Tales from the storage unit - Pt. I

Comic collectors blues and the archivists tale of woe...

Sorry my blogging has been so sporadic this last week or so.This past month we had to reduce budget costs by paring down to having just the one storage unit. The last week I have been helping Matt clear out his unit of anything of mine in there, and as such had to prep my own to fit some furniture and whatever else we needed to condense back into my unit. This meant clearing a pretty generous path within my storage space. So this past Saturday was our last day, and we had to split up to tackle our units separately in an effort to save time. And since we had only so long before the gates were about to close I had to strap on my arm brace and transform myself into Le petite She Hulk.

Let me tell you, I have waay too much shit. And as a I was perusing through my most prized comics box a big box of art supplies toppled off of it's perch and missed me by a mere couple of feet. So that's when it hit me. (in the mental sense that is.) It's a real blessing/curse to have such a vast array of archival goodies.

Besides all the paintings, there are the books, LPs, posters, prints, frames,canvas, back-up art supplies, ancient portfolios, reference materials, archives, old poetry and song journals from my DFP days, photos, magazines, pin-ups, various old vintage ads and ephemera, letters from friends, letters I've never sent - (but kept anyway) toys, action figures..and then... ha ha ha... THEN there are thee comics. Boxes and boxes of 'em. I decided to take the very best of the mix and bring them to the studio room. Tonight I'd just noticed that over the years I'd lost the authenticity cert I had for a signed Amazing Spiderman comic, which sucks big time.

Good news is I recovered some older art and a few sketchbooks. Some include pages that I will edit and clean up for the web to place into my gallery folders on myspace and share. Some of the larger paintings will require the use of a large commercial scanner. (which praytel, that I am not a Rockafeller's heir is quite apparent and thus I cannot afford to own or house one of those monstrous bitches myself.) That will take a little time, and a wad o' money so the paintings folder on myspace is down temporarily and under construction.

I will say it has been a bit of a pleasure finding things I'd long since forgotten I'd had.At the moment I am enjoying the Dark Horse Comics Bettie Page lunch box as it sits next to my monitor. Le sigh. Just knowing it is filled with all 5 sets of the Bettie Page collector cards (issued by the bizarre little publishing company Mother Productions in the 90's) makes my heart go pitter-pat. I'm pretty beat and a little sore. I'm damn tired, but very glad the task is done. This week will be sorting and organizing, also sadly probably a bit of downsizing. Anyways, I'm headed off to bed to read my old childhood copy of PLOP DC and marvel over the wondrously creepy Basil Wolverton cover in all it's finely detailed illustrated glory...uh, gorey?