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| Captain Eel-Begone by Doug Harvey Except for a channeled theater-of-the-absurd excretion called 'Bwa Milan-Go-Boom', 'Captain Eelbegone in A Farewell to Eels' was the last of my epic improvisation-minded comics before the verbal centers of my brain got annexed in the interests of art criticism. Although I had made sporadic attempts to do comics right, I just didn't have the patience or interest to write a whole story, rough it out, pencil it in, and ink it. So I developed a way of working (basically drastically lowered standards) that allowed me to continue writing and drawing a story regardless of such hobgoblins as continuity, coherence, and consistency. I could put something aside, pick it up a year later, and proceed with whatever drawing tools, psychoactive chemicals, and free-floating narrative ideas happened to be at hand. Not only was it more fun, but it was continually surprising – I would often have no idea WHAT I had been thinking at the time (I probably produced 50 abandoned fragments for every finished story), and would be forced to piece together some shakily plausible scenario to move the action forward. I owe a lot to Jerry Bruckheimer. All the same, I was usually pretty happy with the results, and was particularly pleased that photocopies of 'Capt. Eelbegone' found their way into the hearts and minds of several friends’ children, who enthusiastically accepted it at face value. Looking back, I can also see the kind of deep psychological material that emerges when you constrain rational filtering in artworks – observations about the underlying fetishistic paraphilia of contemporary American life and emotional responses to the death of both my parents during the 1991-96 period in which it was made. But don't let that stop you from enjoying it at face value. I'm honored and thrilled that it has a chance to entertain some more people. And if you get nothing else out of it, make sure to try the alu ghobi recipe, which I included to ensure your time would not have beencompletely wasted. Since graduating with an MFA in painting from UCLA in 1994, Doug Harvey has written extensively about the Los Angeles and International art scenes and other aspects of popular culture, primarily as the art critic for LA WEEKLY, the largest circulation free weekly newspaper in America, and Art issues, the highly respected LA-based journal of art and contemporary culture, which ceased publication in 2002. His writing has also appeared in Art in America, The New York Times, Modern Painter, ArtReview, and numerous other publications. He has written museum and gallery catalogue essays for Jim Shaw, Jeffrey Vallance, Camille Rose Garcia, Tim Hawkinson, Don Suggs, Lari Pittman, Georganne Deen, Rick Griffin, Gary Panter, Margaret Keane, Big Daddy Roth, Thomas Kinkade, Basil Wolverton and many others. Harvey’s curatorial projects have ranged from many traditional gallery exhibitions to CD compilations of sound art, programs of found and experimental films, performance events, experimental radio, artist’s comic books and zines, and an LA solo gallery exhibit determined by raffle. He has also been part of the curatorial collective creating the exhibition content and design at the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Culver City, CA. Mr. Harvey also continues to maintain an active art career, exhibiting his visual art (painting-based multimedia) locally and internationally, and participating in international experimental sound, radio, and film communities. He lives and works in Los Angeles. | |
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