The List (Part 2)

After much thought, or rather little thought depending on whose eyes you are looking through, the battle between creativity and cartoons as far as which tops the list of personal interest is one of mutual understanding and not one for dominance.

How creativity got past the round of necessity is clear when you realize I don't need to be creative all the time. The same goes for cartoons, as there are some nights where I don't even watch adult swim, which unfortunately are the nights they are rerunning Venture Bros. Season 2. So what was the deciding factor in the final round?

Personal connection. Yes, a vague thing to consider given how many different ways that could be interpreted. But there's a logic to this that needs explaining and a thought process that requires rest, relaxation for clarity of thought, and a level of personal honesty I really don't like facing due to the severity of realizing a truth that I was naive enough to not believe out of comfort and a lack of security. Don't know what I'm talking about? Look my my Seattle blog entries and those that follow. If you can find them, that is.

The personal connection starts with cartoons. They were there from the beginning and have always been there for as long as I could remember. Alvin and the Chipmunks, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Disney films, DuckTales, Tale Spin, Chip & Dale's Rescue Ranger, Goof Troop, Tiny Toons, Animaniacs, Gargoyles, Batman: The Animated Series, Sailor Moon, Sonic the Hedgehog (PKA Sonic SatAM), Sam & Max: Freelance Police, Pepper Anne, Recess, Pixar films, Pokemon, DragonBallZ, Powerpuff Girls, Gundam Wing, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Cowboy Bebop, Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, Teen Titans, Kids Next Door, Robot Chicken, Ben 10, Futurama, Family Guy, Full Metal Alchemist, The Boondocks, American Dad, Venture Brothers, and just added to that list are the short films on The Grickle Channel. And those are the shows I can remember by name if not by their episode contents that date as far back as when I first moved out of California and into Oregon. Which was back when I was three. And for the most part, those shows are in chronological order as I discovered them and fell fan of them. Keen eyes should notice a trend in my cartoon interest starting with what was seen as kid-friendly to more mature and even stylistic animations. Who knows what will be the next cartoon or animation interest to catch my eye. Horton Hears a Who did catch my eye, but not enough to warrant an addition to the list. The only certain thing is that these shows capture my imagination on levels that I can't even describe with words let alone properly illustrate with images.

The personal connection with creativity has a similar history. From my main interest with cartoons spawned a tangent of creating what could be classified these days as fan fictions. It started, more or less somewhere between when I discovered Gargoyles and Sonic SatAM. They were mostly unfinished products or projects that lead to nowhere due to a lack of knowing what I was doing. Those were the more ambitious ones. Generally speaking, stayed in the realm of character design using visual influences from what I was watching and then using what elements I liked into creating characters. Some could be easily inserted into their respective universe I appropriated their look from while others too original to fit in anything I was watching at the time. Either way you look at it, the happiest times I had growing up were drawing and creating characters who ultimately wouldn't live past their initial design phase. It was a private performance that I got a lot of joy out of, as one teacher once said of me when she saw a pile of dismantled computer parts in my seminar studio one critique.

To pick one over the other is to create a paradox by the very definition of the word. If creativity is more important than cartoons, the how was I able to create anything without cartoons to inspire me? Conversely, if cartoons are the most important of my interests, then why do I not get the same joy from watching them as I do from drawing characters inspired by them? Maybe in some alternate timeline one can exist without the other, but in this temporal tangent? That is not the case.

I've been trying my damnest to bring this into my college education, my poor excuse for an art career. And every time I do, it seems like the people I'm showing it to are either not accepting the aesthetics of it or simply cannot get past the idea that what they are looking at is a cartoon. Maybe they are the same thing, but either way, that's how I've felt for a while. I've cited artists in the past that use elements of cartoons as well as appropriated their aestheics either because of their influence, the subversiveness of play, how they function as a security blanket, an ability to trigger a familiar feeling of nostalgia even if the image is something new, or even their marketability.

What I know about cartoons probably doesn't translate very well into art. That's how I felt before I even saw any art by any of these artists. I've come to realize that is a half-truth. What I do know about cartoons can be art, but I have to figure out what if any can be made into art. Creativity takes a backseat, as does my interest in cartoons, because logic is the only thing that can solve such a mental challenge. You can be creative in your solutions, which is probably where the bulk of the art of the world actually comes from. But a creative solution for me is using a 9mm hollow point as a can-opener for an industrial-size barrel of baking soda or flushing pasta noodles down the toilet so that it creates a wig that can be styled through the use of a "dinglehopper."

Question is what do I know that the artists I've cited know about cartoons that can translate into art? Rhetorical, I know, seeing how I just answered that question with the citation of said artists. But what do I know about what these artists have done with the genre that I can use in the same way that I use design elements from cartoons I like in my own character designs? You can only do so much before you end up producing a product that ends up fooling your viewer into thinking they are looking at something their mind is saying is one thing but you're saying is something else that is appropriating the look of that thing you are thinking about that you think are you looking at.

I know I lost a few of you with that last sentence, so consider this break a visual bookmark while you make sense of it.

This whole thing comes back full circle. Right now, I don't know what I'm doing. My art interest and my personal interests have decided to go two different routes due to the opinions and critiques of the people who are ultimately in control of if I graduate or not, and there is no route on the maps I have that can bring the two back no the same path.

I'll close this with a little story. I talked to one of my out-spoken film friends, one I believe talks badly about me behind my back, about my situation. She feels that the school is probably just trying to get more money out of me. It's a very real possibility, because she believes all the stuff she's seen in the gallery every show since she's been enrolled is utter crap. She's taken Art History and while she understand the evolution of thought of contemporary art, it's still crap. It makes me wonder if the contemporary artist really is living the pop culture stereotype and just doesn't know it. But she is also in the same frame of mind I am, which is the last thing I want to do to the department is produce work that ultimately gives them and the school a big middle-finger. She says contest it. Debating has never been my strongest ability. Mostly because I never have anything to say supporting my point of view that is credible.