“Our Lady of the Cloud”

I created this for Burn All Books‘ Sundays Quarterly Number 1. It is a Riso-printed and appeared on wall of the BAB gallery when their location was in the back of Verbatim Books. The prompt: “NATURE/INTERNET (May 2019).” It’s not really a comic, but was a gateway for me to get excited about making comics and the process of making Riso prints. For years I had been prodded by my friend Chris to make a webcomic. He would remind me of Dwayne the Bear and how awesome it would be to make a comic of it.

I liked the idea. But I feared the idea. I knew keeping to the schedule of a webcomic was too much for me. I did WordPress theme programming for Brett Jackson’s Massive Sqwertz in 2010. It is hard work to keep a creative schedule like that. And so, I will make comics on my own time.

“Our Lady of the Cloud” is dedicated to Phyllis. My Mom: Phyllis Crawford née Silva. She died in 2010. That changed me–and my whole family–forever. Her death was unfair. In some ways collecting toy robots is a direct result of my reaction to her death. Toy-collecting toys is impractical. Silly. Whimsical. I see it as direct confrontation with the unfairness and trauma of death. And so, in “Our Lady of the Cloud,” Mexican catholic iconography (Our Lady of Guadalupe) sits atop cloud upload, and Mary checks her messages. I don’t think I had Encinitas’ Surfing Madonna in mind when I was doing the drawing in Procreate and splitting the 3 layers of print up in Photoshop. It’s impossible for me not to see a connection between my work and that surfing Mary. Cheeky, silly, and devout.

Mom lived her faith. She volunteered in soup kitchens and did ministerial work when she could. When she was in the ambulance headed to the hospital when she had her stroke, she impressed on the paramedics that she needed to make sure to let the woman she was scheduled for tennis with that afternoon that she would be busy. That’s one of many stories about my Mom.

I made a comic about one of her emails.

I think I thought of her outward persona as false. I thought the overtly positive affect was a front. I can’t ask her now. But even it was a front–“toxic positivity” as some say–it’s hard not to still see the echoes of her ebullience. She chose joy. Life isn’t easy, nothing is guaranteed, but we can choose to have a bit of fun, and be kind when we can. That was the real her.

It hurts I can’t share “Our Lady of the Cloud” with her. I can share it with you.