March 05, 2018

Mister V Talks the Main Street Dirt Sheet, Them There Hills, and Life at the Grand Gazette

March 05, 2018/ Neil Greenaway

Written by Neil Greenaway

I first met Mister V at Denver Comic Con 2016, where he had contributed a story to the Uncanny Adventures: Duo anthology from 8th Wonder Press. In the two years since then it has been my pleasure to grow better acquainted with his works; his two graphic novel series (DNR details his own experiences in the healthcare field & Mile High recounts his adventures in medical marijuana), his choose-your-own-adventure GN Death By Dive Bar, his numerous mini-comics and 'zines, and his little 8-pg. Tijuana Bibles. I even have the children's book he wrote and illustrated, Craterface. However, when I heard that Mister V would be starting his third ongoing comic strip in the Grand Gazette, it occurred to me that I knew next to nothing about his newspaper work. I gave him a call and we talked about what its like to work for a newspaper, what his newest comic strip is about, and what we can expect to see at his upcoming appearance at DINK 2018.

Neil Greenaway: I know that you write comics under the pen name Mister V. For the readers who might not know, what is your real name?

Mister V: Well my real name is Matthew R. Veraldo so I basically just used my initials as my pen name.

NG: Why do you use a pen name?

Mr. V: Originally it was because I was working in healthcare and I wanted to write about my experiences there. At the same time, I was employed when I started writing my DNR series (which was about my experiences at work) and there are things like HIPAA that are designed to protect patient privacy. I was so scared of violating federal law, and I was so scared of losing my job if someone found out that I was writing about my employment. It seemed the easiest way to avoid that was just to change my name and then I stuck with it.

NG: Okay, so you started on the DNR series - and you had the Mile High series as well. How did those translate into work at a Grand County newspaper?

Mr. V: You know mostly in the beginning I was just looking for a way to hone my chops. I look back at some of the early DNR stuff and - of course it's embarrassing. I was just a rookie. I think it was Dave Sim that said that you need to draw 1,000 pages of bad comics before you can start drawing good ones. I think he said that. Anyway, I attribute that to him and I really take that saying to heart. When I sent in my first submission to Top Shelf Comics they said something very similar. "You need to draw a lot more comics". So DNR served its purpose for me as a sounding board for the things that I wanted to talk about at the time - which was the state of American Healthcare - but it also was a great excuse for me to sit down and draw page after page after page of comics. That series is just a little bit shy of 900 pages long.

In Mile High I had a fun topic and I was able to use what I was doing with that to tell an interesting story. But really those two (DNR and Mile High) are separate from what I do up here in the mountains. A lot of people here in Grand County don't even know that I have written a series of graphic novels. They think I just draw the comic for the newspaper, and I'm okay with that.

NG: If it was not a matter of the graphic novels translating into the newspaper work, how did you come by the job at the Grand Gazette?

Mr. V: In a really roundabout and strange way. The reason we moved to Grand County is because my wife got a job and it was a great excuse to get out of the Denver metro area. The healthcare job I had been working while I was writing the graphic novels had been slowly grinding me down to a nub. It was a really tough job and it had me really unhappy with almost all the aspects of my life. When my wife got her job and we moved, I knew that I did not want to go back to that same type of scenario. I had been working at places that had my name on my shirt since I was 18, and it didn't sound like something I wanted to do for the rest of my life. In Grand County there are not a lot of places where you can get a job. There's a fairly small population - we don't even have a Wal-Mart or a Trader Joe's or anything like that. We have a City Market and a Subway, and that's it. So there was nowhere for me to get a job that would follow on my current trajectory and I sort of didn't want to. I started writing the Them There Hills strip, which is a single panel strip. I developed that for a restaurant up here. They had table flyers that they would put on each table - and the idea was that they would include some of my comics as well. But the gentleman I had spoken to about setting this up wanted to pay me $20 a week for unlimited comic strips - which is slave labor. (laughs)

NG: Yeah

Mr. V: There are four newspapers up here in Grand County, which is really strange for a dying industry. Who sees newspapers anywhere anymore, right? But there were four newspapers up here, and it seemed like the perfect soil in which to plant my seed - if you will forgive my metaphor. I had originally wanted to work for a few of the papers at the same time. Life Is Grand was originally intended for one of the county's other papers, the Sky-Hi News. But when they found out I was already working with the Gazette, they didn't want anything to do with me. There's a lot of factionalism and competition among the county newspapers. No one takes too kindly to freelancers. I'd originally hoped for syndication among the papers when I moved up here. When that didn't happen I tried making individual comics for each paper, but even that wasn't feasible. It's all or nothing with small town newspapers, apparently. That's how I wound up with all three of these comics in the same publication. Anyway, there can be a preconception that rural areas are very conservative and redneck, but in working with the papers up here I have found that there is a real thirst for literature. It has been an incredible experience to work on these projects

NG: You currently have three ongoing comic strips in the Grand Gazette, correct? Can you tell us a little bit about those?

Mr. V: Sure. I already mentioned Them There Hills - my single-panel gag strip which - I should be so arrogant as to say that it is reminiscent of Gary Larson's The Far Side. It is basically utilizing Colorado native animals to make bad puns and that sort of thing. Them There Hills is my least favorite comic project I've ever done, but for reasons I don't understand it is also the most popular comic I do among Grand County locals. Both my wife and Kim Cameron (the editor of the Grand Gazette) have forbidden me from ever quitting this comic. Sometime around this summer I'll be drawing my 200th TTH strip.

Life Is Grand (085) by Mister V (click to enlarge)

Life Is Grand (119) by Mister V (click to enlarge)

My other comic strip (which is weekly) is called Life Is Grand - that is a historic nonfiction strip about the history of Grand County. Grand County has a long tradition of preserving its heritage and the trials and tribulations of its previous residents, going back to the very founding of the county. There are collections of pioneer newspapers that go back to the 1860s and '70s. I have always been interested in the historical aspects of this particular area because some of the stories out here not very well known - but they are just giant in terms of scope and mythology. I would say that they are the equal of any American myth that you would find out there - say Johnny Appleseed or John Henry, that kind of stuff. We have Ute Bill Thompson, Texas Charley, the Commissioner Shootings, all these weird crazy things. It has been my absolute pleasure to dig through the history of this county - the old newspapers and Pioneer recollections - and just find good crazy mountain shit, essentially. Those two strips I have been doing for a newspaper called the Grand Gazette on a weekly basis for just about 4 years now.

I have also just launched my third strip in that same paper, which is called the Main Street Dirt Sheet. This strip is very topical to the area that I live in, they are human events stories. I actually go and talk to people and dig up stories to sequentialize for the paper bi-weekly. I'm drawing inspiration for this one from the works of Joe Sacco. For many years I've been in awe of how Sacco's work combined journalism and the sequential arts. It's a fascinating combination. Even though I'm reporting on a much smaller and fluffier scale, it's still so exciting to be dabbling in the same pool.

NG: When you lived in Denver and were writing more controversial content,

Mr. V: Yes, much more controversial.

NG: What was it like to move to more of a small town setting and start telling more rural stories?

Mr. V: Initially, it was very uncomfortable. I lived in perpetual fear of crossing some line - but I have spent so much of my career going way, way over the line that I had a hard time recognizing where the line was anymore. There were a couple of times where I would make a joke that wasn't necessarily naughty compared to my past work, but it might have been bad when you looked at the area I was living in. In this area, if you make a reference to marijuana, drinking beer, or sex - you never know who is going to be up in arms about it and writing angry letters to the editor. I was very gun-shy about it at first. I don't have another job, this is how I bring income into my home. It was stressful knowing that if I mess up I could be costing myself a whole bunch of money. On the other hand, as I have progressed and done this couple of years, I have been floored by the way the community has embraced what I do. Which is not something that I ever expected! I am regularly stopped on the street by people up here, people from all walks of life - farmers & ranchers, government employees, retired people, people who are 10 years younger than me and 40 years older than me. They stop me to tell me how much they appreciate my work and how much they enjoy seeing my comics in the paper. I have had several people tell me that they cut my comics out and hang them on their refrigerator, which is something I never thought I would achieve! that is something I have never heard any of my contemporaries say, but why would they? Who writes comics for newspapers anymore? That was definitely an item on my bucket list that I never thought would be checked off. It has all been incredibly rewarding.

Life is Grand: Texas Charley pg.1, by Mister V (click to enlarge)

NG: That's cool! When you do the comics do you do all of the art yourself?

Mr. V: Yes, I do all of the art and all of the writing.

NG: I only ask because the color choices that you use in your comics - particularly when representing the old west are very bold and bright. I wondered what leads to the colors you choose?

Mr. V: Are you referring to Texas Charley?

NG: Yes I am.

Mr. V: I have really been messing around with the colors that I'm using in Texas Charley. One of the reasons I'm doing that is because I knew it was going to be violent. It is the story of a cowboy who was essentially mob lynched by the prominent citizens of the town. At some point I knew I was going to have to draw Charley getting blown away - and I did not know how to do that for public consumption. So a lot of thought went into that and I finally decided that the best way to do it was to completely abstract the color scheme. It is something I have toyed with before and it has been fun to do, but it came about out of practicality

Life is Grand: Texas Charley pg.15, by Mister V (click to enlarge)

NG: I like it. It gives the strip a very bold look.

Mr. V: Thank you, I am glad! That is something I have to consider as well. This is only being printed in the paper one page at a time, and if I want someone to read it I need it to grab their attention before they ever read a word. So it would be an unforeseen bonus if the coloring helped to grab people's eyeballs.

NG: If I could go back to your graphic novels for just a moment - in the past your books have centered heavily around healthcare, with your DNR series and then the Mile High series. The current state of health care in America is very much in flux right now. Could you see yourself writing another story about what is happening now?

Mr. V: It is a more difficult subject for me to approach now that I am not working in the healthcare field. Particularly with what the Trump administration is doing. God, what a nightmare! Of course I'm not happy with the state of healthcare in this country. In my mind there is no debate that our country needs a single-payer system. I have worked in insurance data entry, and it is a scam! Everything that is done in healthcare in this country is done to make a profit. Even the Affordable Care Act did not do anything to help people who were struggling with their healthcare. It expanded Medicare, which is a great thing - I'm all for that. And it made it so that insurance companies could not deny people coverage, I guess. So it let the people who had not yet been screwed by the American insurance system participate. But it is still useless. it is shameful and I don't understand why there are not more people just rabid for Medicare for all in this country. There is no reason not to have it. We are just waiting for our government to realize that insurance profits are not more important than people's lives.

NG: We might be in for a bit of a wait on that one.

Mr. V: That's true, which sucks because across the world all the other countries are doing it. I remember talking to someone from Australia who was complaining because their government insurance only covered 80% of their total costs and they had to get supplemental insurance for the final 20%. I was just thinking in America we have to wait until we're 65 for that kind of coverage.

NG: And this is why I asked about a future comic. (laughs) You obviously have passionate thoughts on the subject.

Mr. V: I do, but to me it feels like such a pointless debate. I don't understand how people can actually defend the way our insurance system works in this country. I guess that's why I have not pursued that one further. I think it is a stupid argument to have. (laughs)

The Main Street Dirt Sheet (02) by Mister V (click to enlarge)

NG: Last year at DINK 2017, you debuted a new choose-your-own-adventure graphic novel - called Death By Dive Bar - and that was nominated for a dinky at the show.

Mr. V: It was nominated yes.

NG: I picked up a copy and I really enjoyed it - but I am a choose-your-own-adventure junkie from a young age. Do you plan on having any new books to premiere at DINK this year?

Mr. V: I will have the third and final volume of Mile High. I am wrapping that story up. I also have a mini-comic dream journal that will be in full color that I hope to have out for that show.

NG: Is it your dream journal? Are they your dreams?

Mr. V: It is, yes. I want to say that it's pretty honest and slightly embarrassing - as most people's dreams would be - and so I look forward to humiliating myself, yet again. I am also really trying to finish up Texas Charley. I put about a year's worth of research into this book. I have used a lot of sources that have never been used before when exploring this topic, and so I am really looking forward to that one. The story has been a lot of fun to tell and to assemble and I would love to debut that book at DINK. However, February has been kicking my ass so I don't know if I will be able to finish it that soon. I love debuting new books at DINK. DINK is my go-to show for premiering a new book.

NG: How long would be collected edition of Texas Charley be?

Mr. V: Not long, it's a fairly short tale. The comic itself should be 25 or 26 pages when it's done, but I'm also going to include a short essay about who I believe was responsible for Texas Charley's death. And it will also include some artifacts that I was able to scan in from primary sources. I think releasing 3 new books in one show is good enough.

NG: I think that is perfectly reasonable. How about at the Grand Gazette what have you got coming up there storyline-wise?

Mr. V: Well after Texas Charley I am going to go back to a non-storyline format for Life Is Grand for a while. I do have a melodrama I would like to adapt called The Moonshiner's Daughter which was written around 1900. In the long term, next January I'm going to be delving into the Grand Lake Commissioners Shooting of 1884, which is one of the quintessential Grand County stories. As far as the Main Street Dirt Sheet goes this week coming up I have a comic above the Kum & Go in Granby which is (within its chain) the number 2 retailer of pizza in the nation - which is an odd random fact.

NG: Yes it is.

Mr. V: And where else could I cover stories like that? That is a weird story! I love it!

NG: Do you have any other projects that you are working on right now?

Mr. V: On top of everything else I've been doing I do also have a year-long fan journal about the WWE, because I am a huge professional wrestling fan. It is called Marking Out 365 and I am releasing it online - either through my Twitter or my Tumblr. Any professional wrestling fan ought to check that stuff out, BROTHER!

You can keep up with Mister V's work at The Grand Gazette by reading the e-Editions online. You can follow his other work at his website, arborcides.blogspot.com.

Mister V sent me an email shortly after we spoke offering a look at one of his comic strip ideas that was never picked up. He included this note:

"I've included two examples from my failed comic strip THE COLORADO CANNABIS TIMES. Marijuana is still a hot-button topic up here, and I wanted to cover the debate. I created this strip last summer (2017), but unfortunately it proved too hot for everyone, including me. It wasn't picked up."

The Colorado Cannabis Times (01) by Mister V (click to enlarge)

January 25, 2018

Clinton T. Hobart Talks About Disney, Doritos, and Michael Rooker at Ace Comic Con AZ

January 25, 2018/ Ryan Hall

Written by Ryan Hall

“Clinton T. Hobart is a Fine Artist and Licensed Disney Fine Artist. He creates original oil paintings of a wide variety of subjects ranging from classical subject matter such as fruit and eggshells to more modern subjects such as Mickey Mouse and Doritos. Even his Disney paintings are technically still-lifes, because he works from real objects in front of him. If he cannot find the objects he desires to paint he frequently will build elaborate “Sets” to work from. For his painting of the tower from the Disney movie Tangled he constructed a four foot tall replica of it made out of stone, mortar, cardboard, plaster and wood. The sculpture has since become as popular as the actual painting.”

— From www.aceuniverse.com

At the recent Ace Comic Con Arizona, Nerd Team 30 had the chance to sit down and talk with Clinton about his path to becoming an artist, how he got into Disney, and why it is important to go to parties

Ryan Hall: What inspired you to become an artist in the first place? What led to your career in art?

Clinton Hobart: I made no decision whatsoever. I couldn't do anything else, and by the age of 12 or 13 I was drawing all the time, and I said, "You know, I want to stick with this.” It just chose me.

RH: What did you start off drawing as a kid?

CH: Copying comic books actually. The first thing I really started drawing was copying Todd McFarlane and Rob Liefeld.

A recent still-life painted by Clinton T. Hobart.

RH: What were your favorite super heroes at the time?

CH: I did a lot of Spider-Man drawings, I like Batman a lot, and then I moved into more cartoon Disney stuff as I got older. When I went into art school I got into figure drawing, people, and went from there.

RH: What drew you into wanting to become a licensed Disney artist?

CH: Pure luck. I had done a Disney internship when I was in art school, I did a mentorship, and I spent about ten years trying to get into Disney to be an animator, an illustrator, or consumer products. I got none of those jobs, so I went into fine art where I had a thriving gallery career. I was in five galleries, and I was winning awards for still-life and portraits. I had left the animation/illustration industry, and had a great career as a fine artist. Then, about four years ago, I decided to do some Disney themed still life. A friend of mine saw the paintings and said, "You should send those to Disney,” so I did. They liked them, released them as limited-edition prints, and I got into Disney in the weirdest way I ever would have imagined.

RH: Are there any other properties that you are really interested in working with that you haven't yet?

CH: I would love to do some Star Wars. I'm in talks with them right now doing fine art paintings.

RH: What other projects are you currently working on?

CH: I'm working on a lot of personal stuff doing some portraits and still-life. My favorite thing to do is just hire a model, and have them come to the [art] studio.

Clinton Hobart sells his Dorito painting to Michael Rooker at Wizard World Cleavland 2016.

RH: I understand that you hold a degree in illustration. Do you feel like that has opened more doors where you can work or helped to increase business by holding your degree?

CH: I've got a bachelor in fine arts from The School of Visual Arts in New York City. Did it help me network? No. The only thing that helped me network was going to parties. I've done more for my career at the after-party for a convention than I've ever done on the show floor. I met Michael Rooker because we were hanging out at an after party and we were talking. He stopped by my table the next day, and he bought the Dorito painting because we were clowning around the night before. If I didn't go to the hotel bar I wouldn't have met him. Be social. That's my advice to any kid. Get out there, leave the house once in a while, go to the right parties, and make the right friends.

RH: What other advice would you give to an aspiring artist?

CH: I usually do a lot of stage demonstrations where I'll paint on stage, and I always say to the kids, "Kids in the audience, raise your hand if you want to be an artist," and about thirty people raise their hand. I say, "Okay, leave them up for a second, now put them down if you play video games," and there's usually one, maybe two, hands left. Then I say, "Well great, now none of the rest of you are going to get my job!" I've got a personal vendetta against the video game industry because you don't learn anything from playing video games! I always tell the kids, "Read! Draw! Draw, draw, draw! Get out there! Work! Read a book! Don't watch television! Don't play video games, and if you can, occasionally, do a sit-up and eat something healthy."

RH: What is your opinion of ACE so far? Have you done many conventions before?

CH: You know, I had a great opinion of ACE before I even got here because the show is made up of half of my friends. The only thing that I was questionable on was that I've never done a show before at an arena instead of a convention center, but look at the turn out! It's pretty amazing. There are a lot of people here, so you can’t really argue with the plan. The first show I ever did was Wizard World Cleveland in 2015. I was invited to that show by Stephen Shamus, so to be invited to this show three years later is still a compliment, and I'm so happy for them.

RH: I'd heard that you were the target of an art counterfeiting ring some years back?

CH: So that's part of what made me famous, for a lack of a better word. When I was first starting out before I got at Disney, there was a town in China that took images off a gallery that I was showing on my website, and putting them on eBay for $39.95. It got me on CBS news with Scott Pele and The Huffington Post. People ask, "How do you feel about getting ripped off by the Chinese?" Well let's see; it got me on the news, increased my revenue, and got me into Disney, but it's still not a good thing, you know. Nobody wants to get ripped off.

RH: What are some of the stranger requests that you've had for a commission or offer from a company?

CH: You know, some of the guys in Comic Con get a little non-Disney with their requests and you have to turn them down. You're like, "No, I can't have Belle doing that. That's going to get me fired. Like, no." Some of the Harley Quinn requests, you're like, "What's wrong with you? No! I'm not . . . a diaper?! No! I'm not doing that!" You know, if I don’t want to be tagged in it on Facebook, then I turn it down.

RH: What are some of the favorite requests that you've had?

CH: I like doing large paintings. I have a guy who liked one of my mask paintings, and has an imported Venetian mask that has been in his family for 100 years. He wants a still-life of it, so that kind of request is really cool. Anytime I can paint something I think no one's ever painted before I'm happy. I like being the first person to do something.

RH: Where can fans go to find you online?

CH: I've got a website, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. It’s all just my name: Clinton T. Hobart.

Mr. Hobart's appearance schedule for 2018... so far.

January 13, 2018

An Interview With Adrienne Norris of Women Behaving Badly (Mini-Con 2017)

January 13, 2018/ Neil Greenaway

Written by Neil Greenaway

Adrienne Norris is not inspired by well behaved role models, and it shows. Her latest series of portraits feature scientists and doctors, but also protesters, revolutionaries, and warriors. Documenting the women who have changed the world and the way that we live in it, the project - titled Women Behaving Badly - has been gaining recognition through convention appearances and gallery showings (like her recent exhibit at the GLBT Center of Denver). I had the chance to sit down and talk with Ms. Norris at the Denver Public Library Mini Comic-Con in December, and I walked away with a better understanding of her art and how it is influenced by society at large.

Neil Greenaway: So I guess really to start us out, could you introduce yourself and give us just a brief background on what you are doing with the Women Behaving Badly project?

Adrienne Norris: Yeah, so my name is Adrienne Norris and I am the creator of the Women Behaving Badly series. I named it that because there is quote that says "Well behaved women seldom make history," and so I wanted to play with that concept. The series is made up of women in history who I believe should all be common knowledge - but really who are not. So what I do is I do research, then I create these paintings - they are on these boards that I make. They are all irregularly shaped which you should totally check out on my website. They are mixed media. I chose mixed media because I wanted to be able to tell stories with my series without having to - I don’t know... There is just something about a photo that really brings out nostalgia or whatever different emotion is needed for that particular piece. Drawings can do it as well but photos work and also they are quicker. So I use collage, I use acrylics, I use texture, I use toys, bullet shell casings, whatever it is that will tell the story of that woman’s life. Then I use watercolor to create an actual portrait of her face so that you get a really good sense of who she is. Then when I hang the originals on the wall they are actually paired with a card that answers 3 questions- Who is she? What did she do? Why does she matter? I felt that last part was essential because when I was a kid learning history in school I didn’t care. I didn’t know why I should care. I couldn’t see how any of these events were relevant to my life. So that Why does she matter part was incredibly essential to me. If for no other reason - if you read nothing else on that card - you get that and you’re like "Oh, this is what that person did for me, this is what my life is like because this person existed".

NG: You have said that in the scope of this project you have 20 of these ladies that you wanted to get done. How many have you finished so far?

Audre Lorde - mixed media piece by Adrienne Norris.

AN: So far I have done 16 and I am almost at 18 because I started 3 simultaneously recently. And it’s interesting, especially with the backgrounds because they are so abstract even though there are the story telling elements. I wanted each background to suit the personality of the person that I’m painting. So I decided to just do the next 3 at the same time almost so the backgrounds are done back to back, the paintings are laid out then the paintings are done back to back. Also it’s a speed thing.

NG: When you set these out, because they are collaged, mixed media - and I suppose specifically because you are working on 3 at the same time - do you find that you get to a point where you don’t know where you want to go and you move to the next? Or when you start one do you have a pretty full picture of what you want it to be in your head?

AN: It’s always Christmas. I never know exactly what it is going to look like. I do know what key elements I want it to contain. So say it’s a civil rights activist, I would want to have elements of the civil rights movement involved in the piece. Say it is somebody who is a writer and wrote something particularly poignant, then I want to have aspects of what she was writing about but also of things that were going on at the time. So if you look at all of my pieces it feels like there is a bunch of different kinds of information that I am putting out depending on the story.

NG: Having looked at your pieces, they are in odd shapes. A lot of them have different heights & widths incorporated into one piece. Is there a reason behind that?

AN: Yeah, 2 reasons. One, I have been painting on rectangles my whole life and I wanted to see what happened if I didn’t. But really reason number two is most important. When I create a portrait I have a tendency to want to fill the space with the face which works really well if it is just about the portrait. But for this particular series it was equally about the story, and if I fill a rectangle with a face then I lose space for the story. So what I decided to do was to create these irregular shapes where I could fill portions of the shape and feel satisfied that the face was large enough and yet still have plenty of room to play with so I could still have these textural elements, these story telling elements. So it just kind of adds this extra power to it. But also because it’s these unusual shapes its unique particularly when you see them on the wall. The shadows will drop differently than if it’s on a rectangle. You just feel it differently.

NG: When we spoke earlier you had said that you had broken down the portraits of these women into categories and you had done them in batches. Can you tell me more about that?

AN: Absolutely. So when I did the first round, the first 11 paintings, I basically - I call it buckshot. I just picked a bunch of women that I thought were interesting. Then I thought, "Ok I sort of followed a certain trend", and I asked my Facebook audience who were they fascinated by? And that helped me diversify. With the next set of paintings I focused on women who had won the Nobel Prize, partly because I met somebody who worked with these women and I thought, oh this is a great idea. Also partly because I realized that breaking these women down into sections it made it a lot easier for me to be diverse but in not so broad a context. It was easier for me like looking at Nobel Prize winning women; ok that is a select set so to choose individuals from on that select set was much easier than to choose from the broad scope of all the women in the world ever.

Adrienne Norris at the Denver Public Library Mini Comic Con 2017.

NG: Are these mostly women that you had a knowledge of or are these women that you are discovering as you go?

AN: I intentionally chose women who I did not know a great deal about who maybe I knew by name, sometimes I knew by face, sometimes I knew not at all. Particularly with the Nobel Prize winners I was looking at accomplishments and I was thinking, whoa this person won the Nobel Prize, I didn’t even know - or won the Nobel Prize for this, I didn’t even know this was a thing - or didn’t realize how things factored into my life. So especially with the first round I intentionally chose either unknowns or lesser well knowns because what I wanted to do was to point out that women’s history is this dark thing in our country. We don’t pay attention to it. So to bring it out into the light, I could have done Rosa Parks, I could have done Harriet Tubman, but everybody kind of knows who they are. So for me to select individuals who nobody knew at all made people that much more interested in the project.

NG: As you move down the line in this, is there a definitive endpoint or will you eventually get to women like Rosa Parks or Harriet Tubman?

AN: I probably will. Really the endpoint is whenever I can’t do it anymore for whatever reason. I have given myself a minimum of 5 years to work on this project because I feel it takes that, it’s going to take at least that to do it any justice. But to be honest I could probably feasibly do this project for the rest of my life and still not hit everybody.

NG: You are doing these as individual art pieces. Is there a plan to collect them and have an art book maybe?

AN: Absolutely. I definitely do want to collect in a book the 20 - that number you mentioned earlier was kind of my critical mass that I’ve given myself. It’s very arbitrary, there is nothing really behind it. So it could be that when I do put a book out there could be fewer individuals represented in it. But really the thing that I want to do is I have seen a number of compilation books where - here’s a picture, here’s a woman’s story, here’s a picture, here’s a woman’s story. I want to do something that is a bit more narrative than that. One of the things I am discovering as I am doing the series is not only that here are these amazing women, and here are the things they are doing, but also recognizing the context in which they are doing these things - and the places in which they overlap. So you can talk about Josephine Baker but you drill down into her life far enough you will run into Frida Kahlo, you drill down into her life you are going to hit all these different people whose lives are intertwined and that’s where I want to be. I want to find those places where that intertwining happens, where this individual inspired this individual who spent time with this individual and so on and so forth. So this narrative isn’t just piecemeal but actually creating a tapestry, a full story.

NG: That is very cool. Now it is obvious that the societal aspect of this appeals to you. I mean I can’t imagine you would take on a project like this if it didn’t. Was the societal aspect of bringing women’s stories forward something that was important to you before you did this or is this a passion that you have grown through this project?

AN: I would say that it is a little of both. Being a woman I am naturally pro-women, but it’s this whole idea of role models. So growing up I was kind of a tomboy, and I didn’t see many female role models who were into sports. When I finally did it was like the Women’s World Cup. I was a soccer player. I was thought, oh my god - there are my role models. Then I decided that I really loved art and I wanted to pursue being an artist. As far as looking for women role models - who were not only artists but who were famous in their lifetime and made money, those women were fewer are far between. You have Frida Kahlo, Georgia O’Keeffe and really how many other names can you come up with naturally.

NG: That is true enough.

AN: Right, so that kind of thing has been on my mind since I was little kid. Leading up to this series I started hearing (just through podcasts), about different things that we do in our lives - you know, refrigeration and transport ships and how they changed the food industry and stuff like that - and I found out there was a woman who came up with refrigerated ships. I thought that was amazing. Why didn’t I know that. There were so many other instances of that. It is amazing, why didn’t I know that and especially why didn’t I know that it was a woman who was responsible for that. So that is what led me to doing this project and looking into the stories of women and their contributions - to society, to technology, to policy. Seeing where I and everybody around me has been benefiting from the efforts of the individuals who are completely nameless and faceless to us. In starting this project I have definitely learned a lot about different individuals and it has opened my eyes to just the way the world could work, does work, and should work.

NG: Another question on the Women Behaving Badly series, and this might be a difficult question to answer, but what justifies greatness? When I was flipping through your pictures I saw revolutionaries, I saw doctors, I saw artists - and once again we might be talking down the road - but is there a place in the series for women who broke barriers in sports or celebrity?

AN: Oh yeah, absolutely. I actually already have a painting of Billie Jean King and so I fully intend to do a sports set as I drill down into these subsections. Sports are definitely going to be one of them, medicine is going to be one of them, and politics is definitely going to be one of them. When I think about greatness - honestly in beginning this series I had wanted to start with pillars. You know, individuals who are beyond reproach in a way or at least little enough is known about them that we can’t be bothered to reproach. But as I move forward I want to move into figures that are more controversial, figures that have done things that we would not necessarily think of as groundbreaking until you put them in a social context.

Billie Holiday - mixed media piece by Adrienne Norris.

NG: Can you give me an example?

AN: Well a controversial figure that I definitely want to draw down the line that is going to raise a lot of hackles is Margaret Sanger. She is the woman who is basically responsible for the birth control movement in this country and created Planned Parenthood. I can’t remember exactly how it was phrased, it was Birth Control something and actually sanitized down to being called Planned Parenthood. There are those who think she is into the genocide of poor and black people. She did believe in eugenics but, again context. There were different forms of the eugenics movements, it wasn’t purely what the Nazi’s were doing. But the fact remains that without her efforts the idea of women having fewer than six children in a lifetime, even fewer than twelve, was unheard of. Something like twelve live births and sixteen pregnancies was the norm in her time, and that is insane. It’s detrimental to an individual, it’s really hard on family structure, it’s hard on societal structure - particularly if you are poor and you cannot support all of these people. So to me she is a positive figure but there are a lot of people who do not like her.

NG: That leads me to another question. Earlier, you showed me a portrait of three ladies who helped with the women’s suffrage movement. You had mentioned at that point that one of them had taken a racist turn and got a back alley out of the movement. As a person of color, as a creator, as a person who is trying to support these women in history - is it difficult to say that this woman should be acknowledged for her contribution, but she was also an active racist? I assume that when you are dealing in the past that has to come up a lot.

AN: That is absolutely true. But here’s the thing: We are all humans and we are all full of greatness and we are all full of very bad faults, and to choose to acknowledge one aspect of a person over another aspect of a person is to do them an injustice. And it’s to do ourselves an injustice because we are putting blinders on ourselves, right? So for a figure like Elizabeth Katie Stanton who absolutely believed in equality for women and in the beginning absolutely believed in equality for African Americans especially those who were enslaved. Those things are all true. But she was also a white woman in a time when black people were thought of as less than, so any things that she felt in that area were also true. Going back to podcasts I listen to, I listened to a great interview where this trans man was talking to his grandmother and asking her about how she felt about this whole idea of trans people. About gay rights, about civil rights - and this woman is 98 years old and lived in the south. She has always been an advocate of civil rights ever since she knew what it was. When gay rights became a big thing she was an advocate for the gay rights movement, and advocate for the women’s rights movement, all of these things. But in this conversation with her she will openly admit that although she wants to be on the right side of history, she has a difficult time with these concepts. She was like "I absolutely believe that politically people should be able to love anyone they want, I just don’t understand it". And that to me was the epitome of that humanization. That human-ness, and so for me to say I am only going to pick saints is for me to do a disservice to women everywhere. Because we are not saints.

NG: In this modern time, when it seems that everything has gone crazy, do you see it being a climate for more women of that caliber to come forward?

AN: Yes, absolutely. Here is my take on this climate and it has to do with astrology - which I am not super into - but it was fascinating because someone explained it to me this way. Because of the way the stars are aligned and Pluto is in retrograde or some such thing (I couldn’t tell you the specifics, but the concept interested me) this is a time in which light is being cast on places which are accustomed to being shadowed. So if we look at the way things have been coming out, all the shootings of African Americans by white cops, all of the sexual abuse of women, the racism that is like the undercurrent, all of this stuff, these things have always been there. They didn’t stop in the 60’s with the civil rights movement, they didn’t stop with the women’s rights movement. None of this stuff has gone away completely, it has just been hiding in the shadows and now light has been cast on it. And because of that people are getting angry, and when you are angry you do something about it. Up until this point we have been like, "Oh no, that has been taken care of!", and ignoring all the signs. You can’t ignore the signs anymore - which means now everybody has to take action in some way, shape or form and because of that I feel like now we are in a position of growth because action is being taken on multiple levels.

NG: Do you think things are getting better?

AN: I wouldn’t say getting better, I would say things are being done. Things are being done and conversations are being had that we have not been having. Among people who have not been talking to one another. And so because of that we are in this place that - with as much vitriol as there is - people are actively seeking understanding. Rather than just saying "That guy is an asshole, I’m out", people are starting to ask "why do you believe this? I don’t understand what you believe". To take the time to ask that question and listen to the answer is going to get us to a very different place than "That guy is an asshole and I’m out".

NG: For the final question, if people want to see more of you if they want to follow you or know what you are doing, where can we find you online?

AN: So you can go to my website, afrotriangledesigns.com. On Facebook and Instagram I am also @AfroTriangle. I also have a Facebook page specifically for the series Women Behaving Badly so if you go there you can find me as well.

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