It's been a minute since my last blog post. I've moved homes, gone on a couple of dates, focused on marketing work for clients, and done a lot of thinking about charting my own path. A couple of months ago I was informed by Deep Space Drive-In that I was granted the residency for July, and I'm back to work creating again.
The title of this show is "Conjure," and it'll be an infusion of many inspirations while still speaking in my own visual language, one I'm continuing to establish. With this show I'm formally introducing my characters Serling and Nova. I'm also anchoring the world of WeeBees into the hat of Serling and inserting my work into a fine art capacity. Opportunities like this are rarely afforded to me, so I'm trying to plant my flag in the ground. I have die-cut wooden picket signs that ask "What's the greatest nation in the world?" Kumo subtly responds, "Imagination."
Serling Curious gets his name from Rod Serling, and his magician-like appearance is inspired by Black Herman, a mystic featured on an African diasporic tarot deck that was shown to me when my reader revealed she'd pulled the Magician. That captured my curiosity. I researched him, and he in fact existed. And wouldn't you know it, he's from Virginia, like myself.
I started thinking about how to infuse this inspiration into my world, and during an art residency I had a couple of years ago, I was asked where the WeeBees live. I made their home Serling's hat. And the building of this lore continues.
My show Conjure is about making something appear. As an illustrator and cartoonist who puts thoughts and characters to paper, that's the only trick I've ever known. But this show isn't just about pulling a world out of a hat. It's about pulling myself into a room I wasn't handed a ticket to.
I'm conjuring my right to exist in the fine art landscape, the same way I've had to conjure that right in every country I grew up in and every place I've called home since. Nobody hands you a seat at this table. You make one appear.
