Sam Wallman: Being born is goin' blind

 

I don't seem to leave the bush much these days, but I was more than eager to break out of the trees for the launch of Sam Wallman's fantastic new comic book 'Being born is goin' blind.' The delivery room was 'Wooly Bully' in North Melbourne, a great little venue that deals in beverages and comic books.

I love Sam's work. Sam can write, draw, tell stories, and make mini visual essays that leave you with a heightened sensibility of all things. ALL things? Holy moley, what does that mean? It means that as I sit here I'm making connections between the rarely considered amoeba, fossilized plant matter and anonymous factory worker that made the plastic keys that are clicking away under my fingers. These thoughts are simultaneously subdividing into continents, religions, political systems, loaves of bread, draining baths, ring tail possums, sex, the tips of tree branches, future meteorological projections and synthetic polyester fabric. Sam joins the dots and after you close his book your mind keeps going.

'Being born is goin' blind' asks some grubby questions, but criticism of humanity comes across as affectionate, detailed, and often very funny. See more of Sam's work and buy his book HERE.

I saw it in a dream

                                       'Scribbly boring'   silk cut lino print      © M.Burton

I have just completed the sequel to 'Self portrait with beetle,' an image I have struggled with for weeks. I have been very taken with the patterns of the 'scribbly borers' in some of the fallen trees around my house. 'Boring' and 'drawing' have become a kind of rhyming slang to me. I wasn't sure what to do but luckily my subconscious took over and I literally saw the the design in a dream. So fitting, as this week also marks the posting of Jeannette Davison's lovely article about all that emerges from my cocoon of a studio. ISIIAD (I saw it in a dream) is an art and design blog, and her recent post is HERE.

Epileptic: David B

The English version of David B's graphic novel 'Epileptic' (originally published in French as 'L'Ascension du haut mal') emerged in 2005, and although it has taken me 6 years to finally read this extraordinary work, the timing is perfect. It is a synthesis of everything I have been investigating in printmaking, autobiographical comics and the human condition, making it the most resonant read I have had in a while.

The author's world is a vivid, confronting and personal account of his childhood growing up with an epileptic brother, and I have never felt more inside a narrator's universe. Panels are layered with different levels of consciousness, with the illustrations departing from the text to describe both the surreal and everyday dimensions of the story utterly seamlessly.

A beautiful and haunting graphic novel.

                                                  
                                                   A panel from David B's 'Epileptic'

Teasleeves

 

                                           'Teasleeves' silk cut lino print © M. Burton 

Back to the printing press

'Self portrait with Beetle' 30 X 30cm silk cut lino print © M.Burton

A new chapter has begun, and the spring weather sprung here at my new digs at the Dunmoochin Foundation. Here begins a new journey as artist in residence, following the footsteps of so many others who have been inspired by this unique pocket of protected Australian bushland. 

It is my great fortune to have 24 hour access to Clifton Pugh's old etching press, which shall hopefully see a new body of work and some bolder experiments in printmaking techniques over the next year.

Out of Hiding

Here it is! 104 pages bound and glued to be held in your hand. Please come and coax this comic book out of hiding at the Melbourne Writers Festival on Sunday 28th of August at 1pm.  Click HERE for more information. Published by Black Pepper

"At first glance, Mirranda Burton's art room is a hidden world full of strange eccentric characters and mysterious minds. But stay a while and in that room you'll find all the joy and sadness of life, the pain and comfort of community, and the ultimate meaning of art. This hidden world is our world; it is where we all live, together and alone.

In Hidden Mirranda Burton is writing about what matters most, and she does so with such gentle humanity and wisdom these stories will stay with you long after you turn the final page and reluctantly close the art room door.

It is one of the most beautiful books I have ever read."

                                                                   DYLAN HORROCKS, author of Hicksville

Coming Soon!

It has been all quiet on the blogspot front in a desperate bid to finish my comic book. Yes! It's coming! Please come and join me at the Melbourne Writers Festival at the end of August to celebrate the smell of fresh printing ink! More details as to where and when are coming soon.

Patti Smith: Just Kids

When I was 19 I discovered Patti Smith's album Horses. Someone had left it lying in the grubby trails of oil paints, clay and charcoal fingerprints that filled the studio I shared with two other art students. There was no-one around, and the acoustics were perfect. Dirty old floorboards greeted the keyboard intro to Gloria like old friends, and by the time the chorus came I felt like I, and everything in that room had woken from a deep slumber.

Patti Smith has stirred me once again with her recent autobiographical work Just Kids. Without focusing on the celebrity aspect of her life, she invites us through the back streets of her artistic journey, visiting her late teens and early twenties as she embraces the harshness and beauty of new York City in the late sixties. It is here that she meets the young Robert Mapplethorpe, and enters one of the most significant relationships of her life. Wild, young and free, little do either of them know that the incredible love and faith they have in one another would fuel their artistic careers to the extent that they did. This is a tale of magic and hardship, faith and courage, but above all, a tender memoir.

Photograph: Robert Mapplethorpe

Bird Wrinkles

                            

                                               'Crows' Feet' (silk cut lino print) © M. Burton


I have been getting really interested in skin lately, and so came up with this design. Lino and wrinkles are a match made in heaven!