mozaikmage (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
mozaikmage) wrote2024-05-14 10:31 am
mozaikmage) wrote2024-05-14 10:31 am
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I went to Alaska for comics camp!
So two weeks ago I went to Alaska for comics camp and it fixed me in every way except it also gave me a wicked cold I'm still fighting off. But emotionally and mentally and stuff it fixed me. At least temporarily.
I don't remember how I heard of comics camp. It was a few years ago. I've applied multiple times, but this year was the first year I was accepted. I wanted to go for the networking and the new experiences, and I got both.
The flight to Juneau was long and had a layover in Seattle where I didn't run into anyone else going to comics camp because everyone else got earlier flights to Juneau. I finally landed near midnight, and when Pat (one of the organizers) picked me up, he pulled over on the side of the road so we could look at the northern lights.
I could barely see anything but apparently they showed up better on camera when set to long exposure. It was like a faint, moving haze over the sky. It was cold.
I stayed with two of my friends from grad school, Filipa and Mercedes, at the same motel as everyone else. The room was horribly hot and humid. There were ravens outside.
I woke up stupid early because of jet lag and then went to have breakfast at The Sandpiper Cafe, joining a group of cartoonists after everyone else had finished eating. I ordered a french toast with mandarin oranges on the recommendation of someone else who had just finished eating it. I felt out of place; I didn't really know anyone there, and everyone else seemed to have a rapport together already. And yet after that I ended up wandering around town with Josh and Cat and Raj and Becca until I had to return to the motel to get driven to some local schools so I could teach children about comics.
At 30,000 people, Juneau is the third largest city in Alaska, or about the same size as a small town in New Jersey. Everyone seems to know everyone in it, except for the tourists that come down from the cruise ships every summer and buy overpriced jewelry from the cruise line owned shops along the pier.
It's beautiful, though. The mountains are bigger than anything I've ever seen before, the trees are taller, there's ravens and bald eagles instead of pigeons and robins, the water sparkles in the sun. The local shops are very cute.
Walking around is fun, and I get to know some of the other campers a bit. Then local artist Rob picks me up and drives me to an elementary school in nearby Douglass. He tells me the school was built on a burial ground, and a few years ago they discovered that and had to do a lot of digging and reburying remains. I teach some fourth graders how to make a 6 page zine out of a piece of paper. Then I repeat the lesson with two middle school classes. Rob tells me the middle school is getting shut down soon due to Alaskan bureaucracy problems.
After I get back, I catch up with Mercedes on our lives, then get a late lunch (pelmeni, which I could probably make identically at home but the novelty of a pelmeni restaurant is delightful), then get a drink at the local gin distillery. They give me the drink for free in exchange for me drawing it. I draw the Carrot Sea Mule.
Then I catch a ride to the Library Kick-off Event where some people give short talks about things they like or are doing. Some people promote their new work. Some people talk about donuts, or bog bodies. The musicians play songs that go with each presentation. It's fun.
Afterwards, everyone gathers at Rob's house for homemade chili and corn bread and cookies. His house is incredible and I want to live in a place like that when I'm a real adult. We get back to the motel pretty late and then the next day is the minicon. We heard good things about this breakfast place called the Rookery so we rush to set up early so we can go over there and grab breakfast before the show opens. Cynthia shows me where they saw a bear the night before. I get eggs and cheese and bacon and it's delicious but probably not very healthy.
I don't sell a lot of comics at the minicon, but I make a lot of money off my $5 index card sketches. I'm tabling between the University of Alaska and Aric who I just met, and Mercedes is nearby. It's a fun time.
Right after the show we take a bus to the campsite which has no Internet or cell service at all. My phone game streaks are all broken and I miss all the weekend drama. I am offline from Saturday night until Monday morning. It's kind of nice.
At camp the food is delicious and different and full of vegetables. It's colder than I'd like, and I blame that and all the talking I've been doing on the sore throat I find myself developing on the second day. But the lodge is warm and full of people and tables on which to draw, and a library of comics to read. I read Debbie's new book and immediately tell her how much I liked it. I read Matt's Incredible Doom online years ago, and tell him how much I liked that. I tell a lot of people a lot of things. I'm talking all the time, to people I've heard about online, to people I've never heard of before.
Sunday morning after breakfast I go to a roundtable on teaching comics where we talk about warm-up exercises and lesson plans and how to get different age groups to pay attention. I take a lot of notes.
I go to Pat and Victoria's meeting about the Comics Advocacy Group and we talk about comics community, advocacy, organizing, what we can do for each other. And it makes me feel fired up! I love comics and I'm not alone! Other people love comics too! I take a lot of scribbly, disjointed notes on things to do with Princeton Comic Makers-- my own little local comics meetup group that I run, ways to connect to local arts agencies, what we can do to make the world a better place for artists! It's exciting and I'm excited!
Afterwards, I am desperately craving a nap, but there's another thing happening in the cabin where I am supposed to sleep so I end up sticking around to listen to Marion the singer-songwriter talk about word choice, and writing, and the creative process. It's interesting enough that I stay awake the whole time, and try to nap after.
Some of the people at camp are game designers, and they test out their new games on us. One of the games is so fun and easy everyone at camp takes a turn at it: a kind of twenty questions, but you can trade poker chips for more hints from the crowd.
After dinner we have five-minute talks where people give five-minute talks on whatever they want. I talk about soviet new year's movies, and people enjoy it. I draw a lot. Everyone is drawing all the time. People draw me. I'm not used to being surrounded by other people who draw all the time.
On day two, I help out with making lunch in the kitchen. Olivia and Cynthia make more egg rolls than I've ever seen in my life, Aric cuts up meat, I chop broccoli and cauliflower. It's fun and rewarding, and tastes delicious. There is also dessert.
After lunch Mercedes leads a printmaking workshop and I learn about Japanese vinyl and staining linocut blocks. I carve an abstract forest into the block and Josh tells me to look up Jamie Hewlett's pine trees when we have internet again. I write it down. While I'm carving, Kendra announces a scenery drawing trip to the beach, and I haven't seen the beach yet so I join the group to go over there. It's not much of a beach but there are cool trees, and we all sit and draw for a while. I leave early so I can finish cutting my block and try printing with it, but I have trouble getting enough ink on it. Then we clean up for dinner, then we have dinner, then we have special desserts for the last night and go over procedures for the following morning. Then we play the "write a sentence-draw what it says-describe the drawing" picture-telephone game while the movie One Hundred Beavers is projected on the lodge wall. The movie is absolutely wild and the game is hilarious.
The next morning is subdued as everyone packs and cleans up. A lot of people are on the same flight back to Seattle, including me, so there's a whole bus taking us to the airport from the camp. We get cell service back halfway there and I find out my little sister got a puppy for her birthday while I was out of range.
On the flight to Seattle, with twenty other comics campers, as the flight attendants go through the safety procedures, I find myself thinking "an emergency landing wouldn't be so bad with this group."
I hang out in the airport with other campers who have long layovers like me. I get home at 7 AM on Wednesday, running on barely any sleep, and by the weekend my sore throat has evolved into a full blown cold.
But I'm still so, so happy.
I don't remember how I heard of comics camp. It was a few years ago. I've applied multiple times, but this year was the first year I was accepted. I wanted to go for the networking and the new experiences, and I got both.
The flight to Juneau was long and had a layover in Seattle where I didn't run into anyone else going to comics camp because everyone else got earlier flights to Juneau. I finally landed near midnight, and when Pat (one of the organizers) picked me up, he pulled over on the side of the road so we could look at the northern lights.
I could barely see anything but apparently they showed up better on camera when set to long exposure. It was like a faint, moving haze over the sky. It was cold.
I stayed with two of my friends from grad school, Filipa and Mercedes, at the same motel as everyone else. The room was horribly hot and humid. There were ravens outside.
I woke up stupid early because of jet lag and then went to have breakfast at The Sandpiper Cafe, joining a group of cartoonists after everyone else had finished eating. I ordered a french toast with mandarin oranges on the recommendation of someone else who had just finished eating it. I felt out of place; I didn't really know anyone there, and everyone else seemed to have a rapport together already. And yet after that I ended up wandering around town with Josh and Cat and Raj and Becca until I had to return to the motel to get driven to some local schools so I could teach children about comics.
At 30,000 people, Juneau is the third largest city in Alaska, or about the same size as a small town in New Jersey. Everyone seems to know everyone in it, except for the tourists that come down from the cruise ships every summer and buy overpriced jewelry from the cruise line owned shops along the pier.
It's beautiful, though. The mountains are bigger than anything I've ever seen before, the trees are taller, there's ravens and bald eagles instead of pigeons and robins, the water sparkles in the sun. The local shops are very cute.
Walking around is fun, and I get to know some of the other campers a bit. Then local artist Rob picks me up and drives me to an elementary school in nearby Douglass. He tells me the school was built on a burial ground, and a few years ago they discovered that and had to do a lot of digging and reburying remains. I teach some fourth graders how to make a 6 page zine out of a piece of paper. Then I repeat the lesson with two middle school classes. Rob tells me the middle school is getting shut down soon due to Alaskan bureaucracy problems.
After I get back, I catch up with Mercedes on our lives, then get a late lunch (pelmeni, which I could probably make identically at home but the novelty of a pelmeni restaurant is delightful), then get a drink at the local gin distillery. They give me the drink for free in exchange for me drawing it. I draw the Carrot Sea Mule.
Then I catch a ride to the Library Kick-off Event where some people give short talks about things they like or are doing. Some people promote their new work. Some people talk about donuts, or bog bodies. The musicians play songs that go with each presentation. It's fun.
Afterwards, everyone gathers at Rob's house for homemade chili and corn bread and cookies. His house is incredible and I want to live in a place like that when I'm a real adult. We get back to the motel pretty late and then the next day is the minicon. We heard good things about this breakfast place called the Rookery so we rush to set up early so we can go over there and grab breakfast before the show opens. Cynthia shows me where they saw a bear the night before. I get eggs and cheese and bacon and it's delicious but probably not very healthy.
I don't sell a lot of comics at the minicon, but I make a lot of money off my $5 index card sketches. I'm tabling between the University of Alaska and Aric who I just met, and Mercedes is nearby. It's a fun time.
Right after the show we take a bus to the campsite which has no Internet or cell service at all. My phone game streaks are all broken and I miss all the weekend drama. I am offline from Saturday night until Monday morning. It's kind of nice.
At camp the food is delicious and different and full of vegetables. It's colder than I'd like, and I blame that and all the talking I've been doing on the sore throat I find myself developing on the second day. But the lodge is warm and full of people and tables on which to draw, and a library of comics to read. I read Debbie's new book and immediately tell her how much I liked it. I read Matt's Incredible Doom online years ago, and tell him how much I liked that. I tell a lot of people a lot of things. I'm talking all the time, to people I've heard about online, to people I've never heard of before.
Sunday morning after breakfast I go to a roundtable on teaching comics where we talk about warm-up exercises and lesson plans and how to get different age groups to pay attention. I take a lot of notes.
I go to Pat and Victoria's meeting about the Comics Advocacy Group and we talk about comics community, advocacy, organizing, what we can do for each other. And it makes me feel fired up! I love comics and I'm not alone! Other people love comics too! I take a lot of scribbly, disjointed notes on things to do with Princeton Comic Makers-- my own little local comics meetup group that I run, ways to connect to local arts agencies, what we can do to make the world a better place for artists! It's exciting and I'm excited!
Afterwards, I am desperately craving a nap, but there's another thing happening in the cabin where I am supposed to sleep so I end up sticking around to listen to Marion the singer-songwriter talk about word choice, and writing, and the creative process. It's interesting enough that I stay awake the whole time, and try to nap after.
Some of the people at camp are game designers, and they test out their new games on us. One of the games is so fun and easy everyone at camp takes a turn at it: a kind of twenty questions, but you can trade poker chips for more hints from the crowd.
After dinner we have five-minute talks where people give five-minute talks on whatever they want. I talk about soviet new year's movies, and people enjoy it. I draw a lot. Everyone is drawing all the time. People draw me. I'm not used to being surrounded by other people who draw all the time.
On day two, I help out with making lunch in the kitchen. Olivia and Cynthia make more egg rolls than I've ever seen in my life, Aric cuts up meat, I chop broccoli and cauliflower. It's fun and rewarding, and tastes delicious. There is also dessert.
After lunch Mercedes leads a printmaking workshop and I learn about Japanese vinyl and staining linocut blocks. I carve an abstract forest into the block and Josh tells me to look up Jamie Hewlett's pine trees when we have internet again. I write it down. While I'm carving, Kendra announces a scenery drawing trip to the beach, and I haven't seen the beach yet so I join the group to go over there. It's not much of a beach but there are cool trees, and we all sit and draw for a while. I leave early so I can finish cutting my block and try printing with it, but I have trouble getting enough ink on it. Then we clean up for dinner, then we have dinner, then we have special desserts for the last night and go over procedures for the following morning. Then we play the "write a sentence-draw what it says-describe the drawing" picture-telephone game while the movie One Hundred Beavers is projected on the lodge wall. The movie is absolutely wild and the game is hilarious.
The next morning is subdued as everyone packs and cleans up. A lot of people are on the same flight back to Seattle, including me, so there's a whole bus taking us to the airport from the camp. We get cell service back halfway there and I find out my little sister got a puppy for her birthday while I was out of range.
On the flight to Seattle, with twenty other comics campers, as the flight attendants go through the safety procedures, I find myself thinking "an emergency landing wouldn't be so bad with this group."
I hang out in the airport with other campers who have long layovers like me. I get home at 7 AM on Wednesday, running on barely any sleep, and by the weekend my sore throat has evolved into a full blown cold.
But I'm still so, so happy.
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Before this camp I was in a constant state of wondering if I should keep doing comics or if I should give up on comics forever, but now I know I cannot give up on comics ever because comics are amazing, and so is everyone who loves comics and makes comics and talks about comics. I felt so in place in a way I haven't felt in a long time. So yeah it was heartening!
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also i would love to hear about soviet new year's movies, if you have a cliff's note version of your 5min talk lying around :P
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I actually made a presentation but I forgot to download it before we went to the no Internet woods so ended up giving the whole speech extemporaneously and relying entirely on my high school academic decathlon public speaking training. But here is my presentation if you would like to see it.
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w h a t is this plot. i. i guess i have to go watch your favorite thing ever at some point huh
thank you for this lmao, did NOT disappoint
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also thank u for going into so much detail i just looked up Jamie Hewlett's pine trees and i'm obsessed
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