Dare you listen to the music of the ants?

New Lines (iv) – John G. Swogger, 2013.

It must officially be summer (despite the grey skies) because I’m back at Fine Line tattooing again. I began this past week with some tidying-up work on the shoulder part of a Japanese sleeve – fixing some clouds and adding-in some colour that had been missed. And to celebrate my return to the studio, Rena and Stuart had bought me my very own gun – a lighter-weight liner/shader that’s a good machine to start on.

Not only has it been great to get back to work on real skin, but it’s been interesting to return to tattooing in the context of my other current projects. The whole comics and archaeology thing seems to be really taking off, which means that I’m exploring comics as a medium that bit more closely – and seeing lots more graphic and visual-communication parallels between the two. I’m also returning to the tattoo studio at a time when I’m doing more of these Japanese woodblock-inspired prints for exhibitions with the Inside Out art group, and again, it’s been interesting to explore parallel lines of praxis between the two.

Because just as each area I work in has its own separate and unique methodologies and mechanics, so they also overlap. It’s these areas of connection and contrast that I find particularly rewarding: a chance to draw lines between one thing and a very different other.

Rear Admiral Daniel V. Gallery (top left), and the cover of Now Hear This (bottom left) – and my homage (right)

Rear Admiral Daniel V. Gallery is perhaps more officially known as the naval commander who boarded – and captured – a German U-Boat during the Battle of the Atlantic. He was also a prolific author, penning a series of five books about incidents during his naval career, a Cold War spy thriller, and a handful of humorous paperbacks about naval life.

I came across one of these paperbacks in a summer jumble sale when I was a kid – a collection of jokey naval short stories called Now Hear This! I paid my 2p and spent the summer reading about high jinks on the high seas. I don’t really remember anything about the stories themselves, but the cover always stayed with me – bright blue with yellow titles, and a jaunty cartoon drawing of a bo’sun that looked like it came straight out of Mad magazine.

I’ve just finished doing a cover for a local author‘s collection of archery short stories called Tales from the Butts, and something about them reminded me of that old paperback. So I mocked-together an alternate version of the cover in homage to Gallery’s Now Hear This! We’re not using it, of course – it’s just pinned up on my office wall next to my drawing board, a reminder of one of the things that probably nudged me, imperceptibly, towards where I am right now.

Extremely creative journal pages by Michelle Allen, via Journal Pages Group on Facebook and allendesigns.typepad.com

One of the things that came out of this weekend’s Underhill Farm Art & Wild Craft Fair was the possibility of running a course at the farm on Landscape Journaling, with Steve Evison of development company R4C. This is something that has come out of my work with comics and archaeology – specifically the Palau field journal I discussed on my SAA poster – and is an approach which seeks to better document the experience and process of fieldwork practice.

My background is in archaeology, and Steve’s is in environmental and social development work, both in the UK and abroad. We’ve both faced the same problems, however, of trying to document the practice of our fieldwork in a meaningful way. Both of us have realised that formal approaches rarely work well; both of us recognise the great value of personal journals and notebooks as a way of documenting field practice. Steve is an avid journal-keeper and sketcher, and knows from his own experience how text and image can work together as a recording tool. My work on comics in archaeology has suggested to me that using other mechanisms specific to comics – direct speech, people as agents/characters, panels & gutters, etc. – will also help capture the narrative of field practice beyond the basic recording of data.

So the theory is that using the experience of landscape as a framework, it is possible to create a narrative journal that more effectively records the practice of fieldwork. In practice this means bringing together the ideas and techniques of creative sketchbook and journal writing and comics to build a true narrative document. The aim is to create something which is genuinely useful as an archive resource, a presentation and PR tool, and as a personal record.

Together, we’ll be developing the course structure through the summer, and hopefully think about running an initial course later in the year. I’m interested to see how this course works out. It’s an opportunity for me to see how the ideas I’ve had for archaeology work out for artists, greenwood workers, environmental workers, teachers and others for whom “fieldwork” is often a major part of their professional practice, but for whom the experience of it is often poorly recorded.

The Archer – John Swogger, 2013; 40x30cm – on exhibition at Underhill Farm, May 4-6

It’s the Underhill Farm Art & Wild Craft Fair this Bank Holiday weekend, and (in addition to organising the event!), I’m hanging a recent print inspired by Llanymynech quarry above the farm. It’s a slightly off-beat work, I suppose, but thoroughly in keeping with recent prints that I’ve exhibited at Cafe Radio in Oswestry and The Hand at Llanarmon.

The print is another in my series inspired by Japanese woodblocks, and uses many of the visual motifs and devices developed by woodblock print artists during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. I’ve been using this style to approach representation of landscape in the Welsh Marches in a different way for about a year or so now, and the results have been really interesting. As my familiarity with the style, and the evolution of my own artistic response has developed, so I have started not just to represent the landscape differently, but I have started to see it differently.

It’s inevitable that as an artist, one naturally translates a view or landscape into the medium and presentation format one is most familiar with. Not being a landscape artist particularly, I found myself most often mentally translating views of the Marches into watercolours or semi-abstract oils, or quick pen-and-ink sketches – media that I do work in, but that I’m not particularly comfortable in. What I never found myself doing was mentally translating what I was seeing into styles that I used everyday in my illustration work.

Now, however, I do. Using the model of Japanese woodblock prints seems to have unlocked something in the way I look at landscape. Now I find myself seeing things that I didn’t really see before – not details in the landscape, but elements that inspire me draw and produce prints entirely concordant with my usual way of working. It’s been something of a revelation. And what’s more, this whole issue of not just representing but also seeing and looking through the lens of a particular style or medium seems to carry with it big implications for what I’m doing with comics and archaeology.

So, the piece I am hanging at Underhill Farm this weekend is only the first in quite a big series of prints which I’ll be finishing up over the course of the year. The series is entitled A Way of Looking at Time, and at the moment consists of eight prints, but will probably end up being expanded to twelve. Each one is linked to all the others, both physically (each print connects, left and right, to others in the series), and thematically – exploring the layering of landscapes, experience and time with artistic responses growing out of the Underhill Farm artists’ group. The series will be exhibited at Underhill Farm first, and then at other venues around the Borderlands.

Printed at NOW Art. Thanks to Ollie, Nick, Pete & Mo at NOW Group.

Underhill Farm Art & Wild Craft Fair – Sat., Sun, Mon., May 4 – 6, 10-4pm. Underhill Farm, Shropshire: SY10 9RB. More info at: www.insideoutart.co.uk

Click above for a link to the pdf of “Drawn Together” – my SAA Poster on comics and archaeology.

Here’s a link for anyone who wants to download a copy of my SAA Poster: Drawn Together.

The copy here is only half the size of the one I displayed in Honolulu – 4′ x 2′ – but I think you’ll be able to see everything quite clearly, and it’ll still be readable if you want to print it out.

And yes, please do print it out – I’m perfectly happy for people to stick copies of this up in their lab, office, etc., particularly if it encourages people to get in touch and/or to start using comics in archaeology themselves.

A fairy-tale eulogy: “King Ironsides”, by Posy Simmonds – via guardian.co.uk

The ever-wonderful Posy Simmonds has written a funeral fairy tale in her own inimitable style.

Proof (if any were needed) that, after all these years, she’s still at her best when she’s penning her own quiet brand of political commentary for The Guardian. There’s a nice interview with her from a few years ago here.

‘Au: Tattooing implements from Samoa – appropriately pronounced “Ow”?

Got up to the Bishop Museum this week, to their excellent and recently refurbished Polynesian and Hawaiian galleries.

Both featured an extensive collection of material, nicely-displayed and with very good and signing and interpretation. In one of the cases was a small group of tattooing implements from Samoa. Far too dark to take photographs, but here are a few sketches from the case.

My apprenticeship at Fineline Tattoos begins properly in a fortnight’s time, so tattooing is much on my mind at the moment! There were some fascinating examples of tattoos from the Marquesas Islands in the Bishop Museum, and from Indonesia in the Honolulu Academy of Art. It got me thinking a bit about traditional tattoos on Palau.

A few comments came in to a post of mine here several months ago, saying how “traditional” tattoos seem to have vanished from Palau. One person remembered their grandparents with tattoos, and sent a link to some Japanese anthropological drawings from the ?1920s up on the web. I’d be interested in knowing if anyone else remembers “traditional” tattoos from Palau, and if anyone knows of more photographs or drawings of old Palauan tattoos.

Is it possible – or ethical – to revive such a traditional art? How does one find new meaning for an artform whose social and cultural context is now “lost”? How does such an artform adapt to find new, contemporary meanings and contexts? Is there an example in the revivals of other Polynesian tattooing traditions – Maori, Hawaiian, etc.? Or is there a precedent closer to home in the approach taken by Hisakatsu Hijikata and the evolution of the Palauan Storyboards?

I’m hoping that one of the things that will come out of this poster is the beginning of some productive dialogue between people who are interested in using, creating and publishing comics in archaeology. I feel like it’s beginning, and it will be interesting to see where it heads from here. I’ll keep posting comics and archaeology stuff here, and I’m more than happy to re-post stuff that other people are doing as well. Also, the SAA’s Public Archaeology Interest Group has asked me to keep them updated on developments via the Interest Group’s Facebook page.

Next planned archaeological comic stuff for me will be in the autumn, when my two archaeological web comics - Copernicus, Amy & Me and Jima San – start being published online. But conversations with people during the poster presentation may be leading to some more archaeological comic projects before the year’s end, too.

And yes, for everyone that’s been asking: the pdf of the poster will be available here sometime towards the end of next week.

Telling the whole archaeological story? Max Mallowan and Agatha Christie

A paper yesterday by Mitch Allen (Left Coast Press) in an excellent late-evening session on “Accessible Archaeology” struck a distinct chord. He was advocating the increased use of narrative in archaeological writing – or, perhaps more accurately, the increased use of narrative in writing by archaeologists – something that was the theme of my presentation at the York Heritage Research Seminars in February (“Discussion, Dialogue, Debate: Examining the role of narrative in the visualisation of archaeology).

Mitch’s argument was that narrative seems an obvious language for archaeologists, but that without training, they do it very badly. He pointed out that it is a literary tool that has a long and honourable history in archaeological writing. By coincidence, I’d picked up a copy earlier in the day of Max Mallowan‘s memoirs – exactly the kind of narrative archaeological writing that Mitch had held up as an example: informative, aimed at a general audience but yet full of detail and specialist information, and – yes – accessible.

This was exactly the point I made in my seminar presentation: that narrative is a vernacular language, and that in the context of public archaeology or community-based archaeological practice, finding a ‘common language’ is key to establishing sustainable lines of communication and engagement. Comics and other similar narrative graphic formats share this vernacular heritage, making them ideally suited to use in outreach and community involvement. They are, if you like, “literacy-blind”. As such, they don’t just “overcome” the issue of varied literacy in audiences – they can “work with” ordinary or everyday literacy across age, class, gender and other social and cultural divisions. After all, in community-based archaeology, “narrative” – in the form of oral histories, stories and personal experiences – often form a significant contribution by communities to the knowledge generated from the archaeological project.

Whether in comics, fiction or public speaking, I see narrative as offering those working in community-based archaeology a “shared voice”. Let’s not forget that archaeologists such as Mortimer Wheeler and Max Mallowan were among some of the earliest advocates of what we would now recognise as “public archaeology” – and putting their work into a narrative context was what made it accessible.