poster sized serigraphs and showed in several galleries. In 2008 things kept moving and I was invited to perform at several gala events including this store front presentation at Toronto's Hudson Bay Co. Yonge and Richmond Street.(above photo) . The fall of 2008 was highlighted by a commissioned clothing design I did for the Art Gallery of Ontario. The image featured many of the real and imaginary character's I'd met on the streets over the years.

In 2009 the city of Toronto suffered a hideous ailment falling victim to the wretched disease known as " a Garbage Strike". Although disappointed by the impossibility of returning to my routine performances, I took the incident as a sign that it was time to move on and get back to what I really want out of life...to make comics!!!!

Okay that's enough rambling hopefully this little exercise will help me in constructing my essay. Back to work.

more stuff like this at http://www.heyapathy-comics-art.com/

ALTERNATIVE COMICS

A FASHION SHOOT TURNS MONSTER! HEY APATHY COMICS

A behind the scenes look at the essence of fashion from HEY APATHY! monster comics. In these panels we see the models, already decorated for the event, undergoing the final transformation before show time. A group of occultist cannibal aardvark humanoids slurp the insides out of the runway hopefuls, thus creating the intellectual necessary to look good under the lights. It's almost time for the shoot! Scenes from my ongoing mythological comics adventure which will be posted at http://www.heyapthy-comics-art.com/ as I complete it. I spent the whole weekend lettering pages but failed to get them posted yesterday as I had hoped. I'm still having difficulties rendering and resizing the text so that it remains legible on the screen. On the brighter side of life, I just found out that there are still booths available at the Toronto Comic Con at the Metro Toronto Convention Center this June and put together my application this afternoon. For some reason I though the big con took place in the fall and am very lucky to be able to apply at such a late date ( I missed booking two of these shows this year already!)

MAKING MONSTER COMICS

ESTABLISHING SHOT from MONSTER COMICS

As I have mentioned before, February is one of the most tedious months in my life as an artist. This is a very busy time of year for filling out forms, mailing applications, and booking my public performances and comic convention appearances for the upcoming season. This leaves little time for production and my days generally get divided as follows; morning research, afternoon essays, and night time scribbles. As a result I tend to produce a lot of single panel artworks and take a brief hiatus from my full time comics schedule. Such is the curse of the Ronin illustrator, you've got to push all the papers yourself (if anyone is serious, willing and capable of representation contact me).

Today, however, is a slightly exceptional day as far as February's go. The sun is shining the wind is asleep and I have completed all my urgent application's early, so the whole day has been set aside to draw. Well, that's not entirely true, actually what I really have to do is the lettering for my online MONSTER COMICS. I only had one panel (the opening shot of Williamsburg above) to complete in the first set of drawings. I'll finish all the lettering throughout the day and hopefully post the introduction at http://www.heyapathy-comics-art.com/ by Monday. I've drawn most of the story and creature features for the on-line comic but as one often does, I left the chore of lettering a little to long. I usually like to knock off the text one page at a time,as I go so as to the avoid horrendous hours of perpetual calligraphy. Don't misinterpret this as entirely pessimistic though, I actually derive a great pleasure from the task except that I find better results when I work on the word bubbles in smaller sessions. I have also found it a real pain to transfer the letters clearly to a format suitable for online presentation. When resizing the scans the letters seem to require singular attention in order to retain visibility. No worries though, I'll figure it all out and the MONSTER COMICS will creep and seep through your screens soon...

SLASH PAGE from MONSTER COMIC

just got to fix the lettering...coming soon