MAY ZINE REVEAL: SIGNS & WONDERS Vol. ONE
May’s zine has more written about it than any 2025 zine before!
Please follow the link to a digital version on the patreon!
MAY arrives across the bow and this salvo follows with it. SIGNS AND WONDERS VOLUME One purports to be : " A combination of Drawings from 2019 in a very mascot oriented sketchbook with collages of signage." The sketchbook in question really was at the vanguard of a sea change IF YOU WILL, in that it saw a new "period" emerging in my work, one of drawing more from observation, and allowing with intention the recreations to slip- to alter thru mine own hand.
I began to find working off of an existing structure and then reforming- incredibly satisfying as a process, and discovered I spent less time judging my drawings when I was creating a reinterpretation of some else's.
This also supercharged a slowly growing concept of mine that interacting with other artists by following their paths, their shapes, their choices (to a point of course) would allow for a new kind of connectivity and communication. This allows me to speak with a collective unconscious of draftspersons throughout antiquity (and of course more recent past) while ALSO connecting to the viewer, an uninterrupted and eternal golden braid transcending time.
Oh and the mascots? Let's dive into them as well. So often a mascot is a drawing that while it has been seen and consumed by a great deal of people, those viewers have no notion of who made it. They often regard a mascot as something beloved and childlike, but ultimately less than, in the world of austere art. Not only am i inordinately fond of mascots for their visual appeal- I also take great strength from feeling part of the drawing hive mind, legions of essentially anonymous creators who shape our world and speak to each other across great distance and time.
AND AS WELL THE COLLAGES OF SIGNAGE: Signage is a bauble i am ever more drawn to, magpie style. Fonts and Letter forms, kerning and typographical structures have been a SLOWLY acquired taste thru my life. Up until fairly recently I felt a sort of aggressive dyslexia to GOOD design, both being confounded by it as well as jealous of an ability to manipulate it. More and more jealousy gave way to appreciation and now in 2025 a sort of low level mania. I have been collecting signage (imagery and practically) starting in earnest in 2020, when i realized how many places were about to close, and how many signs would suddenly be gone. I feared that i would take them for granted and miss them when they were gone. I KNEW, from a job as a graphic artist for film and television, how poorly archived signage could be on the internet and even in publications, and how suddenly a letterform I had taken for granted for 20 years would vanish from my observable world.
In this zine a great deal of the signage is taken not from my personal photos but from the internet, and often collaged together in a kind of flow state, just whatever felt like it made sense together. The drawings too were selected and arranged "on the fly" trying to let some background mind do the walking and the talking.
QUELLE AVERSE!
Let it Rain!
