keegan onefoot wenkman has been a dear friend and collaborator for years. he is a talented and busy man and i am lucky to catch a piece of his time for this project.



me: who are you?
k: wenkman, keegan
www.onefootinfront.com

me: what do you do?
k: draw, paint, and print

me: inspirations?
k: Turn of the century phone books, bonds, and hand made type mostly found in the special collections of your local library. Painters like Rembrandt , Goya , Odd Nerdrum , Joe Sorren . Illustrators like Gorey , Horkey , J. Ryan, Diana Sudyka , Autobahn, Chris Ware , and Posada . Printmakers like W. Winship, Aesthetic Apparatus , and all things Japanese.

me: please describe your creative process, or highlight a specific process used for a recent project?
k: Everything (being pretty or not so pretty pictures) is researched for days ahead of any ink or paint laid down….to form a general concept….so research fuels my concepts, backwards, I agree. Next in the process is a set of visceral decisions on the placement of (researched) subject/s. Followed by a flurry of pigment…a break…finishing touches to achieve some asymmetricality.

me: what does an average workday look like?
k: Coffee then food by noon followed by research. Break at 5-7pm for a beer. Around dusk I begin drawing until exhaustion. Somewhere in there is a goodly attempt to court clients and usually a trip to the post office.

me: what are things that you would like to do in the future that you haven't done already?
K: move to France; publish books, and reinvigorating the beauty of things hand-made to future generations. Maybe own a house and live in the car port.

Keegan Onefoot is the founder of www.onefootinfront.com , and a weekly volunteer at the IPRC. He is also a cofounder of TUP zine and KeeganMeegan press and bindery.

# posted by echolocations @ 2:12 PM 0 Comments

This is an interview i conducted with a.m. at 10:10 pm on a wednesday night. the wind is howling outside and we just finished a dinner of collars, catfish and black eyed peas.

beauty is everywhere by a.m. o'malley

me: what are you wearing?
A.M.: laughing you can see what I'm wearing.

me: ok. real question. what have you been working on?
A.M.: well...i'm writing a series of non-fiction stories in geographical and chronological order about my wacky upbringing. i'm illustrating them with photographs of garbage and other beautiful things i've found.

me: how's that been going?
A.M.: it's been challenging because sometimes the past feels really far away and hard to write about in a provocative and compelling way. listening to my mom's old records helps, because it puts me back in a specific place and time.

me: what records?
A.M.: old bonnie raitt. emmylou harris. and lots of willie nelson.

me: does music play a role in your artistic expression?
A.M.: i think that it does more than i realize. i get very picky about the music that i listen to while i work because a whole day's writing can be effected by what i'm listening to. i don't really listen to music while i take photographs.

me: what are your thoughts on this project?
A.M.: well...i may be a little biased, but i think this project is amazing because it brings so many artistic mediums and artists together, which doesn't happen that often. you've got food, music, visual art, writing, and who knows what else all coming home to roost in this project. it's great.

me: if you could eat anything for dinner tomorrow night, what would it be?
A.M.: that's hard, i just had one of my dreamiest dinners tonight. if i had to pick anything i would have to say sushi...really good sushi.

a.m. o'malley is a whirling dervish- always busy as a bumblebee. She enjoys filling up clean white sheets, grabbing photos out of the ether, sleeping undisturbed for hours at a time and pushing zines on today's youth through her job at the Independent Publishing Resource Center. She is also fond of long sentences and the best book ever written; East of Eden. A.M. lives with a cat, a dog, two rats, a roommate and alice. she is just entering her saturn return.