All afternoon I lay on the couch, staring at the picture on her wall: a ballerina sitting, lacing her shoe: a raised leg, a bended knee. Then, her key turned in the lock. I pretended to be asleep, but she’d seen my dangling feet in socks. She put down her purse. In a while I followed her into the bedroom. The curtains were drawn and the room was dark, and cool. She removed her stockings, and everything else; her dress lay on the floor. Her pale body seemed the source of that coolness. “I’m tired,” she said, “let me sleep.”
Per cinque giorni l’aveva ignorato. Lo guardava passare, seduta sui gradini di casa sua. Poi, il sesto giorno, forse perché era sabato, si era decisa ad allungare una mano. L’aveva grattato dietro le orecchie e allora il gatto si era trasformato in un uomo alto.
“Ce ne hai messo di tempo,” aveva detto, con una voce dolce, mielata.
Era rientrata e gli aveva portato del latte. In una tazza, non in un piattino. “Grazie. Ora mi siederei davanti al camino.”
Così l’aveva fatto entrare. Era da allora che il gatto stava davanti al camino, mentre dell’uomo è meglio non chiedere.
Notes
It took me a really long time to find a proper image for The Ballerina. It’s a complex story in some ways… complex for me at least. The illustration for Latte, is another scan from my sketchbook, which I “enhanced” a bit in photoshop… sometimes these drawings are the best ones to somehow brake with my normal way of doing things. For the idea of this last illustration I have to thank Sbrizz for the input, somehow I was producing only bullshit today… and, like so often, I was a bit behind scedule with these drawings.
The jury, foto by Armin Barducci
Saturday the Grand Jury for the NoWords Comics contest had its final meeting. The Members of the Jury were 4 (as shown in the photo above, from left to right): Luigi Fassi curator of the Museum Gallery, Giancarlo Alessandrini the visual creator of Martin Mystere and comic artist for Bonelli, Thomas Ott our special guest from Switzerland and master of the scratch-board, and finally me.
We had a really hard time judging the entries, as there were a lot of really great works among them. In the end, after endless discussions, we managed to come to a final verdict… and I must say I am really pleased with it. Of course now it’s still a bit early to reveal the names of the winners to the public, but keep an eye on the bolzanocomics.it website and you’ll know soon enough.
Me and Elisabeth spent the following day with Thomas Ott and his wife Anet, showing them the wonders of Bolzano… like the mummy exhibition at the Archaeology Museum (the museum where Oetzi lies… how fitting!). Thomas of course really liked the exhibition… as I did as well. It’s amazing and really well done, with mummies from all over the world (from Egypt, Peru, China, Italy, northern Europe just to name a few) and a lot of background information.
The day ended with Thomas Ott sitting on our drawing table signing the books by him he found in my bookshelf. And he also gave me a copy of his latest publication called Unplugged (Edition Stephan Witschi, Zürich, CH), a great collection of sketches and doodles.
I’ve been a huge fan of Thomas Ott for a long time, ever since I saw one of his stories on Strapazin, more than 10 years ago. I think he’s one of the most interesting artists around, a real master of the scratch-board technique and he’s got this ability to create dense and capturing atmospheres, something I really would like to be able to do… so it was really exiting to meet him and go around and just talk about comics and movies and making art…
A portrait of me by Thomas Ott
Some links:
Thomas Ott (t.0.t.t.) homepage
Martin Mystere
Museum Gallery AR-GE Kunst
South Tyrol Museum of Archeology
Bolzano Comics 2009
As expected more from the holidays. But this time… somethig unexpected. Because nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition… I mean, nobody expects The Human Chainsaw!
