More Piranesi

One of Piranesi's etchings of "carceri" (prisons)

Last week I wrote about going to see an exhibition of

Willworld page 15

etchings of the 18th century architect/fantasist Giovanni Battista (or Giambattista) Piranesi.  As we walked through the exhibition, I marveled over and over at how much his etchings looked as though they could be done by an 18th century Seth Fisher.

Here is another comparison.  The "Carceri" (Prisons) drawings of Piranesi are prisons of his imagination, places of punishment that is existential, composed of meaningless stairways that lead to who knows where, maybe back to where we were in the beginning.  Why are we here?  What are we supposed to learn?  What are we supposed to be doing here?  What is it all for?

The whole of Willworld is filled with similar questions.  But this page in particular, with its staircases and elevators that go in different directions, and to incomprehensible places, shares a visual impact with the prison drawings, as well as a Kafkaesque sense of meaningless oppressiveness.
As in all of Seth's work, however, there is a light-heartedness about it that says, "Someone may have some nasty plans for you, but just take it all in stride, and it will come out fine on the other side."

Creating new universes

"I need to produce great ideas, and I believe that if I were asked to design a new universe, I would be mad enough to undertake it."  --Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720--1778)

We just came back from an exhibition at the San Diego Museum of Art on the work of Piranesi, who produced hundreds of exceedingly detailed engravings of architecture, ruins, cityscapes, sarcophagi, as well as maps, drawings of furniture, details of architectural flourishes, and his own architectural fantasies.  Some of the most intriguing drawings are the title pages of his books, in which the title is engraved on a fallen stone, which is surrounded with  other fallen stones, as well as bones, skulls, plants, people digging, whatever his wildly creative fancy could come up with.  Looking at picture after picture, I kept seeing Willworld, and other of the slightly skewed and often crumbling worlds designed by Seth Fisher.  If the centuries could somehow have been compacted, how Seth and Giovanni would have enjoyed each other's company.  Together I suspect they both would have taken on the project of designing a new universe.  

Their styles are different, but the delight in ornate details that you wouldn't necessarily find in your neighborhood is of a piece.  These two artists were brothers under the skin.
I suspect that Giovanni chuckled to himself, just as Seth did, as he drew in his street scenes the odd touches that make you look at his drawing and wonder, "Could that really be there, or did he make it up?"

Another little bit of kinship:

Not just the fact that both drawings have an arm stretching out to the right, but there is an otherworldy loneliness to them both, a sense of not quite belonging here.  People live in both high and precarious sites, but how do they get there?  Seth's drawing is a design for Myst 3 that was ultimately chucked, so it is less fully realized than the Piranesi one, but in both cases, the artist was trying for a mixture of recognizability and strangeness.  
It's where they lived.  

Flowering Nose sketchcards 2013

Once more the indefatigable J_ay has solicited Flowering Nose sketchcards from artists all over the world wide web.  He sent us these for Flowering Nose day, Jan 30, though I only received them when I returned from Japan yesterday.

This is a particularly nice group of cards, I think.  One was done by a burgeoning artist; we look forward to seeing her art in another 10 years.  The upper right one is a collage of colored paper.

Many thanks to J_ay for your faithfulness to Seth's memory.  And thanks also to the artists who have contributed to the growing collection of sketchcards.  Surely these are also part of Seth's oeuvre--work inspired by him.  

Floweringnose day 2013

This year on the anniversary of Seth's death, I am in Japan, visiting Hisako and Tofu.

We are going to spend the day in Oosu, the area of Nagoya where Seth and Hisako lived in their marriage.  Oosu has an arcaded shopping area with lots of small shops, with many different kinds of goods: small snack shops, tea shops, toy shops, electronic shops, vintage clothing, South American handmade goods, kimono fabrics, all kinds of things.  A fun place.  Seth's youngest brother Eli will be with us, to make it more fun.  Eli is spontaneous, sensible in the important things, imaginative, a good listener, a loyal friend.  He has many of the qualities that we loved in Seth.

I also found this photo (and 50 other similar ones), which was new to me.  i guess Seth knew someone who worked for an advertising company that needed a foreign man for some advertising campaign.  I have no idea of this photo was ever used.  Arre Japanese buyers really attracted to goods by seeing them used by hairy-chested foreigners?

Today is Seth's 40th birthday

I don't think Seth minded aging; he wasn't vain about his age, and I think he just assumed that he would keep getting better and more wise as he aged.  Whenever he learned important new information, he continually kept refreshing his own mental/spiritual map of life, adding what he had learned to it.  That way, his universe continually expanded, and his understanding grew.  He told me once that he was pretty sure he was wrong about some things, but he would learn more as time went on.  I think he was correct; he had more interest in Truth than in being Right, which made him an honest learner.

 

The picture above is a recent one of Seth's son Tofu, and his friend, a stag beetle. 

I am posting this picture for Seth's birthday not only because it is recent, but because--in the Toufuu section of his website--Seth wrote about a dream he had had about a beetle like this.  I think it was actually a kabuto-mushi that he wrote about; this is a kuwagata-mushi.  But that is a distinction that people who don't live with them would not make: both are large, horned, peaceable, black beetles, beloved in Japan, fearsome looking, but benign.  I asked Tofu what he feeds them and he said sweet jelly; not the rotting bodies of their foes, but sweet jelly.

We could even say that the beetles are a little bit like Seth himself: a presence that you can't ignore, a bit outlandish, but underneath that exterior, peaceable and full of sweetness. 

So this is for Seth.  Happy birthday Seth!  The kabuto and kuwagata mushi wish you peace.

  

The new website is up!!!

and it has a whole new look.

Thanks to the hard work and technical skill of our website designers, Seth's work has a presence again on the world wide web.  There is still more to do, especially in the gallery, where we want to present a whole lot more of Seth's artwork for people to see.  Eventually you will be able to view all the old stuff you used to love, as well as see more work of Seth's that you may remember, but don't want to go to the nuisance of going through all the blog archives to find. 

I hope you are not displeased to find that we have changed the look of the website. The way it used to look is still available here, so we can remember how Seth did it himself. At the time of his death, he had a plan to renovate the website, but he didn't tell anyone (as far as I know) what his vision was.   The designers had to use work of Seth's that he had already done, and I think they did a lovely job.  I hope you do too.

RIP Moebius 1939--2012

Moebius (AKA Jean Giraud) died Saturday, March 10.  He was Seth's hero. 

When Seth graduated from college, the first thing he did was to apply to the JET program, Japan's English teaching program in which English-speaking auxiliary teachers are hired for every high school and junior high school in Japan.  He wanted to live in Japan where comic books are so much more a part of the general culture than they are in the US.  But initially he was not accepted into the program.  So he was casting about for something to do that would further his goal of becoming a comic book artist.  He hit upon the idea of asking Moebius if he would take him on an apprentice.  This idea would have had one big problem, as Seth spoke no French, and was not so good at languages as to be able to pick it up easily.  But he pondered the plan seriously for some time. 

Then the acceptance came from the JET program, and his future was set, at least for a year or two.  (It turned out to be three years in the program, four years in Japan that first stretch, a joyful and productive time for Seth.) 

This little picture was done during the time he was an English teacher in the Oki Islands in Japan.  Though Moebius' work is not so familiar to me as it was to Seth, to me this lovely drawing has a bit of the character of Moebius' later drawings, that combination of broad blank spaces with areas of small detail.