Otautahi Goblin Riot

One year and one day ago Christchurch (Maori name Otautahi), New Zealand was hit with its second major earthquake in six months. The first being a 7.1 on September 4^th 2010. In Sept we were lucky. In Feb we were not. Tuesday 22^nd Feb at 1.51pm a 6.3 hit closer to the CBD, 185 people were killed, thousands injured, and much of Chch was destroyed.



Moti



A week or so after the quake I drew a goblin who was stealing a friend's motivation to do anything and it grew from there. Moti wasn’t evil enough so I drew another then they just kept coming. I was dropping them on facebook and Anita started putting up little blurbs about them. Next thing you know we’re making a book. A month later it’s basically abandoned!! I was busy drawing other things and Anita was writing a novel!

But it wasn’t going to die with friends and family continuing to pester us about it. So two months ago it was all on. I’d like to say it’s all finished but the last 10 pages still need to be written then drawn! So I should probably stop blogging and draw.

Here is the first page. For keeping updated with the rest ‘Like’ us on facebook.

I'll just start at the end.

I’ve never worked forwards. I always come up with the final product at the start. School assignments made me go back and fill in all the missing bits that you’re meant to work out before you get to the end. I hated it.

Which is why now, at 28, I’m pulling my hair out trying to storyboard a picture/story/goblins spewed from the earth causing the Christchurch earthquake book. Part of the problem is that although it’s about goblins it’s from factual events. It’s also hindered by the fact that there is no story written. A friend is writing it from the characters I’ve created, which is fine, until you try to put it all together, figure out how each page is going to break and what scene will be on it. It’s not even like I’m planning on trying to get it published but I want to work within what I would get if I was to ever get to illustrate a MS. So I’ve been trudging around the internet trying to find out as much as I can about the how it all works. I’ve come across a lot of useful information, a lot of outdated information–don’t send any CDs or web links to you portfolio!–and at one point I found myself reading about conjoined twins. How? I have no idea.  But back to illustrating, turns out I’ve been doing everything backwards–what a shock!

First you’re meant to have a MS. Ideally someone else’s that is already edited and broken into pages. Then storyboard. Eventually after great consideration and planning you do the final work.

I’ve had twelve or so final scenes in my head for months and the characters rolling around for a year, now I’m storyboarding, cutting it into page breaks as I go and wondering if the MS will even fit what I’m coming up with. Backwards, I tell you, backwards.

One day I will work forwards… maybe… who knows it might even be easier. But then I wouldn’t find myself losing my mind and blogging at 5am after spending 15 hours trying to make sense of everything. I’d do that the much more sensible hour of 3am.

It's perfectly normal in my world.

I never set out to be weird. It was other people who called me weird.  ~ Frank Zappa

Took the things that fell out of my head to a market on Saturday and was met with the usual responses – love it, it’s weird, how do you come up with this, you’re not normal, lots of giggles and people that just walked by but of all the comments one keeps going around my head:

I’m worried about what you’ve lived through to come up with this so young.

It’s not the first time someone has said something along the same lines. People who have only heard small parts of my life tell me I should write a book about it. But it’s just life isn’t it?? Ok so living for years with an unknown then near impossible to get a positive diagnosis chronic rare funky disease isn’t everyone’s life but has it really been that different? Has it really been as bad as people make it out to be? Honestly, sometimes it’s been worse. But it’s just my normal. So why does it worry so many people? Hasn’t everyone had to fight and deal with something in their life?

As for the young part, how old to you have to be to live? How old until you’re old enough to deal with the bad things in the world? It seems as the younger you learn to deal with hell the better you get at it, maybe you end up a little screwed up, a little cynical and weird but I’d rather be this than get to now or 50 or 64 and not know how to cope when everything all falls apart.

I could write a book but it would be 30 pages for a few weeks of bouncy madness and then one line for 9 months: I was too sick to get out of bed, I would have offed myself if I could have moved faster than a snail going backwards. Not exactly a riveting story you have when there has been more of the too sick to function than of the bouncing.

The weird head stuff is never far away though, maybe I could just write about that: Today I spent all day in bed with the pain of my hair ripping though my skin as it grew but it was ok because a five headed flying rat kept me company. I see it as a children’s book, fully illustrated…

Eyes are occupied with: Stardust - Neil Gaiman

Ears buzzing from: Gotye

Head meet brick wall.

I hit a creative brick wall. Zombie flu sucked everything out of me in August and it hasn’t come back.

I’ve tried ignoring anything art related, forced out commissions, started Daily Doodle to make something – anything – happen, spent 4 days alone somewhat removed from reality and it’s still not back.

So now what?

This is the longest I’ve gone without doing anything significant since the start of the year. It’s disturbing and yet before this year I’d go 6 months… a year… without picking up a pencil. So what changed? Oh yeah, I woke up to the fact that I was walking around as a brain dead zombie. Went for years in that state and now I can’t go two months….

It’s now two days later and I’ve fixed it, I think. It only took a 790km mission to Nelson to see the Oi You street art exhibition. It’s not the first time I’ve driven 800k for art and it won’t be the last. Hell if I had the coin I’d be chasing it all over the world.

Why?

Why not.

What is it without honesty?

An artist has been defined as a neurotic who continually cures himself with his art.  ~ Lee Simonson 

It has to be honest. It doesn’t matter what it is, what label it fits under. As long as you can connect to the humanity in it.

Isn’t it part of the point of this life thing? To connect to someone, or something. To feel like someone out there understands you. Understands that we’re all a bit broken. That as different as we claim we are, we’re all the same. That we love and lose, survive when we’re sure that we can’t.

So how do you make something honest if you don’t put your heart and soul into it? Don’t rip yourself apart and put everything out there. How can I expect you to connect to some paint thrown around if I don’t put a part of me in it? Whether it’s a cutesy little picture with a few select words or something that has destroyed me, it won’t connect if it’s empty.

Isn’t this what an artist is meant to do? Put images, sound, words, movement, to emotions. To try to put those same things to how we see the world. To do it in a way that makes you find something in it, because when it comes down to it, as much as I do this for me I hope that when you see it you find something in it, something that you can relate to.

This is everything for me. How I survive. This is how I connect to myself. And to you, because anyone who really knows me knows how much I fail at connecting with people in the flesh. And it’s hard. And it’s scary. But it’s nowhere near as hard and scary as it is to try and be someone else. Nowhere near as hard as it is to try and function in this world without repeatedly breaking myself apart on canvas.

But is spewing the crap that’s inside my head and heart even art? Or is it just a way to avoid spending thousands on a therapist. I’ve been down the psychiatrist/psychologist/therapist route, had more of them than I can count on one hand and none of them ever helped me as much as picking up a pencil has. So is this art or art therapy?

But if there is a part of me in each piece, actually me and not just what I think you want to see, it's honest. And if it's honest there is a chance that you might connect. That you might find something in it that helps you. But even if it's honest and you connect is it art? Or is that what makes it art?

I'm going to be a fucking optimist.

A pessimist is one who makes difficulties of his opportunities and an optimist is one who makes opportunities of his difficulties. ~ Harry Truman

I’m going to put good vibes out into the planet and wait for the good things to come back to me.

Or that’s the plan anyway. Not that I think that this is going to stop me making miserable art. I’ve got enough ideas and things locked away from the past 28 years to fuel miserable art for another 50 years, at least, but it’s time to stop getting lost in them. Time to take this happy buzz I have going and send that out to grow and be. Who knows maybe I will turn into an optimist. Maybe optimism is naïve. But fuck it, as R. Buckminster Fuller said ‘dare to be naïve’.

So I’m going to put everything into making art, I’m going to let it rip me apart and put me back together then send it out into the world to have other people connect to it, laugh at it, rip it apart or ignore it. But I’m an optimist now so it will all go perfectly, every piece will be loved, I won’t sell anything for under 3 billion dollars each. I will get to live in all the countries I want to live in and I will get my castle complete with a moat.

But if it doesn’t and it’s hated or ignored at least in twenty years I won’t look back and wonder what it could have become if only I was brave enough to throw it out there.

Here’s to being an optimist. Where's the vodka...

Ears are dancing around with: John Butler Trio
Eyes are still reading A Child Called 'It' by Dave Pelzer

Absconhuh?

"And sometimes it is kind of nice to try to hold onto your anonymity."

I keep getting asked what Absco-abscontis-abscondeetis-how the hell do you say it?! What does it mean and where did you find it. So here comes a short lesson and a story.

absconditus

ab-scon-di-tus
Latin

ADJ

hidden, secret, concealed; cover, disguised; abstruse, recondite

Around three years ago a friend decided he was going to make me a website. Come to think about it I may have promised to buy him a Ferrari if I got rich. I’ll have to put that in my will because there’s a rumour out there that you don’t get rich from art until you die, if at all. So far this is proving to be true. Anyway back to the website, he was going to call it nikkiparker.co… but that seemed way too scary and would mean I’d actually have to admit to being behind things.

Off I was on a quest to find a name to hide behind. So I did what anyone would do, I read the dictionary. Yep, was a riveting read that one. But I did come out with a collection of words and decided on recondite. Recondite turned into reconditus because Latin is better than English. Though by this stage my friend had temporarily dropped off the planet and I figured the whole thing was dead.

Fast forward to December 2010 and I’m standing in gallery in Queenstown having one of those life changing moments and I figure if I don’t go off and be a fulltime artist there really isn’t much point in anything. So when I get home I start playing around with Reconditus Art logo type things and figuring out what I’m going to do and what arty farty direction I’m going to go in.

Fail.

I can’t stay doing one thing for 5 minutes let alone try to do the same thing for the rest of ever. So art became Creations. Next I punch reconditus into something online only to find someone else has it as a user name.

Fail times two. I’m not going to use it if someone else does. Now what do I do?

Back to the internet to find similar Latin words to reconditus and up pops absconditus. Absconditus Creations was born. A facebook account was created and it was unofficially official.

My quiet take over of the planet began...

Ears are happily bleeding from: John Butler Trio

Eyes have gone into bad spasms from too much time reading things online.