Lotte Reiniger

Lotte Reiniger was an amazing artist. She made more than 70 films with a pair of scissors (and the help of her husband, the cameraman Karl Koch). The figures that Lotte was able to create with black paper were unbelievably delicate and intricate.
Lotte called herself a "primitive caveman artist".

I am reading her book Shadow Puppets, Shadow Theatres and Shadow Film. It's great.
Today, after four hours trying to film an animated ocean sequence (which wasn't working and got me frustrated), I opened the book, and after a few pages I was full of calm joy.
Here's my favorite passage:

"When you are going to play with your figure seriously, make sure that you are seated comfortably. The shooting will take up a long time and you will have to keep yourself as alert as possible. Don’t wear any bulgy sleeves; they might touch your figure unexpectedly and disturb its position. If possible arrange to place an iron or wooden bar 5 in. above the set along your field of action and let your arms rest on it, so that you touch your figure only with the finger-tips, or with your scissors."

Lotte's work is a superbe example of art as patience and solitude and craziness.

Early artwork (1994-1999)

A few days ago I looked through my files and found a CD with old scans: my earliest artwork. Drawings of ten, fifteen years ago. I thought they were lost, spread on covers of 7" inches and tapes of bands where I played or friends played or friends of friends played, on show flyers, and on all kinds of self publications.
If my drawings weren't printed somewhere, for me they didn't exist. I never cared about the originals. The originals were pieces of scrap paper (if you look closely, you can see what's printed behind), stained and creased. I liked them that way. It was exactly the beauty I was looking for.
I was part of something apparently called lo-fi culture. Amy Spencer wrote a book about it. It's ok.

I draw since I was a kid, and it has always been, before anything else, a physical need and pleasure, but it's in my early twenties when I started to think about my drawings as art. I had my idols: Osvaldo Cavandoli, Posada, Elzie Crisler Segar, Pettibon, Bonvi, Attilio Mussino, and Saul Steinberg, whose work I discovered on the cover of an Italo Calvino book (a collection of essays called Una pietra sopra: one of the essays was about Steinberg).
I loathed color (I love it now). I drew, like now, really small, and I photocopied my artwork and blew it up.
I am not posting these drawings because I think they are very good (although I still like them), but because it's like looking at a picture of me (me in my work) fifteen years ago.