Blomsterdrom (Swedish / Norwegian online translate for ‘Flower Dream’). Several weeks ago, as soon as I’d made the decision to once again start creating my weekly comics, I had a dream that I was showing the originals to a long time friend. As we went through an archive box of the originals (which are not usually finished, and so feel lackluster to me), we came across one that had a second panel consisting of nothing but a close-up of a bouquet of tulip-like flowers, and it was in a compelling vibrant blue. Similar to a dream I had decades ago in which I came across a ‘cubist font’ that dynamically morphed on the page, I was struck with how this flower panel sucked my attention in, and seemed to be alive, and at how I had no memory of having drawn it before.
There’s a little of that when I go over my old strips. Most are ‘meh,’ but sometimes I find one, or a panel of one, that I don’t quite remember putting together, and it’s really intriguing, and there’s a magical quality in the finding. In the case of this dream, though, it was clear that something about the strip – the creative process - that represents to me something vital and central to my being (the word ‘being’, here, as a verb).
Of course, the problem with converting a dream into a comic strip has been one of compromise from the beginning, and so the first step, on waking and remembering the dream, was to engage my sense of disappointment over the fact that there is no way I can convey they depth and breathlessness that the living panel of blue flowers brought to me. And so the strip – as always – becomes a compromise between that which I imagine it may be in an Ideal Realm and what it must be in this limited physical realm. Compromised both by my inability to access the Ideal (limited, as I am, by my mortal faculties) as well as by my inability to translate my sliver of vision of it onto paper (limited, as I am, by my lack of skill).
So, the strip here comes together with several flower photos, creating a story of flowers, culminating with the fourth frame in a fading image that I own of myself only several months old, standing in our garden in Connecticut, investigating what I’m guessing was a rose.
This would have been the summer of 1967. (I was born in January.) My sister (6 years my elder) reports that this photo was taken by my father, and that it was my first time outside in the back yard, wobbling around as I was. I have few memories of this time, or Connecticut generally; we moved to Chicago when I was three. I do remember looking down from the roof, my entire family shouting up at me from the ground. My father, it was reported, subsequently required to put screws in all the windows to prevent them from being opened more than about six inches, so reliable was my roof-escape mobility as soon as I could walk.
The third frame here is of David Burpee (of seed fame) at Floradale Farms from Smithsonian Online Virtual Archives, circa 1935-1940. I was drawn to his incongruous clothing in the image long before I realized who I was looking at.
The first frame from Robert Hope, Northern English documentary photographer. “M Robertson Florists, Grainger Market,” from the Robert Hope collection, Newcastle upon Tyne, dated sometime in the ‘70s.
The luminous flowers in the second frame were from a composite of several bouquet images, photographers unknown.
Blomsterdrom (Swedish / Norwegian online translate for ‘Flower Dream’). Several weeks ago, as soon as I’d made the decision to once again start creating my weekly comics, I had a dream that I was showing the originals to a long time friend. As we went through an archive box of the originals (which are not usually finished, and so feel lackluster to me), we came across one that had a second panel consisting of nothing but a close-up of a bouquet of tulip-like flowers, and it was in a compelling vibrant blue. Similar to a dream I had decades ago in which I came across a ‘cubist font’ that dynamically morphed on the page, I was struck with how this flower panel sucked my attention in, and seemed to be alive, and at how I had no memory of having drawn it before.
ReplyDeleteThere’s a little of that when I go over my old strips. Most are ‘meh,’ but sometimes I find one, or a panel of one, that I don’t quite remember putting together, and it’s really intriguing, and there’s a magical quality in the finding. In the case of this dream, though, it was clear that something about the strip – the creative process - that represents to me something vital and central to my being (the word ‘being’, here, as a verb).
Of course, the problem with converting a dream into a comic strip has been one of compromise from the beginning, and so the first step, on waking and remembering the dream, was to engage my sense of disappointment over the fact that there is no way I can convey they depth and breathlessness that the living panel of blue flowers brought to me. And so the strip – as always – becomes a compromise between that which I imagine it may be in an Ideal Realm and what it must be in this limited physical realm. Compromised both by my inability to access the Ideal (limited, as I am, by my mortal faculties) as well as by my inability to translate my sliver of vision of it onto paper (limited, as I am, by my lack of skill).
So, the strip here comes together with several flower photos, creating a story of flowers, culminating with the fourth frame in a fading image that I own of myself only several months old, standing in our garden in Connecticut, investigating what I’m guessing was a rose.
This would have been the summer of 1967. (I was born in January.) My sister (6 years my elder) reports that this photo was taken by my father, and that it was my first time outside in the back yard, wobbling around as I was. I have few memories of this time, or Connecticut generally; we moved to Chicago when I was three. I do remember looking down from the roof, my entire family shouting up at me from the ground. My father, it was reported, subsequently required to put screws in all the windows to prevent them from being opened more than about six inches, so reliable was my roof-escape mobility as soon as I could walk.
The third frame here is of David Burpee (of seed fame) at Floradale Farms from Smithsonian Online Virtual Archives, circa 1935-1940. I was drawn to his incongruous clothing in the image long before I realized who I was looking at.
The first frame from Robert Hope, Northern English documentary photographer. “M Robertson Florists, Grainger Market,” from the Robert Hope collection, Newcastle upon Tyne, dated sometime in the ‘70s.
The luminous flowers in the second frame were from a composite of several bouquet images, photographers unknown.