What I'm Watching (Marina)
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Filtering by Tag: ART
Books I Read: Why Art?
I adore Why Art? by Eleanor Davis. It’s hard to describe what this book is. A comic book? A book of art? A rumination on why art matters and how it shapes us? It also would make for a great gift. Buy a copy!
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Estate Sale (North Hollywood)
An estate sale at the North Hollywood, Calif., home of the granddaughter of Academy Award-winning production designer William Cameron Menzies. For more of my photographs, follow me on Instagram.
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Black Mamba
A mural of Kobe Bryant on the back of a store in Burbank. For more of my photos, follow me on Instagram.
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Triptych of Women
A trio of paintings by Georgia Gardner Gray at Regen Projects in Los Angeles. Follow my Instagram for more.
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A Venn Diagram for a Book Proposal-in-Progress
I made this Venn diagram for a book proposal I’m working on to help me visualize the intersection of ideas.
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Books I Read: 100 Demons
I’ve read Lynda Barry’s One! Hundred! Demons! before, but I wanted to read it again because I find it so inspiring. My first encounters with Barry’s work were with Ernie Pook’s Comeek, and I’ve been a fan ever since. I love One! Hundred! Demons! for a variety of reasons: the work is beautiful, the stories are moving, the message is about persevering regardless of what anyone else’s thinks or what happens to you. My favorite strips in this series are the ones focusing on her childhood, how maligned she was yet kept insisting that she might one day have something to say. I read this slowly so I could savor how precious these artworks are.
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What I'm Watching (Nostalgia)
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Alan Moore Foresees the Future of Pornography
Alan Moore foresees the future of mobile phone pornography in 1982’s The Saga of the Swamp Thing #1, in which a man “looks at his hand” where “something shimmers” and “a blue lady is dancing just for him.”
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Books I Read: A Child's Life and Other Stories
I can’t remember the first time I read A Child’s Life and Other Stories, but it would have been over 20 years ago. The book seared itself into my brain. The art spellbound me, the stories were set in the Bay Area where I had grown up, and the rage and pain of a young person who was neglected at home and acting out sexually and through drugs and alcohol was deeply familiar to me. I could say this book changed my life, but that sounds overdramatic and like a cliche. I will say that when I sat down to reread the book, I wondered if it would have the same effect on me all these years later. And it did. It makes me want to be braver and more reckless and more honest in my own work. And that’s invaluable. Thank you, Phoebe Gloeckner.
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I'm a Ghost
The New York Times Magazine has a fascinating story about ghosting written by Stella Tan and illustrated by Liana Finck. Nota bene: “But those who disappear on their paramours have their reasons for going silent.”
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Munch
A selection of art books for sale at an estate sale. For more of my L.A. photographs, follow me on Instagram.
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Books I Read: After land
After Land is an extremely strange book by Chris Taylor. I loved it for the images. It’s haunting and weird and striking. The story is elusive and slippery. If you’re looking for something that’s different, this book is that.
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Books I Read: Can of Worms
Can of Worms by Catherine Doherty is a remarkable semi-autobiographical account of the author’s attempt to track down and reconnect with her birth mother. Unflinching and insistent, it peels back the layers on what happens when the mother-daughter bond goes wrong and the devastating effects on the truth-teller.
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Books I Read: A Few Collectors
I’m in love with A Few Collectors by Pierre Le-Tan. It is a wunderkammer of a book, an extraordinary collection of small essays about collectors that Le-Tan knew and / or admired and / or encountered. I’m not even sure what this book is about, because I don’t think collecting is it. Perhaps how to live one’s life, or the importance of beautiful things, or the inherent transience of existence. I actually read it slower and slower because I didn’t want it to end. Also, the printing is beautiful. It’s a coffee table book in miniature.
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The Artist Goes Shopping
Some of the wonderful art supplies at Carter Sexton. For more of my photographs, follow me on Instagram.
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RIP David Lynch
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My, My American Bukkake & My, My American Bukkake 2 Now Available Online
For the first time in many, many years, my seminal (!) American Bukkake comics are now available online. You can view them, plus read an introduction about their production and publication history, on my website here.
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Reading Goals for 2025 and a Return to Erotic Comics Art
A panel from an erotic comic I created some years ago: “My, My American Bukkake Too”
2024 is over. Thank god. 2025 has begun. It just has a better ring to it, doesn’t it? In any case, when I was promoting my memoir in late 2023, I was asked what my favorite book I had read that year was and I realized the answer was: none. Yes, in fact, in 2023, I read exactly zero books. That was in part on purpose because I was finishing writing my own book, and I didn’t want some other author’s voice in my head. That said, it was a little embarrassing. I was a writer, an author. Shouldn’t I be reading books?
So in 2024, I decided to read some books and track my progress. In all I read a total of 21 books, which was a lot more than the no books I’d read the year before. So a win in that regard. But the reality is that I didn’t like most of the books I read in 2024. I’d chosen them mostly at random and for who knows what reason. There was fiction, nonfiction, memoir, self-help, one photo book, and graphic novels.
But my favorite book was what could be described as a picture book: Leela Corman’s Victory Parade. It was stunning and inventive and startling and arresting and wildly creative. In a way, I felt a little silly. I write words. Wasn’t I supposed to prefer one of the other books I’d read, with a lot of words, like, you know, Pynchon or Marlowe or someone like that? No, I liked the one with the pictures.
In any case, I decided I’d do another reading challenge this year and chart my progress publicly again, but in 2025 I’m going to attempt to only read books that are picture books. For example, my first book of the year, which is a reread and which I’ve already started, is Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics.
That title selection may hold a clue. The truth is: I want to create a new comic strip, which is something I haven’t done in some time. Quite a few years ago, I created two erotic comics about the times I went to go see bukkake-themed adult movies being filmed. Those comics are called “My, My American Bukkake” and “My, My American Bukkake Too.” And I’ve long wanted to do a third bukkake comic strip. So I think perhaps this re-interest in pictures and words is laying the groundwork for that.
All of which is to say, you can follow my picture book reading progress at BOOKS I READ.
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Blue Skies
The billboard at David Zwirner’s terrific William Eggleston show. For more photos, follow me on Instagram.
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