I have been drawing in little books since I was a kid and keeping them since college. I have had a lot of art experiences. Some good, some disappointing but in the end, most of them have been for other people. I always heard that you should do the thing that makes YOU happy and not worry about others. This was a real problem because, as an illustrator, you are ALWAYS working for someone else. But not the journal. It was its own special thing. 

​I was looking through my photos the other day and it struck me that even though I did not become a world famous illustrator, I did manage to create an interesting and fun body of work that makes me happy. I know that the terms journals, sketchbooks and diaries often get used interchangeably. I do not however. I guess it helps me to make sense of things by labeling them. It’s silly but I think it has to do with the old informational graphic artist in me. Trying to diagram things to make them understandable.

Here’s how I think of them. Sketchbooks are objects. So in this way they are interchangeable with journals. But here is where they differ. I think of sketchbooks as tools to help you plan or practice for larger projects. Simply paper for a job. Diaries are like your imaginary friend whom you talk to about all of your secrets. Journals however are a Frankenstein’s monster. It is a place to draw, paint, write and reflect. It is a friend, a companion, a counselor and confessor. It acts as a mirror and a telescope, looking inward and onward.  

With the advent of digital technology like the iPad Pro, you can take things out and turn them into other things such as stickers or products. It is an amazing time. But in the fast paced digital world, it is a slow, steady and sometime anachronistic object that benefits the user in so many ways. I owe so much to the teachers who turned me on to the practice. I will forever love them for it.

I have been a middle school art teacher for the past 15 years. This year, I have gotten to switch schools and change my curriculum to share what I love to do most with my students. I was hired to teach “graphic design” but I have been able to teach design, through the use of sketchbook journals. We are learning how to use bubble letters and typography, comics, illustrations, printmaking and bookbinding. This has been the best thing I have ever had the chance to teach. Now I just gotta not mess things up. Next year will be better. HAHA. I will be trying to write more about the process and the class because I think there are lots of teachers out there who might benefit from what we are doing. Please follow and share with anyone you think might find this material useful.

Well, I finally did it. I started posting pages of Gob. The first Chapter/Short Story is going up on the site. I will be adding pages weekly. I am still negotiating how many I can reasonably post during the week. For now, I am putting them as I get them done. 

So, a little intro, Gob is a cryptid. A previously undiscovered creature. (Think Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster.) He lives on the edge of the reality we know as scientifically enlightened people. I love science but I hate the arrogance of people who act like we know everything. We don't. 

Gob is a comic about a creature, peaceful, curious, who is passing his time wandering through the parts of the world that we have not yet discovered. As a kid, I loved hiking and playing in the woods and loved how beautiful and spooky it was at the same time. 

As a boy, I was fascinated by the unknown. UFO's, Bigfoot, Urban legends, monsters. It was great. My childhood seemed like a complete mystery to me. I was one of those kids who never got it. Life, social situations, dating, it all confused me. I guess cryptic things and phenomena made me feel like less of a loser. If I was going to have questions, these seemed to be easier to wrestle with. 

Gob is the feeling of the gloaming. The time of day right before the sun rises or right before it is totally set. It is joy and dread but always with a healthy dose of humor. I am really interested in feelings and whether I can make the reader feel things with images and few words.

A writer friend of mine, Michael Frizell said "Do you know what I love about Gob? He always seems to be getting in over his head. I think I have  a little Gob in me. Heck, I think we all do."

I have been teaching now for 13 years. Holy cow! When did that happen. I think I have always been a teacher but this was my chosen field. For the first few years I think I taught but was thinking I would do this until I "made it" as an artist. 
​
Little did I know, that in spite of the challenges (budgets, petty infighting, difficult students, and so on) I would fall in love with it. I recently had to tell a short narrative about my teaching experience and philosophy for a friend and mentor who was nominating me for an award. In doing so. I remembered so many of the experiences I have had. Kids are challenging for sure. But the thing I love so much is the kids. The sheer brilliance of them when you give them a chance to shine. 

I have been so focused lately on the work of making art that I have neglected my work of teaching. It has been like an eclipse where the making had blocked my view of the classroom. I love teaching kids but I also love mentoring young or new teachers. I am going to focus this blog on that. Giving my thoughts and sharing my research about teaching and making art. I hope you will enjoy it and share it on social media to those who love or teach art. If you are a teacher in the visual or performing arts I would love to hear from you. Please feel free to share stories and experiences as well as your wisdom.

In the end, I believe that making and teaching art are two sides of the same coin. I hope that the work I post here will encourage you to make more and share more of your wisdom and insight with others. Please leave comments. That means a lot. It helps me to know what is working. My new goal is to post once a week. Perhaps on Thursday or Friday. I will keep you posted. 

Well, It's a 4-day weekend. Glad. Looking forward to relaxing with the family, playing Mario Kart and making comics. This week was the first (mostly) full week working in a TAB classroom. It was eye opening. As my good friend Dr. Steven Willis told me, "When you empower kids, it is amazing what they will do." At first, I have to be very honest. It was hard not to control the way they worked. I have some colleagues that this would just give them a stroke. I have always thought of my room as a very free room where kids got to make their own art. What it was was a room where they got to make their own versions of my art or my ideas. So letting go was a little stressful.
I have a student teacher who has been running much of the week so I was able to see how the kids reacted and worked as I sat with them at their tables while making the Eat Paste Journal pages. The kids were sometimes off task but for the most part really worked hard to make and explore their own ideas. One of the most shocking things to happen was to see 4 non-english speaking students making drawings of incredible beauty and detail. Language was not the barrier it was in other classes (although they can't understand the theory stuff). They were successful at making ART. 
I also got to spend time with a troubled student who is usually really defiant, make an incredibly detailed drawing of a semi tractor trailer. We got to talking and he became laser-like focused on his work. He was disappointed in his next drawing but we were able to discuss what he needed to work on. I really felt like I was doing some good for these students. It has not only empowered the students as artists but me as a teacher. I am looking forward to seeing what they do as we open the future centers. 
In recent years I have discovered that I have a revolutionary in me. Not one concerned with politics but one who sees the arts as an act of revolt against the tedium and the abuse of day to day life. I love that this approach to teaching is facilitating this revolution for my kids. For now, I have a snow day to make stuff so that I can model this behavior to my kiddos. I am fighting the same fight that they are. I want to make my own life more beautiful, more meaningful by creating my own work. 

This past weekend, I had the opportunity to fulfill a wish of mine I have had for several years. I got to be a bell ringer for the salvation army. It was amazing! The temperature was dropping to single digit wind chills, The first snowflakes of the year fell and I got to see people's generosity and kindness up close and personal. 

The day raised money for the Salvation Army's benevolent services but it also brought out a few unexpected observations. It all began with a phone call I had with an old and dear friend. He sardonically quipped "Prepare to be disappointed in humanity" at my revealing of my new adventure. It made me sad, because not only was I NOT disappointed (people were awesome, generous and funny) but his reaction to volunteering was to assume the worst. To be fair, he has had some tough times as of late. Those times can challenge even the brightest of spirits not to give in to cynicism. The second reaction came from a man I do not know on Facebook. He commented on my post about how fun it was to be able to do this, that the Salvation Army was homophobic and I was supporting hate. Seriously, hate by raising money for the poor? I asked him to find me a perfect company that offended noone so that I could volunter for them. No reply as of yet but I'm sure he is working hard to find one for me. (wink)

As I was standing and ringing the bell, I had two hours to think. Being a teacher, husband, father and artist doesn't always give me lots of time to do this so I was loving it. I was looking at the Salvation Army motto "Doing the Most Good" and it got me thinking about the work we do in the classroom. Some of my ancestors were in the Knights Templar, protecting pilgrims from harm on their travels to the Holy Land. I have always looked at the roll of teaching in a similar light. I am trying to inspire kids to fight for their own futures. To have a chance to succeed and perhaps to rise above their childhood circumstances. We were told when I was first hired, 12 years ago, that you can't save them all. True. But unfortunately many people have become like my real and Facebook friend, cynical or overly critical of the problems in education.

It's true, there are lots of problems. A lack of funding, a lack of respect or understanding of what art teachers do, poverty and entitlement mindset in out kiddos, all making the job even harder. But NONE of that matters. In the end, I think the Salvation Army has it right. DO THE MOST GOOD! This is what we can do. It is what motivates us to smile at that disrespectful student who yelled at you the day before. It is this goal that makes us not give up when fellow teachers or administrators seem to have no concern or support for our programs. The arts have the potential to open minds and change a kid's life. Not just the artistic student but every student has the opportunity to understand that their ideas matter. What they love, are interested in, and care about is IMPORTANT! That is a powerful message for any child. But think about it in the minds of our underpriveledged or oppressed kids. 

This is why, after 12 years of teaching I decided to switch to the TAB based classroom. It allows me to do more good by empowering KIDS to see the wonder in themselves. It lets them have truly meaningful and authentic art experiences in the classroom. It teaches tham that they can accomplish anything if they put in the effort, even something difficult like making art. It validates the meaning in their ideas and in their own culture (whether ethnic or pop in nature). They are amazing, with brilliant ideas and strong opinions but they need guidance. That is what we do. We help them to channel that energy in meaningful ways to produce awesome works of art. If we are lucky, they may even learn a thing or two about themselves and their place in the world.

You may not be able to save them all. But don't for a minute allow yourself to slip into cynicism or criticalness because of it. You the art teacher (heck, any teacher for that matter) have the opportunity to save a life. That is pretty cool in my book. Just keep your eyes on the big picture and realize that doing the most good is way better than doing no good at all.

Ever since I was a little kid I have been surrounded by mysteries. We lived in a small ranch house that was owned by a man whose wifeswapped in the 60s.She had committed suicide in our basement and he was moving to Florida. He gave us the house if we took over the payments and he left a lot of old things in the basement. Old photos, 1930s pinball games, a microscope, super 8 films, old electronics and more. Oh, yeah, and a terrible vibe that things were not right down there. I was told not to mess with his stuff because my dad was afraid that he would come back some day to reclaim his treasures. He never did. I spent countless hours exploring these items and wondering in secret what they were and what they were used for.. It was a secret world that only I and my friends knew about.

Teaching has been a lot like that basement. I got hired on a provisional certificate. This means, I did not have my teaching license but had significant life experience in my field. As such, I started teaching without TRULY knowing what I was doing. I was in someone else's used art room filled with years of accumulated junk. I was in heaven, but this did cause me certain issues as one might imagine. I didn't know the tricks of the trade for classroom and project management but I loved kids, art and I worked hard at making connections and sharing my love of the arts with my students. Love and passion trumps books smarts most of the time.

This became a real asset however once I had a few years under my belt as I was not tied down to many of the conventions that I see teachers struggle with. I was not a slave to schools of thought about teaching nor was I afraid to try out new or experimental projects and approaches. Instead, I developed my philosophy of teaching by trial and error and what I felt I needed to become the artist I had become. In those early years, I had been paralyzed with fear in my art making due to long standing insecurities developed in childhood and further ingrained in grad school. The fearlessness I felt in teaching would eventually close into a feedback loop and help my art making. A truly symiotic relationship. Now, 12 years into my carreer, I am continuing my exploration of the mysteries of classrooms and life as I spend time developing a TAB (Teaching for artistic behavior) classroom.

The "EAT PASTE" page on this site is dedicated to my research on this topic, and on teaching in general. I am wrestling with these issues as I have always done, through images. I want to record for myself the ups and downs that I face as I teach and see how artmaking can now feed my teaching by giving me a refective mirror to think about the things that take place, or that need to change. I will be posting weekly a variety of pages from my EAT PASTE JOURNAL. I hope it helps me answer some questions but I suspect it will produce more questions.

Ok, so I have been AWOL posting new strips lately. There is however a good reason for this. I am working on a BIG project right now. I will be giving more information as it develops. This summer, I hope to be working in earnest on it and be able to share process work here on the blog. Please check back soon and I will have more work to check out. Thanks for stopping by.