LINES ON PAPER Artist Bio - Garret Izumi
"Depending on your inclination-and, most likely, on your age-the ascendancy of the comic book could seem like confirmation of the decline of Western culture, or along-overdue liberation of creative expression. In either case, the days of not taking comics seriously are long behind us. Which is not to say that this form, as a whole, takes itself too seriously. Izumi, who has worked in the medium for about a decade, has the knack for making comics seem both fun arid relevant. His imagery- thickly lined, cross-hatched, and high contrast-never fails to be arresting and his thematic content is epigrammatic, politically potent, sometimes surreal, and always evocative, these attributes have allowed him to stake out a broad milieu the work that the museum describes as 'on varying themes ranging from memories to suburbia to life in the nuclear age.' His latest effort, a letterpress accordion-style book called Three Grey Women, retells the myth of Perseus and Medusa, and makes an eloquent comment on the artist's way of seeing the world. Izumi's career may epitomize this point of view: The self-puhlished comics artist, free from any restricting patronage of the old, stuffy sort, can speak in a personal and vernacular voice. And if they're persistent enough, they might earn their ideal audience, organically and artfully." -Jonathan Kiefer, THE MONTHLY March 2005 <-- Back to Artist's Card