Broken Frontier

If there was one name on everybody's Best of 2008 list, it was Theo Ellsworth. BF talks to this iconoclastic and honest creator in a mammoth interview.

You couldn't get past the name: Capacity by Theo Ellsworth. Again and again, this exceptionally honest and wildly inventive work kept showing up on everybody's Best of the Year lists and deservedly so. Capacity represents a collection of mini-comics, coupled with new material by writer and artist Theo Ellsworth.

It takes the reader on a trip into the subconscious of the artist, leading him on a visual tour de force coupled with architectural dreamscapes on a mission to find a connection between the real world and the mind world.

BF had a long, disarming chat with Ellsworth about his dreams, his inner mind and where exactly those funky creatures come from!?

About Capacity

BROKEN FRONTIER: In Capacity, you mention having a bit of a hard time getting published. According to publishers, the book was either too weird or too wordy. So how did you convince Secret Acres to publish your graphic novel?

THEO ELLSWORTH: Secret Acres actually contacted me. Their focus seems to be directed towards publishing more unusual, eccentric cartoonists, so I feel pretty at home with them. Leon of Secret Acres once told me that his dream project would be to publish the entire works of Henry Darger, and I thought, “That’s my kind of publisher!” They’ve been incredible to work with. They really stood back and let me design the whole book and allowed it be my own personal vision. A lot of publishers seem to want to get their fingerprints all over the author's work, and I don’t know if I could work that way. I always had a feeling that I’d finally get published someday. In this case my publisher just didn’t exist yet. They just got started in 2008, and I’m their third book.

I’m actually glad I didn’t get published right away. It led me to discover the amazing, rich world of self publishing mini-comics and zines. I really love the whole grassroots, community mentality of self publishing. It was a good exercise figuring out how to do it myself, and find an audience on my own. This, ironically, is how Secret Acres eventually discovered me. I think every artist they’ve contacted so far was discovered because of their self published works.

BF: After the critical success of Capacity, is there a sense of personal pride in the fact that you were able to finish this project? Were there some things that you couldn't finish because you felt that Capacity stood in the way?

TE: It was a huge relief to finish this book! It felt like finishing this book was a doorway to everything else I want to do. There’s a huge, epic comic story that I want to tell. It’s been building in my head for years. It’s a world that my mind reverts back to any chance it gets. The Capacity series began as an exercise to help me prepare to tell this story. I was trying to explore comics as a medium, while simultaneously trying to explore the way I interact with my own imagination, and practising the labour of bringing something that only exists inside of my head, out into the world.

BF: Capacity - in broad strokes - is about your quest for the acceptance of your subconscious. After finishing Capacity, did you feel different about yourself? Have you changed as a person in any way after the book was finished?

TE: I feel like every work of art I make changes me in some way. The labour intensive quality of my work makes it an ideal tool for self reflection. At the same time, I’ve never really wanted to write about myself; I want to write character driven stories. But I felt like I needed to work out so many things inside of my own head before I could actually be selfless enough to clearly write about the characters I see. I joke in the back of the book, that Capacity was my thesis project for an imaginary school I’ve been secretly attending. Finishing the book felt like a graduation ceremony of sorts.

The goal has always been to get out of my own way, and delve as deeply as I can into this big story I can’t seem to stop thinking about. At the same time, I’ve always seen the possibility of becoming a Henry Darger type character, and completely losing touch with the outside world. So the other aspect of working on Capacity was to find a balance inside of myself, where I can maintain healthy relationships in the world without losing touch with my own creative drive. Creating Capacity was a huge step for me. In the beginning of the book I’m living out of my car, spending most of my time alone, and towards the end, I’m in a healthy relationship and part of an art community. I feel like the actual creation of the material in the book was the map that led me through all those changes.

BF: Capacity's sole focus is your inner mind's eye, you could say; the way you arrange and view the world and how to put this on paper. Did you find yourself adapting or changing while working on the small press comics that preceded the collected edition?

TE: Every story seems to be a learning experience. Some of the work feels a little embarrassing now, but they also feel valuable to me because they honestly represent where I was at when I made them. I think each story helped me get a little closer to figuring out what kinds of stories I really want to tell. They were all an important part of the puzzle for me.

Imagination

BF: The question that is on everybody's lips: do the mythical Aztec-like constructions and beasts really come to you fully formed? How does that process work?

TE: They weirdly do feel fully formed, yet I’m also making it up as I go. I just kind of start drawing and the details begin to form. It’s kind of like slowly turning a focus knob on a camera. I know that there’s something there on the page, and by drawing it, I’m sort of just bringing it out of the fog, onto the page. It’s a relaxing and invigorating process to me, and suspenseful, because unexpected things always show up. When I draw my creatures, I’ll just think “Lets see who’s hanging out by this building” and I’ll start drawing. A lot of the time it really feels like I’m being “visited” as opposed to making things up.

BF: What is your own theory behind your active dream life? How do you access that particular mind's eye?

TE: I was reading Ron Rege’s great new collection called Against Pain a few weeks ago, and there’s this story about a kid who solves an impossible math equation by going on lots of walks and letting his mind wander. The kid mentions that when he’s on a long walk, he becomes relaxed and alert at the same time, and I thought “that’s exactly it!” Drawing allows me to get into this mind state where I’m relaxed and alert simultaneously. My drawings are so obsessively detailed because adding all that texture helps me delve even further into that feeling. Sometimes a square inch of paper can take up my whole entire world. I remember a lot of dreams, past experiences, and ideas while I’m drawing. Long walks and bike rides are also an important part of the process. Without exercise, I’d fall apart. It really is all about being relaxed and alert at the same time. That combination of feeling seems to be where art and dreams come from.

BF: I fell totally in love with the way you make people fill in their own names in the intermediate parts. Are you in real life also such a nice and polite person, actively searching out interaction with other human beings?

TE: I would like to think so. The social side of me is kind of a goofball, and I’m never really quite sure how I come across, but I have a genuine love and respect for people. I feel awkward in group situations a lot of the time, but when I put myself into the right mind state, I love chaotic social scenes, and random conversations with strangers. I usually just feel like some kind of weird, walking cartoon that’s trying to pass as solid. On the opposite end of that, I have a more serious side that just wants to hide away and work all the time. It’s hard for me to find a balance.

Having the reader to fill in their own name in the blank came out of my own fascination with the fact that anyone who reads my book would be interacting with my own imagination on their own terms. I wanted to be able to invite them in and play around with the weird kind of suspension of disbelief that happens when the reader steps into someone else’s imagined world. Having the reader inhabit an imaginary body throughout the book was also my way of validating all of the preposterous, impossible things I try to do in the book. It’s my way of saying “See? It all really happened! You were there!”

BF: How do you work out the story flow of your stories? Do you just dive in and see where it takes you or is there a method to your madness?

TE: I feel like my method is always mutating according to what the story needs. For the most part it all starts with watching a scene in my head, and trying to see it from different angles. I don’t do thumbnails, though sometimes I’ll work out a rough script. I’ll work out the flow of a scene, sometimes up to 10 pages of so, drawing really roughly, just to break down what happens on each page. After that, I’ll go back and start working out the details. I usually can’t tell what actually works until I put it down on paper. Other times, I’ll work out a story one panel at a time and make it up as I go. I’ve been doing a lot of short pieces this way lately.

Daily life as an artist

BF: Has the success of Capacity opened unexpected venues for your work like Nickolodeon Magazine and Bash Magazine?

TE: Both of those gigs actually originated before my book came out, but it does feel like having a published book out in the world opens things up for me in a new way. The other day I was in a comic shop buying a book, and the fellow behind the counter said there was a discount for professionals. It was the first time that it had really occurred to me that I had somehow become a professional cartoonist. I’ve infiltrated their world! I’m starting to be taken seriously for doing the kind of stuff I used to get in trouble for in High school!

BF: Does your Pony Club Gallery and Store  achieve success in the art world on the West Coast of the States? Does it still leave a lot of time for making comics?

TE: I actually left Pony Club at the end of 2008 in order to put more focus on comics. It was a pretty amazing experience helping to start a gallery and figure out how to keep it afloat. The other members are all great friends of mine, but it started to feel like I was putting my focus in too many places. I want to make comics as much as possible, and it takes a lot of energy and time. I do love doing gallery shows, and it would be fun to curate shows again from time to time. I miss the social outlet of the gallery and the inspiration of being around great art all of the time, but there’s only so much I can fit in to my schedule.

Talking art

BF: Why did you choose comics to express your feelings in? What is your take on the validity of comics as a storytelling medium?

TE: To me, it’s the ultimate art form. It somehow seems to combine pretty much everything that interests me. I get to pursue my interests in architecture, clothing design, character design, mythology, psychology, the musicality of pacing, and just about anything I can think of. And all I need is a pen, paper, and time! I also love the fact that comics are so interactive. The reader chooses the pacing, lingers on the details in their own way, and turns each page. It’s a very intimate medium. I’m also interested in animation, but I really do feel like comics are the best possible art form to me, and it doesn’t really bother me that it’s not taken as seriously as other mediums. If anything, there’s a sort of freedom in that.

BF: There's an inexorable design sense to your drawings, a sense of balanced order and immaculately laid out line work. Does this come natural to you or do you have a background in design?

TE: I never went to art school. It’s nice that you say my pictures feel balanced. I don’t exactly feel like I know what I’m doing. Whenever I’ve heard people talk about design theory, it never makes any sense to me. I just go by what feels right. It’s more of an impulse than an understanding. I do some pretty detailed pencils a lot of the time before I ink, but a lot of new details spontaneously show up during the inking process.

BF: Are you concentrating on short comics right now like you're doing for Bird Hurdler? Any plans for new extended comics projects?

TE: I just finished up a couple of short pieces for anthologies and I’ve been working on a lot of single page comics. I don’t want to get stuck just doing short work. Within a month, I plan to embark on my big project, which will be a multi-volume, ongoing story. I’ve been doing a lot of writing, sketching, and thinking in order to prepare. I’m trying to steer all of my focus into the direction of this project. Figuring out how to keep paying rent while working on a massive project that will take a long time to generate income is a bit of a puzzle, but I’m not going to let that stop me. I’ve invented my own full time job, and I’m dedicated. It seems like the means to support myself should always come through somehow.

BF: Who or what are some of your artistic influences that inspire you in life?

TE: There’s so many! A lot of people point out the Aztec influence and it’s true, I feel a huge kinship with a lot of ancient and tribal art. There’s a deep sense of their art being a necessity to the survival of their people. I like the idea of art being an act of devotion, or a psychological necessity. For this same reason, I feel a real connection to Outsider art. There’s something about art that was made to fill a personal need, without manipulating it to please an outside audience that really registers with me.

I’m inspired by art that comes from the artist’s personal, private world. Adolf Wolfili is one of my very favourite artists, as well as countless others that I could go on and on about. As far as comics go, I would have to name Edward Gorey as a personal favourite. I really relate to the dense, rich panels he drew, as well as his playful sense of dream logic. David B. is another cartoonist I can’t get enough of. All of his work seems to delve into his own deep interest in psychological dream symbols and his relationship to the world. I think that Dr. Suess might be my earliest influences. I’m really inspired by novelists too. I’ve been reading a lot of Haruki Murakami, Steven Millhauser, Karen Russel, and Neil Gaiman lately. Each of whom seems to have a powerful ability to step into a world, look around, and bring back a clear and potent picture to immerse the reader in. That’s exactly what I would like to do with my comics. I try to learn from everyone I can.

BF: And last of all, what has life in comics taught you?

TE: I think most of all, an enhanced sense of self-reliance. No-one’s telling me to do this, but it’s what I want to do. There’s no real support system in society to encourage anyone to do this kind of work. At the moment, I’m pretty thrilled to be barely getting by doing this. Making comics has also improved my ability to bring clear images into the world from my imagination; something I never want to stop improving at. Making comics has also introduced me to a whole world of other cartoonists. Getting to meet other people who share the same art form has been wonderful and educational. I love finding out about other people’s process, seeing their stories in progress, and hearing about other people’s experiences in the publishing world.

BF: Thanks for taking the time to talk to us so honestly and in depth, Theo and best of luck in life and all your future projects!

Capacity by Theo Ellsworth is a black and white softcover, published by  Secret Acres. It counts 336 pages and retails for $15. It is available at all better comics and bookstores internationally.

Check out  Theo Ellsworth website and keep yourself updated regarding his latest projects by bookmarking his blog Thought Cloud Factory News.