Who
is... Donna Barr? Donna
Barr has been drawing since 1954, writing since 1962, published since 1986,
and publishing since 1996.
She has a Bachelors' Degree in German, and
is a veteran of the United States Army (1970-1973).
Readers worldwide
follower her THE DESERT PEACH, STINZ, BOSOM ENEMIES, HADER
AND THE COLONEL, among others.
She is recognized by her peers as
a pioneer in the field of drawn books and their use in new technologies of distribution
and reproduction. She is a contributor to the world's largest webcomics site,
moderntales.com, and its affiliate
sites.
She achieved her lifetime career goal in 2004 when her life's
work -- past, present and future -- has been accepted as part of the San Diego
State University's Library's Special Collection, and will be available to students
and professors for research, and to the public for exhibits.
She can
be emailed at barr at stinz dot com (remove spam barriers). She answers. Keep
the sentences short.
Oy. What a week or two. Mars in retrograde is not good for Leos. What, did I get hematite in my underwear or somecthing? Oh, right; don't wear THAT necklace.
Anyway, now for the HAPPY side of San Diego Comicon -- well, at least for me, and for a lot of my colleagues, now and in the future. That means you, whether you know it yet or not.
The San Diego State University gave me a nice little engraved crystal in their library entrance hall because of my massive contributions to Special Collections. And here's a shot of just part of the exhibit. It's pretty and all, but people are going to look at that in passing -- maybe -- and say, "Who's Donna Barr?" Especially when the dust begins to sift into the engraving.
SDSU did something galaxies better: they showed up as a serious academic presence at the San Diego Comicon International.
SDCC was so delighted they donated the booth. Somebody at the convention realized that university academics and departments don't always have a lot of funds for new ventures into new fields, not without a lot of argument (in the scientific sense, rather than the hair-pulling sense. Mostly). The donation shows a serious understanding about what this can mean to our industry as an art form -- and as a form of literature.
The SDSU team, including Jossie Chavez and her amazing staff (Shown here horsing around with ice cream at the show and creating THE dorkiest performance art films ) showed up with a fancy banner with the logo I'd contributed. I sat in that booth for the show (I'm sorry for the confusion to readers who couldn't find me in my accustomed hermitage in Artist's Alley -- and grateful to Roberta Gregory for sending them our way).
I want to especially thank Daniel Hager for sticking to this project come hell or high water, through confusion, catastrophes and infuriated women. Talk about backbone. It would never have happened without Daniel slogging away on it; I'll always be grateful to him for all his efforts. Considering what the repercussions will be for our industry, we all should be. He's permanently put his name into the history of drawn books, for bringing the art form to a whole new level of possibilities.
At first, admittedly, academia and drawn books were not communicating. The college folks tried to get their point across, but most of the creators they were trying to attract were confused by the concept. Give books to a university collection? Why? What will that do? What is it? A stack of minis in a student lounge? Too often that's all it's been. You know how students struggle to insert anything into the academic atmosphere; sooner or later it begins to breathe, but in the meantime, it can form its own stereotyped image of tiny amateur pointlessness.
I do have one major talent: I can listen to a language for a very short time -- spoken or jargon -- and soon can speak at least a pidgin form of it (20 years of wrestling with German and a smidgen of Russian and Japanese must have finally paid off). After about a half-day of dealing with both sides, the language clicked into place, and I started making the links between the two tribes. Just call me the Algonquin Sachem in The Last of the Mohicans.
At one point Jossie clapped me on the shoulder and said, "We should hire you!"
I hear that a lot. Always from brilliant folks with no money. Where are the schmucks with the dollars? Who would like to torque off their colleagues? I could be a huge help there. They could hire and fire me on the same day, I'd have something to put into the bank, and set off a major fight in any industry. Just try me. I've done it before, but for no money. Hell, I've had head librarians and councilmen and First Nations at each other's throats in a small room, just to rescue a small jewel of a local library. Just call me Coyote. Or Raven -- with all the black and sparkly stuff. Or Kali, my patron goddess. We all survive on carnage and carcasses.
The San Diego show began with confused artists, loathe to hand over so much as a mini to SDSU. Then the word spread. Jossie and the fierce girl staff of Special Collections ran around like the Lulu girls, with the vocabulary I'd given them, and came back loaded with choice goodies.
By the time Sunday hit, creators were running to the booth with stacks of brilliantly-printed, gorgeous books -- not just samples, but full series and collections! Incredible stuff. We spent the non-busy time (of which there was not much!) drooling over the stuff we got. You'll have to contact the University Special Collections for a list of the juicy stuff we received.
When I handed over The Black Manuscripts to the University (knowing I'd probably never see them again (sob!), along with boxes and boxes of art, fan mail, magazines and books, costumes, tapes, videos, it kick-started an academic explosion of respect for what we do. The academics couldn't believe that any creator could put in that much work just for the love of the form. Ah, little did they know; I'm just the tip of the iceberg. For them, SDCC was immersion therapy.
My work will inform the original direction of the collection. But all the books they received at the 2006 SDCC will help form the academic view of what our art form is about, and where it is going. Students and professors will use it to write thesis and papers about the form.
Getting an industry award means little to me, even for the ones I've got -- there's not even any money attached -- but knowing my life's work is safe in a serious book collection, and that scholars are poring over it is the consumption of a life's goal for me. My books and art are in the hands of a University. That may mean nothing to this industry, yet, but it will have great repercussions for all of us.
When a university department argues to put me up into the Hyatt for two days -- when I'm normally more than happy with a couch and a blanket -- and when that argument consists of pointing out that as a lecturer, I should get the same treatment that other authors and lecturers get, from the "respectable" publishing industry -- this means that we're getting real recognition as intellectuals. A lot of you out there are going to laugh at that, but a lot more are going to realize what it means for all of us. Real reviews, in real publications, by full-scale publication reviewers, and not just some token column by a grown-up fan who starts the article, "It's not biff-bam-pow any more." Those guys need to come out. You KNOW who you are.
Anway, it all ends up afterwards with a last-minute meeting with two of the greatest gals in the industry, Melinda Gebbie and Carla Speed McNeil. Here's a photo of what we're calling The Three Witches. Hey, we don't look so gorgeous at the end of SDSU, but at our age Witchiness counts (We were quoting MacBeth at each other). And it's funny. Funny counts. And relieved. I told the SDSU girls to listen to the slow rev as the convention came to the end, the building tension, and then listen to the howls of joy as ConVoice relishingly announced the "End Of San Diego Comicon For 2006." And the subsequent explosion as the convention disemboweled itself like an army camp and got the hell out of Dodge. I'll miss that.
This will be my last SDCC. From now on, it's the internet, and, if I ever fly again (unlikely, for so many reasons), it will be to major industry book events, like Los Angeles.
I even did a little lone nostalgia tour of the harbor and convention area, having a little supper at the Tin Fish, including a beer to get me in the sad mood, watching the dancing fountain in front of the cafe afterwards, taking a last pedicab ride, lying in the waterfront park and watching the sun go down. It was all so deliciously melancholy. I felt like Rene Zellweger at the end of Nurse Betty, all alone, starting out anew, on my own and with a future full of promise.
I'll even miss the little fake-but-lovely stream at the transportation-and-bus pick-up area at Sea-Tac airport. It did wonders for a twisted ankle and a twisted soul.
This is also my last Submission Engine. I've done what I could with and for the industry. If I have anything to say from now on, it will be at my blog WolfFood. Thank you, Silver Bullet. Thank you, the industry that nurtured me in a comparatively safe environment, even if it was on the jungly dangerous edges of that world, still on land, instead of floating on the sea. I'm wading in, now, with no more than a board, a wetsuit and a six-pack.
Thanks to the readers who will follow me and my bravest colleagues out onto the open ocean. Some of us may drown. Some may be eaten by sharks. But at least we've left the wetlands and we're swimming at large. Who knows what will happen when we grow to be sharks ourselves? Perhaps we'll all have to join a 12-step program: "Fish are friends, not food."
A big fat goodbye hug and kiss:
MWAH!
Or as I sent to On Our Backs when they came up with a more political version of their mag I could turn in at the public library when I was done with it: Bitchin'! And I hope that gets the clueless boys in the industry into a whole lot more trouble.
