Chris Ware
Chris Ware
Franklin Christenson "Chris" Ware, is an American cartoonist known for his Acme Novelty Library seriesand the graphic novels Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earthand Building Stories. His works explore themes of social isolation, emotional torment and depression. He tends to use a vivid color palette and realistic, meticulous detail. His lettering and images are often elaborate and sometimes evoke the ragtime era or another early 20th-century American design style...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionArtist
Date of Birth28 December 1967
CountryUnited States of America
I guess we all make choices as to how we want to live, right?
My grandmother was an unparalleled storyteller who gave me a preview of how life might turn out, and also fortified my empathy.
One of the most valuable things one of my art teachers said to me was, ‘Don’t get upset by criticism. Value the fact that at least someone noticed what you did.
Every city began as a campsite - pg. 25
Fortunately, I'm able to make a living from comics, so I'm privileged enough to be quite choosy, though most cartoonists can't afford to be. It's really an uncomfortable situation, since I'm not an illustrator, though I do get calls from morally indefensible businesses offering me money to decorate their ambitions. It's extremely rare, almost unheard of, in fact, that I am asked to do a comic strip. Do writers get calls to pen Toyota advertisements? Do composers get asked to write chamber pieces about exercise machines?
Even the disappointing diffusion of a sheer curtain can suggest the most colorful bouquet of unspeakable secrets.
It's somehow more comforting to imagine that one's suffering is unique, and to measure against what one doesn't know, rather than against what one does.
I was used to being disliked as a kid. Not that I didn't deserve it: I was a pretty sad and unappealing creature, and still am, I guess. It's sort of simplistic to think that one tries to make stuff that accounts for one's repulsiveness as a person, but there's some truth to it. So, when I read something unfavorable, I always take it deeply personally. It's as if my efforts have been in vain, and I should just quit.
I think it has most to do with the way in which a story is told, whether it feels real either via the music of the telling or the honesty of the story.
The thing I don't understand is why so often one hears discussion of the fruits of human labor as if it's all the creation of some alien race.
Lately, I cant shake the feeling that Ive been living a dream for the last 10 years or so; I cant account for most of my 20s, and I have to continually remind myself that certain people are dead now and many of my friends have children.
Unlike prose writing, the strange process of writing with pictures encourages associations and recollections to accumulate literally in front of your eyes; people, places, and events appear out of nowhere. Doors open into rooms remembered from childhood, faces form into dead relatives, and distant loves appear, almost magically, on the page- all deceptively manageable, visceral, the combinations sometimes even revelatory.
I prefer to imagine that my wife, a few friends, and occasionally my mom are the only ones who read what I do, though I realize that this is somewhat unrealistic.
I have a preponderance to look smug in photos; something to do with the way my mouth turns up at the corners.