January Archival Activation
My favorite art style has always been cartoons—classic animations, iconic characters, or simply sketches and doodles. They’re fun and often colorful, sometimes with deep meaning behind them. One of my favorite artists I’ve been following for years, Sam Cox, or better known as “Mr. Doodle,” creates large images of his famous animations on canvas. He even produces his work onto household objects like lamps and chairs, and sometimes onto clothes too.
His only tools are his mind and a marker pen. Often times, he creates his images on the impulse of what he feels like drawing. He makes up every character at the same moment that his pen hits the canvas. These characters tell a story on each canvas. He makes them friends. He makes them dislike each other. All together, they create a sense of community and unity. When critics claimed that his work wasn’t “real art,” Mr. Doodle took on the challenge of recreating famous paintings in his style, including the Mona Lisa and The Scream.
I grew up watching Saturday morning cartoons and have always been intrigued with how each television show had a different style in their comics. Some shows had realist backgrounds with doodled characters overlapping the landscape. Some shows had all cartoon with few details to the backdrop but still gave an insightful story.
Cartoons are an archive of my past, and they remind me of simplicity and nostalgia. They take me back to my childhood days when my mind ran endlessly with imaginations. Cartoons have the ability to show a wide range of emotions. They can be funny, sad, or trigger anger and hate. I chose to include an oil painting done by Martta Garcia, called “Invisible,” because this image itself is a cartoon. Although you can’t see the detail in the people’s faces, the art as a whole conveys a sense of loneliness and wonder. We often think of cartoons as a happy and careless style, but it also can show insecurities and reveal the truth.
I also chose to include a photograph done by artist Elisabeth Blanchet, which perfectly captures childhood. This image brings me back to the simpler days – watching cartoons, doing homework, and having little to no worries in life. Don’t get me wrong, I love where I am today. I would not want to relive my childhood, no matter how amazing it was. Still, I’ve always had a longing to look at life the way I did as a little girl – free and full of possibilities.