This
season, two events in New York have celebrated the work and the
friendship of the cartoonists Matt Groening and Lynda Barry. The
valuable and terrific new show “Alt-Weekly Comics,” at the Society of Illustrators through May 2nd, features their work prominently. And, in February, they appeared together at BAM,
filling the Howard Gilman Opera House with fans, many fervently loyal
since the early alt-weekly days and others drawn by their subsequent
work: Groening’s “The Simpsons” and “Futurama”; Barry’s popular books,
workshops, and classes. She is currently a professor of
interdisciplinary creativity at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
In
the early eighties, discovering non-mainstream culture (independent
cinema, post-punk rock, comic strips that weren’t “Beetle Bailey”) was
much like being a detective, and local alternative newsweeklies were
valuable providers of clues. They reviewed art and music that was hard
to find; most important, they printed Groening’s “Life in Hell” and
Barry’s “Ernie Pook’s Comeek.” Both were electrifyingly good. You
wondered who these people were, where they came from, why they did what
they did. I remember the jolt I felt when looking at the copyright page
of Groening’s book “Love Is Hell” and seeing an odd message, like a note
left in a knothole: LYNDA BARRY IS FUNK QUEEN OF THE GALAXY. Groening
and Barry were friends!
This was startling, but
it made intuitive sense, even though their styles differ greatly,
visually and otherwise. Groening, with his clean lines and rounded
figures—the bucktoothed humanoid rabbits Binky, Sheba, and Bongo, the
fez-wearing couple Akbar and Jeff—created a sweet-looking cartoon world
whose observational wit was merciless. (In the 1984 strip “The 9 Types
of Relationships,” the first panel, “Woman + Wimpy,” shows a Sheba type
asking a Binky type, “How many times have I told you not to cringe?”
“312?” he asks, cringing.) Before McSweeney’s and the revival of the
meticulous overstuffed graphic, Groening presented you with a tidy,
well-packed square of subversive fun—often presented as mock explanation
or advice—that you could settle in with and enjoy in all its tiny,
delightful detail. “Life in Hell” was a safe, visually appealing realm
for sharp self-mockery.
Lynda Barry’s “Ernie
Pook’s Comeek,” on the other hand, made the world look wild, ugly,
joyful, and mysterious; the rawness of both the art and the text seemed
to communicate from id to id. Entering Barry’s world gave you much to
discover and comprehend. Her panels—four in a horizontal strip,
usually—were filled with a scribbly vigor, her characters shaded and
freckled and slackjawed, often eyeball-less behind their cat-eye
glasses. The language was crudely hilarious, the world almost
exclusively a kids’ world, of bug collecting, forbidden diary-reading,
excited Mexican hat dances, and adults who look and act like monsters or
fools. (In the strip “String Heads,” a principal with a Van Dyke and a
dickie scolds two giggling girls by saying, “I am not a jive turkey and
this school is not a jive turkey!”) Barry and Groening drew art that
looked nothing alike, but you could imagine them respecting each other.
Do they ever. In February, the two of them, still funk lord and queen after all these years, came onstage at BAM
holding hands. They both look like their drawings, one of which was
projected onscreen behind them: a flyer for an event they did together
thirty years previous (shown above). Barry wore her long hair in two
braids, with a hippieish pillbox hat on her head; she smiled, danced,
and curtseyed. Groening, his eyes behind owlish glasses, has gray hair,
which was parted in a style that recalled Bart Simpson’s at church.
The
night was a guided tour through their lives and art, starting at the
beginning. Groening showed slides of local TV clowns from his childhood.
“Rusty Nails was the inspiration for Krusty the Clown,” he said. But
there were differences: for one thing, Rusty Nails was Christian.
“Rusty Nails is a really bad name for a Christian clown,” Barry said.
Groening’s
parents were named Homer and Margaret, or Marge. “When I was a kid,
looking up, her hair seemed very tall,” Groening said. His sisters are
Maggie and Lisa. “My sister Maggie’s here!” he said. “Maggie lives in
Brooklyn!” He showed a photograph of Homer Groening in a B-17 in the
Second World War and played a short film that Homer had made in the
early seventies, called “The Secret of the Universe,” which showed him
on a basketball court, making perfect consecutive impossible shots:
backward, over his head, from far away.
“That’s the real Homer,” Groening said. The real Homer didn’t strangle his kids.
Groening
and Barry met in college, at Evergreen State. “I heard there was a girl
who’d written to Joseph Heller, the author of ‘Catch-22,’ and got a
reply,” Groening said. “This is the girl.” Groening
ran the newspaper, and he wanted Barry to contribute. “He made this
promise that he’d print anything I did,” she said. “Matt said, ‘I’d like
you to review all the hamburgers in Olympia, Washington.’ I was a
vegetarian.” Her first published cartoons were in that paper.
After
graduation, Groening moved to Los Angeles, and they wrote letters to
each other. (Barry read a postcard from Groening that began, “I am
writing this naked on the floor, listening to reggae.”)
Groening
started drawing “Life in Hell” in 1977. “I got a job at a Xerox place,”
he said. Working at a copy shop was a big deal then: you could be an
independent publisher. In 1982, he made it into a zine. (One of these is
on display in a vitrine at the Society of Illustrators exhibit, next to
a “Work Is Hell” coffee mug.) He met the artist Gary Panter in L.A.
“Gary and I decided to see if we could try to invade pop culture,” he
said a bit later. “Gary did it quickly: album covers, ‘Pee-wee’s Playhouse.’
” Groening invaded, too. He and Lynda Barry both began publishing their
comics in their local alternative newsweekly, and then syndicated them
nationally. In 1986, he began to animate cartoon shorts—“The
Simpsons”—for “The Tracey Ullman Show,” on the fledgling Fox network.
(For “Life in Hell” fans, this was thrilling: after all that detective
work you’d done to find Groening’s work, now it would be everywhere, for
all the world to see. We didn’t yet have the instinct to fear that kind
of thing.) “The Simpsons” got its own show, of course, and has been on
ever since; Groening kept drawing “Life in Hell” until 2012. The Society
of Illustrators exhibit has a tribute poster to the strip, in its
style, drawn by big-name alt-cartoonist admirers.
“I did ‘Life in Hell’ for thirty-two years,” Groening said.
“I did mine for thirty-one and a half years,” Barry said.
Groening
said that some of his favorite strips featured his sons, Will and Abe,
talking, when they were little. He showed a few onscreen, with lines
like “Why do people go to Dracula’s house?” and “Why do skeletons
dance?” He looked out at the crowd, pleased. “Abe is in the house!” he
said.
Barry showed some Marlys and Maybonne
cartoons (“That dream is jive! Rod Stewart would hate that dream!”
Marlys yells) and kept telling long and wild stories (about nude
modelling, about a kid she met on a plane, about her terrifying aunt)
that got huge laughs. Groening said, “O.K., so. I know you’re
entertained by her. She’s been like this since I met her. She’s one of a
kind. I will confess that, at one point—”
“You
asked me to marry you,” Barry said. The audience was quiet—a couple of
claps, an “aw” somewhere. (They have long been married to other people.)
“That’s right,” Groening said.
“Look out,” Barry said.
“We disapprove of each other.”
“Very much.”
“You think L.A. is Hell, this awful place of corruption and anti-creativity, and when I look at Wisconsin—”
“It’s
its own kind of Hell,” Barry said. She described it as “colder than
Scott Walker’s tit.” She went on, “When I look at your place in Malibu,
and you can see the ocean, I just think, I’d rather die than live here.”
During
the audience Q. and A., Groening said that struggle was funny, and that
a standup comedian in a tux is not funny. “Keep struggle alive,” he
said. They both talk about Hell a lot—in life, love, work, school, L.A.,
Wisconsin, all over the place. It occurred to me that our hellish
world, evoked smoothly or aggressively, starring rabbits in pearls or
featuring jive turkeys, might be shorthand for that struggle. And if you
can turn the struggle into humor and find your funk lord or queen, Hell
can be pretty good.
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dont know if this is a real photo, but the effect it has on me is as follows:
I imagine, if this were my friend coming to visit me, we have tea and
some dimsum in a cool, mountain top terrace - looking out, clean fresh
air. Nice food, sweet people. Looking at this picture generates this
feeling for me. smile emoticon This little guy is also a chirpy energetic person, not too quiet quiet.
Costs : cubes, cans, staples, spray paint, hand held QR label printer, duct tape, instant contact glue, sandpaper, coarse, medium, fine grades, welding sticks, bolts, nuts, screws, nails stainless steel (or steel) plates, wood/construction grade or better Tools: electric saw, chainsaw, stapler (4 stapler), welding torch Tig machine, grinder, welding mask, gloves, overall, chaps (for chainsaw work), goggles, protective eye wear List of tasks/ man power:
Cubes : 1000 cubes to be made, gather a team of workers, each one makes 10 cubes? 100 person, or 200 person each one makes 5 cubes... etc
Welding of connectors : professional welders to produce connectors as per drawing specification
Transportation of material
Wood units : wood worker, making of a gabarit with plywood cutting angle of wood properly build the diamond frames
Infill furniture: small cafe table with 4 chairs optional : electrical outlet for evening use ordinary ambiance lighting, bright enough for mobile phone to capture the QR codes on the cube wifi : wifi for mobile phone internet access enabled
Assembly: 2 man unit per team. The diamond frames are connected to each other via connectors
Cubes attached together into a "wig" like skin to put over the dome: Team of 2 person, 4 teams? Cubes are attached together into basic units (depending on the permanent nature of the work, if its to be a non-detachable unit, rivets will be used; if dismantled to be mobile, screws and bolts will be used)
After dome is completed, it will be anchored to the ground with stone/sand flooring
Content: All QR codes and links to url are proposed by the Artist creator.
Model for the final construction: A model of 50cm diameter (or smaller) will be made so the individual pieces could be easily assembled. Man Power source: >Universities will be contacted to see if architecture students might like to participate in the construction of the final unit
Sponsors call : > funding from Art friendly corporations - > professional welders > construction wood material supply > Garden chair and table set > recycled aluminum cans (3000 of 500ml) > tea set, and tea leaves > lunch box money for volunteers
Secretary, general office communications: > paper office work Documentary of the work, video/ logbook: > iphone film, video cam, memory disk (shock proof 2 ter) A list of names of all participants, sponsor will be printed into a large poster, if sponsor wish to remain anonymous, that is also possible. This is to show the assemblage spirit, how small incremental work could combine to make a big (moderately big) project.
