FIGHT FAILUREINDULGENCE

VOLUME 1

The first issue of The Jist, published one year ago, was full of spelling errors, trivial content and inconsistent layouts. The total circulation was less than one hundred and I would guess that even less people actually read the thing. For all its shortcomings though, the initial issue had a certain amount of fight to it. During the time of its publi-cation, I stopped going to school and picked up the grand campaign of injecting meaning into the world through a twice-stapled fold of paper. Of course, any goal so heavily weighted is doomed to failure and eight months later, printing stopped. The Jist can’t work as a monthly publication – there isn’t enough interest or time. However, in light of the new format changes, I’m ready to begin the new fight. Let us indulge in the best of what was and establish what will be.

~ Mason Balistreri

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The Jist is a quarterly zine that features artists and writers from all over the world. If you are interested in contributing to The Jist contact us through the website: www.thejist.org

ALEX CHERRY DEATH RIDES A HORSE

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MARTIN NOWICKICONGREGATIO

SEE MORE OF JOHN’S WORK AT ZIMBIO.COM/MEMBER/MANSON48

DETOUR AHEAD: SOUTHBOUND MEMORY LANE

TAKE EXIT 66 HIGHWAY TO HELLJOHN MILLER

How many times must mankind bruise his Achilles heel on that slippery slope where the tides of time churn in perpetual turbu-lence against the shores of tomorrow, be-fore he slows down his race to get there? At what point will he cast away his whimsical machines equipped with the: nine ply, steel belted, hard driving, 42 trillion gigabyte, flat screen, super chargers, that quicken his departure from yesterday, while spit-ting mud pies at sibling rivalries, only to go back with sticky glue and cellophane tape in hasty attempts to repair the damage when his irresponsibility breaks mother’s porcelain vase?

Can he remove the comforts of this mask provided by his scholarly experts of seman-tic convolution, seduced with the tainted gold of his deeds and face truth? Or will he continue to trick himself, whirling about in fits of denial, while shoving the contrived essays of these hired men into the face of his opponents under outrageous headlines like: Pulitzer prize winning Swedish physi-cist, Imso eFn Brilliant reveals: Molecular crack in porcelain cause of breakage in Mother’s vase.

Does he not understand he only chases the very tail he surrendered to evolution and pasted on the coin of chance he so haphaz-ardly tosses in vein attempts to predict what he left behind? Calling heads while listen-

ing to tales, he recklessly heeds the advice of procrastinators posing as oracles. These deceivers of time and worshipers of their false god, tickle the ears of men with glori-ous prophecies and their majestic declara-tion: Doeth today whatever your experts can blame on Mother nature Tomorrow.

So he squanders the present, abandons the past and races toward an illusion, only to find fragments of porcelain scattered along his trail and more points on history’s score-card. He sets back to the drawing board and adds another four ply, better steel and another trillion gigabyte, determined to score a few points against the past. He rins-es and repeats, another day on the slope, and another molecular crack in mother’s vase. Will mother ever learn?

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Triumphantly tumultuous beings theseThat grind and heave their wayThrough counted treesConstantly seekingMoving not speakingBlinding the weak with anythingShiny or prettyBinding their feetWith bonds of pitySad strange sacrilegiousUnconsciously vicious

INTELLECTUAL SOLLIPSISM SIMON MYSAKThe idealist movement specifically de-scribes the philosophical view that what we perceive of reality ultimately consists of the mind. However, in it’s grand sense, the term can also be seen as describing the trend of philosophy and thought since the enlight-enment. It sparked dialogue and discourse which ushered humanity into a new age of thought and expression. It is out of concern with the current progression (or rather, re-gression) of society that I write this paper, looking back on the early stages of modern idealism, and attempt to establish new dis-cussion about some implications of their ideas, and of thought and mind itself.

The claims of the idealist movement, espe-cially the views of Berkeley and Kant, ulti-mately lead to a form of solipsism, which I will term “Intellectual Solipsism”. In the same way that we can never perceive the neumena [atomic particles] which produce phenomena [what we see] in perceivable re-ality, we can never perceive another human being’s mind. I must be cautious in how I present the term “Intellectual Solipsism”, for I do not intend to suppose the lonely and ultimately implausible view that reality, in it’s entirety (including people) exists solely in the mind of the perceiver. Rather, I posit the claim that all of perceivable reality ex-ists solely in the mind of the perceiver. Just as we can never perceive (in the grand sense of the term) an atom, we can never perceive others’ thought. We can only perceive the qualities of both. I am confident that this is absolutely true and I will attempt to explain my claim with a short allegory:

Imagine a village in a desert where the in-habitants are forced to re-use their water over and over again, which has become

polluted and stale. A bright young man sets out one day, and after a while of searching, he comes upon a glistening lake, full to the brim with crystal clear water. The man gathers an amount of it to bring back to the village, and as he does so, dust and salt from his hands mix with the water, putting his mark upon it. As the man heads back, he encounters another traveler. They exchange words, some water is spilt, and the traveler marvels at the man’s discovery, putting his mark upon it as well. The two part ways, and the man returns to the village, present-ing his find to them. The villagers marvel at the clear water, although the man sees now that it is not the same clear, sparkling mass as when he first encountered it. Dust and salt had altered it, he had put his mark upon it, as too did the traveler. The people of the desert city dump away their old water with glee, and use the man’s new water, adding to it, spilling it, putting their marks upon it in scores, and polluting it with every use. Others are enthralled with the find, stim-ulated by it, and set out to find the source themselves, but foolishly mistake the puddles spilt by the man as he returned as their goal.

We see how the water becomes inevitably changed by everything it comes in contact with. The same process affects thought: Any attempt to rationalize and potentially externalize thought will inevitably bestow linguistic elements, and other categories of understanding upon it, altering it at it’s core. Similarly, as we listen to an ‘Other’ attempt to convey a thought, we are putting our mark upon it, rationalizing it with our own categories of understanding, and altering it further. By this process, we will never truly perceive what the Other’s mind intended.Do not mistake this claim I have made as

a declaration of defeat, that we can never know our fellow man. On the contrary, I posit that to constantly fight against the state of intellectual solipsism is to partici-pate in reality. I believe that this claim is what all modern philosophy has been at-tempting to grasp, with varying degrees of accuracy. We fight against the state of in-tellectual solipsism in many ways (as Hei-degger attempted to convey in his philoso-phy), but they can be summed up simply and generally as discourse. It is inherently wrong to take an idea at face value, and treasure it as your own since it is inherently flawed upon perception. We must debate the phenomena, the idea, synthesize theses and strive to create unique ideas of our own. Only a select few thinkers have this abil-ity (as is illustrated in the allegory above), since the vast majority of the populace are fixated on simply understanding ideas and claims already posited, and seem to be sole-ly fixated on exploring the implications of those ideas in the narrow form their mind has presented to them. It would seem that they lack the ability to understand that they have already understood what they will of the claim itself, and the next step is to seek

out it’s source, the meaning, the neumena behind the phenomena of the idea. The point that most miss is that ‘claims’ are dif-ferent from ‘thought’. One cannot speak thought, as when thought is rationalized, it becomes ‘claim’. The few who truly under-stand this appear throughout history as the great minds which have moved our society.The source of ideas must be thought itself, and therefore, discourse which promotes thought, coupled with meditation on ideas is the only way to actively participate in reality. Not to do so would mean that one’s existence is meaningless. Expressing thought subjectively (as Sartre attempted to convey in his philosophy) as opposed to objectively is the only means of participat-ing in the ongoing dialectic of life, for sub-jectivity openly embraces argument and dialogue – to present a thought objectively, rejecting dialogue is heresy to thought it-self. The Greek philosopher Socrates un-derstood the concepts described above, and presented the claim that there was a realm of the intellect, and a realm of the material. Meditation on the implications of his Meta-physical dualism show striking similarities to the claims posited by myself in this essay.

Any attempt to rationalize and potentially external-ize thought will inevitably alter it at it’s core.

It is said that an enlightenment occurs whenever a people discover the Greek classics. I believe that this is because, due to their age, the classic works of Socrates, Aristotle, and Plato (among others) are inherently viewed subjectively by society. Indeed, as our modern society progresses, works more and more modern are naturally viewed more and more objectively by stu-dents and are taken (incorrectly) for truth at face value. This is the natural way that society progresses, and so it is only though the study of history that we can attempt to trace the idea back to it’s source, and in turn produce crisp, clear thought of our own.According to the model and views ex-pressed above, society can only progress by process of ‘looking back to move forward’. However, we as a society are in danger of losing this dialectic process and entering upon another dark age. We are discour-aged to look back, and echo phrases like “history is boring” or “ancient civilization is irrelevant and backward”, but it is in-sensible to agree that this is the case. We are constantly encouraged to distract our-selves from pure thought with materialist values imposed upon us by our consumer society. If this trend continues, as a society we will loose touch with the classics, and regress into a new age of ignorance. Unlike the dark ages of past, we will not worship deities of gold and stone, but of plastic and

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electronic. The old estates of religion will not rule us, but marketing and technology will be the guides we blindly follow. Do not mistake me for belittling any religious view or ideology, for religion, spirituality, and the material object can be wonderful sub-jects for thought. I am merely stating blindly following an idea is inherently wrong.

We as a society have already started down this road and it is up to us, the thinkers of this era to turn the tide. If you disagree with me, dear reader, I am pleased. I invite you to debate the contents of this essay and create your own synthesis of it’s content.

(INTELLECTUAL SOLLIPSISM CONTINUED)

MARK MILLERUNTITLED

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Written in wrinkles are senseless obsessions printed like incurable diseases.

And on a need-to-know basis, words become contagious killers, saturating the air like graffiti on a wall.

Our minds are easily infested with laughing pests, speaking of false intelligence and very few would rather rot in the corners of sterilization until it’s safe to move on.

We have been told that our heads are full of sin and viruses and disability.

Give me pills. Quickly fix me. Forgive me.

We are force fed the newest diet plan.

We have been diagnosed with profitability syndrome. They tell us we are sick bugs who need them.

One-thousand dollar burial box.

Headlines and controversy and commercials fed intravenously into our veins. Catheter full of excitement and concern.

The nurse vigorously licks the bottom of a coffee cup in front of a beeping screen.

Entertainment is the late breaking news on the lives of our most well-known, no-talent alcoholics and cokeheads.

This stylish exploitation is a fashion statement.

What they’re looking for is blood on the pavement.

These filthy, self-proclaimed professors wade in shallow wastewater and don’t bother to wash their feet sensibly.

Even as we migrate, the spread bites us.

Our only solutions come in silent syringes blinding sight and attention.

Focus our wrath and cold apathy and see what’s happening.

Take the vaccine, a suppressor in a subtle shot.

Wipe the insecticide from your eyes!

This is the apocalyptic lecture of social skin spots.

JOANNE BAKERDESECRATION OF LITERATURE

JOANNE BAKERDESECRATION OF LITERATURE

MAGNUS BLOMSTERUNTITLED

MAGNUS BLOMSTERPERVERT

When did you first start drawing?

I was five years old. I did a little paper book for my dad which had all of the Quake monsters in it. I even titled the Scrambler as “The Blood Polar Bear”.

Quake, the video game? That’s pretty awesome, I remember drawing stuff from Doom. How old are you now?

I’m seventeen now and I’ll be eighteen in June, but yeah I would have probably done Doom monsters if I grew up with a windows computer but I grew up on Macs. I guess Quake was the Mac Doom

Do you come from an artistic family or is draw-ing something you always did on your own?

I came from a very artistic family. My mom owned her own hair salon before I was born and my dad owned his own design business called Little Pictures.

Did you pick up your style from them? Or did you sort of go on a tangent. In other words, what’s the inspiration for your art?

Well my dad has a very new age style to his art. I always loved his style but I went for a different look. I drew from dreams. Later on, I drew when I was upset - maybe as an outlet. Now I just do it for fun, it’s nice to put what’s in my mind onto paper.

What mediums do you work in? Is it all done free hand and scanned in? What is the process you have for creating a piece like “Your Mark” or “What Can Rabbits Do?”

Well if the drawing involves something that I

don’t have a good visual image on, I’ll surf the web and look at photos, images, or maybe anat-omy. Then I’ll sketch out outlines with a pencil and add some detail. I go over this with art pens lightly and erase the pencil. Then I’m left with an outline of my art with some big details. I use fine pens to add my dots. From there I scan my art and bring it up in Photoshop. I’ll fix up the image and make it all one solid black line work. This is when I begin to color in different layers with dif-ferent properties until I’m done.

I notice motifs in your work – grotesque things like skulls and violence, but then also common symbols of beauty like roses and the female body. What are you trying to accomplish with those images?

To be honest, I never really think long and hard about what’s in my art until it’s done. I love the de-tail I can put into bone and skulls so I use them a lot and I enjoy drawing something that I can easily look at in the mirror: of course, the female body. If there is a position I don’t know how to draw, I can go to my mirror and study what the position will look like. As for other things I add to my art, I truly borrow from what happens when I sleep.

LYDIA BRAUN INTERVIEWPAIN AND PLEASURE

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You look at yourself for study; does this mean that you inject yourself in the pieces? In other words, is that part of you in those images?

I use what I see in the mirror. Not everything is exact but the dimensions are around the same. Rarely do I draw things that I just make up – it usually comes from an experience I’ve had or something to do with dreams.

I’m interested in your series, Problem Alpha-bet. Where did that idea come from?

Well it originally started with artist’s block. I wasn’t dreaming and nothing seemed to pop into my head. So one day I had this idea to draw women in different situations. The situations were problems like anxiety, bulimia, cancer. Real problems for each letter of the alphabet. I’m sav-ing the rest of the series for when I have artist block again.

Why not draw men?

For some reason, it’s much harder for me to draw the male body. I don’t draw from remembering how the human body bends or moves but rather from what I see in the mirror. Thus, all my men end up looking like women.

I ask because I see a strange stream of sexual-ity running through much of your work. “An Error of Judgment” is a good example. How do you feel about that piece?

I did Error of Judgment after I thought I was pregnant. I wasn’t but it got me thinking about things. I had a couple of weird nightmares on the subject. One included a bunch of flies engorging themselves on a nest of broken eggs. The other one involved me and an unknown man. He im-pregnated me and left me on my own. The idea was to show a man who only wants sex but doesn’t want to deal with the results. I wanted to portray him as blue collar, but I also made him a skeleton - maybe symbolizing that he is inhuman.

STEPPING IN

That’s pretty intense for a 17 year old. What does your family think about the things you draw?

My father seems more than okay about it. If any-thing, he encourages me to delve deeper into things. My mom loves my art but doesn’t seem to touch too much on the content. She’s just happy that I’m doing what I enjoy, I suppose.

Do you like showing your art?

I enjoy showing it when it’s done, sometimes I get uncomfortable when I’m asked to bare my soul about my art. When it’s expected that every piece should be some orgasm of the soul, it just gets a little weird for me.

THE MUNCHIES

Sorry, I hope I’m not doing that.

Oh no not at all, trust me I’ve had some weirdos ask way to many questions about things that not even I could see in my art. I remember two dif-ferent occasions. The first, a couple years ago, I had art displayed at our local visual arts center. I was practically cornered by this one guy who asked me questions about the lines in my work, asking why I made it seem like the image was tilt-ing towards the left and how the color made me feel. Just things that were almost stalker-ish.

That is pretty strange

It was very scary now that I think about it. An-other time was recent. I had a person sending me

e-mails with all these detailed, creepy questions about “An Error of Judgment”. It made me not draw for a couple weeks

What’s next for you, I saw you’re starting to make clothing?

Oh yes! That is actually the reason I haven’t drawn in awhile : I got sucked into the world of tee shirt designs! I gave up on trying to get big companies to recognize my work. So I opened up my own store online. I’m pretty excited about it.

INTERVIEW BY MASON BALISTRERI SEE MORE OF LYDIA’S WORK AT BELLICOSEBUTTERFLY.DEVIANTART.COM

EXISTENTIAL HANGMAN

ALIE LAVOIEMaybe it takes sitting in the backseat of a car to realize your life. Maybe it takes lean-ing your head against the window, know-ing your hair will have a weird kink in it when you get out of the car to go wherever you were going in the first place. But you do this anyways because it’s what they do in the movies, and sometimes it’s nice to feel like you’re in a movie.

Maybe it takes your own silence, your own touching your bottom lip to the top. Look-ing around at the people that you could rec-ognize by their wrist. This sounds impos-sible, but I bet there are people in your life that you could do this for. If somebody took pictures just of the wrists of all your closest friends and family, you could probably tell who was who. Arm hair. Geometric freckle formations. Protruding wrist bones. Creas-es in the skin from where they’ve waved and written at odd angles. You would know.

Maybe it takes the streetlights. And the traffic lights. And the lights from inside the houses of strangers. Polarizing lights and their first impressions. Flickering blue from a television screen: loneliness or a family that has stopped talking. A warm wash of light from a dining room chande-lier: wholeness or children who get hugs before bed. These impressions are probably wrong, you tell yourself. But a little part of you wonders what other people in various seats of cars have thought about your own house when they passed it. Unless you don’t have a house. Or unless there is no road ac-cess to your house. Or unless you never have any lights on because you’re worried about the environment. But this would still leave some kind of impression, too. But it wouldn’t be the right one unless you put a sign on your yard that said “I choose to never have any lights on because I am wor-

ried about the environment.” You would have to make the sign out of salvaged wood and non-toxic paint, though. Otherwise you would be a hypocrite.

Maybe it takes nothing to realize your life. Maybe you are realizing your life all the time but you just don’t realize it. Maybe ev-eryone’s life is just a whole lot of unrealized realizations. Maybe this is sad, because we could know a lot more if we just realized more. Or maybe this is happy, because, in some way, it seems kind of humble and friendly to not realize. Because it’s like, for once, we’re not patting ourselves on the back for doing something that really doesn’t deserve a pat on the back. Unless you need a pat on the back once in a while. Then it would just be sad.

Which brings us here: Maybe it takes – and this is where you insert something really profound and deeply personal. Partly be-cause I don’t know what it takes and partly because I like the idea of existential hang-man. Guess a vowel.

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ZACH WILSONA GUN FOR HIRE

MATT BOROFFSPIT BACK REPRISE

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SUMMER DAZEJACK ARNOLD

There’s the chair. SIT! It’s kind of uncom-fortable. There’s no back so you have to lean over like a taco. Lots and lots of peo-ple, walking somewhere. Where do they all go? Oh and it’s hot too. Lots of smelly, hot, humid, gross people. Stop sign red. Stand-ing tall like an extension of the flat outward facing palm from some far away station enforcing the “Sit down, shut up, no ques-tions, thank you, please”. There’s a lot of grass. It’s in everybody’s yard. Everybody’s own Easter basketful clipped and without weeds. You like that tree? It’s pretty big and way too old. There’s no way your dad planted it. It must have been some old Davy Crockett. You wonder what his name was. Cars drive by your deck. They must not see

the red stop sign. Johnny Law is too far off on other business anyway. There are cars sitting on the street too. They must not feel like running stop signs now. You can re-ally feel that heat now. It’s so sublime. You pretend you’re a water drop floating in the air right now, making some person hot. You laugh a little. The sun sits high look-ing down with his burning laser vision. The sun is a superhero to these plants. These plants that grow and twist and wave. It’s a lazy day. But the people never stop. Always walking to something, always.

You can hear a man washing his car. Every-body has a car except for you. You can hear him singing twangy country songs. It was something about a deluxe pick up truck and fast, leggy women. You wouldn’t exist if he didn’t exist. Molecules that make up both your bodies were spit out a long time ago by Superhero Sunshine. Suddenly you realize you were never really alone. The plants, the wood that makes the house a house, the sweaty people, these birds chirp-ing over your head; they are all connected.

You look over at the house across the street. It’s tall and yellow grey. It sits like a canary in a cage of evergreen trees. They’re having a porch sale selling bird poop. You almost want to get up and see what kind of things they have but scene around you is far too grand from your chair. You sit in awe. More people walking. These people are sucking on sticks that disintegrate to mist into the wet, hot air. The tips glow red and the peo-ple seem to relax a little. More people and they all seem to be going uptown. It’s like a parade. There are dogs now walking. They know it’s hot too with their tongues falling out trying to touch the burning cement. Oh, a breeze! You’re almost raised from the daze of these humid, hot summer days. Still you sit taking it all in almost forgetting where you are.

You are here. On this street here. Sitting on a porch, in this chair, at this corner. The man is done with his car. Now he’s open-ing its mouth and he’s looking at it’s organs. He sweats, dripping on the engine block. Looking for something he lost, maybe? Gently, he is walking back and forth turn-ing a switch on the inside of the car trying to wake it up. A plane buzzes overhead, a giant metal mosquito sucking up oil from the ground; now off to lay its eggs in some

big city airport. A real bug lands on your arm and you watch it in anticipation. It’s so light you almost don’t feel it, it has a natu-ral anesthetic, but it’s there like a pin being slowly pushed into your skin. You don’t do anything but watch. She thinks she’s going to get away. SMACK! She lays shattered on your skin. FLICK! Never again.

A big yellow bus rolls down your street. He stops because he has to, who knows what if he wasn’t working. More people going downtown. They didn’t want to walk. You hear the man with his car swearing loudly sending carets, asterisks, dollar signs, ex-clamation points, and pounds into the at-mosphere. The car makes a sound like a ro-bot throwing up. More swearing and more nonsense characters. Then finally……click. SUCCESS! He almost clicks his heels.

The sky is ablaze, orange and red. But there are dark clouds off in the distance and you hope for rain. The man sits now drinking lemonade, cool and tart. Two girls walk by. The man watches like a hawk. One looks and sparks you in the eye before she passes. You wonder if you’ll ever see her again. A cloud passes over. No more sun. Humid-ity’s still here. You start to feel sticky like you showered in soda. Now there’s a new girl in a new car. Old girl you knew, but still new. Asks if you want to take a ride. You think about it. You’ve sat here long enough. There must be a puddle. You agree and get in. Where will we go? Who cares. You say goodbye to the man and take another look at your street. Drive away into the sun.

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WHEN YOU SLEEPJULIEN PACAUD

He was not born Hatter. No parent had taken the cruel and unusual step of christening him thus. He had spent an entire childhood not be-ing Hatter. Likewise, I imagine he is not Hat-ter now. No wife affectionately addresses him as such; no children whisperingly chide Daddy with his quaint moniker. Only for us was he Hatter. We made him Hatter, and for two years he was Hatter, and very little but Hatter.

I attended an all boys grammar school in Buck-inghamshire, an educational backwater where the tripartite system still reigned. Clad in blaz-ers and ties, with little exposure to girls, ethnic minorities or the educationally average (there were different schools for each of these strange groups), we were a race apart. Things were dif-ferent. We saw things differently. We did differ-ent things. I did an A-level in Religious Studies.

Even in our quaint, olde-worlde alma mater, an A-level in Religious Studies was an unusual re-quest. Upon discovering my desire to be tutored in epistemology and scriptural analysis, the head of R.E. and the Headmaster himself were set in a fervent chin-scratch of consternation. They both thought the idea a very fine and noble one in principle, but expressed concerns as to the viability of running such a course. Clearly I could not be taught one-on-one. This was a state school, after all. The money simply wasn’t there to justify teaching a single scholar for a whole A-level course. A solution was suggested. If six other boys could be found whose A-level choices were still malleable enough for them to consider Religious Studies, then this would suf-fice as a viable class-worth.

Seven deadly sins. Seven seas. Seven sons, pos-sibly of seventh sons. I recruited five accom-plices quickly to bolster my chances of studying my chosen course. Alex was first. Alex intended

to do an art foundation course after sixth form. His exact choice of subjects mattered little, so long as the homework didn’t get in the way of compiling his portfolio. Joseph was next. Joseph would do anything to make himself appear highbrow and quirky. He would eventually lose his eyebrows in what can only be described as a birthday experiment. Then came Michael. It’s possible Michael didn’t even know what course he was doing. Michael played guitar in a rock band. Years on, as I write this, Michael still plays guitar in a rock band. After Michael came Rich-ard Borland. We would come to know him as Richard Boring. A pasty-faced, musical-loving mother’s boy with a fine singing voice and little else of note, least of all a personality. Scraping the barrel for a fifth, I found Will George. Ini-tially I assumed his name was George, as no one had ever addressed him by his Christian name. By the end of the course, ‘George’ would be the kindest name we had called him.

The sixth was Hatter.

It would do no good to reveal Hatter’s real name. This is neither a character assassination nor a confession. It is merely a reporting of fact. Suffice to say, before he was Hatter, he had a name, though this would be of little importance to us. Hatter was a tall, broad-shouldered boy, the kind of build that gets a boy described as a strapping young lad. This strappingness, how-ever, extended to his head. As broad and box-like as his shoulders were, his skull was doubly so. His gi-ant, rectangular head grew from his torso not on a neck as such, more as if extruded, like a block of plastacine from a child’s play-dough mould-ing kit. This monstrous cranium was topped with a beige Brillo-pad of hair, and rimmed on all the flat edges and corners with the raw carbunkling of the serial acne-picker. This was Hatter. This was the last of our scholarly band.

HATTER: A TRUE STORYSTEWART M MCNICOL

As I have mentioned before, our place of learning was a selective grammar school. The ‘Twelve-plus’ exam, taken in our final year of middle school, determined who was crammed into the pre-dole purgatory that was the second-ary modern, and who was creamed off the top and whisked away to academia via the Gram-mar school. The ratio was 5 to 1. We were not thick. Hatter was not thick. In a school where an average year group would produce at least a dozen straight-A students, it was possible for very bright young men to go unnoticed, appear-ing only ‘average’ if their ten or eleven GCSEs only included two or three ‘A’s. Hatter had been one of these selective education also-rans, as had the rest of our group. We were not incapa-ble of work. We chose not to work. The system allowed for coasting. Someone had to be bottom of the genius barrel. It was our duty to under perform.

This coasting, however, relied on the ability to pull a conspicuous show of intelligence out of the hat (no pun intended) at any given time. The privilege of idleness was supported only by the capability to unexpectedly just know things when teachers queried one’s work-rate. The joy of sitting listening to Tom Waits and reading Burroughs rather than revising was relished only on the understanding that an inexplicably high exam result would turn up anyway. We all appreciated this. We all conformed to this. We were doing a Mickey Mouse subject, and were allowed to be Mickey Mouse pupils, but we knew that only by maintaining the appear-ance of potentially excelling could this joyous existence be maintained without fear of effort reports and less lenient homework deadlines.

This is where Hatter’s troubles began.

Not long into our lower sixth year, we began to notice something about our box-faced class-mate. He began to exhibit the attitude of what educational experts refer to as a disaffected pupil. His attention span became limited; he

would gaze into space for minutes at a time; his homework became slapdash, if it turned up at all; he would go absent for days at a time; his ability to come up with ad-libbed answers in class deteriorated to the point where he would just sigh and shrug at the teacher. He was draw-ing attention to himself (and therefore the rest of us) with his conspicuous lack of effort. He was becoming a threat to our peaceful exist-ence, and we all knew it.

Looking back so many years later, I forget what the exact question was which bought the situation to a head (a large, rectangular head at that), but it certainly wasn’t anything any semi-serious scholar of scriptural analysis (or even the majority of entirely un-serious ones) would have found challenging. For the sake of argu-ment, let us assume that one afternoon, the head of RE turned to our misshapen protagonist and asked,“So, which three of the four Gospels can we group together as the synoptic Gospels?”

All eyes turned to the hapless addressee. He should know that. He had to know that. To not know that would imply that he had been asleep for the whole of the preceding three weeks. He was one seventh of the group, a representative sample. To not know that, in front of the head of RE, would imply by proxy that none of us were taking the subject seriously. He had to know that.

He did not know that.

His great head lifted upwards. His eyes rolled back. He sighed. His shoulders, weighed down, perhaps, by the massive cranium mounted on them, shrugged imperceptibly.

We were aghast. How could he not know that? Why did he not know that? Didn’t he see what would happen to us if we actually looked like we weren’t doing any work? Alex, usually as laid-back and jovial as any A-level art student, was incensed. “Christ! You don’t know that! Why don’t you know that? You’re such a Brown Hatter!”

And so he was.

This juvenile insult, born of complete frustra-tion, was a new baptism. He was born again as Hatter. Hatter became a label summing up all that we found frustrating, dreadful and un-fair about the boy. From here on in, any time he made the class look foolish by displaying his complete ignorance of the subject matter; every time he gormlessly shrugged off a question in class; every time his homework failed to mani-fest; every time he sat in stony silence while the other six endeavoured to debate some aspect of Christian theology with only a cursory glance at a textbook and our native wit to guide us, we reminded him of his position.

“Hatter!”

Many people who attended school in England in the seventies, eighties or nineties will be fa-miliar with the game known as Bollocks. While the teacher is writing on the board, or otherwise distracted, a class member softly says the word “Bollocks,” (or some similar obscenity), just loud enough to be audible to their immediate neighbours. If no teacher response is detected, another pupil takes up the challenge, and re-peats the obscene outburst a little louder. The ripple of excitement spreads around the class-room as more and more adventurous youths call out the offending utterance at incrementally increasing volume, until either the teacher ex-plodes in a fit of blind accusations or the whole class is reduced to a heap of giggling invalids (or quite often both).

We did not play Bollocks. We played Hatter.The game of Hatter was a far more extreme and challenging past-time. Firstly, with only six competitors in the room (clearly the man him-self never felt inclined to join in), the chances of getting caught out were far greater, and the option to sit out and not take part was far less readily available. Secondly, the potential repris-als for being caught were exponentially more

severe. Not only was one being disruptive and childish, but these disruptive, childish out-bursts were also aimed at someone, with the intent of reinforcing their relative status within the group. In retrospect, this intent could be dubbed bullying.

We, however, did not see it as such.

The pressure to conform is very strong among modern teenagers. People who deviate from set standards and norms of behaviour, dress, speech and the like are often reminded, either subtly or in more gross ways, of their aberrance. Well-meaning adults often describe this proc-ess, rather negatively, as peer pressure. We saw it more as peer guidance. By pointing out to Hat-ter every time he failed to behave in a way con-ducive to an easy life for the class, we reasoned, we were performing a service. Our actions were preserving the fragile balance between fun and A-level qualifications, and teaching Hatter im-portant lessons about pulling his weight.

Hatter failed to see our point of view.

We intensified our campaign.

The back of my RE folder, previously decorated with the logos of punk bands and quotes from Nietzsche, was re-decorated with a new slogan. Emblazoned in six-inch high black letters, it read simply HATTER. Every page of notes we took became decorated with ornate marginals depicting grotesque figures with grossly mis-shapen heads. From these illustrations, comic characters were developed such as Postman Hat, Hatman, Hat Stevens, Hatty Arbuckle, Cleo-hat-ra and worse, all brought to life by Alex’s skilful draftsmanship and my own twist-ed imagination, all with the same rectangular face and blank-eyed expression. We even devel-oped a theme song.

At the time of our activities, a song was released in the popular music charts. The name of both

(HATTER CONTINUED)

track and artist/s is lost to me now. The tune itself was an upbeat dance track, the vocals of which took the form of a speeded up, sampled loop of rapping, the clarity of which left a lot to be desired. To this day I have no idea what the lyrics actually were, but at the time, we devel-oped our own theories. To our ears, the song appeared to be warning us,

“Known as a Hatter,And one of the worst kind.Going to be NitpicklingSomewhere in your mind…”

This became our anthem.

As a further upshot, we developed the nonsense term Nitpickle to act as a variation on Hatter. To be a Nitpickle was to act in a way reminiscent of Hatter, although we used it freely to refer to the original Hatter too.

He seemed unimpressed.

At this point, things seemed fairly bleak for our lumpen victim, and, indeed, they were. This didn’t stop the situation getting worse. A friend who had not been roped into the RE group was out one night at his village pub. Attending the pub in addition to the locals on this particular night was a group of colleagues from the local supermarket, all enjoying a works evening out. Our friend, an amiable fellow, engaged them in conversation, and made a discovery which would escalate the Hatter situation to even fur-ther extremes of teenage cruelty.

The supermarket workers were mostly assem-bled when our friend began his conversation with them, and were awaiting the arrival of one further workmate, who seemed decidedly un-popular among the group, due to a consensus feeling that he was ineffectual and bone-idle. What really caught our friend’s ear, though, was the nickname of the missing shelf-stacker. He was known as Bungle. When he asked after the

origins of such a quaint alias, the explanation he received set the alarm bells truly ringing. Bun-gle was so called because his bulky form, thick, brown hair and stunningly oversized head re-minded his workmates strongly of Bungle the Bear, a character from the cult children’s TV show, Rainbow. Our friend’s mind raced with the possibilities. The last supermarket worker entered the pub.

“Bungle!” bellowed his compatriots.

“Hatter!” cried our friend.

For it was.

Eventually the time came for us to fulfil the oth-er side of the dossing around bargain and actu-ally perform in our first set of modular exams. Each modular paper we sat was an hour long and consisted of six possible question titles, of which we had to attempt two. For six of us, the format presented no problems. Even, George, who generally seemed to have slipped through the IQ test net, was fairly confident. The pass mark was 40% for a mark equating with an E, with the grades then being delineated by differ-ences of 10% each. We would walk it.

Hatter did not.

The following description of Hatter’s exam ig-nominy is taken directly from Alex and Joseph’s eyewitness accounts. Their surnames being al-phabetically earlier than Hatter’s and mine be-ing later, I was sat in a position in the exam room where to look at Hatter even if I had wished to would have been conspicuously turning round, whilst they enjoyed (if this is the right term) an excellent view of the back of his towering skull.

Upon starting the exam, Hatter carefully filled in the details on the cover page of his answer pa-per (His name, candidate number, etc), opened the paper and carefully read the possible ques-tions, thoughtfully tapping his pen on the desk

as he did so. He read through his options twice, paused, and wrote the title of his first selection out in full on his paper. He paused again, as if in thought, for what felt like several minutes. Leaving a gap on his answer paper approxi-mately large enough to fit a reasonable sized response in, he then wrote out the title of his second choice. Once again he paused, appar-ently pondering. Then he placed the lid on his pen, breathed out gently and slowly lowered his head to the table, face down. He remained in this bowed position for the rest of the exam. The strangest thing about this whole procedure, as Joseph commented, was that, “The top of his head formed a perfect right-angle with the table.”

Then Hatter went away.

From that day on, Hatter was conspicuous only by his absence. He ceased attending school completely, and was no longer mentioned on any registers or exam entry lists. Had we won? Could the loss of the target of our spleen be viewed as a victory? We actually quite missed having Hatter around. We cursed him for not having the bottle to brave it out. Why had he run away? Didn’t he see we’d been doing it for his own good? We thought even less of him now. Not only had he failed as a student, he’d failed as a victim too.

The truth had a tinge of melodrama that we completely failed to suspect.

That term, someone made a discovery, in what-ever ways teenagers make discoveries about the adult world, its gossip and its tattle. This dis-covery was to shed an unhappy new light on the Hatter phenomenon, but not in the way that now, as an adult, I suppose it ought.

Hatter’s father had died.

He had been ill throughout Hatter’s GCSEs, presumably with some unspecified cancer, and had succumbed to his illness just as Hatter had begun his A-levels. The young Hatter had been

left to comfort his grieving mother, hold down a weekend job at the supermarket and make the family proud by achieving A-level success. The task had clearly been too Herculean. Hatter’s disaffected attitude had been born of the grief of losing a parent.

We should have felt dreadful. We did not.

How dare he? How dare Hatter be so bloody-minded as to withhold such a thing from his peers, alienating himself in his time of sad-ness? What was he thinking? To have continued bumbling through life, accepting every cruelty his schoolmates and workmates could throw at him, never once saying, “Stop it! Shut up! My Dad’s dead!”

Why hadn’t he just stood up to us? We were in-candescent. This oaf had tricked us into being vile to him at the most cringingly inappropriate time. There was no way we were going to feel guilty about this. He had brought it on himself. He had been pathetic and weak, and we would not recant.

In retrospect, our reading of the situation seems harsh, irrational, even. However, con-sider things from our point of view. On the one hand, you can admit to yourself that you have destroyed the life of a recently bereaved boy, for reasons which seemed slightly tenuous in the first place, that you have delighted in coming up with more and more hurtful insults for an inno-cent victim, who all the while was dealing with the unthinkable. On the other hand, you can sweep your own guilt under the rug, fill your-self with as much blustering indignation as you can muster, and look to your co-persecutors to do likewise, justifying your actions in the most base and cowardly way.

I defy anyone reading this now to say that they did not laugh at any of the ways in which we made Hatter’s life hell. I defy anyone to say that they were not revolted by themselves when they

(HATTER CONTINUED)

stopped laughing and read the revelation about his terrible loss. I defy any of you to claim that you wouldn’t do anything or say anything to make that nagging feeling of guilt go away.

We only did what anyone would have done.

This was not the last chapter in the sad saga. Without Hatter, our coven lost focus. We no longer had a common interest binding us to-gether. We could hardly claim that a love of the subject would keep us a cohesive unit. We turned in on ourselves.

Michael drifted first. By the end of year twelve, he had left the school, and shifted allegiance to the local Sixth Form College, that palace of bo-hemian anti-establishmentarianism (relatively speaking, of course). A life of rock guitar beck-oned, and school was not the place to be.

Reduced to five, we began to look to the weaker elements of the group as replacement Hatters. Richard Boring was the first to taste this new wrath, but being so entirely featureless, any insult we threw at him did not stick. No box-shaped head, no acne-scars, no gormless stare. He survived by his utter anonymity. How many others get through school like this, without ever being noticed? There were somewhere in the re-gion of 300 people in the Grammar School sixth form. Looking back, I would struggle to name 50. How many Borings? Where did they go? Banking, perhaps, or actuaries, or local govern-ment middle management, who knows?

George was not so fortunate.

George’s reign as a replacement Hatter was

far more successful than Boring’s. For a start, George had the look of a victim. George looked for all the world like a Quentin Blake illustra-tion. He resembled some sinister villain from the pages of a Roald Dahl children’s story. George’s face was a single triangle; his sloping forehead and non-existent chin coming togeth-er to form a sharp spike of a nose. His hair, lank and greasy, could have been drawn figuratively by three or four coarse pencil strokes. His bug-eyes stared, rodent-like, from behind his tiny, round spectacles. He had the sort of faces that nicknames stuck to.

The name was Grundle.

Just as meaningless as Hatter or Nitpickle, and presumably just as hurtful in its repeated use, Grundle was merely a sound that seemed to sum George up. However, it was no use. Grun-dle would never be as exciting as Hatter. Per-haps it was George’s reaction which spoiled it. When mocked, he would laugh along, seeming-ly unaware that he was the butt of the humour, much like the excited wagging and barking of a confused dog when you throw an invisible ball, and it darts half-way down the garden, before bounding back, assuming the ball will manifest next time it is hurled.

The only other escape from this tedium was the day the modular results arrived. Our modular results, and Hatter’s. For whatever reason, the teacher had to leave the room for a couple of minutes, leaving the document exposed on the desk.

We had to look.

(HATTER CONTINUED)

We scanned through the printed-out sheet. 68.5%, predictably sound for me; 42% for Grun-dle, a pass at least; 65% for Joseph, unexpect-edly fair. No surprises for anyone. Then we saw Hatter’s. We paused. It had to be a misprint. The decimal was in the wrong place. Or was it? Looking back, this mark actually seemed strangely generous. Hatter’s name, candidate number, and two successfully transcribed ques-tions had earned him 4.5%. How was this pos-sible? In terms of percentage points per word, we felt swindled. 4.5% for spelling one’s name right? Unfair did not come close.We felt justified.

The story now comes to its final sorry twist.

The day of our final exams. The two last modules, to be taken back to back. Three hours more and an A-level in the most obtuse of subjects would be ours. We waited outside the exam room. As we chatted, nervously, we became aware of a presence. Near us lurked a large, hulking figure. We stared. We stared some more.

Hatter.

He had returned. A ripple of excitement and speculation blasted through the group as fierce-ly as an alien spacecraft cutting geometric pat-terns in a cornfield. What was he doing here? He was taking the last two modules as a private candidate. We did some quick mental arithme-tic. Two astounding performances plus the 4.5% would average out to a C over three modules. Hatter would gain an AS qualification. Not the same as our full A-levels, but what a triumph over adversity. We felt proud of our prodigal victim. He would be like the Karate Kid, getting

back up after Mr Myagi had weaved his magic healing ways over the boy’s hurt leg. Hatter would stagger to his academic feet and strike his bad fortune with a fearsome Crane Kick. What’s more, we had given him the strength and fire to do it.

Justified and vindicated.

Go Hatter!

Well done us!

We entered the exam room. Again, I sat in front of Hatter. Again, Joseph and Alex sat as wit-nesses to events as they unfolded.

The exam began. Hatter filled out his name, candidate number, etc. He read the paper care-fully. He paused a while, as if in thought. He put pen to paper, and copied out his first selected question. He paused again, his huge head al-most quivering with the effort. He left an essay-sized gap on the answer paper. He wrote out the second question.

Then, with the inevitability and grace of a giant redwood, felled by the combined efforts of half a dozen lumberjacks, his great skull sloped forward ‘till it met the tabletop and came to rest, forming a perfect right angle with the surface below.

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CASTLE SUNSHINE KRISTOFF CUNNINGHAM

OXYCONTIN MASON BALISTRERI

HUNGER, THIRST, REFUGE, INTOXICATION

ANDREW SPIESS

Alone on a dark pastel neighborhood. I drop and stand tall on a friend’s porch while casual, caustic cop cars watch and pass by. They have nothing on me. I am simply a standard presentation of Young Eccentric Humanity. The mad eyes in my mad head glow with specks of black and grey like a static TV. I feel enlightened and can’t stop laughing. My only plan is to smoke a pack of cigarettes and maybe try to sleep, though I know I’ve just sacrificed the ability; I smashed my machine with a sin-gle tab, disconnected for only a momentary holiday. Squads of thought invade me like an imaginary charge. It’s almost too much to handle, but I can’t stop laughing. Music leaks from an open window with warmth and happiness swells inside my stomach. As I perch myself on a ledge like an alert cat, I only begin to notice the significance of light from streetlamps smeared on shiny parked cars. I begin to notice significance. I lose sense of time and deconstruct myself while I try to confide in burning tobacco. My vision becomes profoundly stylized and smoke always dances with the liveliest temper and the shadows drape under trees and everything feels great from up here and I can’t stop laughing.

I have heard some striking stories on the effects of LSD on a person’s rationality

and logic from people that I know. These are people whose minds have been slightly warped due to a thriving market and cul-ture. Consumers crippled by the prod-ucts they demand so fervently. It is fairly well known today that marijuana smoke is extensively more harmful than tobacco smoke, yet I frequently come across flyers around campus suggesting an organized effort to legalize marijuana. The conflict seems to be amusement vs. health. But civilization has been infused with passion and excitement with the rise of intoxicants. Risky impulses have been fulfilled with the rise of intoxicants. Every day life isn’t such a droning, bitter and bland routine when we disintegrate and disorganize. We hold infinite perspective in the palms of our hands. Recreational drug use is a way of life among the curious youth that cannot be willingly resigned. How can we give it up?

The perceptions of the effects of drugs on people today are radically different than they were in the 1960s. Back then, the psychedelic van strolled down the Ameri-can road full of loving animals. Psychedelia first became a lifestyle and a major compo-nent for the intellectual type. Drugs were the right way to increase creativity and mental power. They were imbued with a spiritual nature and were not illicit. Drugs

were innocent. An entire culture of people tightened its affectionate bear hug around mind alteration and kissed the pipe. Hip-pies weren’t even the first counterculture to compete with mainstream structure; the Beat Generation embraced marijuana and mescaline, among other drugs, as a means of perspective as well.

Drugs have now become, for the most part, a venture of escapism much like our beloved television, video game console, and fantasy novel. Maybe it has always been that way. I cannot say that this is either good or bad. Most classrooms are too dull, most jobs are too repetitive, most lines are too straight, and most people are too bored. This is a matter of simple pleasure. It is the cold numb space that I drift in when I’m high. The self-inflicted glitch in my machine. It paints the walls with intense technicolor, adds action to my stable life. I close my eyes and watch strands of radiance swirling like a screensaver. And as it wears off, I get dragged down to the solid world. Indole alkaloids, such as acid and psychedelic mushrooms, have more than once left me as a sickly sewer rat in the dull grasp of The Ordinary by the end of the day. My throat dries up. The nutri-ents in my body get depleted. Everything that could be considered good about it is entirely fleeting. We soon regain strength, replenish. Wait a few weeks and you figure out that the feeling is so utterly temporary and all you want to do is buy more products. May-be the impermanence doesn’t even cross your mind, but either way you still want more. Some-times I don’t know if I need it more than I want it, or vice versa, but it feels good and that’s what really matters. The key word is hedonism.

Aside from abusing drugs for the sake of amusement, we self-medicate with them to muddle through cruel emotional troubles. Alcohol is one, if not the only socially ac-ceptable means of self-medication. Drugs are a coping mechanism. Those prone to fear tend to lift off in illicit shuttles. De-pression rises from our fiery bodies for the street merchants to extinguish. Sometimes we feel guilty when in a stressful state, as if depression and rage are simply the wrong emotions to feel. We could blame this so-cietal approach on a frustrating depend-ency upon demanding institutions, vague and deceptive advertising, public relations scams, fake primetime comedies, etc. Com-mercials for fresh medication tell us how to function and offer their pricy comforting solutions. In a consumerist society, we as average citizens are given a small number of options in life and are persuaded to buy supplies for bliss. If we are not fully aware of what we’re hearing and why we’re hear-ing it, we end up convincing ourselves of how we should think and feel based on what snake-tongued profiteers say. Thus, we resort to self-medication in order to obey and fit like puzzle pieces within typi-cal human organization. Many drugs are stress relievers, but the fact is that some are legal and some are not.

But there is more than one type of salesman: the above mentioned Street Merchant. I’ve heard the argument that drugs are first and foremost a financial institution. Cocaine is powdered cash and marijuana is as green as the dollar bills that may or may not be in your wallet or bank account. Criminal organizations all over the world are fueled

by feel-good toxins. Street gangs in dirty urban areas frequently release blood over drugs. It is a thriving, violent market. A dealer once told me he is a businessman before a junkie. I’m almost surprised that marijuana is still illegal when considering our capitalistic society and all the pill com-mercials on TV and all the stocked medi-cine cabinets across the nation.

Many components of popular culture have and will always embrace marijuana as the safest jail breaker. In the 60s, a kid could tune in to any radio station and hear lyrics of drug romance: the Grateful Dead, The Doors, etc. Weed still emanates from the words of hip hop and reggae, and there is a following in the genre of stoner metal. In any case, censorship has taken these refer-ences off of the airwaves. High Times is a strong proponent for recreational drug use, though it can be difficult to take this maga-zine seriously. Hollywood targets smokers with the outwardly delightful stoner mov-ie, such as Half Baked and Friday. Reefer Madness, a film from the 1930s, is an anti-drug film yet it is regularly grouped in with stoner movies as ridiculous entertainment. In this sense, popular culture and the me-dia can be subtly expressive and indirect of what is acceptable in the world when re-garding recreational drugs.

Still, society is torn on how to handle drug abuse. Vast amounts of research have been conducted on all types of drugs since the late 60s. Physical addiction is the cold es-sence that our blood envelopes. Therefore, cocaine and heroine will never detach from a hard stigma. Our entire population

is fully aware of the harmful possibilities of recreational drug use. Information like this can be accessed all over the media. There are anti-drug websites with archives full of personal drug narratives. One could simply open a magazine or turn on his or her television and see an anti-marijuana public service announcement. These PSAs are also on posters and billboards across the country as well as all over the Internet. Media claims like these spit in the blood-shot eyes of drug inspired entertainment. Everyday we are subject to so many mixed messages on the topic of drugs through popular culture and popular news media by separate organizations with separate agendas. The key word is contradiction.

I’ll leave you with one last thought: consid-er the groups of people who flock together and assert themselves as “straight edge”. This basically means they take no part in substance abuse of any kind. They repre-sent a conflicting subculture, coinciding with the punk music scene, to that of drug junkies. Thus, sobriety has become more of a definition, a lifestyle rather than some-thing natural. It seems that society sleeps in constricting cabinets as we begin to di-chotomize the natural aspects of our lives. This may signify how permanent drug cul-ture has become and how it will continue to solidify over time.

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MYDEADPONY: RAPHAËLVICENZIINTERVIEW

Is there any meaning to the pseudonym “My Dead Pony” or is it something that you just randomly came up with?

At first it was some kind of personal joke.I had to ride a pony for a picture when I was a small child and I was terrified of that huge beast. have this picture of me on the pony where you can see I am making the face. After all those years I thought that it was probably dead, hence the name. It is also a reminder that you have to grow up and go beyond your childhood dreams, fears and hope. You have to face yourself and the fact that you’re probably going to die as well.

It says on your website that you were self-taught. How did you first become interested in illustration?

It was a long winded road to get there. I tried my hand at graphic design, webdesign and so on but it was after a good while that I realized that what interested me much more was illustration. I started with vectors illustration, Vault49 was a huge inspiration back then, they still are. Slowly it morphed into the present style, mixing all I’ve learned so far.

I seem to find your work all across the internet, what are some of your favorite art communities and websites?

Yes, I try to promote myself a lot in this way. You never know who is going to look at your works. Lately I found that behance.net is really the best community out there. But I participate to deviantart and creativestem on a regular basis. I also browse regularily some design and illustration blogs such as artskills, changethethought.com, http://secretstill.com/blog/ and many others

Regarding your career, what sort of projects have you worked on or been part of? What are some of your upcoming projects likes?

I did some espadrilles for string republic, which is one the past project I like the most. But mostly there are only personal works. I am working on new things as usual, although it can take some times before it takes shape. I am currently getting my works on canvas.

Could you describe the creation process for a typical illustration?

It all starts with words, an idea shapes itself around a bit of text, it has to be something I can relate to, something that happens to me when I realize something about myself or the world I am living in. Sometimes the idea is popping up in my head, half done already. I usually start to create the letters in Illustrator either from old sources or from scratch. I play around with shapes I build regularily with Illustrator, I make some watercolours or use old ones, I build a girl from various sources and go from there. I don’t follow a strict pattern of creation though.

INTERVIEW BY MASON BALISTRERI MORE ARTAT MYDEADPONY.COM

Do you find yourself coming back to central themes in your art?

The working of the human machine, in all its psychological aspects, the lies we tell ourselves and the discoveries we make when looking at ourselves with open eyes. I mainly use a feminine apporach to it because it feels somehow natural to do it like that.

Which piece out of your portfolio is your favorite, or do you not have one?

I like them for a while then I don’t and then I like them again. I really do like me and my pet tank though, it is direct and has so many meanings that I enjoy that one better but I don’t get high on my own work, I try to see it for what it is.

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