Hey Charities: We Want to Give You Stuff
Charities, social support organizations, and do-gooders of all kinds: we want to give you themes! As part of us having well-developed superegos and generally giving a shit, we’d like to extend an invitation to any and every group that’s using the platform in their campaign against world badness.
We’re especially interested in helping registered and established charities get set up on Tumblr, but we’re open to new and lesser-known groups too. Whether you work for one, support one, or just know of a great cause that should get its charitable butt on Tumblr, send us an email!
Emphatic Swanson courtesy of the ever-useful ReactionGIFs.
Blogs We Like: Anamanaguchi
Chiptune has had the good fortune to evolve without losing any of its juiced-up, adolescent enthusiasm. As forerunners of 8-bit music’s millennial resurgence, Anamanaguchi might have dwindled by now given the difficulty of inventing and reinventing within the same musical type. But here we are, and you can bet your weed-grimed Game Boy that Endless Fantasy, released this week, is awesome.
Taking 3 years to create, Endless Fantasy is giddily ambitious both in size (22 tracks) and unabashed, ass-shaking grooviness. It’s the soundtrack to an eternal pre-responsibility summer, full of intergalactic discovery and psychedelic wombat rides through seas of benevolent bikini babes. Anamanaguchi are also longtime Tumblr-ers, constantly posting all manner of blippy goodness and just being generally cool members of Tumblr’s music community. Give ‘em a follow and check out their live wizarding somewhere near you this summer.
The ‘guch are everywhere you’d expect, including Twitter, Facebook, Soundcloud, and their mainsite. Be sure to check out Endless Fantasy’s Kickstarter too, which features ridiculous donor rewards like personal theme songs and even their ultra-dank tour van.
Stuff You Can Use: Your Current Version Number
As mentioned previously, there’s no better way to safeguard your blog against javascript errors and werewolves than to make sure you’re running the newest version of your theme. So pull yourself away from contemplating the political economy of Hungry Hungry Hippos with ’80s Don Draper for a bit, and make sure you’ve got the freshest of freshness.
- Anchorage - 3.0.0
- Antiqua - 2.2.0
- Aperture - 2.0.0
- Blank Slate - 1.1.0
- Bookmark - 1.0.1
- Boutique - 2.0.0
- Carbon - 1.0.2
- Cobalt - 2.0.0
- Crate - 2.1.0
- Eclipse - 1.0.14
- Effector - 2.0.1
- Fluid - 2.2.0
- Fluid 2 - 2.0.0
- Gun Metal - 2.1.0
- Halcyon - 1.0.7
- Halogen - 2.0.0
- Havana Club - 1.2.0
- Hue - 1.0.2
- Insider - 2.0.0
- Juneau - 3.0.0
- Kodiak - 2.1.0
- Kyoto - 2.2.0
- Marber - 1.0
- Maximalist - 2.0.0
- Nautical - 1.0.1
- Noir - 2.0.0
- Paperback - 2.0.0
- Photofolio - 1.0.9
- Provenance - 3.3.0
- Simplefolio - 1.3.0
- Sonic - 1.1.3
- Sticks and Stones - 1.0.3
- Stockholm - 1.0.7
- Storybook - 2.0.0
- Synthesis - 3.0.0
- The New Yorker - 2.0.0
- Titan - 2.0.0
- Vanity - 3.0.0
- Videographer - 1.0.7
- Vintage Portfolio - 1.2.0
- Vintage Scrapbook - 1.0.4
- Vogue - 1.0.6
- Workspace - 2.0.0
Have an older version? No problem. Throw us an email and we’ll be happy to give you the newest code, and probably recommend a weird youtube video too.
[image courtesy of some rando on Imgur]
Theme Spotlight: Titan
Our goal for some time now has been to create small families of themes that complement each other. Rather than shunting everything into a single “brand” aesthetic, we’ve consistently aimed to design small constellations of related themes that vary in function but share visual elements. To that end, we’re proud to introduce a grid-based brother to Provenance, our recent single-channel offering. Meet Titan.
Titan takes the sharp, simple aesthetics of Provenance and expands them into a beautiful mosaic. It keep the always-popular sticky post and customizable header features, and includes post highlighting to improve organization. Like our other grid themes, Titan is a spectacular frame for curated and portfolio blogs, or just about anything image- or video-heavy. Pick it up today for $49.
Stuff You Can Use: Keep Your Theme Updated
Starting Monday, I’ll be making a bi-weekly(ish) post letting you know of recent theme updates. For many of you, this won’t matter too much: Tumblr themes automatically update whenever we push new version. If you’ve made any changes to your theme’s css or html, though, auto-updating doesn’t happen. So, to keep things working well, keep an eye out for our posts, and check your version numbers every now and then.
Odds are that if you’ve fiddled with your theme’s code then you know how to check its version. But, in case you don’t:
- Go to your blog in whichever browser you’d like, right click, and select “View Page Source.” Some browsers will phrase this option as “Show Page Source” instead, but it’s the same thing—”page source” is the important part.
- You’re now looking at your theme’s html. Under our super-classy Pixel Union ASCII tag, you’ll see your theme’s name and a version number (“v X.X.X”). That’s your theme’s version. Check it against what we’ve updated to, and if it’s not right, send us an email for that sweet re-up.
[Brooks-tastic GIF from “Mother” borrowed from the great Televandalist]
![Tumblin’: Notalkingplz (Kenan Bayraktar)
Kenan’s art is relentless. Its volume, intensity, skill, and nihilism are so consistent and overwhelming that his blog feels like a passage through an infinite event horizon. It’s work that exclaims universal absurdity while also particle-accelerating that meaninglessness into a sardonic mania. It’s funny, disconcerting, vicious, and oddly charming—all executed with little more than a couple pens, crayons, and 40 hogsheads of paper.
When I first walked into Kenan’s Highlighter and Sharpie Party last year, I felt a sense of uncanny familiarity. As it turns out, we’re both from the same part of Michigan, and our epigenetic midwestern coldness immediately bonded us. If you’re lucky, stretches of rust-belt tedium effect a productive derangement, and Notalkingplz is, to me, the current aesthetic high-water mark of where that leads. What follows came together over months of conversation, cobbled together with interrogative baby steps and undulating silences. Enjoy.
Let’s start with pleasantries. If you could pick three people to put in a locked, windowless room and have fight to the death, who would it be?
Oh man, this interview just got personal. I’m gonna go ahead and suggest a no holds barred battle of grit and grits, and say Kathy Bates, Paula Dean, and Janet Napolitano.
Obviously, Kathy Bates comes out the winner. Paula Dean’s not lasting more than a minute since her butter-heart would surely explode if she attempted combat.
Paula Dean’s butter-heart is her body’s Krang.
[[MORE]]
More pathetic: Ralph Wiggum or Bobby Hill?
Ralph Wiggum, no question. To be honest, I hate everything about King of the Hill. Can I say that? Can I admit that here?
Of course—this is a safe place. Following on the subject of taste: of the handful of repeat subjects in your work, Dragon Ball, Akira, and The Simpsons are among the most prevalent. Which had a bigger effect on you, and why?
Man that’s a tough one, but I’m gonna have to put Akira at the top of that list. I never found myself in awe of anything in Dragon Ball or on The Simpsons, entertained yes, but never in awe. Akira has played a big part from the get-go. I think Tetsuo’s transformation permanently altered my perception of bodies and masses. It was definitely what got me started on drawing stretching, melting, twisting skin and the like. Also, it had a level of technical detail that I had never seen. So I always felt compelled to study even the tiniest of details. This is a can of worms; I can’t succinctly state its importance.
As for the other two, I think Dragon Ball was my anime gateway drug, and The Simpsons was like some cool older kid at school, the kind of guy you could pick up good slang and curse words from. I guess I feel like they both just had a larger impact on the tone of my drawings.
I kind of figured Akira would rank highest of that group. Tetsuo’s transformation seems especially influential on your work’s…metaphysics, I guess? The complexity of your subjects’ disfigurements/distortions exceed Otomo’s though: enjambment with other objects, melting/stretching, and varying degrees of evisceration. What is it about torsion and mutation that so appeals to you?
In part because it’s fun to draw, but also because the end results are generally ambiguous and confusing. Especially when it comes to enjambment of entirely unrelated items, those are the most fun. I just draw different things that I like, whatever comes to mind really, and force them together visually. There’s not much more to it than that, my sources of inspiration are really fragmented.
Conceptual influences also seem really fragmented and diverse. Other than the soul-devouring torpor of Midwestern grayness, what do you consider to have strongly influenced the tonal content of your work?
Man, that’s a tough question. It’s weird for me to think about, because to me all of my drawings are jokes, but that’s just how I see them. There aren’t any coded punchlines that I expect people to get or not get. I just haphazardly jump around between ideas, some are related, and some aren’t. There’s no spanning architecture or framework to it.
As dismal as it sounds, I would cite monotony in general as the single most strongest and puzzling influence on the mood of my drawings. I feel like I’m in the movie Groundhog Day and I’m Bill Murray (is that twice now in our correspondence that I’ve likened myself to a Bill Murray character? Maybe that’s what I’m really trying to say, I subconsciously owe everything to Bill Murray.) except instead of making the most of my predicament, I’m just apathetically frittering the same day away over and over again. It sucks, but it’s also really funny to me.
Favorite: baked good, article of clothing, and professional athlete.
Baked good: What is baking? I only eat raw meats and mustard.
Article of clothing: Without a doubt, Cloak. Although I would never be so bold as to wear a cloak, I think they’re pretty cool. I wish they had never faded from popularity. Put a cloak on a fictional character and he’s cooler than fuck, but put one on a person in real life, and they’re some kind of pervert. What a cruel end for the cloak, I think we need to revive the cloak.
Athlete: Bob Probert, he was like a caveman on ice skates. Flying around the ice, sans teeth, punching the living shit out of everybody, he made for some really entertaining hockey. May he rest in peace.
Oh man, Bob Probert. Toothlessly smiling down from Cocaine Heaven, at the right hand of Fight God. Let’s go back to tedium for a moment, since I assume you’re at work right now. The inhumanity toward which you feel your self/work inevitably gravitating, the Bill Murray subject-position: is that entirely a product of repetition? Or has the torpor of work-life evolved an innate nihilism? Despite the lack of intention or intentional architecture to what you’ve done, it does read as the elaboration of something, even if “just” aesthetic. It’s hard to imagine that being solely reactionary.
I think it’s a strange mix. I don’t know how to explain it. I feel like there’s something to be said about the banality of “life sans-fascination” and it makes it even worse when you leave everything lumped into one soft limp grey pile of suck. So, instead of just letting it turn into a blob, I mold it into funny shapes. The more grey there is, the more I have to work with. It does nothing to alleviate the swelling of the blob, but it helps if you shape it into a butt, or put a tiny hat on it. Overall, I just try to have a sense of humor about the repetition of said torpor via hyperbole…and crayons. Whatever is entertaining I guess.
What do you imagine/picture in response to the phrase “everything happens for a reason?”
Everything happens for a reason, and that reason sucks.
Do you have any kind of aspiration for your work? If the rabble threw enough gold coins at you, would/could you sit in a fortress and just produce art full time?
I’m not sure. I suppose I have some aspirations, but they’re hidden in a drawer somewhere, or underneath a pile of drawings. I’d like to branch out and do something more than just draw and post, but I’m clueless and far removed from the world of art. I have no idea how I’ve gotten to where I am. When I think about it, the theme from Unsolved Mysteries starts to play, and my inner monologue is interpreted by Robert Stack standing in a shadowy room. So, needless to say, I try not to think about it. Gimme a fortress with a stable internet connection, trade the gold coins for a wellhead of ink, and I’d be all set.
Although we all know that the universe ends in a dumb and protracted heat-death, what would you choose for a different finale?
The universe wakes up, it’s 6 am, on February 2nd, “I got you babe” plays on the radio, and the universe gets up and kills itself all over again.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/d4c8104257f52d43aded596aa5617c6e/tumblr_mkswcjsVOf1rnolxfo3_500.jpg)
![Tumblin’: Notalkingplz (Kenan Bayraktar)
Kenan’s art is relentless. Its volume, intensity, skill, and nihilism are so consistent and overwhelming that his blog feels like a passage through an infinite event horizon. It’s work that exclaims universal absurdity while also particle-accelerating that meaninglessness into a sardonic mania. It’s funny, disconcerting, vicious, and oddly charming—all executed with little more than a couple pens, crayons, and 40 hogsheads of paper.
When I first walked into Kenan’s Highlighter and Sharpie Party last year, I felt a sense of uncanny familiarity. As it turns out, we’re both from the same part of Michigan, and our epigenetic midwestern coldness immediately bonded us. If you’re lucky, stretches of rust-belt tedium effect a productive derangement, and Notalkingplz is, to me, the current aesthetic high-water mark of where that leads. What follows came together over months of conversation, cobbled together with interrogative baby steps and undulating silences. Enjoy.
Let’s start with pleasantries. If you could pick three people to put in a locked, windowless room and have fight to the death, who would it be?
Oh man, this interview just got personal. I’m gonna go ahead and suggest a no holds barred battle of grit and grits, and say Kathy Bates, Paula Dean, and Janet Napolitano.
Obviously, Kathy Bates comes out the winner. Paula Dean’s not lasting more than a minute since her butter-heart would surely explode if she attempted combat.
Paula Dean’s butter-heart is her body’s Krang.
[[MORE]]
More pathetic: Ralph Wiggum or Bobby Hill?
Ralph Wiggum, no question. To be honest, I hate everything about King of the Hill. Can I say that? Can I admit that here?
Of course—this is a safe place. Following on the subject of taste: of the handful of repeat subjects in your work, Dragon Ball, Akira, and The Simpsons are among the most prevalent. Which had a bigger effect on you, and why?
Man that’s a tough one, but I’m gonna have to put Akira at the top of that list. I never found myself in awe of anything in Dragon Ball or on The Simpsons, entertained yes, but never in awe. Akira has played a big part from the get-go. I think Tetsuo’s transformation permanently altered my perception of bodies and masses. It was definitely what got me started on drawing stretching, melting, twisting skin and the like. Also, it had a level of technical detail that I had never seen. So I always felt compelled to study even the tiniest of details. This is a can of worms; I can’t succinctly state its importance.
As for the other two, I think Dragon Ball was my anime gateway drug, and The Simpsons was like some cool older kid at school, the kind of guy you could pick up good slang and curse words from. I guess I feel like they both just had a larger impact on the tone of my drawings.
I kind of figured Akira would rank highest of that group. Tetsuo’s transformation seems especially influential on your work’s…metaphysics, I guess? The complexity of your subjects’ disfigurements/distortions exceed Otomo’s though: enjambment with other objects, melting/stretching, and varying degrees of evisceration. What is it about torsion and mutation that so appeals to you?
In part because it’s fun to draw, but also because the end results are generally ambiguous and confusing. Especially when it comes to enjambment of entirely unrelated items, those are the most fun. I just draw different things that I like, whatever comes to mind really, and force them together visually. There’s not much more to it than that, my sources of inspiration are really fragmented.
Conceptual influences also seem really fragmented and diverse. Other than the soul-devouring torpor of Midwestern grayness, what do you consider to have strongly influenced the tonal content of your work?
Man, that’s a tough question. It’s weird for me to think about, because to me all of my drawings are jokes, but that’s just how I see them. There aren’t any coded punchlines that I expect people to get or not get. I just haphazardly jump around between ideas, some are related, and some aren’t. There’s no spanning architecture or framework to it.
As dismal as it sounds, I would cite monotony in general as the single most strongest and puzzling influence on the mood of my drawings. I feel like I’m in the movie Groundhog Day and I’m Bill Murray (is that twice now in our correspondence that I’ve likened myself to a Bill Murray character? Maybe that’s what I’m really trying to say, I subconsciously owe everything to Bill Murray.) except instead of making the most of my predicament, I’m just apathetically frittering the same day away over and over again. It sucks, but it’s also really funny to me.
Favorite: baked good, article of clothing, and professional athlete.
Baked good: What is baking? I only eat raw meats and mustard.
Article of clothing: Without a doubt, Cloak. Although I would never be so bold as to wear a cloak, I think they’re pretty cool. I wish they had never faded from popularity. Put a cloak on a fictional character and he’s cooler than fuck, but put one on a person in real life, and they’re some kind of pervert. What a cruel end for the cloak, I think we need to revive the cloak.
Athlete: Bob Probert, he was like a caveman on ice skates. Flying around the ice, sans teeth, punching the living shit out of everybody, he made for some really entertaining hockey. May he rest in peace.
Oh man, Bob Probert. Toothlessly smiling down from Cocaine Heaven, at the right hand of Fight God. Let’s go back to tedium for a moment, since I assume you’re at work right now. The inhumanity toward which you feel your self/work inevitably gravitating, the Bill Murray subject-position: is that entirely a product of repetition? Or has the torpor of work-life evolved an innate nihilism? Despite the lack of intention or intentional architecture to what you’ve done, it does read as the elaboration of something, even if “just” aesthetic. It’s hard to imagine that being solely reactionary.
I think it’s a strange mix. I don’t know how to explain it. I feel like there’s something to be said about the banality of “life sans-fascination” and it makes it even worse when you leave everything lumped into one soft limp grey pile of suck. So, instead of just letting it turn into a blob, I mold it into funny shapes. The more grey there is, the more I have to work with. It does nothing to alleviate the swelling of the blob, but it helps if you shape it into a butt, or put a tiny hat on it. Overall, I just try to have a sense of humor about the repetition of said torpor via hyperbole…and crayons. Whatever is entertaining I guess.
What do you imagine/picture in response to the phrase “everything happens for a reason?”
Everything happens for a reason, and that reason sucks.
Do you have any kind of aspiration for your work? If the rabble threw enough gold coins at you, would/could you sit in a fortress and just produce art full time?
I’m not sure. I suppose I have some aspirations, but they’re hidden in a drawer somewhere, or underneath a pile of drawings. I’d like to branch out and do something more than just draw and post, but I’m clueless and far removed from the world of art. I have no idea how I’ve gotten to where I am. When I think about it, the theme from Unsolved Mysteries starts to play, and my inner monologue is interpreted by Robert Stack standing in a shadowy room. So, needless to say, I try not to think about it. Gimme a fortress with a stable internet connection, trade the gold coins for a wellhead of ink, and I’d be all set.
Although we all know that the universe ends in a dumb and protracted heat-death, what would you choose for a different finale?
The universe wakes up, it’s 6 am, on February 2nd, “I got you babe” plays on the radio, and the universe gets up and kills itself all over again.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/1eeeccec9dd39d1f1c4790d232e67dbc/tumblr_mkswcjsVOf1rnolxfo1_500.jpg)
![Tumblin’: Notalkingplz (Kenan Bayraktar)
Kenan’s art is relentless. Its volume, intensity, skill, and nihilism are so consistent and overwhelming that his blog feels like a passage through an infinite event horizon. It’s work that exclaims universal absurdity while also particle-accelerating that meaninglessness into a sardonic mania. It’s funny, disconcerting, vicious, and oddly charming—all executed with little more than a couple pens, crayons, and 40 hogsheads of paper.
When I first walked into Kenan’s Highlighter and Sharpie Party last year, I felt a sense of uncanny familiarity. As it turns out, we’re both from the same part of Michigan, and our epigenetic midwestern coldness immediately bonded us. If you’re lucky, stretches of rust-belt tedium effect a productive derangement, and Notalkingplz is, to me, the current aesthetic high-water mark of where that leads. What follows came together over months of conversation, cobbled together with interrogative baby steps and undulating silences. Enjoy.
Let’s start with pleasantries. If you could pick three people to put in a locked, windowless room and have fight to the death, who would it be?
Oh man, this interview just got personal. I’m gonna go ahead and suggest a no holds barred battle of grit and grits, and say Kathy Bates, Paula Dean, and Janet Napolitano.
Obviously, Kathy Bates comes out the winner. Paula Dean’s not lasting more than a minute since her butter-heart would surely explode if she attempted combat.
Paula Dean’s butter-heart is her body’s Krang.
[[MORE]]
More pathetic: Ralph Wiggum or Bobby Hill?
Ralph Wiggum, no question. To be honest, I hate everything about King of the Hill. Can I say that? Can I admit that here?
Of course—this is a safe place. Following on the subject of taste: of the handful of repeat subjects in your work, Dragon Ball, Akira, and The Simpsons are among the most prevalent. Which had a bigger effect on you, and why?
Man that’s a tough one, but I’m gonna have to put Akira at the top of that list. I never found myself in awe of anything in Dragon Ball or on The Simpsons, entertained yes, but never in awe. Akira has played a big part from the get-go. I think Tetsuo’s transformation permanently altered my perception of bodies and masses. It was definitely what got me started on drawing stretching, melting, twisting skin and the like. Also, it had a level of technical detail that I had never seen. So I always felt compelled to study even the tiniest of details. This is a can of worms; I can’t succinctly state its importance.
As for the other two, I think Dragon Ball was my anime gateway drug, and The Simpsons was like some cool older kid at school, the kind of guy you could pick up good slang and curse words from. I guess I feel like they both just had a larger impact on the tone of my drawings.
I kind of figured Akira would rank highest of that group. Tetsuo’s transformation seems especially influential on your work’s…metaphysics, I guess? The complexity of your subjects’ disfigurements/distortions exceed Otomo’s though: enjambment with other objects, melting/stretching, and varying degrees of evisceration. What is it about torsion and mutation that so appeals to you?
In part because it’s fun to draw, but also because the end results are generally ambiguous and confusing. Especially when it comes to enjambment of entirely unrelated items, those are the most fun. I just draw different things that I like, whatever comes to mind really, and force them together visually. There’s not much more to it than that, my sources of inspiration are really fragmented.
Conceptual influences also seem really fragmented and diverse. Other than the soul-devouring torpor of Midwestern grayness, what do you consider to have strongly influenced the tonal content of your work?
Man, that’s a tough question. It’s weird for me to think about, because to me all of my drawings are jokes, but that’s just how I see them. There aren’t any coded punchlines that I expect people to get or not get. I just haphazardly jump around between ideas, some are related, and some aren’t. There’s no spanning architecture or framework to it.
As dismal as it sounds, I would cite monotony in general as the single most strongest and puzzling influence on the mood of my drawings. I feel like I’m in the movie Groundhog Day and I’m Bill Murray (is that twice now in our correspondence that I’ve likened myself to a Bill Murray character? Maybe that’s what I’m really trying to say, I subconsciously owe everything to Bill Murray.) except instead of making the most of my predicament, I’m just apathetically frittering the same day away over and over again. It sucks, but it’s also really funny to me.
Favorite: baked good, article of clothing, and professional athlete.
Baked good: What is baking? I only eat raw meats and mustard.
Article of clothing: Without a doubt, Cloak. Although I would never be so bold as to wear a cloak, I think they’re pretty cool. I wish they had never faded from popularity. Put a cloak on a fictional character and he’s cooler than fuck, but put one on a person in real life, and they’re some kind of pervert. What a cruel end for the cloak, I think we need to revive the cloak.
Athlete: Bob Probert, he was like a caveman on ice skates. Flying around the ice, sans teeth, punching the living shit out of everybody, he made for some really entertaining hockey. May he rest in peace.
Oh man, Bob Probert. Toothlessly smiling down from Cocaine Heaven, at the right hand of Fight God. Let’s go back to tedium for a moment, since I assume you’re at work right now. The inhumanity toward which you feel your self/work inevitably gravitating, the Bill Murray subject-position: is that entirely a product of repetition? Or has the torpor of work-life evolved an innate nihilism? Despite the lack of intention or intentional architecture to what you’ve done, it does read as the elaboration of something, even if “just” aesthetic. It’s hard to imagine that being solely reactionary.
I think it’s a strange mix. I don’t know how to explain it. I feel like there’s something to be said about the banality of “life sans-fascination” and it makes it even worse when you leave everything lumped into one soft limp grey pile of suck. So, instead of just letting it turn into a blob, I mold it into funny shapes. The more grey there is, the more I have to work with. It does nothing to alleviate the swelling of the blob, but it helps if you shape it into a butt, or put a tiny hat on it. Overall, I just try to have a sense of humor about the repetition of said torpor via hyperbole…and crayons. Whatever is entertaining I guess.
What do you imagine/picture in response to the phrase “everything happens for a reason?”
Everything happens for a reason, and that reason sucks.
Do you have any kind of aspiration for your work? If the rabble threw enough gold coins at you, would/could you sit in a fortress and just produce art full time?
I’m not sure. I suppose I have some aspirations, but they’re hidden in a drawer somewhere, or underneath a pile of drawings. I’d like to branch out and do something more than just draw and post, but I’m clueless and far removed from the world of art. I have no idea how I’ve gotten to where I am. When I think about it, the theme from Unsolved Mysteries starts to play, and my inner monologue is interpreted by Robert Stack standing in a shadowy room. So, needless to say, I try not to think about it. Gimme a fortress with a stable internet connection, trade the gold coins for a wellhead of ink, and I’d be all set.
Although we all know that the universe ends in a dumb and protracted heat-death, what would you choose for a different finale?
The universe wakes up, it’s 6 am, on February 2nd, “I got you babe” plays on the radio, and the universe gets up and kills itself all over again.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/6b8b34a21c12e1d0026b45501019200f/tumblr_mkswcjsVOf1rnolxfo6_500.jpg)
![Tumblin’: Notalkingplz (Kenan Bayraktar)
Kenan’s art is relentless. Its volume, intensity, skill, and nihilism are so consistent and overwhelming that his blog feels like a passage through an infinite event horizon. It’s work that exclaims universal absurdity while also particle-accelerating that meaninglessness into a sardonic mania. It’s funny, disconcerting, vicious, and oddly charming—all executed with little more than a couple pens, crayons, and 40 hogsheads of paper.
When I first walked into Kenan’s Highlighter and Sharpie Party last year, I felt a sense of uncanny familiarity. As it turns out, we’re both from the same part of Michigan, and our epigenetic midwestern coldness immediately bonded us. If you’re lucky, stretches of rust-belt tedium effect a productive derangement, and Notalkingplz is, to me, the current aesthetic high-water mark of where that leads. What follows came together over months of conversation, cobbled together with interrogative baby steps and undulating silences. Enjoy.
Let’s start with pleasantries. If you could pick three people to put in a locked, windowless room and have fight to the death, who would it be?
Oh man, this interview just got personal. I’m gonna go ahead and suggest a no holds barred battle of grit and grits, and say Kathy Bates, Paula Dean, and Janet Napolitano.
Obviously, Kathy Bates comes out the winner. Paula Dean’s not lasting more than a minute since her butter-heart would surely explode if she attempted combat.
Paula Dean’s butter-heart is her body’s Krang.
[[MORE]]
More pathetic: Ralph Wiggum or Bobby Hill?
Ralph Wiggum, no question. To be honest, I hate everything about King of the Hill. Can I say that? Can I admit that here?
Of course—this is a safe place. Following on the subject of taste: of the handful of repeat subjects in your work, Dragon Ball, Akira, and The Simpsons are among the most prevalent. Which had a bigger effect on you, and why?
Man that’s a tough one, but I’m gonna have to put Akira at the top of that list. I never found myself in awe of anything in Dragon Ball or on The Simpsons, entertained yes, but never in awe. Akira has played a big part from the get-go. I think Tetsuo’s transformation permanently altered my perception of bodies and masses. It was definitely what got me started on drawing stretching, melting, twisting skin and the like. Also, it had a level of technical detail that I had never seen. So I always felt compelled to study even the tiniest of details. This is a can of worms; I can’t succinctly state its importance.
As for the other two, I think Dragon Ball was my anime gateway drug, and The Simpsons was like some cool older kid at school, the kind of guy you could pick up good slang and curse words from. I guess I feel like they both just had a larger impact on the tone of my drawings.
I kind of figured Akira would rank highest of that group. Tetsuo’s transformation seems especially influential on your work’s…metaphysics, I guess? The complexity of your subjects’ disfigurements/distortions exceed Otomo’s though: enjambment with other objects, melting/stretching, and varying degrees of evisceration. What is it about torsion and mutation that so appeals to you?
In part because it’s fun to draw, but also because the end results are generally ambiguous and confusing. Especially when it comes to enjambment of entirely unrelated items, those are the most fun. I just draw different things that I like, whatever comes to mind really, and force them together visually. There’s not much more to it than that, my sources of inspiration are really fragmented.
Conceptual influences also seem really fragmented and diverse. Other than the soul-devouring torpor of Midwestern grayness, what do you consider to have strongly influenced the tonal content of your work?
Man, that’s a tough question. It’s weird for me to think about, because to me all of my drawings are jokes, but that’s just how I see them. There aren’t any coded punchlines that I expect people to get or not get. I just haphazardly jump around between ideas, some are related, and some aren’t. There’s no spanning architecture or framework to it.
As dismal as it sounds, I would cite monotony in general as the single most strongest and puzzling influence on the mood of my drawings. I feel like I’m in the movie Groundhog Day and I’m Bill Murray (is that twice now in our correspondence that I’ve likened myself to a Bill Murray character? Maybe that’s what I’m really trying to say, I subconsciously owe everything to Bill Murray.) except instead of making the most of my predicament, I’m just apathetically frittering the same day away over and over again. It sucks, but it’s also really funny to me.
Favorite: baked good, article of clothing, and professional athlete.
Baked good: What is baking? I only eat raw meats and mustard.
Article of clothing: Without a doubt, Cloak. Although I would never be so bold as to wear a cloak, I think they’re pretty cool. I wish they had never faded from popularity. Put a cloak on a fictional character and he’s cooler than fuck, but put one on a person in real life, and they’re some kind of pervert. What a cruel end for the cloak, I think we need to revive the cloak.
Athlete: Bob Probert, he was like a caveman on ice skates. Flying around the ice, sans teeth, punching the living shit out of everybody, he made for some really entertaining hockey. May he rest in peace.
Oh man, Bob Probert. Toothlessly smiling down from Cocaine Heaven, at the right hand of Fight God. Let’s go back to tedium for a moment, since I assume you’re at work right now. The inhumanity toward which you feel your self/work inevitably gravitating, the Bill Murray subject-position: is that entirely a product of repetition? Or has the torpor of work-life evolved an innate nihilism? Despite the lack of intention or intentional architecture to what you’ve done, it does read as the elaboration of something, even if “just” aesthetic. It’s hard to imagine that being solely reactionary.
I think it’s a strange mix. I don’t know how to explain it. I feel like there’s something to be said about the banality of “life sans-fascination” and it makes it even worse when you leave everything lumped into one soft limp grey pile of suck. So, instead of just letting it turn into a blob, I mold it into funny shapes. The more grey there is, the more I have to work with. It does nothing to alleviate the swelling of the blob, but it helps if you shape it into a butt, or put a tiny hat on it. Overall, I just try to have a sense of humor about the repetition of said torpor via hyperbole…and crayons. Whatever is entertaining I guess.
What do you imagine/picture in response to the phrase “everything happens for a reason?”
Everything happens for a reason, and that reason sucks.
Do you have any kind of aspiration for your work? If the rabble threw enough gold coins at you, would/could you sit in a fortress and just produce art full time?
I’m not sure. I suppose I have some aspirations, but they’re hidden in a drawer somewhere, or underneath a pile of drawings. I’d like to branch out and do something more than just draw and post, but I’m clueless and far removed from the world of art. I have no idea how I’ve gotten to where I am. When I think about it, the theme from Unsolved Mysteries starts to play, and my inner monologue is interpreted by Robert Stack standing in a shadowy room. So, needless to say, I try not to think about it. Gimme a fortress with a stable internet connection, trade the gold coins for a wellhead of ink, and I’d be all set.
Although we all know that the universe ends in a dumb and protracted heat-death, what would you choose for a different finale?
The universe wakes up, it’s 6 am, on February 2nd, “I got you babe” plays on the radio, and the universe gets up and kills itself all over again.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/e1bd4ddf479a5ef40403d3cdfc8687c2/tumblr_mkswcjsVOf1rnolxfo2_500.jpg)
![Tumblin’: Notalkingplz (Kenan Bayraktar)
Kenan’s art is relentless. Its volume, intensity, skill, and nihilism are so consistent and overwhelming that his blog feels like a passage through an infinite event horizon. It’s work that exclaims universal absurdity while also particle-accelerating that meaninglessness into a sardonic mania. It’s funny, disconcerting, vicious, and oddly charming—all executed with little more than a couple pens, crayons, and 40 hogsheads of paper.
When I first walked into Kenan’s Highlighter and Sharpie Party last year, I felt a sense of uncanny familiarity. As it turns out, we’re both from the same part of Michigan, and our epigenetic midwestern coldness immediately bonded us. If you’re lucky, stretches of rust-belt tedium effect a productive derangement, and Notalkingplz is, to me, the current aesthetic high-water mark of where that leads. What follows came together over months of conversation, cobbled together with interrogative baby steps and undulating silences. Enjoy.
Let’s start with pleasantries. If you could pick three people to put in a locked, windowless room and have fight to the death, who would it be?
Oh man, this interview just got personal. I’m gonna go ahead and suggest a no holds barred battle of grit and grits, and say Kathy Bates, Paula Dean, and Janet Napolitano.
Obviously, Kathy Bates comes out the winner. Paula Dean’s not lasting more than a minute since her butter-heart would surely explode if she attempted combat.
Paula Dean’s butter-heart is her body’s Krang.
[[MORE]]
More pathetic: Ralph Wiggum or Bobby Hill?
Ralph Wiggum, no question. To be honest, I hate everything about King of the Hill. Can I say that? Can I admit that here?
Of course—this is a safe place. Following on the subject of taste: of the handful of repeat subjects in your work, Dragon Ball, Akira, and The Simpsons are among the most prevalent. Which had a bigger effect on you, and why?
Man that’s a tough one, but I’m gonna have to put Akira at the top of that list. I never found myself in awe of anything in Dragon Ball or on The Simpsons, entertained yes, but never in awe. Akira has played a big part from the get-go. I think Tetsuo’s transformation permanently altered my perception of bodies and masses. It was definitely what got me started on drawing stretching, melting, twisting skin and the like. Also, it had a level of technical detail that I had never seen. So I always felt compelled to study even the tiniest of details. This is a can of worms; I can’t succinctly state its importance.
As for the other two, I think Dragon Ball was my anime gateway drug, and The Simpsons was like some cool older kid at school, the kind of guy you could pick up good slang and curse words from. I guess I feel like they both just had a larger impact on the tone of my drawings.
I kind of figured Akira would rank highest of that group. Tetsuo’s transformation seems especially influential on your work’s…metaphysics, I guess? The complexity of your subjects’ disfigurements/distortions exceed Otomo’s though: enjambment with other objects, melting/stretching, and varying degrees of evisceration. What is it about torsion and mutation that so appeals to you?
In part because it’s fun to draw, but also because the end results are generally ambiguous and confusing. Especially when it comes to enjambment of entirely unrelated items, those are the most fun. I just draw different things that I like, whatever comes to mind really, and force them together visually. There’s not much more to it than that, my sources of inspiration are really fragmented.
Conceptual influences also seem really fragmented and diverse. Other than the soul-devouring torpor of Midwestern grayness, what do you consider to have strongly influenced the tonal content of your work?
Man, that’s a tough question. It’s weird for me to think about, because to me all of my drawings are jokes, but that’s just how I see them. There aren’t any coded punchlines that I expect people to get or not get. I just haphazardly jump around between ideas, some are related, and some aren’t. There’s no spanning architecture or framework to it.
As dismal as it sounds, I would cite monotony in general as the single most strongest and puzzling influence on the mood of my drawings. I feel like I’m in the movie Groundhog Day and I’m Bill Murray (is that twice now in our correspondence that I’ve likened myself to a Bill Murray character? Maybe that’s what I’m really trying to say, I subconsciously owe everything to Bill Murray.) except instead of making the most of my predicament, I’m just apathetically frittering the same day away over and over again. It sucks, but it’s also really funny to me.
Favorite: baked good, article of clothing, and professional athlete.
Baked good: What is baking? I only eat raw meats and mustard.
Article of clothing: Without a doubt, Cloak. Although I would never be so bold as to wear a cloak, I think they’re pretty cool. I wish they had never faded from popularity. Put a cloak on a fictional character and he’s cooler than fuck, but put one on a person in real life, and they’re some kind of pervert. What a cruel end for the cloak, I think we need to revive the cloak.
Athlete: Bob Probert, he was like a caveman on ice skates. Flying around the ice, sans teeth, punching the living shit out of everybody, he made for some really entertaining hockey. May he rest in peace.
Oh man, Bob Probert. Toothlessly smiling down from Cocaine Heaven, at the right hand of Fight God. Let’s go back to tedium for a moment, since I assume you’re at work right now. The inhumanity toward which you feel your self/work inevitably gravitating, the Bill Murray subject-position: is that entirely a product of repetition? Or has the torpor of work-life evolved an innate nihilism? Despite the lack of intention or intentional architecture to what you’ve done, it does read as the elaboration of something, even if “just” aesthetic. It’s hard to imagine that being solely reactionary.
I think it’s a strange mix. I don’t know how to explain it. I feel like there’s something to be said about the banality of “life sans-fascination” and it makes it even worse when you leave everything lumped into one soft limp grey pile of suck. So, instead of just letting it turn into a blob, I mold it into funny shapes. The more grey there is, the more I have to work with. It does nothing to alleviate the swelling of the blob, but it helps if you shape it into a butt, or put a tiny hat on it. Overall, I just try to have a sense of humor about the repetition of said torpor via hyperbole…and crayons. Whatever is entertaining I guess.
What do you imagine/picture in response to the phrase “everything happens for a reason?”
Everything happens for a reason, and that reason sucks.
Do you have any kind of aspiration for your work? If the rabble threw enough gold coins at you, would/could you sit in a fortress and just produce art full time?
I’m not sure. I suppose I have some aspirations, but they’re hidden in a drawer somewhere, or underneath a pile of drawings. I’d like to branch out and do something more than just draw and post, but I’m clueless and far removed from the world of art. I have no idea how I’ve gotten to where I am. When I think about it, the theme from Unsolved Mysteries starts to play, and my inner monologue is interpreted by Robert Stack standing in a shadowy room. So, needless to say, I try not to think about it. Gimme a fortress with a stable internet connection, trade the gold coins for a wellhead of ink, and I’d be all set.
Although we all know that the universe ends in a dumb and protracted heat-death, what would you choose for a different finale?
The universe wakes up, it’s 6 am, on February 2nd, “I got you babe” plays on the radio, and the universe gets up and kills itself all over again.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/f8a86b20279c4e10467a14ed13df64d4/tumblr_mkswcjsVOf1rnolxfo5_500.jpg)
![Tumblin’: Notalkingplz (Kenan Bayraktar)
Kenan’s art is relentless. Its volume, intensity, skill, and nihilism are so consistent and overwhelming that his blog feels like a passage through an infinite event horizon. It’s work that exclaims universal absurdity while also particle-accelerating that meaninglessness into a sardonic mania. It’s funny, disconcerting, vicious, and oddly charming—all executed with little more than a couple pens, crayons, and 40 hogsheads of paper.
When I first walked into Kenan’s Highlighter and Sharpie Party last year, I felt a sense of uncanny familiarity. As it turns out, we’re both from the same part of Michigan, and our epigenetic midwestern coldness immediately bonded us. If you’re lucky, stretches of rust-belt tedium effect a productive derangement, and Notalkingplz is, to me, the current aesthetic high-water mark of where that leads. What follows came together over months of conversation, cobbled together with interrogative baby steps and undulating silences. Enjoy.
Let’s start with pleasantries. If you could pick three people to put in a locked, windowless room and have fight to the death, who would it be?
Oh man, this interview just got personal. I’m gonna go ahead and suggest a no holds barred battle of grit and grits, and say Kathy Bates, Paula Dean, and Janet Napolitano.
Obviously, Kathy Bates comes out the winner. Paula Dean’s not lasting more than a minute since her butter-heart would surely explode if she attempted combat.
Paula Dean’s butter-heart is her body’s Krang.
[[MORE]]
More pathetic: Ralph Wiggum or Bobby Hill?
Ralph Wiggum, no question. To be honest, I hate everything about King of the Hill. Can I say that? Can I admit that here?
Of course—this is a safe place. Following on the subject of taste: of the handful of repeat subjects in your work, Dragon Ball, Akira, and The Simpsons are among the most prevalent. Which had a bigger effect on you, and why?
Man that’s a tough one, but I’m gonna have to put Akira at the top of that list. I never found myself in awe of anything in Dragon Ball or on The Simpsons, entertained yes, but never in awe. Akira has played a big part from the get-go. I think Tetsuo’s transformation permanently altered my perception of bodies and masses. It was definitely what got me started on drawing stretching, melting, twisting skin and the like. Also, it had a level of technical detail that I had never seen. So I always felt compelled to study even the tiniest of details. This is a can of worms; I can’t succinctly state its importance.
As for the other two, I think Dragon Ball was my anime gateway drug, and The Simpsons was like some cool older kid at school, the kind of guy you could pick up good slang and curse words from. I guess I feel like they both just had a larger impact on the tone of my drawings.
I kind of figured Akira would rank highest of that group. Tetsuo’s transformation seems especially influential on your work’s…metaphysics, I guess? The complexity of your subjects’ disfigurements/distortions exceed Otomo’s though: enjambment with other objects, melting/stretching, and varying degrees of evisceration. What is it about torsion and mutation that so appeals to you?
In part because it’s fun to draw, but also because the end results are generally ambiguous and confusing. Especially when it comes to enjambment of entirely unrelated items, those are the most fun. I just draw different things that I like, whatever comes to mind really, and force them together visually. There’s not much more to it than that, my sources of inspiration are really fragmented.
Conceptual influences also seem really fragmented and diverse. Other than the soul-devouring torpor of Midwestern grayness, what do you consider to have strongly influenced the tonal content of your work?
Man, that’s a tough question. It’s weird for me to think about, because to me all of my drawings are jokes, but that’s just how I see them. There aren’t any coded punchlines that I expect people to get or not get. I just haphazardly jump around between ideas, some are related, and some aren’t. There’s no spanning architecture or framework to it.
As dismal as it sounds, I would cite monotony in general as the single most strongest and puzzling influence on the mood of my drawings. I feel like I’m in the movie Groundhog Day and I’m Bill Murray (is that twice now in our correspondence that I’ve likened myself to a Bill Murray character? Maybe that’s what I’m really trying to say, I subconsciously owe everything to Bill Murray.) except instead of making the most of my predicament, I’m just apathetically frittering the same day away over and over again. It sucks, but it’s also really funny to me.
Favorite: baked good, article of clothing, and professional athlete.
Baked good: What is baking? I only eat raw meats and mustard.
Article of clothing: Without a doubt, Cloak. Although I would never be so bold as to wear a cloak, I think they’re pretty cool. I wish they had never faded from popularity. Put a cloak on a fictional character and he’s cooler than fuck, but put one on a person in real life, and they’re some kind of pervert. What a cruel end for the cloak, I think we need to revive the cloak.
Athlete: Bob Probert, he was like a caveman on ice skates. Flying around the ice, sans teeth, punching the living shit out of everybody, he made for some really entertaining hockey. May he rest in peace.
Oh man, Bob Probert. Toothlessly smiling down from Cocaine Heaven, at the right hand of Fight God. Let’s go back to tedium for a moment, since I assume you’re at work right now. The inhumanity toward which you feel your self/work inevitably gravitating, the Bill Murray subject-position: is that entirely a product of repetition? Or has the torpor of work-life evolved an innate nihilism? Despite the lack of intention or intentional architecture to what you’ve done, it does read as the elaboration of something, even if “just” aesthetic. It’s hard to imagine that being solely reactionary.
I think it’s a strange mix. I don’t know how to explain it. I feel like there’s something to be said about the banality of “life sans-fascination” and it makes it even worse when you leave everything lumped into one soft limp grey pile of suck. So, instead of just letting it turn into a blob, I mold it into funny shapes. The more grey there is, the more I have to work with. It does nothing to alleviate the swelling of the blob, but it helps if you shape it into a butt, or put a tiny hat on it. Overall, I just try to have a sense of humor about the repetition of said torpor via hyperbole…and crayons. Whatever is entertaining I guess.
What do you imagine/picture in response to the phrase “everything happens for a reason?”
Everything happens for a reason, and that reason sucks.
Do you have any kind of aspiration for your work? If the rabble threw enough gold coins at you, would/could you sit in a fortress and just produce art full time?
I’m not sure. I suppose I have some aspirations, but they’re hidden in a drawer somewhere, or underneath a pile of drawings. I’d like to branch out and do something more than just draw and post, but I’m clueless and far removed from the world of art. I have no idea how I’ve gotten to where I am. When I think about it, the theme from Unsolved Mysteries starts to play, and my inner monologue is interpreted by Robert Stack standing in a shadowy room. So, needless to say, I try not to think about it. Gimme a fortress with a stable internet connection, trade the gold coins for a wellhead of ink, and I’d be all set.
Although we all know that the universe ends in a dumb and protracted heat-death, what would you choose for a different finale?
The universe wakes up, it’s 6 am, on February 2nd, “I got you babe” plays on the radio, and the universe gets up and kills itself all over again.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/c45f17d1256921b6de2402c6e03e47ef/tumblr_mkswcjsVOf1rnolxfo4_500.jpg)
Tumblin’: Notalkingplz (Kenan Bayraktar)
Kenan’s art is relentless. Its volume, intensity, skill, and nihilism are so consistent and overwhelming that his blog feels like a passage through an infinite event horizon. It’s work that exclaims universal absurdity while also particle-accelerating that meaninglessness into a sardonic mania. It’s funny, disconcerting, vicious, and oddly charming—all executed with little more than a couple pens, crayons, and 40 hogsheads of paper.
When I first walked into Kenan’s Highlighter and Sharpie Party last year, I felt a sense of uncanny familiarity. As it turns out, we’re both from the same part of Michigan, and our epigenetic midwestern coldness immediately bonded us. If you’re lucky, stretches of rust-belt tedium effect a productive derangement, and Notalkingplz is, to me, the current aesthetic high-water mark of where that leads. What follows came together over months of conversation, cobbled together with interrogative baby steps and undulating silences. Enjoy.
Let’s start with pleasantries. If you could pick three people to put in a locked, windowless room and have fight to the death, who would it be?
Oh man, this interview just got personal. I’m gonna go ahead and suggest a no holds barred battle of grit and grits, and say Kathy Bates, Paula Dean, and Janet Napolitano.
Obviously, Kathy Bates comes out the winner. Paula Dean’s not lasting more than a minute since her butter-heart would surely explode if she attempted combat.
Paula Dean’s butter-heart is her body’s Krang.
Theme Spotlight: Provenance
Provenance was an experiment. After a handful of high-concept themes, we wanted to return to zero and make an archetypal bread-and-butter theme with all the things we’d learned and refined. Thanks to the endless galaxy of genius pooled between Carlo and Jared, we did just that.
Provenance is an unpretentious single-channel theme with multiple header and sidebar options, our newly improved featured tag drop-down menu, and loads of color options. It’s simple, sharp, and flexible—joining perfect organization with slim, unpretentious styling with all the now-standard accoutrement. Pick it up today for $49.
Theme Spotlight: Aperture
We don’t use the phrase “magic bullet” often. Typically it’s just when we’re talking about horrible informercials or the Kennedy assassination. When working on Aperture though, we were compelled to flap that cliche around like a cat with a rat because, well…it’s the best portfolio theme we’ve ever made.
We took the best-loved bits of our other portfolio themes (Kodiak and Photofolio mainly) and expanded upon them, adding in smoother animations and even tidier structure. Tag-organized galleries, an ultra-compact navigational menu, and an alternate grid view all blend seamlessly into Aperture’s stoic, alabaster face. It’s a perfect solution for professional photographers, visual artists, and curators alike, and we’re incredibly proud to share it with you. Pick it up today for $49
Theme Update(s): The Tweets They Are a-Changin’
Twitter is changing the way Tumblr (and we designers) can use it’s API, and this, in turn, will change they way you use our themes’ Twitter feeds. Starting tomorrow, most of your Twitter feeds will require a slightly different setup process, and may go down for a couple days while we push some changes through. This isn’t as scary as it sounds though: let’s walk through it.
Most of our themes have an integrated Twitter feed. This has worked by Twitter maintaining an “open” API, meaning we design code that pulls raw data from Twitter into the container we’ve built for your tweets. Think of the API as an open ocean, and that we build little site-specific channels for its water. However, starting tomorrow, Twitter’s closing the beach and forcing everyone to use bottled water instead (so to speak).
Fortunately, though, the new system won’t change a lot for you folks. Signing into your Twitter account in your blog’s general settings should be enough. To do that, head up to the gear icon atop your dashboard, then select whichever blog on which you want to show your tweets. The Twitter sign-in option is toward the bottom of these blog settings, and totally self-explanatory.
We’re mainlining coffee and foregoing sustenance to update as many of our themes as possible, but many of our themes’ Twitter feeds will be temporarily unavailable tomorrow and a day or two after that. We’re sorry for the inconvenience, and I’ll be in touch to let you know if anything else changes, or if any themes’ Twitter feeds will be fragged for longer than expected.
Mouldering Fail Whale courtesy of Kudsite
![Tumblin’: An Interview with Jessica Fortner
There are remarkably few artists with the range of reference and visual depth of Jessica Fortner. Based in Toronto but working with an aesthetic of the furthest out-theres, Fortner’s design and illustration are equally genre-bending and deeply empathic. An alumnus of the Ontario College of Art & Design, she’s studied and worked in printmaking, sculpture, woodworking, bookbinding, and slews of other forms—a constellation of skills and media that clearly shape her work’s sophistication, novelty, and narrative tinge.
Jes is also one of the talented minds behind Squidface and The Meddler, a Canada-centric online arts magazine co-created with her equally talented boyfriend Michael Wandelmaier. I caught up with Jessica in between trips to Tequila Bookworm and The Beguiling, and asked her about…pretty much everything.
I’ve always been interested in artists’ mental states while working. Since your work has such strongly hypnotic, patterned, and surreal components to it, in what kinds of weird places do you sometimes find yourself?
That’s an interesting question. It really depends on the project. I did one piece (Mouthy) that came about from thinking about perception and it’s distortion in cases of mental illness. I was listening to a lot of Radiolab podcasts on the subject, and started to feel really subjective about everything (not being able to trust my perception). At one point my boyfriend suggested that he might be my Tyler Durden—just a figment of my imagination.
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Cashews or almonds?
Both. Crush them up with some beets, kidney beans and onions, cook them into veggie patties, and you’ve really got something special.
In a past interview, you mention that the generation of new concepts is the hardest part of your work—that (I’m paraphrasing) the hardest part is overcoming the given in order to find the new. On an intra-psychological level, what kinds of processes do you employ to facilitate this movement/evolution? How do you get your brain-meat to “go past” and into novelty?
Haha. I still struggle with this and often find it even harder for client projects. But generally I’ll do an initial set of sketches. I need at least an hour or so of straight sketching in order get anywhere. Then I just relax, sort of like mediating. I let one image float into my mind and then another and so on… visualizing things with loose association to the project that I’m working on at the time. When I have something I like, it’s like being stuck by a thunderbolt – I just know. Sometimes, I’ll ask myself what could I do to make it more interesting. Something unexpected but relevant. Then I do another batch of sketches, most nobody ever sees.
Often, working with art directors, I come up with several concepts for the same brief. Usually there’s one that I like the best, which is the one I’d choose if I was doing a personal project. On occasion, fully formed pictures just pop into my head and I am compelled to draw them.
Given your background with bookbinding and printmaking, and your illustrative work’s heavily narrative nature, do you have any plans to produce a comic/graphic novel? If so, what kind of story would it be?
I’ve had the beginnings of a story I’ve wanted to illustrate in my head for sometime now. It’s a little hard to describe and I haven’t really found the right way to approach it yet. It’s sort of a creation myth incorporating ideas of quantum physics, exploring the idea of mirrored realities or the shadow self. I imagine something pretty abstract and non-linear. Kind of a mix between a comic book and a children’s book with large full page images and very few words.
Just recently, I started the preliminary work for a short comic set in the Arctic wilderness. The story is still evolving in my mind, but essentially follows a woman and her dog through some real and imagined events that occur while traveling through a cold barren landscape. A mix of a Jack London tale with a touch of Philip K. Dick.
In addition to those you just mentioned, what storytellers (either literary or in film) have most affected your art? Especially following the description you gave for your book project, I’m intrigued to know more about what fictional/mythic worlds have most shaped your own.
It’s very hard to pin influences down to only a few as we all consume so much in terms of film, books, art, comics, visual and storytelling culture. I definitely follow certain tangents and get on “kicks” where I’m obsessed with a theme. After reading a few Jack London stories I was definitely focused on all things wild and desolate. I mentioned Philip K. Dick mostly for the paranoia and craziness of doubting your own perception.
Apart from those two I have tons of favourites that influence visual and storytelling approaches. Stanley Kubrick movies are huge for me – the way he composes shots so dead-on and symmetrical. I think I’ve worked a few patterns from the carpets in The Shining into some of my drawings. Jim Henson’s movies like The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth really struck a chord with me when I was a kid. I think when I’m doing character design I’m always thinking a bit about Brian Froud’s work on those movies.
What records have caught your ear-love recently?
A bunch actually! My boyfriend has a subscription to Rdio and I’m always discovering new music through the service—it’s really great for that. Here are some local Toronto bands:
Bahamas - “Barchords”
Cold Specks - “I Predict a Graceful Expulsion”
Crystal Castles - “Crystal Castles (III)”
Deloro - “Deloro”
Timber Timbre - “Creep on Creepin’ on”
Some other bands I’ve really been digging recently:
Lykke Li - “Wounded Rhymes”
Lord Huron - “Lonesome Dreams”
Shovels & Rope - “O’ Be Joyful”
Maybe that’s too much. [Ed. note - Nope.]
Animals of many kinds are prominent in your work. Have you had many animal companions, or memorable critter encounters? And if so, how have they affected your attitudes toward animals now (re: vegetarianism, etc.)?
When I was a kid I was terrified of dogs. There was a man who used to spend his weekends working on his car in the parking lot next to my building. He owned a doberman, which I was absolutely petrified of.
One day, I was playing outside with my brother when this dog came barking and running at us. My brother froze, while I tore off towards my building screaming up to my parents who were on our balcony at the time. Luckily, I was a fast runner. I made it into my building with the dog seconds behind me barking and snarling (this version of the story could be distorted by memory). My brother thought I was being ridiculous, but I remember this being one of the scariest moments of my childhood.
This has little, or nothing to do with my being a vegetarian, but I thought it was a story worth telling. To be honest, my political inclination to vegetarianism came on slowly through reading a lot about industrial farming … the cruel, unnecessary, and unsustainable practices of producing meat for our crazy demand.
On a side note: I’m no longer afraid of dogs and have been nagging my boyfriend incessantly to get one.
You’ve expressed some love for vegetable sushi. What’s your opinion on natto?
I’ve never had natto before but I’d definitely try it. It looks gooey and gross (like a puke-y rice crispy square regurgitated after eating)—still, I’d try it.
Given unlimited time and resources, what’s your dream project?
Ok—so, with unlimited resources—I would like to do a landscape-scale geoglyph illustration like the Nazca lines in Peru.
Why is there something instead of nothing?
Asymmetry.
Fortunately for us, Jessica’s all over the place. Check her out on Twitter, Google+, Facebook, Behance and, of course, her main site. And be sure to spend some time with ole’ Squidface & The Meddler too.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/165217a32008551d55dfc544d92215f9/tumblr_mi6svaijKm1rnolxfo1_500.jpg)
![Tumblin’: An Interview with Jessica Fortner
There are remarkably few artists with the range of reference and visual depth of Jessica Fortner. Based in Toronto but working with an aesthetic of the furthest out-theres, Fortner’s design and illustration are equally genre-bending and deeply empathic. An alumnus of the Ontario College of Art & Design, she’s studied and worked in printmaking, sculpture, woodworking, bookbinding, and slews of other forms—a constellation of skills and media that clearly shape her work’s sophistication, novelty, and narrative tinge.
Jes is also one of the talented minds behind Squidface and The Meddler, a Canada-centric online arts magazine co-created with her equally talented boyfriend Michael Wandelmaier. I caught up with Jessica in between trips to Tequila Bookworm and The Beguiling, and asked her about…pretty much everything.
I’ve always been interested in artists’ mental states while working. Since your work has such strongly hypnotic, patterned, and surreal components to it, in what kinds of weird places do you sometimes find yourself?
That’s an interesting question. It really depends on the project. I did one piece (Mouthy) that came about from thinking about perception and it’s distortion in cases of mental illness. I was listening to a lot of Radiolab podcasts on the subject, and started to feel really subjective about everything (not being able to trust my perception). At one point my boyfriend suggested that he might be my Tyler Durden—just a figment of my imagination.
[[MORE]]
Cashews or almonds?
Both. Crush them up with some beets, kidney beans and onions, cook them into veggie patties, and you’ve really got something special.
In a past interview, you mention that the generation of new concepts is the hardest part of your work—that (I’m paraphrasing) the hardest part is overcoming the given in order to find the new. On an intra-psychological level, what kinds of processes do you employ to facilitate this movement/evolution? How do you get your brain-meat to “go past” and into novelty?
Haha. I still struggle with this and often find it even harder for client projects. But generally I’ll do an initial set of sketches. I need at least an hour or so of straight sketching in order get anywhere. Then I just relax, sort of like mediating. I let one image float into my mind and then another and so on… visualizing things with loose association to the project that I’m working on at the time. When I have something I like, it’s like being stuck by a thunderbolt – I just know. Sometimes, I’ll ask myself what could I do to make it more interesting. Something unexpected but relevant. Then I do another batch of sketches, most nobody ever sees.
Often, working with art directors, I come up with several concepts for the same brief. Usually there’s one that I like the best, which is the one I’d choose if I was doing a personal project. On occasion, fully formed pictures just pop into my head and I am compelled to draw them.
Given your background with bookbinding and printmaking, and your illustrative work’s heavily narrative nature, do you have any plans to produce a comic/graphic novel? If so, what kind of story would it be?
I’ve had the beginnings of a story I’ve wanted to illustrate in my head for sometime now. It’s a little hard to describe and I haven’t really found the right way to approach it yet. It’s sort of a creation myth incorporating ideas of quantum physics, exploring the idea of mirrored realities or the shadow self. I imagine something pretty abstract and non-linear. Kind of a mix between a comic book and a children’s book with large full page images and very few words.
Just recently, I started the preliminary work for a short comic set in the Arctic wilderness. The story is still evolving in my mind, but essentially follows a woman and her dog through some real and imagined events that occur while traveling through a cold barren landscape. A mix of a Jack London tale with a touch of Philip K. Dick.
In addition to those you just mentioned, what storytellers (either literary or in film) have most affected your art? Especially following the description you gave for your book project, I’m intrigued to know more about what fictional/mythic worlds have most shaped your own.
It’s very hard to pin influences down to only a few as we all consume so much in terms of film, books, art, comics, visual and storytelling culture. I definitely follow certain tangents and get on “kicks” where I’m obsessed with a theme. After reading a few Jack London stories I was definitely focused on all things wild and desolate. I mentioned Philip K. Dick mostly for the paranoia and craziness of doubting your own perception.
Apart from those two I have tons of favourites that influence visual and storytelling approaches. Stanley Kubrick movies are huge for me – the way he composes shots so dead-on and symmetrical. I think I’ve worked a few patterns from the carpets in The Shining into some of my drawings. Jim Henson’s movies like The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth really struck a chord with me when I was a kid. I think when I’m doing character design I’m always thinking a bit about Brian Froud’s work on those movies.
What records have caught your ear-love recently?
A bunch actually! My boyfriend has a subscription to Rdio and I’m always discovering new music through the service—it’s really great for that. Here are some local Toronto bands:
Bahamas - “Barchords”
Cold Specks - “I Predict a Graceful Expulsion”
Crystal Castles - “Crystal Castles (III)”
Deloro - “Deloro”
Timber Timbre - “Creep on Creepin’ on”
Some other bands I’ve really been digging recently:
Lykke Li - “Wounded Rhymes”
Lord Huron - “Lonesome Dreams”
Shovels & Rope - “O’ Be Joyful”
Maybe that’s too much. [Ed. note - Nope.]
Animals of many kinds are prominent in your work. Have you had many animal companions, or memorable critter encounters? And if so, how have they affected your attitudes toward animals now (re: vegetarianism, etc.)?
When I was a kid I was terrified of dogs. There was a man who used to spend his weekends working on his car in the parking lot next to my building. He owned a doberman, which I was absolutely petrified of.
One day, I was playing outside with my brother when this dog came barking and running at us. My brother froze, while I tore off towards my building screaming up to my parents who were on our balcony at the time. Luckily, I was a fast runner. I made it into my building with the dog seconds behind me barking and snarling (this version of the story could be distorted by memory). My brother thought I was being ridiculous, but I remember this being one of the scariest moments of my childhood.
This has little, or nothing to do with my being a vegetarian, but I thought it was a story worth telling. To be honest, my political inclination to vegetarianism came on slowly through reading a lot about industrial farming … the cruel, unnecessary, and unsustainable practices of producing meat for our crazy demand.
On a side note: I’m no longer afraid of dogs and have been nagging my boyfriend incessantly to get one.
You’ve expressed some love for vegetable sushi. What’s your opinion on natto?
I’ve never had natto before but I’d definitely try it. It looks gooey and gross (like a puke-y rice crispy square regurgitated after eating)—still, I’d try it.
Given unlimited time and resources, what’s your dream project?
Ok—so, with unlimited resources—I would like to do a landscape-scale geoglyph illustration like the Nazca lines in Peru.
Why is there something instead of nothing?
Asymmetry.
Fortunately for us, Jessica’s all over the place. Check her out on Twitter, Google+, Facebook, Behance and, of course, her main site. And be sure to spend some time with ole’ Squidface & The Meddler too.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/ecac8e5e3f017c117088caa94da2e7af/tumblr_mi6svaijKm1rnolxfo2_500.jpg)
![Tumblin’: An Interview with Jessica Fortner
There are remarkably few artists with the range of reference and visual depth of Jessica Fortner. Based in Toronto but working with an aesthetic of the furthest out-theres, Fortner’s design and illustration are equally genre-bending and deeply empathic. An alumnus of the Ontario College of Art & Design, she’s studied and worked in printmaking, sculpture, woodworking, bookbinding, and slews of other forms—a constellation of skills and media that clearly shape her work’s sophistication, novelty, and narrative tinge.
Jes is also one of the talented minds behind Squidface and The Meddler, a Canada-centric online arts magazine co-created with her equally talented boyfriend Michael Wandelmaier. I caught up with Jessica in between trips to Tequila Bookworm and The Beguiling, and asked her about…pretty much everything.
I’ve always been interested in artists’ mental states while working. Since your work has such strongly hypnotic, patterned, and surreal components to it, in what kinds of weird places do you sometimes find yourself?
That’s an interesting question. It really depends on the project. I did one piece (Mouthy) that came about from thinking about perception and it’s distortion in cases of mental illness. I was listening to a lot of Radiolab podcasts on the subject, and started to feel really subjective about everything (not being able to trust my perception). At one point my boyfriend suggested that he might be my Tyler Durden—just a figment of my imagination.
[[MORE]]
Cashews or almonds?
Both. Crush them up with some beets, kidney beans and onions, cook them into veggie patties, and you’ve really got something special.
In a past interview, you mention that the generation of new concepts is the hardest part of your work—that (I’m paraphrasing) the hardest part is overcoming the given in order to find the new. On an intra-psychological level, what kinds of processes do you employ to facilitate this movement/evolution? How do you get your brain-meat to “go past” and into novelty?
Haha. I still struggle with this and often find it even harder for client projects. But generally I’ll do an initial set of sketches. I need at least an hour or so of straight sketching in order get anywhere. Then I just relax, sort of like mediating. I let one image float into my mind and then another and so on… visualizing things with loose association to the project that I’m working on at the time. When I have something I like, it’s like being stuck by a thunderbolt – I just know. Sometimes, I’ll ask myself what could I do to make it more interesting. Something unexpected but relevant. Then I do another batch of sketches, most nobody ever sees.
Often, working with art directors, I come up with several concepts for the same brief. Usually there’s one that I like the best, which is the one I’d choose if I was doing a personal project. On occasion, fully formed pictures just pop into my head and I am compelled to draw them.
Given your background with bookbinding and printmaking, and your illustrative work’s heavily narrative nature, do you have any plans to produce a comic/graphic novel? If so, what kind of story would it be?
I’ve had the beginnings of a story I’ve wanted to illustrate in my head for sometime now. It’s a little hard to describe and I haven’t really found the right way to approach it yet. It’s sort of a creation myth incorporating ideas of quantum physics, exploring the idea of mirrored realities or the shadow self. I imagine something pretty abstract and non-linear. Kind of a mix between a comic book and a children’s book with large full page images and very few words.
Just recently, I started the preliminary work for a short comic set in the Arctic wilderness. The story is still evolving in my mind, but essentially follows a woman and her dog through some real and imagined events that occur while traveling through a cold barren landscape. A mix of a Jack London tale with a touch of Philip K. Dick.
In addition to those you just mentioned, what storytellers (either literary or in film) have most affected your art? Especially following the description you gave for your book project, I’m intrigued to know more about what fictional/mythic worlds have most shaped your own.
It’s very hard to pin influences down to only a few as we all consume so much in terms of film, books, art, comics, visual and storytelling culture. I definitely follow certain tangents and get on “kicks” where I’m obsessed with a theme. After reading a few Jack London stories I was definitely focused on all things wild and desolate. I mentioned Philip K. Dick mostly for the paranoia and craziness of doubting your own perception.
Apart from those two I have tons of favourites that influence visual and storytelling approaches. Stanley Kubrick movies are huge for me – the way he composes shots so dead-on and symmetrical. I think I’ve worked a few patterns from the carpets in The Shining into some of my drawings. Jim Henson’s movies like The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth really struck a chord with me when I was a kid. I think when I’m doing character design I’m always thinking a bit about Brian Froud’s work on those movies.
What records have caught your ear-love recently?
A bunch actually! My boyfriend has a subscription to Rdio and I’m always discovering new music through the service—it’s really great for that. Here are some local Toronto bands:
Bahamas - “Barchords”
Cold Specks - “I Predict a Graceful Expulsion”
Crystal Castles - “Crystal Castles (III)”
Deloro - “Deloro”
Timber Timbre - “Creep on Creepin’ on”
Some other bands I’ve really been digging recently:
Lykke Li - “Wounded Rhymes”
Lord Huron - “Lonesome Dreams”
Shovels & Rope - “O’ Be Joyful”
Maybe that’s too much. [Ed. note - Nope.]
Animals of many kinds are prominent in your work. Have you had many animal companions, or memorable critter encounters? And if so, how have they affected your attitudes toward animals now (re: vegetarianism, etc.)?
When I was a kid I was terrified of dogs. There was a man who used to spend his weekends working on his car in the parking lot next to my building. He owned a doberman, which I was absolutely petrified of.
One day, I was playing outside with my brother when this dog came barking and running at us. My brother froze, while I tore off towards my building screaming up to my parents who were on our balcony at the time. Luckily, I was a fast runner. I made it into my building with the dog seconds behind me barking and snarling (this version of the story could be distorted by memory). My brother thought I was being ridiculous, but I remember this being one of the scariest moments of my childhood.
This has little, or nothing to do with my being a vegetarian, but I thought it was a story worth telling. To be honest, my political inclination to vegetarianism came on slowly through reading a lot about industrial farming … the cruel, unnecessary, and unsustainable practices of producing meat for our crazy demand.
On a side note: I’m no longer afraid of dogs and have been nagging my boyfriend incessantly to get one.
You’ve expressed some love for vegetable sushi. What’s your opinion on natto?
I’ve never had natto before but I’d definitely try it. It looks gooey and gross (like a puke-y rice crispy square regurgitated after eating)—still, I’d try it.
Given unlimited time and resources, what’s your dream project?
Ok—so, with unlimited resources—I would like to do a landscape-scale geoglyph illustration like the Nazca lines in Peru.
Why is there something instead of nothing?
Asymmetry.
Fortunately for us, Jessica’s all over the place. Check her out on Twitter, Google+, Facebook, Behance and, of course, her main site. And be sure to spend some time with ole’ Squidface & The Meddler too.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/cb949764c2d3afdb88d5f8487a7d886f/tumblr_mi6svaijKm1rnolxfo3_500.jpg)
Tumblin’: An Interview with Jessica Fortner
There are remarkably few artists with the range of reference and visual depth of Jessica Fortner. Based in Toronto but working with an aesthetic of the furthest out-theres, Fortner’s design and illustration are equally genre-bending and deeply empathic. An alumnus of the Ontario College of Art & Design, she’s studied and worked in printmaking, sculpture, woodworking, bookbinding, and slews of other forms—a constellation of skills and media that clearly shape her work’s sophistication, novelty, and narrative tinge.
Jes is also one of the talented minds behind Squidface and The Meddler, a Canada-centric online arts magazine co-created with her equally talented boyfriend Michael Wandelmaier. I caught up with Jessica in between trips to Tequila Bookworm and The Beguiling, and asked her about…pretty much everything.
I’ve always been interested in artists’ mental states while working. Since your work has such strongly hypnotic, patterned, and surreal components to it, in what kinds of weird places do you sometimes find yourself?
That’s an interesting question. It really depends on the project. I did one piece (Mouthy) that came about from thinking about perception and it’s distortion in cases of mental illness. I was listening to a lot of Radiolab podcasts on the subject, and started to feel really subjective about everything (not being able to trust my perception). At one point my boyfriend suggested that he might be my Tyler Durden—just a figment of my imagination.
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