Do what looks normal but isn’t. For Jim Woodring, that directive, in 1989, launched the now acclaimed artist into a lifelong career as a cartoonist. With the creation of his generic, anthropomorphic cartoon character Frank, Woodring began telling stories without words, gathering international fans and art patrons. A select few of Woodring’s pen and ink drawings are currently on exhibit at VALISE Gallery through the end of the month.
The fantastic world of Woodring’s imagination has filled comic books, graphic novels and animated shorts with timeless, placeless and metaphysical tales. His work has been acquired by the Frye Museum, published in over 10 countries and garnered several awards. Laughing in his light-filled island studio overlooking Colvos Passage, Woodring, 63, points to a poster on his wall advertising the Stranger’s Genius Award for literature that he won in 2010.
“I wish my parents had lived to see that,” he said. “My father thought I should become a blacksmith.”
Like other artists throughout time, Woodring grew up with a vision of the world that was misunderstood by his family. From a young age, Woodring said he hallucinated, heard things and had perceptual challenges. His parents thought they were “mental problems,” but eventually Woodring discerned that they were “just phenomena,” the very imagery now populating his pen and ink drawings. As a child, though, he compensated by playing the role of the “out-of-it, weird kid” — until he read the biographies of artists.
“I realized you can act like I act and be admired for it,” he said. “After I saw the illustrations of Boris Artzybasheff and the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Bruegel — all these strange, charged, symbolic images that seemed to point at something that was too real to see directly — I thought that’s what I want to do. It’s what I like and want to give to other people. I just needed to find a new circle of friends, and that’s what I did.”
Inspired by Betty MacDonald’s novel, “The Egg and I,” Woodring moved to Seattle in 1974. He said the author’s descriptions of the Olympic mountains, intended for readers to feel sorry for her, were like catnip for him.
“They seemed romantic and mysterious,” he recalled. “I wanted the onerous majesty of the deep mountains and the cold northern winds, the call of the wild, so I moved up here as soon as I could.”
MacDonald’s influence — this time from “Onions in the Stew” — came back into play not quite two years ago, when Woodring and his wife bought a house on the island. Looking to move out of Seattle, they had previously stayed at MacDonald’s farm and decided Vashon, where a “deep, poetic mood settles over the island at night” and the community is strong, constituted home.
Meanwhile, in his daylight studio, Woodring works with a 7-foot pen he made to draw large-scale pen and ink drawings for a show next year at a prominent art venue. The show has eclipsed his regular cartooning, including a 100-page graphic novel, but it’s in line with his mission to draw what’s important. Recalling his youthful supplication to the universe to overcome his personal problems, Woodring said with a wry smile that he asked to become a cartoonist, but put stipulations on his request.
“I wouldn’t need to be the next Walt Disney,” he said. “I (promised) to aim low, to be a cult artist and be happy. I only wanted to get up and produce a cartoon a day and get (paid for it). That’s exactly what I got. At this point, that seems like just enough.”
