The Creator of The Boy Who Made SilenceJoshua Hagler
Bay Area 2006 Xeric Grant winner Joshua Hagler is gaining acclaim for his subtle storytelling in his new graphic novel The Boy Who Made Silence. Joshua is also well known for his work as an artist in the Sam Kieth book My Inner Bimbo, published by Oni Press. Sequential Tart: First off, can you summarize what The Boy Who Made Silence is about? Joshua Hagler: The Boy Who Made Silence is basically a coming-of-age story that follows Nestor Gudfred, a deaf boy coming up in a small town, from the time he's about ten years old until he's sixteen. He wasn't born deaf however. His loss of hearing occurs mysteriously when he falls off a bridge into a river. Esme, a girl a couple years older, saves him from drowning. Along with becoming deaf, he seems to be able to create a silence that, in turn, creates a series of unusual changes in anyone who happens to be near. Important to the story is that Nestor's father left when Nestor was about four years old. The only sibling to speak of would be his parents' first born who died before Nestor was born. His mother is around, but not really able to cope with his deafness. Nestor's situation is unique in that he's something of a tall tale within the town, yet he's quite isolated as the only deaf person around. One of the churches, and, in turn, the town itself begins to see him as a sort of prophet. As he gets older he sets out to find his father, which could be interpreted as a search for God. The story is something of an allegory as well. The fact that the story takes place in a rural, American Midwestern town is important to the story also. Some of the themes I explore in the book have to do with how religious ideas take root and how people come to believe in these ideas. As Nestor and Esme come of age, readers are introduced to a cast of characters such as Peter'n'Charlie, the upside-down visitor who wears the strange cat mask of the school mascot; Reverend Clearwater, a town pastor in search of a prophet; and Nestor's long-lost father, a dark-haired image of Jesus Christ, who starves himself for weeks at a time as a circus sideshow act. ST: Where do you think the majority of the inspiration for this book came from? JH: I think the two strongest areas of inspiration came with the death of my younger brother when I was very young and from the small Illinois town that I grew up in. Much of the story stems from real life events that have been stretched out into various shapes of fiction. In terms of my brother, when I was young, I often imagined him as a sort of magical boy up in heaven who would have some kind of power or ability that I couldn't have. I would always want to fly or become invisible or read people's minds, but I just couldn't make it happen no matter how hard I tried. I think his death introduced me to a darker world that before that time, I wasn't aware of. My imagination has always sort of worked like that since—as a sort of mechanism that is keen to observing through a sort of darker lens and re-projecting it in a way that tries to give what is observed a little bit of meaning. It's a way of coping with things that you don't have control of I suppose. In terms of the town I grew up in, I always had a hard time finding a sense of belonging. In small towns people derive their identities from who their family is. So if the family goes back generations within a couple towns or counties, there's the sense that you belong, and people tend to accept and trust you a bit more. The other thing that identity comes from is the church you belong to (all of which are Christian), which goes back to the family thing because people tend to belong to the same church their family did. When my family moved there from Idaho, we didn't have that foundation, so I always had the sense of being a little bit outside the huddle trying to piece together what was actually happening within it. Maybe that's why I decided to make Nestor deaf, a sort of concrete reason for why he's less inclined toward noticing what others notice, but more inclined toward noticing things they don't. Also, the Midwest tends to be a very superstitious area in the country. Something about being surrounded by churches and cornfields. It seemed a fitting place for Nestor. ST: How long did it take you to complete the artwork for the book? JH: The strange thing is, I don't really know. I mean, this idea has been growing since college, and I've started drawing a couple versions of it that I've since discarded. Now that I'm working on the other issues almost everyday, it's going quite a bit more quickly than the first issue did. But at the time that I started on the current published version of issue one, I was broke and trying to make it in San Francisco. I worked at a frame shop for a while, took whatever freelance illustration I could until I was doing art full time. But even by that time I had to do as much freelance as I could to pay the bills and I was also getting into the gallery scene to such a degree that it started to make the commissioned illustration work I was doing seem really trite and meaningless. This first issue happened over such a long period of time it's silly. I guess it took a couple of years. I wanted to work on it more, it has always been on my mind, but the only way I could do that was get a publishing deal, which wasn't going to happen for a lot of reasons. Since I got the Xeric, it's propelled me into focusing on it again. Now I'm almost done with issue two and it's only taken a couple of months. I think as I keep going the other issues will take even less time. To answer the question in a more precise way, it takes about eight to twelve hours to do a page. So if I were able to make that my full time pursuit, it wouldn't take all that much time compared to how long it's taken so far. ST: You have a very lush, atypical comic art style. Please tell me which artists have had the biggest influence on you, throughout your life. JH: My influences are all across the board because I'm interested in all kinds of things. But here's a few: Painters—Willem de Kooning, Jenny Saville, Francis Bacon, Cecily Brown, my friends Kim Weinberg and Mike Ritch, my former teacher David Christiana, Gottfried Helnwein, Courtney Reid, Lucien Freud, Giacometti's drawings, Egon Schiele, Gunter Brus (performance, video), Basquiat, Henry Darger, Mark Rothko, Gustav Klimt, Edvard Munch, Nathan Oliviera, Frieda Kahlo, Kiki Smith (sculptor, drawer, installations) .... Cartoonists/comic book artists—Sam Kieth, David Mack, Dave McKean, Daniel Clowes, Craig Thompson, Art Spiegelman, Chris Ware, Tomer Hanuka, Toby Cypress, Greg Ruth, Kent Williams (who's probably more of a painter, but I love his comic book art too), Joann Sfar, Gipi, Paul Hornschemeier, Paul Pope .... Writers- Flannery O'Connor, William Golding, J.D. Salinger, William Faulkner, Dorothy Alison, David Foster Wallace, Jonathon Safron Foer, Haruki Murakami, Kurt Vonnegut, John Steinbeck, Raymond Carver .... Filmmakers- David Lynch, Harmony Korin, Lars von Trier, Richard Linklater, Tommy Pallotta (produced Waking Life and Scanner Darkly), Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, Sophia Coppola, David Fincher, Chris Cunningham, Richard Kelly, Darren Aronofsky, Michael Gondry, Terry Gilliam .... ST: You are currently working with Sam Kieth on My Inner Bimbo, a mini-series currently being published by Oni Press. Can you tell me a bit about that project? JH: My Inner Bimbo is a book that Sam is writing. We're both doing art for it. (You should know something about the process. :) ) I'd rather Sam be the one to speak at length about it because it's his baby, so I can only repeat things that I know have been made public. It's a five-issue black and white miniseries about a middle-aged man named Lo who got married young to a woman (Betsy) who was much older than him. Now that he and his wife are older, he's questioning the marriage and is visited by this stereotypical bimbo who seems to have come from a bubblegum "cocoon" which emitted from Lo's "magic-box." If that doesn't make complete sense to you, just read the story. You'll catch on! It's not made a secret that the Bimbo is another side of Lo's psyche, so like a lot of Sam's stuff, you're seeing more than one version of the same element. Two sides of a coin. The process is a lot of fun, and I really enjoy how Sam is able to create characters that can go from slapstick to tragic and back again within a few pages. And since Sam was such an influence in my work when I was learning to draw comics, it's been a great experience. ST: I've seen it noted that you also do gallery showings of your paintings. Is there a place people can go to see some of your fine art pieces? JH: Shows are going up and coming down all the time. My solo show at the Mina Dresden Gallery in San Francisco just came down, but Varnish Gallery has a couple of older pieces in constant rotation. Aside from that, for everyone outside of the bay area, I keep recent work updated on my website: www.joshuahagler.com. There's also some work featured in current issues of Castle Magazine and the Australian Art Market Report. ST: About a month ago your apartment building caught on fire. Did you lose any of your artwork in the fire? JH: Just one painting that was no good. ST: What future projects do you have waiting in the wings? JH: There's always things buzzing around or fizzing away. Most of them I can't talk about concretely. Mainly, I'm really trying to kick ass on The Boy and concentrate on that. I'm working back and forth between that and Bimbo. I should start painting again as soon as I get into a new studio this summer sometime. Aside from that, there's been a film project that I hope finds its remaining funding soon. It's got some well-known names signed on and I would be doing the art that shows up in animated sequences as well as on film. I have a novel I want to work on again one of these days. And I'm going to be doing some work with the Mina Dresden Gallery to help make it a more prominent art destination in the city. I've also had a couple of essay ideas that I want to make time for sometime this year. ST: Do you have plans to attend San Diego Comic Con this year? JH: No, but a certain publisher will be there making an announcement about The Boy Who Made Silence. I will have a table in artist's alley at Wizard World Chicago instead of San Diego this year.
|
|||
|
Home |
Features |
Columns |
Culture Vultures |
Report Card
Indicia | Contact | Archives © Sequential Tart, 1998 – 2021 |
|||
