Dissertation Preface to Unflattening

(Note - I have moved this site over to www.spinweaveandcut.com. All new material, information about Unflattening, as well as past archives will be over there. Please join me over there! Thanks - N)

My dissertation proposal was handed in this week and defense is around the corner. I prepared this preface for it - which gives a hint at where i'm heading with the dissertation itself, "a visual-verbal inquiry into curiosity" - that is a comics narrative as academic dissertation. In starting this with a nearly all verbal approach, i set up the final definition on page 4 - pointing to the inadequacy of this approach. The page following, when it comes, will thus launch forth in full comics fashion. (And likely i'll reference Alice, saying, "what is the use of a book ... without pictures or conversations?") Look for excerpts from the dissertation in progress in the year ahead (and other comics as well of course!). - Nick 

(Note: this piece didn't actually appear in the dissertation - only in my proposal. To see excerpts, go here. - N)

Five Critical Senses with professor Tim Eatman

This piece was produced for and with Professor Timothy K. Eatman, of Syracuse University and the director of research for Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life. In the midst of a conversation in which Tim was taking me through his presentation on the five critical sense of engagement, i was struck by his use of his fingers to convey his ideas along with his words. Given my interest in working with visual metaphor in my work, I saw a lot of visual material in this and it also resonated with one of my first (and still favorite) "mature" works - "Show of Hands." And so one thing led to another, and I created this piece out of text versions of his talk, and he presented it in conjunction with his acceptance of the early career award from the IARSLCE. Ok, all that said, let's get to the work itself. - Nick