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EUROPE'S MOST VISITED SF/F WEB SITE |
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Of Clockwork Men
Artist Tom Abba on winning both the the Ken McIntyre Award and
the Paper Tiger Art Award at the UK's Eastercon, plus how he has never
considered himself to be a real science fiction artist. Crikes, how
did we resist slipping some Nordic pop group jokes into this interview?
PB: Winning both the Ken McIntyre Award and the Paper Tiger Art Award at Eastercon 1999, one after the other like that, is certainly a unique feat - especially bearing in mind that the set of artworks you were exhibiting, Of Clockwork Men, weren't standard fantasy paintings but strangely unsettling 3D pieces. How did it feel?
The most rewarding part, though (other than spending the cheque), was the commentary that was read out on behalf of the judges - that's the first time I've had anything remotely close to a book-jacket blurb to promote my work. As you say, the fact that the work is three-dimensional, deliberately unsettling, and not traditionally "sciencefictional" at all was a surprise. I'd been working on the puppets for about three months, but I put it in at the very last minute, and really only because I was bringing stuff up for the convention, and they provided me with a car big enough to bring it with me. I do think that by next year it'll have come full circle, though, and very professional sf-based work with a high finish will take both prizes, and I'll go down as an oddity. Nice while it lasts though. PB: Was Of Clockwork Men just a one-off, or are you planning to concentrate most of your energies into 3D in the future?
I do think I've pushed my work as far as I want to in 2D, for the moment anyway. I can't see a direction opening up in either comics or straight illustration in which what I do is remotely commercial, and since I've discovered the delights of mucking about on a Mac, the idea of generating animated movies, interactive fiction and illustrated hypertext is opening up my work to a lot of new directions and possibilities. Of Clockwork Men is a story that started life as a comic, had tracts of text added to it, and festered in the back of my mind for a few years before I started to build puppets and sets for it in earnest. Now I can't see it in any other way. Comics, the roots of them at least, lend themselves so well to new technology and the serializationist aspect of web fiction that the leap is obvious. When it's finished I'm relying on the thousands of consumers who've been conned into buying "better and faster" PCs for the last few years wanting them to do something besides play Doom very quickly and process letters at speeds unknown to humankind. PB: I can well remember - quite a few years back it was now - your exhibiting at an Eastercon on Jersey another 3D work. That one consisted of a bathroom cabinet which, when people opened it, proved to contain a teddy bear to which some truly obnoxious things had been done. Half the people at the convention couldn't stand even to look at it - but the piece certainly imprinted your name on art fandom. I've often wanted to ask you, what brought that piece on? Did it have serious intent, or was it just a youthful attempt to make a lucrative sale to the Saatchi Collection?
The notion that people were allowing stuffed animals to write and publish filled me with complete amazement - I mean, "Who's editing this stuff? Is there a fat tiger in an office somewhere smoking a big cigar and shouting at ducks sitting at typewriters? Do monkeys have lunch meetings in Bar Med?" So I thought I'd get in on the act and include stuffed animals in horror illustration. I didn't get any letters from bears or chickens, so I supposed they must have thought it was OK. I actually can't remember why I did those things to that bear. But I am sorry. Really. And the bit about the fanzine is true. PB: I know that you've also done a fair amount of writing. Are there any exciting developments on the horizon on that front? TA: Lots. I believe one of the best things about the internet, and the availability of computers, is that anyone can write and create and even publish. (Also, probably the worst thing about the internet, and the availability of computers, is that anyone can write and create and even publish.) For me - having a background in Illustration and writing, it's allowing me the freedom to think in more dimensions than I could have done a few years ago. I'm adapting the original drafts of Of Clockwork Men for a hypertext/multimedia environment, and allowing them to interact with the reader, and explore more of the story and the deliberate and not-so-deliberate layers of intention that are in it than I originally thought would be possible. The relative ease with which anyone can put a website together is prompting me to look at publishing parts of the story there first of all. I remember seeing Geoff Ryman's hypertext novel 253 (www.ryman-novel.com) and suddenly having this little door open in my mind. The conceit behind the writing was so simple and so elegant, and it worked as a hypertext. From then it's been a series of stepping stones to learn what works on the net, what is possible and what should be possible, and taking steps to adapt what I do to suit the medium. Interlinked stories, fragments of stories and things that have no bearing on the story whatsoever, but I'm sure people will click on them just to annoy me. As things get faster, connection-wise, over the next few years, using film and multi-media on sites and as part of a story shouldn't be difficult. As far as deadlines and progress are concerned - I'm in the first year of an MA in Digital Media, and am planning to have the whole thing finished as the course finishes, sometime early in 2002. Other than the multi-media stuff, there's a novel about fathers, sons, betraying people and regret that's at third draft stage. I'm writing it when I'm sick of being covered in tissue paper and paste and want to sit down and do something that is big, and sensible, and doesn't have to be programmed. PB: Looking at the world of commercial fantasy/sf illustration from the outside, as to an extent you must, are there any particular illustrators whom you think have influenced your thinking? TA: Lots. If I didn't say Dave McKean right away I'd be a liar, and it's really the constant pushing at and around the edges of the comics medium that Dave's done since he began that originally prompted me to illustrate in the first place. Also a lot of Eastern European animators - the Brothers Quay, Jan Svankmajer and the like. There's an English animator who worked on The Nightmare Before Christmas - Paul Berry - his first film was called The Sandman and was done in that European style (real, earthy Brothers Grimm stuff) but has a very nasty, English feel to it. That was the first piece of animation I saw at college that made me want to use puppets. The Nazgul in the Ralph Bakshi Lord of the Rings were the finest thing about that film and prompted me to look at different ways of presenting familiar ideas. And Ray Harryhausen, without whom nothing would have been possible, ever. In fantasy and sf: Brian Froud and Ian Miller. Regular illustrators: Ian Pollock, Ralph Steadman, Russell Mills and Gerald Scarfe. The comics artist Fox taught me a lot about commercial practice at the right time (just before I had to do it for a living). Some designers - David Carson, for example. Painters: Schiele, Turner and Goya. Anything that feels "raw" or "honest" in art. What I can't stand, and never have been able to, is the tradition started by the bloody Pre-Raphaelites of slick, commercial art with all the depth and integrity of an Athena poster. Going back to the Eastercon awards, that's what made me most pleased about the judges' commentary: I've always wanted to - and am doing this sort of work in order to - break boundaries and invent worlds that haven't been done before. If I'm invited to enter a world by an artist or a writer, and that world is both convincing and original, then I'll respond better to it than one that looks like a thousand others. PB: If there were one book in the world which you were to be asked to illustrate - not just the cover but the interiors as well - which book (or story, or piece of music, or whatever) would that be? TA: Animal Farm. I had to study it for O-level English when I was fifteen, and since then the notion of the story as a nightmare has stuck with me. We were taught the text as an allegory for communism, and I've no doubt that it fundamentally is, but the subtitle Orwell gave it is "A Fairy Story". I'd love to tackle it as a looming, nightmare vision with the pigs growing more and more disgusting as time goes on. With lots of papier-mache puppets and funny lighting. PB: Finally, what particularly inspires you to paint or otherwise create - what really gives you that kick in the pants that tells you you've simply got to get to work? Is it music, or your own imagination, or things you see around you . . . or what?
I think most artists, certainly the ones I've known, see what's around them and allow it to spark off some idea or response. That provocation can come from anything, a piece of writing, a piece of music, someone else's work or something I might have done years ago and only just remembered. And I think that's the only difference between artists, in any form, and the rest of the world - that desire to be led to something that wasn't there before you started. There's also a lot of motivation, personally, to make sure that, since I can do this, I do do it. I can't see myself growing old in an office, doing a nine-to-five job, and, since I've been fortunate enough to have this exposure to art and the training and some talent to be able to communicate an idea, I'd better not waste it. PB: Tom Abba, thank you very much. TA: Thanks for letting me rabbit on. PB: That's OK. A version of this article originally appeared in The Snarl, Paper Tiger's reader zine. Many thanks to Snarl's Editor extraordinaire, Paul Barnett (www.papertiger.co.uk), for letting us play with his prose
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OTHER CONTENT - May 2003
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Tom
Abba caused something of a surprise at the 1999 Eastercon by picking
up both the Paper Tiger Art Award and the Ken McIntyre Award - surprise
not that Abba should win awards but that he should so with an uncanny
3D piece that could hardly have been further removed from the kind
of highly finished painting that normally prevails. A designer by
full-time trade, he took a break out to answer the Snarl's impertinent
questions . . .
TA:
Very, very gratifying. I've never considered myself to be a real Science
Fiction Artist (in the sense of being able to use the term in capital
letters), so to be awarded prizes not only by the fan community but
also by a professional body brought it home that maybe I'm actually
doing something right. 
TA:
All that I have to spare when I get back from work! I've been shuffling
slowly towards 3D for a few years now - most of my final Illustration
degree show was based on puppetry and theatre, and the transition
to full 3D has been gradual, but inevitable. 
TA:
Drugs, that's all. No, I'd been exposed to fandom for just a few months
at that point, and, aside from the interesting stuff and the weird
stuff, what really struck me was a fanzine I saw that purported to
have been written by a bear, for bears to enjoy and reply to. 
TA:
Usually, it's having finished the washing up and not really wanting
to watch television until there's something good on. My overall motivation
is a desire to tell something personal to the world. To show stories
and pictures and ideas that are exclusively my own and come from somewhere
dank and misty inside my head.
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