KILLING MY PAPERMATE
“house of the rizo” – papermate pen – pencil – paper – 1994 eDONE kMPM
kMPM or killing my paper mate. the tagline i used to place under my pseudonym when signing my early work, came from the fact that i went through dozens of these pens, using them until the last drop of ink. during this time, i found that of all the household pens i had access to, a very specific type of papermate worked best for what i needed, no ink blobs or rough patches, no stutters, no drags. a well-made cheap pen. i could tilt the pen a certain way and it would draw a very ghostly line which worked great for shading and other effects. i wasn’t about to buy anything expensive for drawing-i still had my graffiti mentality at the time-and so i used whatever i had already, or could easily ‘rack,’ that being the papermates.
The drawing in this post comes from a time frame (1991- 1996) in which i took to drawing images filled with detail and story telling, using pen as the outline and pencil for additional shading. i’d spend hours on each of these, completely engrossed in the process, living within the imagery that sprouted before my eyes.
as most of my drawings then and now, this one started with staring at a blank canvas, in this case paper, and letting my imagination run. there is no large story here, this is me having fun inside a world that is building itself in real-time before my eyes. this image likely took several hours and was done in one sitting as most of the pen art during this time.
this was the beginning of my freestyle approach to art, a process that remains with me to this day in just about all of my artistic endeavors. i had a black sketchbook filled with images similar to this-images by ED ONE THE PAPERMATE KILLER-whole pages replete with this type of scenery, feel, and detail.
as life would have it, surrounded by a group of silent and complicit onlookers and at least one of them a thief, my book was stolen from behind my back as it made its round, being passed around and looked at by the small crowd. i made an effort to retrieve it but faced with silence and innocent facial expressions, i understood the score; my book was not coming back with me. at that moment, two of the people present got in their car and drove off, one among them someone i considered a friend. that day was the last i ever saw of my book, filled with images from a time in my artistic life that i will never again emulate (pen on paper in small intricate scenes) as i have no desire to do so anymore.
this loss lived with me for a while as i had spent so much time and effort into each piece. i can still to this day recall only glimpses of some of the images there. it took me several years to get back to drawing after that loss, or drawing with this level of feel and detail. what came next was grander, larger, more colorful, and not so private anymore. not as personal as a black sketchbook i carried in my backpack. what came next would be and is currently now shared with the world on this website.
to the thief: i hope you and whoever saw the book got as much pleasure and wonder from each image as i got from making them. at least that is my hope for my stolen book, as opposed to it being thrown in a ditch somewhere, ripped apart for no one to see. and if you made money from the art in my book, then i hope it was well spent.
the work was lost but not the happiness i felt while working on it. the book may be stolen, but the joy of discovery and amazement, the wonder of creating, that, can never be taken away.
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