01/01/2025
This post is way past overdue, but this year I was incredibly honored to be the recipient of the Emerging Talent Award at Cartoon Crossroads Columbus. The past few months felt like such a blur and now I'm scrambling to reflect back on this year. It's been a good big year full of transformations and changes. What Can You Bring to the Table was nominated for Best Short Form Comic earlier this year for the Cartoonist Prize Award-- I feel incredibly honored to receive these recognitions and all the support for me and my work.
I had the privilege to be able to do 8 comic/zine fests this year and I think definitely the maximum amount for a while haha. But it's been so fulfilling to see and hear people genuinely connecting to my work and making genuine connections. I think what means the most to me and what I'm most proud of myself looking back on each year, in my work and as a person, is being able to be vulnerable.
I remember describing how making art felt (and still constantly feels) like you're stripping yourself down-- clothes, skin, flesh and bones and all to the world that is like a void where you don't know if there are sad, angry, or happy people; or even anyone at all to even acknowledge this act of vulnerability-- to know how people handle you being your most truthful self. The pain that comes when people don't but feeling the extreme euphoria when you find the people that do.
As I'm thinking of what I would like to do next with all these transitions in my practice and opportunities with the grant, I look forward to the upcoming year with excitement and but truthfully also with immense fear. For new and ongoing projects, and for a world that seems to be squeezing and pushing us to an extreme. This constantly weighs on my mind.
I share and think about this quote often, from Naoki Urasawa on Manben. "One book can change someone, it can make them a better person and then maybe that changed person can save the world.
I want to be the person who does that."
It's got a real shonen-type cheesiness and naivety to it, but I admire the confidence and as a reminder of the power behind art and all of us as individuals.
(Continued in comments lol I'm yappin..)
#2024
