In the planning stages of Character, I purposefully chose artists with a range of backgrounds to test the limits of pop culture proliferation. By background I am generically referring to geography, age, sex, and ethnicity. Julia Stoops was one of a handful of Character collaborators who was born and raised outside of the United States. This subgroup of collaborators presented a hurdle for discovering pop culture similarities, or so I believed. My preconceived theory was that we would have to settle for the most common and ubiquitous American characters, Mickey Mouse for example. This would not have been a failure by any means, just not nearly as interesting as what actually surfaced during the drawing sessions.

Julia and I found that we share an appreciation of Doctor Who, the classic BBC Sci-Fi series. Her introduction to the series came by way of syndicated reruns in New Zealand and Australia, mine was through West Virginia public television. We settled on drawing a Dalek, a member of a race of evil mutants/machines that have plagued the poor Doctor for years.

Through this drawing I learned two things: nerdiness is an international affair and Doctor Who fandom knows no geographic bounds. Check out this video clip of Julia and I discovering our mutual reverence for the good Doctor.

Click on the names below to find out more about each of my collaborators.

Edie Tsong
Craig Baldwin
Geoffrey Ellis
Dan Gilsdorf
Yoshihiro Kitai
Matt McCormick
Ryan Alexander-Tanner
Bean Gilsdorf
Midori Hirose
Adam Sorensen
Jaclyn Campanaro
Jo Jackson
Julia Stoops
Daniel Duford
Emily Ginsburg
David Eckard
Peter Burr
Edward King
Mack McFarland
Samantha Wall

This video clip is excerpted from a two-hour conversation with Craig Baldwin. The drawing session took place in February 2007 and was one of the first in the project. For the uninitiated, Craig is an amazing underground filmmaker who works primarily with appropriated material. He also has a long-running exhibition series in San Francisco’s Mission District called Other Cinema.

Character was born during a conversation with Abra Ancliffe (PNCA Faculty) over dessert and drinks. We were out with a small group of friends and the discussion turned to Smurfs. Don’t ask how because that question has no easy answer. The rest of the group moved on to other discussions but Abra and I decided to attempt a recreation of a Smurf on a piece of scrap paper.

Were they chubby or slim? In which direction do their hats tilt? What do their ears look like? Noses? Eyes? How many fingers on each hand? These are the questions we asked ourselves and each other, using sketches to test, compare, and solidify our memories. Eventually, through deliberation and perseverance, we settled on a version of a Smurf that was passable if not entirely accurate.

This was not the first time I had attempted this exercise but it was the first time I considered the relevance of personal interaction in relationship to the drawing. I realized that while I could render a rudimentary version of a Smurf from memory, the collaborative process strengthened the resulting images. Additionally, I was able to consider my long-standing fear of monoculture in a new light. Abra and I were born and raised in different geographic regions of the Untied States but we were able to connect through a direct and real cultural memory.

That single evening of Smurf-drawing led to some interesting questions. Does our relationship to pop culture help define our identity? If so, to what degree? Why do some characters leave stronger impressions than others? Can a shared mediated experience such as watching Saturday morning cartoons as a child function as a catalyst for interpersonal connection as an adult?

I have been working on a project titled “Character” since February and it is showing at Tilt Gallery and Project Space through the end of this week. The Regional Arts and Culture Council provided me with a generous grant to support the project. For the next two weeks I plan to reveal the process of making the work through words, images, and audio clips.

The project began with an email sent out to twenty artists; some I knew personally, others I had yet to meet. The email consisted of the following paragraph:

“Here’s the basic idea of the project: I will make collaborative drawings with twenty artists and filmmakers. During the drawing session, we will choose a character from popular culture, past or present, of whom we both have memories. We will then attempt to draw the character on a single sheet of paper using only our memories, conversation, and drawings as references. The paper records all of the mistakes and successes.”

It was a simple premise with unpredictable results. My goal was to show all of the drawings regardless of our success at recreating the characters. The project is really about each conversation, all other elements are interesting residue. Video and audio from the drawing sessions were recorded but I was not sure how each would fit into the final exhibition. Sound would play an important role, video on the other hand was always an uncertainty. But like my great-grandfather used to say “it is better to have video and not need it than to need video and not have it.” Or, ah, er… something like that.