Insides, Outsides; Words, Pictures

The theme this weekend, and all of last week, even, seemed to be "images". The workshop at GWN was on graphic novels (another fantastic workshop), and then I went down to the Lower East Side with the fam to see InsideOut; OutsideIn, an installation by image artist, Shantell Martin. She's at the Colette Blanchard Gallery on Clinton Street for the rest of this week, so if you get a chance to go, do - it's definitely worth it. Shantell is warm and engaging, and her work is a fascinating reflection of an internal journey on an external landscape. She also draws on just about everything - including people, so be prepared to walk out as a piece of living art ;).

Having been a media studies/film major, I've always been intrigued by the merging of words and images. I was never an avid reader of comics, but I absolutely adored Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis and Alison Bechdel's Dykes To Watch Out For. I couldn't imagine those novels written in any other format. If I were a more skilled illustrator, graphic novels are something I would most definitely explore writing. As it is, words are enough for me to grapple with, ha. O_o