One of my all-time favorite comic book characters has always been Captain America as a member of the Avengers. Just like so many other artists hooked on comic books, I have drawn my heroes numerous times. Here is a sample. This is mostly a pen and ink drawing, colored with colored pencils.
The Dust Man is unique because he creates worlds from chalk dust. He draws pictures on the chalk board in colored chalks, sometimes massive full-board murals. He is a natural at telling stories, whether they are pieces of great literature read aloud (he used to do Rikki Tikki Tavi by Rudyard Kipling, A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, Joey Pigza Loses Control by Jack Gantos, and The Reptile Room by Lemony Snicket), or they were incidental slice-of-life stories about his own experiences, or even re-tellings of historical figures and the events in their lives (one student used to sum up all of these stories by saying “first you tell us what wonderful things he or she did, then you tell us how that person died a horrible or painful death”… and I often found humor in that). The Dust Man was a natural teacher of boys, able to connect their silly and hormonal little lives to a great wide world of significant experiences. He could teach girls too, even though he found them much harder to understand. But now, in 2014, he will lay the chalk down for a final time. The dust will race across the blackboard no more. The stories will go from oral to written form. And something will be, regrettably, forever lost. (And, yes, pathos is humor too, a fond but bittersweet memory… so I did not miss-tag this post!)
Although the child in the painting is definitely not me or one of mine (the dog is Queenie, and she was real), and although I grew up about as far from the sea as you can get, this painting reveals something critical about who I am. My Grandpa Aldrich was a singular man of wisdom and good humor. He could tell a funny story with the best of them. He was a farmer and inculcated in me a farmer’s work ethic, that get-up-before-dawn style of thing. He never got mad, even the time I broke the plumbing in his house by playing Tarzan in the basement, swinging on the bathroom pipes in the ceiling. Everything I know about how to love, and how to act, and who to be I got from him, or at least from him through my mother who was his child. My grandpa lasted into his eighties and was alive until I finally got married at 38. He lives in my heart still, guiding my actions… even the words I am writing now.
Yes, I think I was born entirely in the wrong time. I could’ve been a great pulp fiction cover artist. Of course, I would’ve done great work and starved to death, because that’s what most of them did. It was, however, a time when art was blazing with brightly-colored surrealism. I was inspired by the artwork in this book; Pulp Culture, the Art of Fiction Magazines by Frank Robinson and Lawrence Davidson.
I used to find secret treasures like this in my Uncles’ bedroom when I played there at Grandpa’s house in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s. They were full of cowboys with sixguns, pirates and skeletons, poisonous snakes, nearly nude ladies, and science fiction heroes from the future. So I decided to create one of my own.
What’s it all about? Surrealism’s quest to make life more like art. Pretty heroines can strike back at the heart of evil with goodness, and sweetness, and most importantly, nearly nakedness. We can skew the future by applying the wisdom learned in the past. You know, pure unadulterated fantasy. And hopefully we will be making a skew towards goodness and the light, not darkness and evil.
Filed under Uncategorized
Yes, I have become a wizard. It isn’t just my author-beard and my Gandalf-hair. It is a matter of wisdom. To be a wizard, you must be a wise guy… in more than one sense of the word. I am a wizard because over the past 33 years, I have had about everything that could possibly go wrong in a teaching career go totally wrong. I have also had things go totally right. I have gotten teacher evaluations that are so high that you can’t score any higher. I have also been evaluated so low that I was dropped immediately, It took two years of substitute teaching to get another job. I have been accused of being stupid, of being evil, of being a child molester… none of that proven… except possibly the stupid part. I have been a department head, a gifted and talented program coordinator. I have taught every kind of kid there is. I loved many of them with the love a teacher feels for those he must reach… and then does. Experience makes you a wizard. Now that I am retiring, I am not giving up the magic. I am still going to reach people. I will have to do it mostly through words and ideas.
So, I am thinking a lot now about my magic. I am still working at my craft. I am practicing by trying hard to post a blog post every single day. You have to stretch ideas all out of shape. Mash up old ideas and rehash old drawings and paintings. Make something new out of something old. Shuffle things around, pair them with something different… You have to rearrange the matrix of the mental world you live in. Okay, enough stretching and mashing. I am a wizard of words, and this that I am typing now is my magic.
So have a little bit more of my magic. This little wizard is young Prinz Flute. Drawings are part of my magic too. You wouldn’t believe how much teaching I did with cartoons on the board, on the overhead projector, on handouts. Drawings make the ideas go around.
Filed under Uncategorized
I have always been fascinated by science fiction B-movies. Flash Gordon battling Emperor Ming on a black-and-white paper mache planet Mongo… The Soviet-paranoia of Invaders from Mars… Cowboys and dinosaurs… Frankenstein in space… Godzilla… You have to love what they used to accomplish with imagination, enthusiasm, and creative use of Styrofoam.
After the invasion ended in defeat for the frog people from the planet Telleri, I found I had a leftover box of these Zillokahsitter Skortch Rays. Zillokahsitter makes a very fine ray gun, not that I ever bought any before, but a couple of my little green friends told me so. They are very useful for removing old paint, unwanted neighborhood dogs and cats, grouchy relatives you don’t really want around any more… Did I mention they disintegrate things completely? Atom by atom? The only drawback is… once a thing is skortched, you will not be able to put it back together again. That’s what happened to my wife’s hair dryer… but please don’t tell her that. I’m not sure how to price these. I was thinking about selling them for the five dollar shipping and handling only. I have to get rid of them before my kids play with one again. The principal at the middle school may never be the same again.
Sometimes you just have to put together something crazy. This is a combination of colored pencil, ceramic egg-man painted with acrylic, and a photoshopped photo. Definitely a looney Paffooney.
In my hometown novels, Catch a Falling Star and Snow Babies so far, the Norwall Pirates are a critical feature of the humor, pathos, and fantasy elements. I know it’s pure conceitedness to think that I really understand kids, but I do. It comes from the fact that I was one once. In fact, I was one of the worst of the breed. Milt Morgan, the grand wizard, the Merlin of the original Pirates is a little bit me, only a bit more magical. He and Brent Clarke found the Pirate organization in the 1970’s. He is a practicer of prestidigitation , a liar, and a story-teller. He makes the Pirates, a group of small town boys, in his own image, a sort of mystical liars’ club. The fantasy elements; journeys to the Dreamlands, Pellucidar, alien invasions by Tellerons, encounters with ghosts and the undead spirits called the Lonelies, all stem from the imagination and wonder that he establishes. Brent Clarke is his Arthur, King and mighty man at arms. Being the best athlete of the group, Brent provides the muscle for the Little Wizard’s wild schemes. Brent is a natural born leader, having defeated a demonic tom cat, pure black, by the name of Fondamn. After his catricidal feat, Brent is forever after known as Brent “the Cat” Clarke.
The original group, after battling werewolves and undead Chinese wizards, drift apart to various other careers and lives. The story-teller’s little sister, though, is not ready to let a good thing die out. In the 1980’s Mary Phillips becomes the new Pirate Leader, recruiting boys into the club like her best friend the Polack, Pidney Breslow. Pidney is the boy next door, a football hero, and really rather dense. But he has a good heart with which he truly loves Mary. Mary recruits another girl too, so that the Pirates’ club isn’t all about farting and lying and spying on girls in the school locker rooms. That girl is the lovely Valerie Clarke, Brent’s young cousin. She is the most beautiful little girl that Norwall ever produced, and the fair Princess Valerie goes on to succeed Mary as the Pirates’ fearless leader.
In the early 1990’s, the club falls into the hands of another Clarke cousin, Timothy Kellogg. Tim is all boy, except for that one time when he is turned into a girl by alien technology. Tim is responsible for leading the Pirates through an alien invasion, a siege of time traveling robot boys, and an invasion of ghosts and unquiet spirits.
So, there you have it. The Norwall Pirates. Liars, braggarts, bullies, boys, a couple of girls, and a 4-H softball team that never seems to win. They are not entirely my invention. They are completely grounded in the kids I grew up with, the kids I have taught, and versions of my own three irrepressible children. As I said, I know about kids. And I intend to use what I know to commit intolerable acts of pure fantasy fiction.
Filed under Uncategorized
Catch a Falling Star 