Great fuel

The New Zealand Book Council have included my recommendations for NZ's next Great Kiwi Classic on their Booknotes Unbound site.

And my list gets another favourable mention on Wellington City Libraries' News Blog.

I hope there's something in this little lot to fire up your interest in graphic fiction!

Great full year

 

My thanks to Pikitia Press, who kindly asked me to review my great year in and out of comics. I'm very grateful they went to the trouble of sourcing complimentary pages from my comics to illustrate the post.

Islanded one

 

Day one of the Graphic Novelist Exchange Residency began with Ant Sang, Tim Gibson and me being introduced to Chuang Yung-shin, 61Chi and Ahn Zhe by Catriona Ferguson, Director of the NZ Book Council, with the help of translation from Dala Publishing's Aho Huang, at Vaughan Park Retreat Centre (you can read my introduction to the residency here).

Left to right: Dala Publishing's Aho Huang (our translator), 61Chi, Ahn Zhe, me, Chuang Yung-shin, Tim Gibson and Ant Sang.

Once the welcoming was over, we had the first of what was to become a daily ritual: the meeting.

 

The meeting gave us all a chance to air our initial ideas and thoughts about what form our collaboration could yield. 

Since finding out I had been selected for the residency, I had put a lot of thought into form and took along some graphic novels and stories and sketches to illustrate my ideas.

 

 

Click on images for links. 

I chose The Octonauts and the Only Lonely Monster to show how pages could be printed in different directions, upside down, for eg, to engage readers to participate physically with book and how this technique could be employed to make a reader from one culture shift their perspective, literally, to see a work from another culture's point-of-view (start video at 5:05 for demonstration of how the book has to be turned to be read).

I talked about Mary and Bryan Talbot's graphic collaboration, Dotter of her Father's Eyes, which demonstrated beautifully not only the relationship of its subjects but also is endearingly revealing about its author's marriage. 

New Zealand cartoonist Grant Buist had told me about another collaboration that involved translation of sorts: The Red Re[a]d Diary, by Teddy Kristiansen with Steven T. Seagle, where one artist, unable to read the language of the original manuscript, had made up his own interpretation for what the story was by looking at the images and text and guessing. 

And I talked about the graphic conversation Dylan Horrocks had with Emily Perkins, that resulted in All Hail Ellie Destroyer of Worlds.

I wanted to visually represent the surface image we present to strangers and the inner that we only reveal once we become friends, and how this applies to our cultures. 

I demonstrated how cut-outs could be used to hide then reveal parts of a narrative.

 

This idea was popular as it fit well with the overall theme of the exchange: Island to Island. 

The meeting gave us lots to think about. We decided a walk was in order to let the thoughts settle in. 

Vaughan Park is siutated at the edge of Long Bay Regional Park and the weather was kind to us as we took in the beautiful views....

 

 

...recorded ourselves recording and...

 

...recorded graphic fiction in the sand....

 

...encountered a little history about an earlier cross cultural exchange...

 

...and found our own ways to bridge our cultures.

 

 

In complete words

New Zealand poet Paula Green has blogged a terrific write-up of Dylan Horrocks' Incomplete Works book launch on Tuesday evening, focussing on the part of the discussion my "Incomplete Names" comic is about - which she kindly mentions.

Thanks so much, Paula! I can see that me and Rachel Jones are going to have to have words.

In complete

1. Incomplete Works is published by Victoria University Press.

2. Dylan Horrocks was half my prize for winning the Auckland University Graphic Fiction Competition.

3. Sarah Laing adopted my rabbits. 

4. I have reviewed Sarah's novel but have yet to find a home for my review.

5. Sarah may have phrased it differently.
6. Dylan may not have said this.

7. Usurper, doppelganger, pretender!
8. "Nathan Jones" was a hit for 80s Brit-band Bananarama.

 

All text and images ©RaeJoyce 2014

Exit bit

I just got back from the launch of  the Ngā Pakiwaihtuhi exhibition at the St Paul Street Gallery, central Auckland. The exhibition contains work by many of New Zealand's finest comic artists and is curated by Dylan Horrocks. 

 This was my view from the Mimosa cafe in Takapuna where I stopped for a coffee and a muffin on my way to the comics exhibition.

 

I didn't finish this sketch of the window cleaner. I wanted to show his reflection beside the bank's slogan, but a bird titched on my head.

 

The exhibition was very interesting - all the work was inspiring - it made my brain fizz. When my senses felt overwhelmed I went outside to sit on a bench where I could look at the mingling through glass as if viewing a diorama.

 

I was distracted from my sketching by a conversation between the people further along the bench.

 

 I tried to capture the ambiance.

 

 In between ear-wigging I was noticing things. I noticed this guy looked like he wished someone would talk to him before staring at the same panel on Mat Tait's work for some time.

 

 It got cool. When the people got up to leave I noticed a skip at the end of the bench.

 Then a man in a suit that appeared to have been pencilled on him sat next to me, said something. I smiled. He smiled. My husband arrived with our kids and I left.

All images copyright © 2013 Rachel J Fenton (Rae Joyce)

Graphic sorry

Couple of things for you before the Easter Bunny gets here:

Just enough time to get your nominations in to Story South Award - closing April 9th - for the best short story of at least 1,000 words published online (not self-published) in 2011. Thanks to Dorothee Lang for this link.

My thanks to AUT and judge Dylan Horrocks for picking my graphic story "Alchemy Hour" to win the AUT New Zealand Creative Writing Competition - my first ever win - seriously, unless we're counting that spagetti I won at the tombola in infant school (spag that turned out to be dried up in the single person sized tin - enough for one person, that is, not a tin as large as a single person - that would be silly). If you'd like to read the story, it's here.

Followers of my face book page will have noted I was particularly overwhelmed by my success, in part for the above reason, but also because I almost didn't enter the competition at all. The deadline was looming and it wasn't clear from the entry guidelines if non-students could enter. Huge thanks to Ant Sang for finding out and letting me know I could. But I was literally going against the clock and the story I did enter wasn't even my first choice.

My first choice ate up a lot of time and paper and ended up down the back of the book case. My winning story, therefore, was something of a last minute panic, and lucky for me it was because that's what gave me the inspiration for the structure - that and the fact I can't actually draw! Oh, and the other fact that I was down to two pieces of A4 cold pressed cotton paper. Just goes to show it's sometimes what you don't have that counts! That was the structure sorted.

Content wise, my daughter had just had her first surf lesson and I'd spent the whole of that day just staring at the sea, studying the way the waves peak and roll. I wanted to capture that. In my dreams I imagined the piece as a mini movie, I'm not convinced I pulled it off, but the thing I am happiest about is that I finally got to tell the story about my granddad.

My granddad taught me to paint with his watercolour paints. He kept them in a shortbread tin in the pantry cupboard in the caravan where my brother and I holidayed with him. I found him just after he'd died. I was nine.

I'm sorry I was too late, I hope my story conveys that.

Name some paper

Signed by the lovely Emily Perkins and the handsome and jovial Dylan Horrocks.....

I have a copy of their collaborative graphic conversation - on why Emily writes fiction and Dylan draws it - to give away....

....all you have to do is be your usual startlingly witty selves and leave me a jolly comment and I'll pop your graphic/literary representations (erm, names on a bit of paper) in a hat and announce the lucky winner....

....when I have ten comments (not including my replies!)

Have a great weekend :)