Odessa Sawyer's work is pretty amazing. She responded to a call for vendors for the Glubdub store, and in a matter of a couple of exchanges we were on our way to doing her story. Here's what we have so far.
So the first question is what goes into making my pieces..
Most of the time I'll get an idea in my head that I want to play with and go from there. I work exclusively in Photoshop and start creating from scratch within the program. Most of the time I just start sketching out my idea using a drawing tablet and build on it. I utilize digital painting and photo manipulation and take all of my own stock photography which I love to incorporate into my work. I also get very emotionally invested in my characters and there's usually a story involved with each character I create and the surroundings that inhabit them.
Your second question was where the images come from.
The ideas usually just come into my head and I like to run with them without really thinking about it or planning too much. The concepts are born from many things I really enjoy and the different places my head lives in. I'm extremely childlike and love to bring that aspect into my work. I also love strange and eerie surroundings and am especially influenced by fairy tales. I enjoy creating new worlds, and most of all, I try to take the viewer somewhere else.
I started out as a traditional painter and drew a lot in pencil and ink but I never felt fulfilled in the medium. I started learning Photoshop in 2003 and right from the start it felt more familiar and infinite to me. From the time I was little I was always drawn to those kinds of places, and growing up I was influenced by different artists and music and stories that helped shape that part of me.
I do show up in my work a lot, it started out that way because I was my only model so I had to use myself a lot, and as I grew into the art form I realized I quite enjoyed modeling and now I love doing it. I do like putting myself in the worlds I create but I also just love the process of posing for a picture and trying to evoke a certain feeling or emotion and then creating art around it. Modeling and fashion have been passions of mine for a while now and if I weren't doing this form of artwork, I would probably be trying to do something in that industry.
I'm not sure what exactly attracts me to Carnivals, I think it's the absurdity of it all and how bright and colorful and beautiful it is. It's like a small artifical world created in the middle of the mundane, and stuff like that has always fascinated me.
I spend way too much time in my head. When I was little I used to walk into walls because I wasn't really connecting to the world around me. As I got older I've learned to be more present and I enjoy living in both worlds more now but I still escape a lot into my imagination.
Mikey
Written by Max Stout
Mikey was a thirty year old guy With the sautéed innards of a dying man And the nickname of a little boy That he’d never out grow He smoked and drank enough to leave Stained brown gobs of the inside of his lungs Crusting over in the bathroom sink And fragrance a hot steamed shower With the dead day old stink of booze Seeping through his pores
He drank enough to sleep through Meals cooked back to their original Carbon based form and Through hours of records skipping Running over the same old ground Hiccupping forward and reverse He puffed enough to fill a room with smoke Before he ever walked into it The taste of blackened exhales In each breath anyone else took And the burning eyes that cause Grown men to cry Mikey drank too much And passed out in the middle Of jerking off He was found that way by a friend Who had walked in on it without much thought But left with much regret Once the shock gave way to horrified disbelief And the paralysis of the senses was awakened By feet that had the good sense To turn and run away He had passed out and stayed hard With his prick still stiff And his pants pulled down around his ankles Or so I’ve been told I was spared the scars that came From seeing this car wreck in the flesh But seeing it through someone else’s eyes Is more than even a blind man Should ever have to see
Dirty Girl
Written by Administrator
Jennifer Clary’s Dirty Girl tells the story of a women riddled with cancer, which takes the form of tiny beings living inside her body. The movie strikes a balance between the extremes of a sparse black and white film, and the exploding colors of claymation. Dirty Girl opens with a women lying still on an operating table. On the outside she appears calm, letting out only a whispered gasp when the doctor’s knife enters her.
In contrast, inside of her, is a wild party of germs, and life sucking creatures that melt into each other, and swallow everything around it, only like clay can. The juxtaposition of black and white versus color, and the muted world around her, against the vivid world inside, shows how the imagination can take control, when reality ceases to make sense.
Dirty Girl was inspired by a benign tumor that was removed from Jennifer’s breast. She was fortunately never diagnosed with cancer, but the surgery left an impression and was the impetus behind the film. The film details the images that popped into her head, when she thought about the disease inside her body.
In the end Dirty Girl winds up being an interesting combination of the real and the imagined, and truly makes you wonder what's going on inside you. It will make you laugh, and at the same time leave you feeling helpless, as you ponder your own mortality.
The Interview with Beat Circus
Written by Administrator
Here's an myspace exchange between myself and bc from Beat Circus about doing a story together. Their music's pretty fucking cool. Check them out at Asbury Lanes in Asbury park NJ.
Hey Man I really love your band and the music is amazing! YOu guys are playing at the Asbury Lanes in NJ on Feb 8th right? I know Jenn who runs the place and we're going to also have the Glubdub first anniversary party that night. Check us out if you get a chance. Anyway we're going to cover the event for Glubdub, and then feature the show in the next issue. I'd love to interview you guys before hand if you're into it. Let me know Thanks Alex
Brian Carpenter. Photo by Liz Linder
hi alex sure we can do an interview. maybe after sound check we can talk? we'd just ask you to not post videos of our set. thanks. bc
hey no problem...just curious, do you mind if I ask why no video? How about stills? Thanks Alex
horrible sound quality, usually horrible video quality. unless it's a multi-camera 3 CCD DV setup synced with a professional live sound recordist who knows how to record live sound, there's no way i would ever to agree to video. it's enough work trying to make an album sound good, i don't need shitty bootleg videos floating around that look bad and sound even worse. you asked... bc
do you have any video of your stuff you'd want to use?
No
I'm almost tempted not to shoot some video that night.
