more Tanyard panels
Still at work on the orator, reflecting on the Tanyard story, what worked and what didn’t. Overall, we need to maintain that artistic license to stretch and bend his story towards OUR story, one that plays with time and space.
work on exhibit!
Feels fantastic to have our work up on the wall! And we got such good, helpful feedback at the reception last weekend. We’re already planning a few edits and additions to what’s there. We’re also cooking up another Cincinnati story in which Hearn and his friend Henry Watkin attend a ‘spiritualist’ lecture in Kentucky- complete with scrolling chakras, a sadhu and a leotard-clad lady contortionist. Stay tuned. In the meantime, this story is on view at 1628 Ltd. thru Feb. 25- at 11 Garfield Place, downtown.
showing a story!
We finished (!!) a story about Hearn’s sensationalized story of the ‘Tanyard Murder’, in which a man was shoved into a furnace for impregnating the daughter of a tavern owner in Cincinnati’s West End in 1874. A huge challenge for us, forcing us to flex and stretch in ways that we hadn’t before. A printed version will be on view at 1628 Ltd. See info HERE .
more gore
not hitting any of the parties tonight - having my own private shindig with death instead. Happy Halloween y'all. #graphicnovel #LafcadioHearn
channeling Hearn
Hearn and Coroner Maley’s hands examining an incinerated skull- in progress details.
gettin' er done
The Tanyard Murder story, a gruesome tale of a man burned alive in a furnace, made Hearn’s name as the Dickensian ‘Dismal Man’ of Cincinnati- we’re working on finishing a sequence about it for an exhibition at 1628 Ltd. in downtown Cincinnati
Here we are in full action mode, looking at our work in progress, editing, brainstorming. It’s gonna be weird and good, if all goes well.
New Orleans- a tough decision
In this in-progress image, Hearn is deciding whether to spend his meager funds to buy the image he’s picked up or the woman’s 'services’. I cribbed heavily from a historical photo for this setting—-any guesses as to what photo it references? We are planting all sorts of easter eggs in this project, and might even list our references in an addendum.
Finally, a TITLE- we think!---and laundry.
Evan did some heavy lifting this week, brainstorming all kinds of titles, but we are going with NOT FROM HERE- Translating Lafcadio Hearn. I’ve also been developing all sorts of assets for Evan to put into a 3d program, for building Bucktown- a now-forgotten squalid area where the poorest of the poor lived. Just riffing with gouache on hanging laundry.
New work- stink factory, suicides
As we pick away at parts of story that inspire strong visual imagery, we are also picking away at story structure and even a working title. As of today, we’re entertaining the title ‘Not From Here’….which reflects Hearn’s own rootlessness and longing for a home, plus the xenophobia that meets the ‘others’ in many cultures,, and finally, the reality of colonial invasion and exploitation. In the meantime, I’ve been exploring combinations of analog painting and digital collage. Most of my pieces start with a gouache painting and photographs of my paint palette, as well as of other grotty surfaces. Then they are blended, along with considerable digital painting in Procreate.
Attempts at Rosa
We’re still neck deep in research for this project- it contains so much content to navigate: racial injustice, childhood abandonment, fascination with ‘otherness’, notions of the afterlife, etc. etc. In the midst of writing and reading, sometimes you just want to draw. Here are some messy attempts at Hearn’s Greek mother, Rosa, who abandoned Hearn when he was 2. She’s a mystery to us because there are no photos of her, but we know that she was an extremely sensual and earthy woman, also a devout worshipper who combined superstition with intense Greek orthodoxy. I imagine her with loose hair and a unibrow for some reason.
Rosa was left, pregnant with her third child by Charles Hearn, in Ireland with his aunt, while he repeatedly left on military posts. I imagine that she often raged over this.
Rosa eventually died in an asylum, after a nervous breakdown, at the age of 49. I can see her looking tired, frightened and confused during her later years, a truly tragic figure.
head sculpt from Evan
Evan is working on a 3d sculpt of Hearn’s head, so that we can render his head from different angles and in different lighting conditions.
Les Chiffoniers
A ROUGH try at working on a story idea. This one is from Hearn’s story about ragpickers, a story that described a grey squalid world of labor.
Althea Foley, Hearn's invisible muse
Hearn documented outcasts because he felt like an outcast himself—abandoned by both parents, shunted off to Cincinnati at the age of 19 by his aunt’s family, arriving here homeless and with a disfigured left eye from a childhood accident. Hearn was homeless until he found work documenting those in worse shape than he was. Because of his Greek heritage, he was seen as an ‘Oriental’, NOT white. Because of his left eye, he felt like a freak of nature. Because of his abandonment, he felt unmoored and insecure. So he identified with others who suffered similar, often much worse, troubles. Hearn made his name as the “Dismal Man'“, documenting the slaughterhouses, whorehouses, gravediggers, ragpickers, and others ground under the thumb of industry in the urban wasteland of Cincinnati’s poorest neighborhoods—including Bucktown, now a parking lot behind Proctor and Gamble headquarters. Hearn gained access to these neighborhoods by befriending cops and people who lived and worked in them. One such figure was Althea Foley, with whom Hearn fell in love and married. Because she was black, marriage between them was illegal, but they found a black AME minister to perform a ceremony in his home. Hearn being a prickly and difficult dude, the relationship soon ran into trouble, and they parted ways. But Foley provided Hearn with many stories and access to an elusive community, as well as comfort and affection. After he died, she unsuccessfully sued for a portion of his estate, but because the marriage was never legalized, she lost. Her importance as a figure is buried, just like Bucktown, under the concrete behind P&G. By the way, FOUND a picture of her after doing this sketch—-at the 2019 Hearn symposium. Back to the drawing board, happily.
Lafcadio Hearn Project underway!
The eccentric 19th-century writer Lafcadio Hearn is a folk hero in Japan, having been one of the first Westerners to write respectfully about their culture and beliefs. But almost NOONE knows that he began his career here in Cincinnati, writing lurid and macabre journalistic tales about the underbelly of early-industrial urban life. I am collaborating with two other artists to showcase his time in Cincinnati, linking his subject matter from Japan (ghost stories, etc) to that of his writing here. I’m collaborating with Evan Carroll and Rob Jefferson on this project, which will involve travel to JAPAN. The Hearn Society here in Cincinnati have already been amazing, as has the rare books library at Tulane University, and the Japan Society in New Orleans. It’s going to be a fascinating project, dealing with a difficult man and his complicated relationships with those that he documented.
This image is an attempt to depict Hearn HEAD-ON, exposing the disfigured eye that he hid from others, either by looking down or holding his hand over that eye. His eye was injured in his childhood, and it deeply affected his self-image.
