Lifeboat

Because I’m not just an Academic In The Streets/Artist In The Sheets, but rather a real deal arts-based researcher and working artist, I like to publish things in lots of places, but I particular like the popular press– both for visibility reasons as well as for reasons related to my larger project around larger publics, larger conversations, and democratizing the conversation about art and meaning. I also owe a lot to my roots and experiences as a newspaper cartoonist. This is the place where I learned the business and those tools are the foundation of everything I do today. Years and years ago when I was a brand new cartoonist still figuring out how to do crosshatching by hand I published a weekly comic in a newspaper, but I haven’t done any newspaper work since then. Until now! Today I ran a short piece in the Hampshire Gazette Home Magazine about home repair.

It’s a little hard to read in the print version of the paper, but I’ve been super nice and made a screen shot you can zoom into, and a PDF version to download. No need for a magnifying glass! The first link is to the PDF of the newspaper version, but the second link is to the full size “readable version”– you can read all the small bits that were not visible (including some easter eggs…)

Yes, home repair.

When the editors sent out a call asking people to submit stories about their homes and home repairs and home histories, I thought, HAVE I GOT A STORY FOR YOU. I love my little townhouse. I really do. But it has been a long journey of rehabilitation and more than one major surprise. Read for yourself about how repairing a neglected house is more than a process of improvement, but rather a process of healing. Just like with people.