What a lovely end to my working year: this morning I learned that On Fire is a Mutha Magazine nominee for the Pushcart Prize! I’m so grateful to Meg Lemke, the editor in chief of Mutha and a real champion of working cartoonists, for putting my hat in the ring.
Last night was the last class of my first semester teaching comics at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. I am so grateful to my students for the journey we shared this semester: only two students out of the 15 came into my class with any comics background, and most had never made narrative art of any kind before. In kindred naïveté, I had never taken a comics class as a student before either, much less taught one. To my great relief I found my footing and voice quickly, and captained the ship of the class as well as I could have hoped.
The students’ final project was to self publish an original mini comic in an edition of 20, enough to share with classmates and have a couple leftover to sell at Quimby’s (or give to friends & family). The work they made was spectacular and wildly varied: a 1920s Cthulian horror; a dark medieval fantasy poem; a vulnerable and lovely short story about a religious teenager coming out as a lesbian to her best friend; a buck-wild action comic about a malicious Mario manifesting in real life out of a video game and needing to be assassinated; a sweet children’s comic subverting tropes where a girl is lost in the woods and finds a cabin full of supernatural temptations and she befriends them all; etc etc. I was grinning so hard all class my cheeks hurt!
We ended class with my favorite closing ritual: we all sat in the dark around the central table and I talked through what it has meant to me to teach the class, what it means to be in creative community together; how important it is to gather and be in community with each other, as cartoonists and as artists, as thinking caring people, always but especially now when times are dark. We remember the levity and light and magic that is made when we share ourselves with each other. Then, in the dark, I do my magic trick (a kindergarten science experiment about convection currents) and everyone gasps. Farewell!
I generally prefer to keep my end-of-year reflections around my birthday instead of around the calendar year, but with a home and now work life dancing to the rhythm of school semesters, the calendar year has more weight than usual. This is the first year after many years of false starts subverted by the urgent and tender care needs of a young family where my need to make my own work had consistent time to satisfy. I am going in to 2024 with a collaborative zine project in pencils, a big graphic novel scripted and ready to re-approach now that consistent studio time is finally here, and another long-form personal essay/lyric poem/swirling-ideas-around-interconnected-themes comic coming together in writing stages. I now have this Intro Comics class developed and pressure tested, with lectures and demos and assignments ready to polish and refine when I teach it again this spring semester, and plans to develop a special topics comics class for the fall semester. I consistently made diary comics for the second year running, which kept my fingers inky and my thoughts nimble, and I was surprised by how much I felt the loss of that meditation when other needs ate up that drawing time. Every month I make kids science comics for Ask Magazine, in the recurring kids science comic Ask Ask, and I have a few freelance projects already penciled in to the new year calendar that I’m excited to work on.
2023 was not an easy year: I was sleep deprived for most of it, with a 2 year old who would wake up 3-8 times a night, unsatisfied by anyone else’s middle-of-the-night help except for me. Friends and family who I love ferociously are enduring frightening health crises. (If you any funds to spare, my beloved cousin Rachel could use some support.) A fall construction project to make a long-crumbling part of our house water tight and more functional turned into an is-this-a-scam-or-just-contractor-incompetence money pit that left us financially and personally stressed to the breaking point. The scope of work includes my studio, so I’ve been working in the corner of my living room since mid-September while kids’ fingers sticky with jam and peanut butter explore all my papers and “borrow” my nice supplies.
Even if the embodied experience of this year has been stressful and sleepy and hard, I can’t help but feel satisfied and content to look back and see everything we’ve made stronger this year. My kids are healthy and happy, funny and loving and curious and weird, and deeply good. I feel exceedingly lucky, wildly privileged, and grateful beyond bounds for this life of love and friendship and creative community that I get to live.
Happy holidays, my friends! Gather together in this darkness with people who lift you up, share some tea, and then light that teabag on fire.
* 2023 holiday card *
Happy New Year!
Oh gosh, I'm weirdly glad I'm not the only one with a little toddler that kept me up for most of 2023. I almost lost my mind.
Congrats on finishing your semester. Your send-off ritual sounds so lovely.