LoBURN Volume 2

V0L 2: Fall 2013

N IO T I D E L

A I C

E P S

PRESENTS:

A Conversation With

loburn inc.

loBURN MAGAZINE CONTRIBUTORS

WETHEPEOPLE: Owner/creative consultant

Abe Weinstein Owner/executive editor

Hope Bellgren Managing editor/writer

Lana Gentry Designer/creative consultant

TaTOMIR Pitariu Assistant editor/magazine assistant

ALEX Croell Production assistant for Robert Crumb issue

Donnie Green Assistant editor

Julie Winters Assistant editor

Allisun Talley Advertising assistant

Lisa Lake Contributing writers and artists

ChristoPH Mueller, JC Bravo, Sean Madden, Jeremy Eaton

A narrow view of art is like a narrow view of anything. loBURN uncensored, aims to open the lens that you may finally see.

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MICHAEL GANCARZ . .

SEAN MADDEN . . . . . JC BRAVO . . ROBERT CRUMB . .

JEREMY EATON RICARDO ACEVEDO CHRISTOPH MUELLER

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Michael Gancarz

Michael Gancarz

“Upon first encountering Crumb’s work as a so-called ‘weirdo’ at thirteen, I realized that weirdness is the greatest of strengths, not a weakness. Crumb continues to inspire us weirdos to the dizzying heights of quirkiness.” ~ Michael Gancarz

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Sean Madden

SEAN MADDEN “In 1976, when I was in 8th grade, Robert Crumb’s work in ZAP Comics changed the way I viewed art. My head exploded when I saw it. It was one of a handful of experiences that made me want to be an underground artist for the rest of my life, regardless of lack of recognition, pay, or societal appreciation. His line work and the development of values are so well done, but it’s amidst this insanely anti-societal dark humor and sarcasm. I particularly enjoyed, “Whiteman,” as he symbolized my high school principal, my neighborhood probation officer, my girlfriend’s father, Nixon, and every other uptight, rigid conformist male that ran the world I lived in. Crumb’s fearlessly sarcastic (yet accurate) portrayal of conformist society still cracks me up to this day, and his rendering skills just get better and better. In all honesty, he made me fall in love with pen and ink as a medium very early in my development as an artist.”

Sean Madden’s surreal artwork has been exhibited and published throughout the US and beyond. He’s been a part of the alternative art scene on the east and west coast for many years. A new compilation of his works entitled “The Boy from Saturn: The Surreal Paintings of Sean Madden,” is available through Verboten Books.

Sean Madden- Artist www.clownvomit.org ink and paint Published in US, UK, Australia, Canada

JC Bravo In 2001 I was fortunate to take a trip to Paris, France. My purpose there was to see as much art as possible and to get inspired.

I went to all the popular museums and saw the great masters but the highlight of my trip was the discovery of Robert Crumb’s work. On my way to see the Dali Museum in Montmartre, by pure luck I encountered The Erotic Art Museum. I thought it would be fun and I decided to take a chance, not really knowing what I was going to see. Amidst the ancient boring artifacts and cheesy pin ups there was this greatness. On the third floor of the museum there was an R. Crumb exhibit. I was blown away and I felt enlightened by the show. Here was a man who was so honest and brutal in his vision that it made me a true believer and an admirer of his work.

When I got back home I was consequently so inspired to create that I took the influence R. Crumb had on me, as well as that of the old masters I’d seen, and I started to paint.

Crumb inspired me to be expressive, to be courageous and to create work that was and is personal. He showed me that creating art about personal obsessions, fears, desires and anxiety was valid. It can also be as interesting and sometimes even more beautiful than some less honest forms of art. ~ JC Bravo

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Robert Crumb

A Conversation With

by Lana Gentry

In all the years I have interviewed artists, there has been a nagging feeling I could not hold the title of “interviewer” if I were unable to obtain the incomparable American illustrator and comic artist, Robert Crumb.

Known in the 60’s and 70’s for Zap Comix, Keep on Truckin’, Mr. Natural, Fritz the Cat, and more, Crumb’s beautifully cross-hatched presentations of life stood far above the rest.

Despite various interpretations and controversies involving his portrayal of women and raw sexuality, Mr. Crumb evolved into a cult hero of Underground Art. While this “underground” thrust him into both commercial endeavors and success, he never strayed from his personal truth. Crumb laid bare his deepest neuroses and sexual compulsions, making his imaginative anti-heroes identifiable and humorous for many men.

He was introduced again in the riveting 1994 documentary, Crumb, (directed by Terry Zwigoff, produced by David Lynch) in which Mr. Crumb’s intimate and brilliant process was revealed in his familiar surroundings. He still resides humbly in France and collaborates with his lovely wife of many years, Aileen.

We caught up with Robert Crumb for a personal, comprehensive conversation and I am beyond honored to share his words here.

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Robert Crumb

LG: What kind of satisfaction, if any, did it bring to you to present the works of your brothers, Charles and Maxon, in the film Crumb with David Lynch and Terry Zwigoff?

RC: Well, you know that whole film thing was not really my idea at all. My friend Terry Zwigoff motivated the whole thing, and he knew my family quite well and had been a friend of mine for a long time, 20 years before he did that film, so it was important to him to show my two brothers. For my younger brother, Max, it was really good because after that film, he began being able to sell his paintings and actually went off welfare, and he’s living off his artwork. He has a waiting list of clients who will buy his paintings. So that film was really good for him. My other brother, of course, Charles, died shortly after that film came out, so….

LG: Belated condolences on the passing of Charles Crumb to you and your brother, Maxon. Tell me how the inspiration came about to present a biblical interpretation through your Genesis book. What inspired you to tackle this subject...of all things?

RC: Well, let’s see…I had this idea about ten years before I did it to do this send-up of Adam and Eve. The whole story kind of fascinated me. I did some sketches and stuff, and it never felt quite right, this satire kind of thing that just didn’t work. In the meantime, I was reading a lot about Mesopotamia and the Sumerians and their myths. A lot of myths of Sumer, which [dates to] 2500 BC, had things in common with stories in Genesis. That really fascinated me. I was talking to this guy I worked with, named Dennis Kitchen, about doing this Adam and Eve thing, and he said, “Why don’t you do the whole book of Genesis? I said, “Well, that’s a lot of work.” He asked, “Well, if I can get some publisher to give you a big advance for it when it’s done, would you be interested?” I said, “Well, okay... see what you can get.” So he shopped the idea around, and Norton offered me an advance of $200,000. When I turned in the finished manuscript, that seemed like a lot of money at the time, except it was four years of arduous labor, so it didn’t seem like that much [after all], but that’s what kind of motivated me to do it. You might interpret it as I did it for the money. [laughs]

LG: Well, it was a religious thing, so of course you did it for the money. [laughs] RC: Well, Genesis was a very interesting story. Anyway, it ended up being a lot of labor, more than I had thought it would be. I was thinking it was gonna take me a year and a half, but it was four years of working really steadily on it. I got very obsessive about trying to interpret it correctly and trying to get all this historic authenticity. I made lots and lots of corrections—used a lot of White-Out—but it was a big success financially. It made the publisher very happy.

Norton saw that it was selling well, and then they thought I was really a genius. [laughs] They said, “Crumb, you’re a genius! You’re a genius! How did you know?!” I said, “Well, you can’t go wrong with the Bible, ya know. It sells millions of copies every year.” [laughs] LG: You have said that your work is almost universally reviled by women. Is it possible that you are responding to a demographic of mentally and physically frigid women with no sense of humor? Surely you jest when you speak of this universal contempt from women.

RC: I would say there are exceptions, of course, but “A lot of people walking around have secret believe me, they are few and far between. Every lives that no one knows about. I really believe publisher that I have ever worked for, that was honest I have fewer secrets than most people. I’ve and really in touch with their audience…they ALL tell made public all my most inner thoughts.” me it’s all men. Someone was gonna publish these R. Crumb silkscreen prints of mine, and he knows who the customers are. He decided to do this silkscreen print of this cover I had done in the ‘70s about the rise of feminism, and I did this comic cover showing this hippie guy apologizing to his girlfriend for being such a male chauvinist, and he was trying to prove he would be better in the future, and she’s saying, “Yeah, well, the proof’s in the pudding, buster!” I said, “If you’re trying to do something commercial, why do you wanna print THAT cover?” He said, “Well, I think it might somehow appeal to women [laughs] because women just don’t like your work.” He has these prints, these big, beautiful color prints of older works of mine, old comic covers. He said guys would often say, “I’d like to buy it, but my wife or my girlfriend won’t let me hang it on the wall.” [laughs] He said, “You know, women just don’t like your work. They don’t like the style, they don’t like the content.” And I also found that to be true over the years. Generally I would say it’s 99%. There are some really, crazy-out-there, quite eccentric women that like my work. Once in a while I will do a nicey-nice drawing that appeals to women…once in a while.

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Robert Crumb

LG: Haha! Nicey-nice one? Tell me about that.

RC: Well, I did this book called The Sweeter Side of Crumb. There were drawings of mine people thought might be considered sweet or might appeal to women. I did this 60 page book of drawings like that - no comics, just drawings. It didn’t have any threatening content or depressing, nihilistic, negative message or anything. It was kind of a nice book, and a nice cover for it. Norton published it. It totally bombed [laughs].

It just sank without a trace. [laughs]] LG: So that was the end of trying to be nice to women? [laughs] RC: Yeah. If you want to see that side of me, you can find that book, The Sweeter Side of R. Crumb.

LG: Mr. Crumb, do you think women are more accepting of your work than they were, say, 20 or 30 years ago? Should I skip that question? [laughs] RC: Yeah, I think it actually is more accepted today. I think the younger generation of women aren’t quite as outraged. There’s so much crazy shit in the media now that my stuff’s not THAT disturbing by comparison. This generation of all these punk, crusty, hipster girls [is] like, R. Crumb? Big deal. I mean, it’s not their favorite thing. It’s definitely not something they are drawn to particularly, but in the new world of graphic novels, there are some things, other ones, out there that appeal to women way more than my stuff. Generally when I was young, it was almost completely the case that comics were almost entirely a male thing. It was a kind of media that mostly boys were into. Very, very few girls liked reading comics or were interested in comics at all. That’s changed somewhat. A lot more women are interested in comics, and there are also a lot more interesting female comic artists now, younger ones. So yes, that’s changed.

LG: What do you think is the biggest misunderstanding that women in particular have had about your work?

RC: I’d say the biggest misunderstanding—and also a lot of men have the same misunderstanding—is that I personally am like those characters in my work. I had this one woman interview me 20 years ago, and after talking to me for a couple of hours, she said, “I am kind of surprised by you. You are actually not that bad.” [laughs] I said, “Well, I’m a guy. What do you mean?” She said, “I expected after reading your comics that I would meet this horrible, hateful guy.” So that was a big misunderstanding. Otherwise, I know that that work of mine was definitely filled with misogyny and violence towards women. It had a lot of anger towards women, and I think women saw that and, you know, were repelled by it. That’s understandable.

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chapter title

LG: I always saw your vision overall as more humorously castrating to men, rather than degrading of women. Your male characters can have a real sense of vulnerability about them; especially when they are presented as slaves of their own deviant or natural compulsions. How do you see your portrayal of men versus your portrayal of women with regard to who generally holds the power?

RC: That’s really interesting. I thought that was an interesting point there you made in your initial letter to me and all I can do is agree with it basically. [laughs] It’s not a great heroic view of men in my work.

Male characters are not powerful fighting heroes. They’re sick twisted little monkey-eyed perverts that are losers—pathetic—and you have these women who are physically powerful and also they have other kinds of powers, so there’s some kind of dynamic where it ends up that the male has to conquer and degrade the women in my comics. Maybe I could sit on that couch for 20 years and some Freudian psychoanalyst could figure it out—I don’t know.

LG: Do you think it is an urban myth that most visual artists are more eccentric or mentally ill than others?

RC: Yeah. I wouldn’t say they are any more eccentric than other people. Maybe some artists are more open about who they really are. Certainly any kind of generalization in the world about the human race is totally crazy. It’s totally insane. I just think most people can’t articulate in that way. With artists, I think only 1 in every 50 artists I know actually pulls it off, and reflecting that, most people who want to be artists don’t succeed at it that well. Aline’s [Crumb’s wife] actually said one out of a thousand. That might be more accurate. Especially nowadays, you have galleries full of this art that’s just incomprehensible. I don’t know what the fuck they’re doing.

LG: Because of the strapping and sometimes monstrous nature of some of your illustrations of females, there is a group of women out there who find them empowering. Do you hear much from these women?

RC: Oh, rarely, maybe once every 20 years. [laughs] [To his wife] Who was that woman, Aline, about 20 years ago, defending my work in Seattle? She wrote something about it. It was Seattle, I think. Anyway, not too often. But I sometimes wonder if there is one of those girls out there, and if I don’t hear from them, I wonder what’s going on. The silence is deafening out there. [laughs] LG: [laughs] That’s amazing and really surprising to me.

RC: I don’t know what they are thinking. Women…I don’t know. The way they think, the way they react to things, is incomprehensible to me. I can’t figure it out.

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Robert Crumb

LG: The character you created called Mr. Natural could obviously be seen as a character who possesses some of your own qualities, at least with regard to his abandonment of a conventional lifestyle; not attached to the material world, he’s philosophical and also open about his own weaknesses and his most obsessive physical desires. Did you see Mr. Natural consciously as some tentacle of yourself, or was your desire to create him spawned from some other place?

RC: It all came out of taking LSD, these characters. These were spontaneous manifestations of LSD. Actually, as time went on, I realized that the flaky character Mr. Natural is actually more like me. Mr. Natural’s something else again. I don’t know what. I wouldn’t know how to define it because all those characters I used to draw came out of taking LSD.

LG: But of course, LSD can make some people more perceptive, they say.

RC: Yeah, in a way…in funny ways. Again, it’s hard to even define with words, that stuff. It’s an alchemical process.

LG: You and your brothers, Maxon and Charles, seemed to be rife with compulsion, as was seen in the in riveting documentary Crumb. Do you ever consider whether this was perhaps more genetic, or do you think this reality came to be as a result of your environment, or both, or does it even matter to you, Mr. Crumb?

RC: I’m sure it’s both, genetic and environmental. I see these tendencies in the Crumb family—in my father’s family, my uncle, [other] people in the family. They are all farmers and workers, but they had these obsessive-compulsive streaks. I don’t know. Some of them were just fanatics. It’s hard to say where stuff like that really comes from. My brothers, all three of us, had that craziness.

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Robert Crumb

LG: We live in an environment now that caters more to female objectification, religious slander, and dark thoughts. I would imagine it would be difficult to even explain to the young how absolutely brave, raw, and unchained your works were at that time in the ‘60s and ‘70s when they emerged.

With more young people and others connecting to a sense of darkness, sacrilege, and sexuality, I would think you are finding even more of an audience now. Would you say this is true?

RC: I don’t know. I don’t even know who the audience is out there. I don’t get out there that much. They’re still selling and that’s amazing... that all those comics still sell. They are reprinted, so there is a younger audience for that stuff. I do think the climate of opinion, the way people see things has changed. In some ways, the 70’s were even more loose and outrageous than it is now. Maybe the world then was more defined. The straight world back then was extremely straight. Those people were very straight-arrow and then you had this hippie subculture. Within that subculture, things were pretty wild and crazy...pretty loose.

My comics in those days were only or mostly read and appreciated by people within that subculture. It’s different now.

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Robert Crumb

LG: Are your thoughts really perverse in your own view or do you believe they are merely fantasies and desires that are worn on your sleeve?

LG: Which is the best way to respond to accusations aimed at you by women about your objectification of their images? (A) Do not respond at all, (B) rabidly defend your work for whatever it is with no apology whatsoever, or (C) somewhat apologetically explain and impart your philosophy on your artistic expression in a way that you hope will make them understand your process better?

RC: It’s another good question. Most people keep those things pretty hidden. A lot of people walking around have secret lives that no one knows about. I really believe I have fewer secrets than most people. I’ve made public all my most inner thoughts. If I could have seen in the future when I was 18, how public my obsessions would become, I surely would have just died of a heart attack. I would see the future and see how open I would become about these things I was so ashamed and embarrassed about when I was 17 or 18. In those RC: Well [laughs], (C) is always the pathetic attempt days I did my sexual fantasy drawings, jerked off, I make. Shrugging my shoulders and palms up into tore them up, and flushed them down the toilet. the air, “Well, I…I…I can’t help it. I have to draw it.

I’ve just put it out there. It’s unbelievable. I don’t If I didn’t draw it, I would be in a mental institution know what percentage of the population has crazy, or something. I HAD to do it. What it means and socially shocking fantasies, sexual fantasies, and what it’s about… obsessions. No one knows. well, I don’t blame We don’t know. They use “I wouldn’t know how to define it because all those them for reacting to try to do surveys on that, characters I used to draw came out of taking LSD.” to it with revulsion.

R. Crumb you know—Masters and I can’t blame them Johnson, stuff like that. for that. It’s not The Kinsey report. [laughs] I think they’ve given up for everybody, I know. Why do I do it? Who do on that, trying to survey stuff like that. It’s hopeless.

I expect to read that and enjoy it? I don’t know.

I use to know this woman who worked in the sex I have no idea. Here’s a funny and ironic twist: magazine business, and she use to say she went in recent years, my original work goes for good through a period in the ‘70s and ‘80s where she prices, lots of money. I don’t even have a lot of was really loose and had lots of sex with men. Lots, them anymore. I had this art dealer who told me like a couple of thousand men or something. And that the tough drawings, and by that he meant the she told me that if you had sex with them more twisted sex stuff, the stuff that’s the most bizarre, than a few times, essentially the quirks came out. goes for the most money. So go figure. What does She said that every man had some kind of sexual that mean? I don’t know. quirk and that if she got intimate with them more than two or three times, the quirks would start to come out. Who knows?

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chapterCrumb Robert title

LG: Makes sense. Some of it is its own kind of pornography, so there’s a market for that.

Beautifully illustrated pornography, of course. [laughs] Whatever “pornography” even means.

C: I don’t know. I don’t know what that’s about. I have no idea. I think if it’s more outrageous, it R gets more fascinating somehow.

LG: Within the realms of your work which have taken on issues of deviant sexual thoughts as well as deviant religious ideas, there is additionally this undercurrent of bleakness that exists in your work. In your own mind, what role did your comical presentation of bleakness play in the measure of your success?

RC: [laughs] I would say it played part in the measure of the “impairment” of my success, more than contributing to it. That part of my work, the negative depressing part of it, eliminates three-quarters of the population right there. The fact is—and here’s another piece of ironic information—that actually none of my books besides Genesis have ever sold in large numbers. None of them. None. Twenty thousand, tops.

That’s tops! Except for Genesis. Genesis was something else. Because of the negative, whatever you want to call it, in my work, it doesn’t interest most people at all. The population is completely shut off by that, and I hear that a lot from positive, well-adjusted types. They say “Crumb, you’re so negative, so depressing.

What’s the matter with you? Jesus, cheer up.” [laughs] LG: I’m really surprised the audience is not bigger for THAT stuff. That’s kind of what I wanted to know: how much that played into your success.

RC: Well, they don’t want to see that. People just don’t want to see that. People go to movies and there’s some dystopian nightmare vision, but there’s action, there’s something that drives the story to the end, some kind of horrible vision for the future or whatever. Sometimes it’s a hero or something, but my work is more of a kind of mundane reality. There are no heroes. [laughs] LG: So it’s redemption free?

RC: Yeah, people don’t want to see that. They want something that’s an escape. They want to escape.

LG: Still, I’m surprised. I would think there would be more of an audience for that because of some primal identification.

RC: Well, I didn’t tell you. The audience is small. I have this notoriety and this name. So sometimes people contact me and they want to get involved in some kind of publishing and they want to make some money off of it, and so I tell them the audience isn’t that big and they kind of lose interest and go away. They assume the audience is much bigger because of my name. My name is well known, [with] the Crumb film and all that. I’m sure more people know me from that film than have actually spent much time looking at my work. Funny about that.

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Robert Crumb chapter title

LG: You would think it would lead them to the work.

LG: May I ask about your music? Are you doing any of that these days?

RC: It might. They might glance at it and go, “Ahh…okay, yeah. [laughs]

RC: Nowadays, I play my banjo when I’m taking a break from work. I used to play music with bands, but it got to be too time-consuming. I didn’t really enjoy public performance that much. Once in a while, I still play with this band in New York.

A couple of these guys are, like, 20 or 30 years younger than me. Eden and John’s East River String Band. I recorded with them a little recently, and I did the cover for the CD, of course.

LG: Could you share a bit more about your compilation Drawn Together, the book you did with your wife, Aline?

RC: Yeah, that covers a period of about 40 years of work. It started in ‘72, and we’re still doing it.

It’s much easier than having to come up with your own work. Aline is this fountain of Jewish standLG: Would you like to share any upcoming up comedy. It’s coming out of her all the time. projects with the fans here that would give them She’s entertaining to live with. She likes making something to look forward to? me laugh. With comics, I just feed her lines and RC: There are a couple “I have to draw it. If I didn’t draw it, I would she just goes with it of projects of reprints. As be in a mental institution or something. I had and takes off. The only for new work, I am doing, to do it. What it means and what it’s about… problem with her is that these collaborations with well, I don’t blame them for reacting to it we write this big long Aline, of course, various with revulsion. I can’t blame them for that.” script and then we have to strips that have appeared R. Crumb” edit it down ‘cause there’s in various places. As for just too much. new projects, I don’t like to talk about it, cause then if I don’t do it, I feel embarrassed that I even talked about it.

LG: So there’s never any conflict about what will I have some ideas, but I’m getting older now. I’m or won’t go in? not as motivated to prove myself as I used to be.

RC: Well, yes…we discuss. We discuss what My sexual motivation is also winding down as I get does or doesn’t go in, and sometimes we discuss older. I’m not so fucking obsessed with all that! storylines and stuff. You know, beginning, middle, [laughs] and end—that kind of thing. She’s not as strong about that as I am, structuring this thing in some way that makes it cohesive in some way, ya know, with a storyline and making some kind of resolve.

She doesn’t think that much about that kind of stuff. She’s very spontaneous when it comes to doing comics.

vvv

C hristopher Ulrich

“Last Judgement” Resin on oil on wood 37.5” x 73.5”

www.christopherulrich.com facebook.com/christopher.ulrich.artist.page ulrichart@gmail.com

Jeremy Eaton

JEREMY EATON

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Jeremy Eaton

One of the many artists who found inspiration and joy in the works of Robert Crumb is Jeremy Eaton.

Jeremy Eaton is a longtime alternative cartoonist and illustrator/painter whose work has been published in more than a dozen comics and paperback collections by the likes of Fantagraphics, Chronicle, Kitchen Sink, and Black Eye Press, major titles being A Sleepyhead Tale, The Island of Dr. Moral, A World of Trouble and Hump Crazy! His graphic fiction has also been featured in numerous anthologies, including the upcoming Graphic Canon Vol. 3, to be published in 2013 by Seven Stories Press. His art can be seen in such publications as The Village Voice, The Philadelphia Daily News, The Stranger, The Portland Mercury and many others. His diverse client list includes Walt Disney Productions, Macy’s, McGraw-Hill, Nickelodeon and Sub Pop Records.

His ongoing series of cartoon character “mash-up” paintings, Cartoon Jumbles, can be found at www.facebook.com/CartoonJumbles “A creative maverick in the frightening array of human perception” – Chelsea Cain, Heartsick, Evil at Heart “My new personal visionary is Jeremy Eaton, the width of his mind may be partly gauged by the stunning originality of his work” – Jim Woodring, Frank, Congress of Animals.

“Charged with more surreal images than Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” – Seattle Weekly

Ricardo Acevedo

left: “Shae” © Ricardo Acevedo right: “The Librarian” © Ricardo Acevedo

www.ralife.deviantart.com

www.inthera.tumblr.com

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Christoph Mueller

Christoph Mueller

I discovered Crumb’s sketchbooks when I was I traveled to Hamburg where he performed music.

13 years old—an alienated youth who’s parents quarrels had caused me to form a selection of obsessive-compulsive disorders. The average adolescent usually abandons his interest for drawing around that age, in favor of pursuing more social activities. I however was lucky to be spared from such diversions. Not only was I completely intoxicated by the way Crumb’s exquisite crosshatching masterfully created texture and depth, but also by the brilliant way he used drawing as a tool to comment on the world around him, to understand it, to become conscious of it—of his frustrations, sorrows and desires. All in order to eventually reach a better understanding of himself as well as the nature of life itself.

At the age of 23 I was again in danger of being forced off the draftsman’s path. This time being an unhappy student of graphic design I saw my artistic ambitions jeopardized by the demands of the so called real world. Again Crumb saved me from

peril. This time I met him in person for the first time.

I traveled to Hamburg where he performed music with his family for the opening of a book shop. After the show he was charged by a crowd of autographhungry fans. I waited patiently in hopes to be able to show him my sketchbook before he would leave.

To my surprise he observed every page with what seemed to be sincere interest. Afterwards he handed it back to me exclaiming the endlessly encouraging words: “Keep on drawing!”

Crumb keeps on inspiring me to always try my best, to always work on my skills and improve as an artist.

Through his work I found a way to sort the chaos around myself by drawing; Drawing became a lifesaving device that helped me make it through a lot of darkness. Likewise it’s become a way to delight in and celebrate life’s many joys and pleasures; A way to sail the unsteady seas of life. His encouragement has helped keep me on the draftsman’s path in spite of a world that seems to be obsessed with trying to convince you to quit. And for all these reasons I am owing an eternal debt of gratitude to Robert Crumb.

www.muellersjournal.com thedraughtsman.tumblr.com

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Christoph Mueller

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Christoph Mueller

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Christoph Mueller

catapult-mag.com

Erick De La Vega Fine Artist and Photographer

left: Photo by Erick De La Vega, Models Alley Shiver & Deanna Deadly top: Photo by Erick De La Vega, Model Alley Shiver Photo by Erick De La Vega, Model Alley Shiver

facebook.com/artoferickdelavega • erickdelavegaimages.tumblr.com • modelmayhem.com/510291 erickdelavega.com

loBURNmagazine.com facebook.com/loburnMagazine volume 2 | Fall 2013 • loBURN Inc.