Hello to everyone out there in the Do Art Nation! We hope you’re off to an amazing summer.
One of the amazing things about making comics, and learning about comics, is finding a rich history of diverse and brilliant artists who are able to make the medium their own. Discovering these artists becomes a part of your own journey as an artist and a creative person: in seeing their work, their stories, their unique style of expression, You are not only inspired. You see the art form, and the world, in a new way. Art like that is truly special, and the artists that bring it to us are people that we cherish whether we have ever met them, or even if our lifetimes never intersect.
The world of comics lost a legend last week. Marjane Satrapi, an Iranian comic book artist & filmmaker, passed away, leaving an incredible body of work. Reading her book Persepolis was one of those moments in my life that I mentioned: a spark of contact with a beautiful work of art at a moment when I was starting to discover that “comics” or “graphic novels” have an incredible range of style and expression, bringing stories of all kinds to life in way no other medium can quite duplicate. In Persepolis, I saw how comics could render a person’s feelings & life experience even more vividly in an abstract, expressive style, showing how the lines between fantasy & reality can become blurred in real life, our desires, our anxieties, our hopes & fears taking shape & finding places among the “real” people & things we encounter in life.
It’s been a few years since I read Persepolis, & hearing the news that the author is no longer with us has me thinking about what I learned, what I really took away from the book. I probably would have given you a different answer years ago, when I first read it. But looking back on it I’m drawn to the main character–based on Satrapi’s own life in Iran before & during its revolution in 1979. And I think back to the way she memorializes those she loved with her art–not only herself but her parents, her grandparents, her friends. Though life takes her, as it may take us, far from the people who make up home & belonging to us, their words, their acts of kindness, and yes, their wacky eccentricities stay with us, even if we cannot see or hear them. We carry them with us, & we hope that our words, our acts of kindness, our wacky eccentricities draw a little doodle on their hearts in return.
The power of art is its power to connect! How has a book, a comic, a work of art connected you with someone? Let us know in the comments, & KEEP CREATING!
