On writing
Billy Mavreas
I write
sporadically although I more often work with text. I find it easy to convince
myself that my text-based visual arts practice is the main part of my writing
practice. This gets complicated because my visual arts practice is quite
multi-disciplinary, involving collage, concrete and visual poetry making and
comics/visual storytelling. If that wasn’t enough my habit of collecting paper
ephemera and found paper scraps has insinuated itself into my art.
When I actually
get around to using just words in writing, the context is either random
semi-foolish tweets (an extension of my long standing practice of bumper
sticker poetry and band name poetry) or earnest blog posts mostly about
creative process.
This all doesn’t
stop me from telling myself stories about things in life and using personal
(unfolding, unwritten) storytelling as a guiding principle in life. Neither
does it stop me from self-identifying as a writer. As in writer/artist.
I’ve been
drawing all my life and writing on and off since adolescence. I studied
undergrad English Lit for what that’s worth. I worked on my college paper and
university literary journal. I wrote poems. In university I shared my poems
with another student writer and he unceremoniously suggested I stick to
drawing. The advice of another 19 year old froze my poetry for decades. Kids,
don’t listen to kids.
At the time I
was increasingly self identifying as a writer (art was something I always did,
hence took for granted, was known about me so it didn’t have the same weight or
loftiness to me as did calling myself a writer). That silly episode broke the
spell and I continued - a little- writing in secret. Mostly awesome song lyrics
and slogans. I started writing graffiti more seriously, always in clear capitol
letters. I got way weirder with my text. Invented alphabets, channelled
entities.
I cannot
successfully extract ‘writing’ from a myriad other creative processes. My
visual poetry is composed with collage and found fragments more than type or
text. My drawing is heavily informed by the minute strokes and gestures well
known to the calligrapher or long-hand writer. My hand writing is an odd
semi-cursive that grew out of all caps lettering. I am a decent letterer. I
enjoy sigil crafting and logo designing.
I am glad I’m
well over forty now so I can presume I have something to say. I am able to
express myself competently in short personal essay form however choppy. If I
have writing goals they include more graphic novels, at least one solid fantasy
short story, at least one decent YA novel, and some children’s books. I have
little interest carving out a larger place for myself in the various literary
writing scenes I’ve been around for years although I do want to find the
opportunity to write more, straight up word after word writing.
I love reading
and I love books. I love odd puzzling books that aren’t necessarily hard to
read. I want to make odd puzzling books. I’ll make them, as I already do,
regardless of the kind of writing they are made with.
The challenge
for the multi-disciplinary writer/artist, as I see it, is to achieve a balance
in output, a union of voices and tendencies, that speak of a whole person. It’s
ok if I am known as the guy who paints bunnies or the person who draws stoner
comix or the guy who makes Xerox abstractions or yet another one who publishes
small collage zines, as long as I know that I am cresting towards a unification
process, wherein all my offerings are part of the same coherent universe.
Writing can function as a glue of some sort as I use it most to explicate to
myself and others what I am doing as an artist, as a writer/artist, as a writer.
Billy Mavreas is a Montreal based
multi-disciplinary artist/writer and co-director of Monastiraki, an art shop in
the Mile End neighbourhood.
He
is the author of three graphic novels, one book of posters and many mini books,
prints, zines, pamphlets and assorted ephemera.
No comments:
Post a Comment