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Sometimes the forgotten past comes into your life like an unexpected visitor and sometimes you re-discover parts of yourself through it…

A couple of weeks ago me and Elisabeth went with my mother up the mountains, to the village where she was born, to visit our relatives. At one point we took a walk through the woods and I discovered this really weird “pietà” sculpture (a Madonna holding a dying Christ, which you can’t really see in the picture above). What I like about it is, that the face is completely white and the eyes look more like empty holes giving it a pretty unsettling effect. The figure looks more like a ghost or a vampire, than the grieving mother we are used to see.

According to my mother this sculpture was made by a granduncle of mine called Joseph Ploner, better known in the village as “Weber Våter”, who got into wood sculpture when he was 80. Somehow it makes me think that a certain interest for the macabre and the unsettling  might have its root in the family… at least on a latent, unconscious level. Now that I think of it, many of the old iron crosses in the village’s cemetery where made by my grandfather (should take pictures of those too, there were just too many people in the cemetery last time).

The unexpected visitor might have opened a door I had forgotten.

Il buon nome dei McLowry di Angelo Macrì

Nigel McLowry s’impiccò nella torre est. Lasciò un biglietto:
“McLowry Castle è da tempo fonte di insostenibile imbarazzo. Nelle notti d’autunno sembra bucare la nebbia per avventarsi sui rari viandanti. Nei cigolii delle porte par di sentire i defunti graffiare con le unghie i loro sepolcri. I passi riecheggiano dalle profondità dell’inferno e la luce lunare penetra dalle vetrate tingendo di pallore funereo i volti dei visitatori.
Eppure nessuno spettro lo abita, caso unico nella contea.
Per questo lo lascio per non lasciarlo mai.”
Ora al suo posto v’è un campo da golf e dei lamenti risuonano alla buca 8.

Notes:

New entry for the project: Angelo Macrì aka Madmac. You can find his blog here: madmacshow.blogspot.com
The funny thing about this illustration is that, while it contains all the elements that usually attract me (gothic novel castles, spirits, stormy nights…) in the end I preferred to illustrate something completely different. Maybe because certain images are best left to the mind of the reader, and also because I wanted to underline the macabre and absurd humour of the story.

The Magpie by Ryan Licata

Market day was the best time to be at it. His victims were fellows with twirling canes and straw hats, beside dames with parasols, strolling about, haggling for rugs, munching from a bag of the Chinaman’s persimmons. He’d bide his time in the narrow streets, to where they were carried beneath him by the push of the crowd. Then, on the hour, as the church bells rang, the inexplicable would occur: a choreographed dance of dandies removing their watches from their pockets. And that’s when he struck, with the quick rip of fabric, the flutter of wings, up, and away.

Notes:

When I first read this story I didn’t know what a Magpie was, but I immediately had to think about a strange looking fellow, dressed in black with big wings on his back. Then I looked the word up in the dictionary, and it all made sense…

The Ballerina by Ryan Licata

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.”

Latte di Susanna Raule

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

I made a really weird dream, so weird I had to draw it. There were these laidies, really tall ladies, dressed with long black coats. And when they opened their coats tentacles would come out and drag you into the black space they were hiding inside.

My desk in the old flat. Before I got me a real computer.

I tried several times to portrait my brother Andreas. Unfortunately I never really succeeded. What is it that makes people we know really well so hard to portrait?