Archive for the ‘From Tom’ Category
Rosalie Lightning
Dear friends, as many people know, my wife Leela and I lost our most precious life force, our most generative, beautiful, gorgeous daughter, Rosalie, this past month.
Her passing was shocking, ripped a hole in our hearts, “My heart is a blast site” Leela said. A friend offered, “Rosalie opened a capacious space in your hearts” – capacious, capacity. I get it.
We had just moved from New York City to Gainesville, Florida, in search of a simpler, less stressful life. Rosalie loved, absolutely loved it here. I will tell more of this story some other day.
Leela and I will be spending time traveling, first to the Golden Willow Retreat in New Mexico, for people grieving and suffering from loss. Leela first heard about this on the radio show Snap Judgment, when the founder of the retreat told his story of losing his wife, then his mother and children all successively. That show was broadcast on my birthday earlier this year.
After a return to Gainesville, which we too, love and are committed to staying and working in, we’re going to spend a week in Hawaii, where we’ve been offered a small free artist’s cottage in Makawao, Maui, at the Hui No`eau Visual Arts Center. This is a place we taught at when Leela was pregnant in 2009, and it is where we were happiest during those first 9 months. It also gave us the kick we believed to move to a more beautiful place and to start a school and center dedicated to making art.
In Maui, we’ll scatter Rosalie’s ashes there in the ocean. I always said she was a water spirit. I still believe it.
We’ve had an outpouring of generosity and love from you all. We have cards and emails and postings of all kinds still to open and read; the deluge of support and love from you all has been our greatest strength.
We certainly didn’t wish it would take a tragedy to remind us that we are loved among our friends, and even strangers, but reminded we have been. We thank you so deeply for your words, contributions, prayers. All that was sent our way helped bolster us, strengthen us in this time when we were so deeply deeply in pain.
Leela and I have been together on a long path. Suddenly diverted, shocking, terrible, but the path out is still forward. In the darkest times, your support meant everything.
We are feeling a lot of bruised and conflicting emotions throughout all of this, but one thing has remained consistent: our gratitude towards the people who reached out to us. We honestly could not, and can not, make it through without you.
Love each other, and thanks.
If you ever met Rosalie Lightning, keep her in your hearts, and send us your fond stories or reflections. She was special. We miss her immensely.
Tom Hart
Hutch Owen Strips: Dennis Go Does Down
I’ll be cross-posting here and on Blogger for a while until the Hutch book, Let’s Get Furious comes out.
At the HOW TO SAY EVERYTHING blog, I’ll be detailing more about process, etc. Here’s I’ll just be broadcasting.
The following marks the largest single section of Let’s Get Furious, the largest sub-story in the book, called “Dennis Goes Down.” Dennis, clearly one of the world’s “1%” decides to go see how the rest of the world lives. He thinks they need a kick in the butt to get spending again. This was written in 2004 or 5, I think.
I was still drawing too small at this point, and figuring out how to use this small space. I don’t love these drawings, nor the color choices (the book is printed in black/white), but this is a pretty great long story. I’ll be posting the more thing in the coming weeks.
The idea that we all, as consumers and producers, are part of a larger myth and story interests me, fascinates me and disgusts me to no end. What was in ancient times a system of stories and rituals for coping, growing and evolving has been recast and relocated in commercial endeavors. It’s regrettable, maybe even evil but I don’t give people that much credit. We’re mostly just stupid and have lost sight our best options for our humanity: art, ritual, family, nature, faith, physicality, concentration, generosity, etc.
I wrote this while reading David Copperfield, which I never finished; got too carried away with this story.
Pushing this over to blogger
Well, one year later I’m finally posting a “moved away” sign on this blog. We’re currently at http://hutchowen.blogspot.com/
Most lite, personal stuff has wound up at Facebook.
This site is full of good archives so keep looking. In the meantime, visit the new school, the new blog, the new baby, etc.
Greetings from Maui
Alright, this is where I gush like everyone else. Nothing original here. Leela and I have just returned from Maui where we taught in Makawao for 10 days and ravenously visited the rest of the island in our free time.
It’s paradise. Maui’s the first place for which I want to drag out that term, throw it around and see if it fits. It does.
The place is so full of life, of green and moisture and ocean and streams and lovely birds and wild-looking delicious fruits. It’s got wild chickens (see right (or is that one some sort of pheasant?)), lovely people, a defunct volcano (2 actually), hundreds of microclimates (including types of desert, tundra, rainforest, etc.), great coffee, silence, color, a love of art, the 4th best observatory on the planet (off-limits to the public), ranching, rodeos, plein-air art festivals, hula, keiki, craters, cattle, sugar cane everywhere, mangoes to die for, dragon fruit, glorious avocados
,folk-art, giant trees, zen monks, taiko, pork-in-the-dirt, spam sushi, surfer car rental places, a long and fascinating history and tropical fish that will basically swim up to your cheek and kiss you in your pores, as if you needed one more reason to begin sobbing from the beauty of it all.
And the people are wonderful.
Hello to the fabulous Kelly McHugh, Caroline who runs the Hui, her wild and hugely interesting family, and to Maggie, Nathalie (Yay Nathalie), Keri, Miguel and Miguel, Lana, all the great students and the many others I’ve no doubt forgotten or whose names I can’t spell. I doubt anyone on Maui is so gauche as to google alert their own name, but in case Maggie Sutrov is listening, hello Maggie! Here is a link of her in the act painting her most recent splendid view of the island. (See bottom.)
And Travis Fristoe, if you go to Maui, you have a coffee waiting for you at HAZ BEANZ in Pai’a. They’re only open 7am – 1 pm so go early and then go sit with the sleepy dog next door.
SVA Cartoon Allies at Mocca 2009
Cartoon Allies at Mocca 2009…
Cartoon Allies begin their slog to Mocca
Slogging…
Ok everyone’s cheery
Greg Fenton shows off his Egyptian $20
Cartooning Like You Mean It — Fragments
SOME FRAGMENTS as I get organized.
———————-
Why what’s the point why why?
because we as a race of creatures constantly want stories, we want
images and stories that can add to our ever changing (and not always
maturing) understanding of the how what and why of life? Why are we
here? How does it work? What the hell is going on anyway?
stories and images help us triangulate ourselves, find ourselves in
the sea that is the answers to these questions…
————————————————————————————————
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Attaching images to images, stories to stories
this is the assembling that all narrative works from. Pulling from
your collected store of images and stories and creating more, explore
the existing paths already between them.
How do we do that. Go back to mess mode. But now with a starting place.
want to make a giant graphic novel? The connections will start to make
sense via plot. Of course the mother who discovers the knife is the
woman I imagined crying at the zoo… She went there because it was
where her husband was a custodian. She discovered the knife when she
found him dead in the pool. The woman’s story begins to emerge. She
must find her husband’s killer, and will learn more about… …
look to your other images and fragments. What else suggests a double
life, unsolved mysteries, or what else just calls out to be part of
this larger story?
Want to work in short forms? You’re more than halfway there. Connect
the two images… Tick that “story clock” one or two notches and get
out.
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notes re: sit com
————————————————————–
With good characters and the self discipline to sit down, you can
write dozens more of these effortlessly. The key is having good
characters, and injecting them with an interesting enough new
situation.
We always wonder about our plots? Is it funny enough? Grave enough?
Puzzling and suspenseful enough? None of this matters before you
sitting down to explore your characters. None of this matters before
you sit down to explore your characters. The only thing plot does is
enliven your characters…
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meta is different.
To all my friends searching for happiness
To all my friends searching for happiness, success in love, career, life, listen to Kiki:
Love is a battlefield.
Be arrogant, rather than self-denigrating. Be furious and be disciplined.
Take solace in music. Find music to sing along to. That’s why songs have choruses. Our struggle is your struggle. Love is a battlefield. Nothing is new. Be lovely and typical. Penetrate it. Go through it. (Katabasis.)
Arrogance will get you farther than self-hatred. The darkness will deepen your work, but fight to be rid of it anyway.
You will never be completely free of the anger and resentment and hurt. But try to wrestle it off, anyway, through art and practice.
Life is a battlefield. Art is a battlefield.
Connect with the struggle and the suffering, and deepen your practice. Art is your practice. Like a martial art, like meditation or chanting, like breathing. Breathing is your battlefield. (Just ask Arjuna.)
Cut yourself open, untangle the knots (-Leonard Cohen). Art presents you to the world, opens you for the world. Art gifts you to the world.
You have to commit to it, for a higher purpose- but that’s what you’re here for.
Kiki and Herb: Kiki is a raw, desperate, hurting, somewhat (or mostly) ugly Child of God. She deserves your love. Do you? Don’t you? Oh less ugly ones?
Don’t turn your back on me.
Don’t turn your back on Kiki.
Kiki Loves You!
Kiki Needs You!
Kiki would die for you!
Prepping the show
Getting ready for the 92Y Tribeca show. Matthew Thurber and Lauren Weinstein paint the wall. My section done, I’m cutting or pasting or some other task.
Show coming up at 92Y Tribeca
The 92Y in New York City is opening a hip, beautiful new space in Tribeca and are christening their space with a show of their three cartooning teachers: Lauren Weinstein, Matthew Thurber and Tom Hart
Opening reception: Saturday October 25, 2008
La Colombe Coffee
I’m in love, and I can’t hide it anymore.
The best espresso in New York City, bar none is La Colombe, on Church Street, one block south of Canal behind Pearl Paint. God bless it.
Here’s a crappy photo of a great Americano, after I put milk in it!
I am a snob about few things, except effort and coffee (living in Seattle for 5 years spoiled me on the latter front). La Colombe is the best espresso I’ve had in NYC. Running close are the following (in descending order):
1. Cupcake Cafe on 9th Ave by Port Authority. Worth a trip far far far out of the way. Plus, a great old fashioned icebox where they keep the milk.
2. The Cafe in the Theater at
136 E. 13th St., New York, NY 10003
I never remember what the theater is called.
3. The place in Chelsea Market! AMAZING! (Ninth Street Espresso)
4. Push Cafe. Great for years. Expensive, and weirdly it’s never as good in a to go cup, but it’s a special thing in a mug seated out front watching traffic.
Far below but still great
5. Think Coffee by NYU on Mercer
6. Gimme Coffee in Williamsburg
7. Mud in LES
8. Heights Coffee in Prospect Heights
God bless all these places for caring.
