SPEIERMAN SPEIERMAN...

A Visit from the ghost of Imaginations Past 

My yearbook picture from 5th grade. By this time I was heavily involved in drawing daily.

Marvel Comics figure heavily in my development as an artist.  Comic book art served to prime and foster my curiosity and imagination and transport me out of the everyday of my childhood.  I easily forgot all the things going on around me, insulated by imagination.  Super heroes and villains were part of a world I created and could invite others into, one I seemed to control.  This world stood in contrast to most of the world around me that seemed uncontrollable.  The imagined world belonged to me and my friends, adults weren't allowed in.    

Our adventures extended beyond paper into the playground and after school in neighborhood streets, parks and woods.  Like any group of children with common interests we had a community of practice, we were discursive comrades.   We knew our roles at recess; I "was" Wolverine or "was" Spiderman, and my friends similarly clothed themselves in various characters as we created our missions, battles and other plots of different scales, temporal and spacial.

The reaches of our imaginations were (are?) vast and seemingly without limit; we created the world! We were however tethered to the drudgery of spelling tests, diagramming sentences (did that matter at all?), getting in line and reading "X" number of library books per month.  Do teachers have any idea what stories are being told daily in a child's mind and to his friends?  To what extent do they crush the tendency they wish to cultivate, that is genuine creativity and valuation of stories?

As a child I felt the world's demands on me and to an increasing degree as my awareness of it (the world) grew and I became more "thrown-in." My drawing has always been constrained, consciously or otherwise, like probably any artist's. Many of these constraints are self imposed in order to avoid risk of failure, failure for example to create an original pose or purely imagined setting and scenery, to portray visually and in two dimensions.  This safety-in-risk-aversion has lurking behind it the possibility of success and breakthrough. Triumph, even insight.  And what is the cost really, of a "failed" drawing?  Shouldn't a component of my success be the earnest trial and effort, the development of willingness to do something different and more extensive? What safety is there in this comfort so conceived?  

Part of what makes Comic Art successful and engaging is its ability to transport the viewer beyond the ordinary in terms of human ability, powers, scale and stories.  We often find ourselves seeking something greater, unknown, unfamiliar and beyond our experience. A "being in the world" beyond banality.  As various creatures (human and otherwise) slumber in their hibernation this winter and in their day to day routines, I find myself re-emerging, unseasonably and unexpectedly, to rediscover a re-imagined world.