HIDDEN ROBOT

PART 2

The DVD showcases a series of pieces that are simply sitting outside your home...canvases made of various materials like tile board and other misc. surfaces, and you've adorned them with incredible paintings and sketches. What continues to drive your passion for "found art"?
DM: I started making art very young. And I made art out of mostly garbage. Leftovers. Old boxes, old wood, scrap paper, etc. I have a natural tendency to look at something mundane and see the value in it. See what I could use it for, or what I could turn it into. Much of art to me is the magic of making value out of nothing. Turning garbage into gold to keep with the Alchemy metaphor.

Your influences seem to be right there on the page, literally sometimes in the form of works created by some of history's greatest artists that you have replicated, could you mention some names and maybe even some specific pieces that have inspired you over time.
DM: I’m open to taking in things from all levels and all times and all cultures. I have a pretty wide open radar about where I can find inspiration. For instance, in the current Kabuki story, there is quite a bit of ripples in the story that were inspired by research into Nikola Tesla and Shakespeare, as well as a hundred other places. My art, my stories are kind of where I digest and sort and connect and piece together and intergrate and absorb all of the research and experiences that I take in as a person.

You stated on the DVD, "Sometimes your ideas and instincts are smarter then you are and sometimes you just have to follow that."
How much of that notion plays into your overall creative process? Is it an attempt to balance preconception and spontaneity for you? How much of that notion plays into the construction of Kabuki on an issue by issue basis and even for the series as a whole?
DM: There is quite a lot of conscious design, and effort and hard work and planning, but doing those things gets you in tune to the zone where the large ideas hit you over the head and have a way of being attracting themselves to you when you are in the zone of dedicated work. Then the you have to roll with them and the work becomes larger than you are, and larger than you could have figured out ahead of time.

Shy Creatures will arrive in Fall 2007 as your first foray into children’s literature, where are you going with children's books for those who might not have seen the DVD or been to your message board recently?
DM: For The Shy Creatures, I wrote the entire story of it while I was writing the script to KABUKI: The Alchemy.

I had set a premise in the Kabuki series of incorporating children’s stories into the narrative of the story. And the story itself as a retelling of children’s stories.

For instance, the first KABUKI volume KABUKI: Circle of Blood is a retelling of Alice and Wonderland and Through The Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll. In that story, like in Looking Glass, each of the characters corresponds to a piece on the chess board. And like Carroll’s stories, Circle of Blood was the story of a child’s journey to an adult consciousness, or to use the Chess metaphors of both books, the journey across the Chess board from Pawn into Queen.

Volume 2 of KABUKI, called Dreams, alludes to some Japanese folk stories for children, including the Japanese Book of Hells.

In Vol 4 KABUKI: Skin Deep, where Kabuki is incarcerated into a maximum security facility for reprogramming or containing defective government agents, Dr. Suess was the central Kids book reference.

And In KABUKI: Metamorphosis, I had introduced My Invisible Friend to underscore the themes of that story.

So when I was writing KABUKI: The Alchemy, where Kabuki is looking for a new line of work, I knew this was going to be the series that all of the references to those children’s stories paid off and came to the forefront of the story and not just as subtext.

There is a moment in the story when Kabuki is given some children’s books that are said to have a hidden meaning beyond the surface layer. And that the story and themes in the books have a deeper ripple effect to their readers than just pure entertainment for children.

So I knew I was going to feature one of these books in full in the context of the story. That book was The Shy Creatures. And I wrote it in full while in the course of writing the second issue script of The Alchemy.

I wanted the art of The Shy Creatures to be very simple and expressive. And I wanted it to contrast the painted approach of the rest of the Kabuki issue. So I rendered The Shy Creatures entirely with brush and ink.

Each double page of The Shy Creatures, is actually one horizontal page of 8 1/2 by 11 typing pager. I sketched it in pencil loosely, and then drew it directly in ink with a brush so it would have a spontaneity and expressiveness to it that I get from the quick rich strokes of a brush and ink.

On the Alchemy of Art DVD from herovideoproductions.com it shows each and every page of The Shy Creatures in its black and white original form. One of the extra features on the DVD is me doing a reading of the book, directly from the original pages that are filmed page by page.

It is just a really quick and simple and expressive way to work. I felt like it was a good way to express imagination, and would be effective in activating imagination in the reader. And imagination is much of what the story is about.

It begins in a classroom with children talking of what they want to be when they grow up. Doctors, firemen, teachers, etc. But there is a Shy Girl in the class and she wants to be a doctor to the Shy Creatures. When the teacher asks what she means, she begins mentioning various mythological and crypto-zoological creatures. And what problems they may encounter. And how she would help them.

For instance:
“What if the Chupacabra didn’t brush his teeth?
What if they all fell out so he couldn’t eat?
I’d make for him some dentures to get fed!
Then he could eat my vegetables instead!”

And instead of the Chupacabra’s fanged teeth she makes for him some bugs bunny type dentures just right to chew up her vegetables. And the visuals are of the Shy Girl romping around with each of these creatures and helping them with their unique problems. One of my favorites is when she makes the near-sited Cyclops a set of one-eyed- glasses.

CONTINUE TO PART 3