If you ask Liquid what she wants to be when she grows up she'll tell you, "I wanna be a superhero, so I have a lot of fun "liquidizing" my friends into robotic superhero status via caricatures"

Glubdub:
Why is the process you use to breed humans and robots called Liquid?

Liquid:
I love robots and I love science fiction. I think that shows in my quirky art. When I came to Myspace, I wanted a way to showcase some of my talented friends and introduce them to my readers in a unique sorta way, so 'liquidizing' them into superhero status type robots was the beginning of a whole new virtual gallery. I have never had any previous professional artistic training at all so I admire anyone that has an art degree or has had the privilege to study with talented art masters out there. My foundation stands on the fact that there is a little artist down deep inside each of us that is just screaming to get out and I think the challenge is to create something that is an extension of yourself. In other words, when you are done, to be able to sit back and look at it with fresh new eyeballs and see the moment you just captured. I think photographers do this really well. They can stop time by shooting that image in a single frame. Each photo becomes a frozen precious moment. Painters do this too with each stroke of their brush; they truly put their souls upon their canvas.You can also see this in children's art: freshness and innocence.

I guess my first artistic endeavor that I can remember would have been playing with paper dolls as a child. I wanted more variety for my little cardboard doll's wardrobe, so I would draw, color, and cut out new ones and now since I have grown up - along with the digital computer world - technology has surely blessed me and anyone else out there with new tools and software to express themselves. The lovely part about digital work over painting in real time is that you never spill any pixals on your clothes while you create! Ha Ha clean up is easy to accomplish! I love all the wonderful programs out there today. I actually started learning photoshop as a theraputic escape after an accident and it's been a lovely adventure for me ever since.

GD:
When I used After affects which is the equivalent of photoshop for video, I fell in love with a couple of filters because they really matched what I had in my head for the film. Is there a special filter or effect that you use thats kind of defined your style?

Liquid:
Absolutely. I use eyecandy more than any other because it has such a lovely chrome effect. I enjoy taking a digital photo and manipulating it into something fun. The imagination is endless on what can be done today. One of the powerful things about photoshop that I first noticed for photosgraphers, was that, to get a specific effect, one had to use so many filters on their cameras to achieve it and now you can take one image into photoshop and layer it with hundreds of filters if you choose or as much as your RAM can take on your computer. If you are a photographer, even with today's nifty digital cameras with built in filters, you should definately learn photoshop and all it's grand possibilities because it will extend your talent into new rhelms. It's a great time which we live in where we can mesh technology. The music industry is doing this with image in their videos and it's opened so many doors for their music reaching viewers by stimulating the optic nerves along with their fan's ears. When I have had the opportunity to create a cd for an artist, I will put my headphones on and get lost in 'only their sound' while I work in photoshop on their project. It's a way to connect their music to the soundscape of the visual art. That's my "liquidizing technique" in a nutshell. I just sit back and follow the light.

GD:
Tell me more about the book. What kind of a world is it that has half-robots, half-children?

Liquid:
I get a lot of questions about "The Liquid Metropolis" on my site. My goal is to take my little cyborg characters and mesh them with the cities into a story for the book. As for the art that is now in the Metropolis series, the style and perception that I have put into them, If I am truly honest here, goes back to my childhood, because when I was a little girl, like every other child out there, I was curious about heaven and what it looked like. I can remember every wish was about getting inside those pearly gates. I am not joking here at all, every birthday candle I blew out and every penny I tossed into a fountain was sealed with that "Let me nto that beautiful heaven" wish.

Very early my heart was set on eternity and my mind on heaven and what it really looked like. So whenever I would later hear a sermon on the description of heaven or read a scripture that let us get a glimpse of what ;it might be like' I would try to imagine the beauty that it would encompass. Now I do realise that it's really impossible to describe it, because we don't even have words for it and what we do consider beautiful here is just a dull reflection of what it's going to be like there, but my cityscapes that I make are truly inspired by what my mind's eye hopes that it 'might be like' in that other world to come. I love the gates and the thought of glass and precious stones and that the streets would be paved with gold and transparent like. Just the thought of knowing that in heaven, that what we might have thought was valuable here (gold for example) will be under our feet and we will walk upon it there is truly amazing to me.

The whole mystery of that idea excites me and puts things into perspective for me on so many levels and so I hope that shows through in the metropolis cities that I create. To the best of my imagination, they are the new places that are to come. I also love that utopia hope that there will be no sickness or sorrow there. In one of my city's descriptions, which has a hospital, the city boasts that even it's nursery has no baby tears. It's a pain free environment. Who wouldn't want to live there? So, although it won't be heaven, the Metropolis will be "another world" and an utopia that my character in the book will be searching for. She will be on a mission in search of her genetic code as her donar will already live there. The story will have colorful characters such as a steam punk mad scientist that is passionate about cloning and building parts for a group of cyborg and humanoid children and this with a current running parallel of an undercover agent trying to solve a high tech crime. I would tell ya more but then that would spoil everything eh?

The moment I realized Garbage Pail Kid designer,Luis Diaz was a Glubdub member, i knew it wouldnt be long before we connected.  Happy had just recently discovered the Garbage Pail Kids and fell in love with just how gross they could get.  He fancied himself a Garbage Pail Kid and entertained visions of one day being immortalized on the ront of a trading card.  When Happy's 5th birthday rolled around, I commissioned Luis Diaz to do a piece with that in mind.  The rest of this piece is what Luis came up with, along with a brief history of his relationship with the Garbage Pail Kids.

Well I collected GPK's like many other kids my age from '86-88. I started collecting around the 2nd series which luckily were still in stores which was my favorite series next to the 3rd.  I collected up until around 7 and somehow they kind of disappeared or something. I just didn't see that many anymore and maybe we just lost interested and focused on something else.  The 80's were like the craziest time of inventive toys and playing at a friends house and sharing toys was commonplace.  I remembered kids having Trapper Keepers with Garbage Pail Kids all over them and my friends door had GPK's from top to bottom.  I thought that was so cool, but I just couldn't have my precious cards on a wall that I knew one day I might
move or would be painted over which funny enough some people painted over GPK's.  I think a lot of parents really hated GPK's but they were a strong influence in my art which I didn't know for a very long time.  I didn't think of GPK's again till some time in college and I knew the 80's were slowly creeping into everyone's subconscious.

The millennium then hit and I worked doing graphic design right after school and decided I wanted to draw and paint more.  I mean I graduated from art school with an Illustration degree and I didn't want to get stuck in doing design so I quit and went freelancing full time.  I heard about GPK's coming out from a friend and I was suddenly transported to that world again and I decided I wanted to find out if there's a possibility I can be involved in the series.  So I contacted several artists after doing some digging online and found out more history about the artists and that kind of thing.  Original GPK artist from the 80's series, John Pound gave me some tips at first and Jay Lynch who was creating some of the gags gave me the addresses to send samples to Topps, Inc. I got a phone call several months later and it was a dream come true.  I could see my 8 year old self scream out, "Alright!" with his fist in the air.

So it was a learning curve for me, but the fans responded and shortly after I got tons of mail requesting autographs.  It was insane.  I never signed anything as a professional for people before and it felt nice.  I decided I wanted to make a vast improvement from series to series so I got better
at painting and getting the "Pound" look down.  I sold out of all my paintings weeks after I got them back from Toppswith the help of one of my buddies who has a GPK website: http://garbagepailkids.proboards25.com/

One of my paintings for Topps even went for something like $3400 on ebay.  It was crazy.  Unfortunately Topps owned that one cause under contract they have the rights to purchase my art if they choose to, but I was lucky to have almost all my art always delivered back to me.  So far Garbage Pail Kid commissions and other related things have been a major part of my income.  I am working as a freelance illustrator today, but I have started to pursue gallery events locally and nationally this year and hopefully gain some recognition in that sometime, but I know that takes some time and it's a different group of collectors. Since working on Garbage Pail Kids since 2003 it has put me on the map.  So it molded me twice in my lifetime and I have a lot I owe to those crazy kids.

I stumbled upon Sarah Joncas' work and immediately wondered why I hadn't seen it before.  It was beautiful and stunning, and I had to know all about it.

Glubdub:
Can you tell me how you've developed your style and who some of your influences are...even ones outside the art world.

Sarah Joncas:
Personally, I can very clearly see where a lot of my influences have come from, many of which impacted the development of my style.  I know as a child and teen, I was looking forward to getting into graphic novels, illustration or animation as a career, so a lot of my visual interests surrounded those types of fields.”

GD:
What was is it about your childhood that pushed or pulled you in this direction.  Was there something you were running towards, or even running away from, that made you turn to art as a way to define who you are?

SJ:
Really, the only thing that pushed my interest in the fields of more design-oriented art careers was my personal motivations.  I always loved to draw, and I guess the sort of fantastical and imaginative worlds I was witness to within media environments, such as cartoons or comics, just appealed to me at that age.   Eventually I found out that a lot of the animators and illustrators of such careers worked in teams, often through the direction of someone else’s vision, and I knew it wasn’t for me.  After discovering this sometime in my teens, I started taking what I enjoyed so much from those sources and expanded on it in ways that appealed to my own feelings and experiences.  But, overall, I believe my thinking process is very much a visual experience as well – only made sense to embrace it, even if I wasn’t fully aware of why at 3 or 4 years old.

SJ:
When anime started hitting North America significantly in the 90's, it too became apart of my regular digest; not to mention all the Japanese video games...  Eventually I grew out of those phases, but let the style linger on - the kind of elongated proportions, big eyes and the dramatic narratives.  

GD:
I totally see where a lot if these influences come into play as far as the way your work looks, but what about the ideas that you're painting. Where do they come from?  What is your work commenting on and where are the themes behind your work come from.

SJ:
In retrospect, the themes behind my work have changed quite dramatically by the particular stages and events in my own life.  Though I do intake and project a lot of my imagery through personal experience, I also take from a lot of outside sources, such as contemporary and historical concerns.  In some instances, it becomes a way for me to engage with what I learn and try understanding it from a more psychological standpoint.  Rather than just having book knowledge, I can use this process as a way of finding out more about myself.

SJ:
Currently, music is probably the largest factor in my work!  A lot of the time I end up naming my paintings after songs or lyrics I feel relate to my themes; bands such as Pink Floyd, Portishead, Radiohead, NIN, Tool, APC etc.  



GD:
Is it the words of these bands that you're pulling ideas from, or you inspired by the music, and the words are really just a vehicle for titling the painting?  Do you find that the music helps create a mood or draw the blinds on the rest of the world, and help you escape into your work?

SJ:
It’s never really just the words or just the melody, but everything at once; and I don’t doubt that even my mood at that particular time will be bias on what tunes impact my work.  The other motivator of music is the time-based aspect – like my interest in film and animation, I enjoy imaging my characters in narratives or movement.  Music is something of a lubricant to that – emotional and provocative; certainly a process of escaping into my fantasies, or at least escaping reality, haha.



SJ:
There have also been phases of particular artist's work I've grown attached too.  Some of those include Ralph Steadman, Frida Kahlo, Joe Sorren, Viner, Amano, Hussar etc.  

GD:
I like what you say here because like my favorite bands, my favorite artists have periods of work that really hit home with me.  What do you think it is about these potent phases of your favorite artist’s work that inspires your work so much? Is there some common thread between them, and if so what is it?

SJ:
Looking back now, it was really a more time/place scenario, running into them haphazardly and choosing to investigate further.  Often it was in the aesthetic elements of their artwork – at a time when I’m playing around with inks and line-work, I stumble upon Steadman.  Or when I’m focusing on more dark-religious subject matter, I happen to find Hussar.
Most of all though, I believe it was seeing artists who did have a distinctly “illustrative” style making a living in the art world - was a glimpse of hope that I could find sanctuary in this world; something to escape the undertow of the service industry and produce work that was honest to me.  They became like role models.

SJ:
Other things that have significant effect on my work are mass media, specifically film - lately more film noir, though my list of favourite films could go on a while too long…



GD:
Are there any pieces you've worked on that you can see a direct link between how a film made you feel or what it made you think about, and the inspiration behind that piece?

SJ:
I very recent work of mine called “Ghosts” was actually inspired by the film “Requiem for a Dream”.  There was a particular scene involving a girl screaming beneath the water of a bathtub and something about it struck me; the private space of the bathroom, her agony/venting, and my already invested attachment with water.  Once I had the work envisioned, it wasn’t really dealing with the sort of downward-spiral narrative of the film, but the music and imagery certainly became a potent starting point… And to credit that, as well as hint at my personal narrative, I named the work after one of the songs from the film.