The architects, god bless them, have been a demanding bunch these last few months, but it didn’t stop HEEB, the inimitable Jewish cultural mag (think Vice with afikoman), from putting a ray of light down on my creative pursuits. I’ve been selected as one of the Heeb 100 for “books.” The blurb’s about Scrub and refers to Blue-Eyed Apples, but maybe the mention will get some juice into finding a home for Dry Run. Who knows? It might even light some fires in the museum memoir. New working title: The New Foundation: Jewish Culture and the Modern Museum.
Shout out out out to Tom Starkweather for the great pics. His favorite outtake:
Filed under: watercolored | Tags: art, brooklyn, cherries, emily nemens, painting, watercolor
With cherry season in full effect and a bowl of sweet guys in the fridge, a new series of watercolors was begging to be set down. All are 6″ square on paper. Here’s the first four, more to come after the Dry Run revision. Which is to say, imminently.
It’s fitting that on the 40th anniversary of the Moon landing, the latest edition of the New York Moon arrives in Brooklyn. Check out the story I wrote with Ben, “The Blue Book” in the Radio edition.
Thanks to Aurora Andrews for the great illustrations, and to Zack, Brad, and Steven. Second to Buzz, you guys are my favorite moon men.
Filed under: getting out of the house, i make things | Tags: comics, emily nemens, harvey pekar, paul buhle, studs terkel
Please come out this Saturday, 7-9, for a panel discussion/general celebration of Stud’s Terkel’s Working. KGB is at 85 East 4th St in the East Village. Details here.
Hope to see you there!
Filed under: i make things
I’m working on “Self Portrait in Fifty States”—anatomical drawings with state tattoos sited all over my bod.
Here’s nine of the first ten (Connecticut’s not web-appropriate). More soon!
Filed under: i make things | Tags: emily nemens, harvey pekar, new press, paul buhle, studs terkel, working
Check out The New Press’s latest, a graphic novel adaptation of Stud’s seminal oral history project documenting people talking “about what they do all day and how they feel about what they do.”
Why?
Studs, the Chicago-based daddy of oral history, and the New Press, an awesome NYC nonprofit publisher, have been working together for years. Studs died last fall, at the ripe old age of 96; this is a great tribute.
Harvey Pekar, the comic genius of “American Splendor” fame, scripted many of the chapters.
Paul Buhle, the editor of the volume, has been promoting oral history for decades and trained a legion of historians himself; he’s retiring from 35 years in the American Civilizations department at Brown University this spring.
The chapter about Beryl Simpson, Airline reservationist, was illustrated by the Nemenator herself. It was an honor to work Pekar’s blue-ballpoint stick figures and scrawls into a something a little more “polished.”
More info here.
UPDATE: May 1, International Worker’s Day, marks, appropriately enough, the official launch of “Working.” See some more coverage in the LA Times and The Boston Globe
I’ve started drawing cartoons, here are some of my favorites that didn’t quite make the cut for a certain weekly literary New York magazine. Click for a bigger version
Filed under: i make things
After a few-months hiatus, the New York Moon is back up and running, and feature my latest short story, “Slow Dance with Mr. October.” The piece is illustrated picture-perfect by Rose Nestler, painter and pie-maker extraordinaire. Welcome back, Mr. Moon!
Filed under: i make things, watercolored | Tags: art, emily nemens, pretty in pink
The latest non-Elvis drawings are here: “Pretty in Pink.”
It all started on a bad day, when I wrote “abandonment!” (punctuation included) real big on the wall, in a gesture at once cathartic and kind of funny. Magenta colored-pencil in hand, I set to writing the larger-than-life, Molly-RIngwald-meet-Ed-Ruscha words with a anal fourth-grader’s determination. Through the ongoing series, I want to know: can the text cut both ways? Jubilant and devastated? Ironic and honest?
Colored pencil on 18″ x 24″ bright white paper. Click for a bigger, no-red-border version.
Filed under: art appreciation 101, getting out of the house | Tags: Brooklyn Elvis, emily nemens
As any frequent “Notes” visitor will have noticed, I’m not posting all that much these days. The reasons are numerous: a book project, the graduate record exams, summer heat, but mostly it is because I’ve been logging my internet hours at brooklynelvis.com
Go there to find pictures and posts from around town, and (almost) daily drawings of Elvis. Real and serious news about Emily’s writing and art will still show up at “Notes,” but for the equivalent of my “Art App 101″ and “Getting out of the house,” click on over to Brooklyn.
Kisses.
