Nicola Streeten Interview

Next up in the UK Com­ics Snap­shot Inter­views is Nic­ola Streeten;

1 / Can you intro­duce yourself?

I am Nic­ola Streeten. I have worked as a freel­ance illus­trator since 1996 with a rel­at­ively recent interest in graphic nov­els. I am study­ing for a Mas­ter of Research degree at The Uni­ver­sity of Lin­coln and my area is gender and the graphic novel.

My back­ground is a first degree in Social Anthro­po­logy that I stud­ied after spend­ing some time in Papua New Guinea. I later stud­ied art and design for a year at Middle­sex Poly­tech­nic and really began draw­ing after the death of my first child in 1995. In 1999 I moved from Lon­don to Lin­colnshire with my artist hus­band and our tod­dler daugh­ter to a derel­ict Meth­od­ist chapel that we ren­ov­ated to make into a live-work space. Then we set up a non-venue based con­tem­por­ary visual art organ­isa­tion, Beacon Art Pro­ject, that we have run since 2004.

2 / What drew you to comics?

It was the auto­bi­o­graph­ical ‘graphic novel’ that drew me, in terms of the form and also the sub­ject mat­ter that was being dealt with. I was one of the con­verts after Chris Ware’s Jimmy Cor­rigan won the Guard­ian First Book Award in 2001. My illus­tra­tion style has always com­bined text and image and had a car­toon look about it, form­ing one panel ‘gags’ rather than nar­rat­ive sequences. I was inter­ested in devel­op­ing my per­sonal prac­tice to work with narrative.

3 / Who do you count as your influences?

Every­one. For here I will restrict my answer to three graphic novel works that have been most influ­en­tial. Dragon Slip­pers Ros­alind B. Pen­fold; Epi­leptic David B and Bare­foot Gen Keiji Nakazawa. For me they are good examples of the power and pos­sib­il­it­ies that exist in the form.

4 / Can you describe your work­ing process?

I don’t like to work at night because I miss stuff on telly, so I work in the day. I sketch out ideas and then redraw them again and again until they’re just right for me. Usu­ally then I do a lot of leav­ing and return­ing, espe­cially with nar­rat­ive based work. There’s a lot to be said for step­ping away from work and look­ing at it in a new light, it’s amaz­ing how clear it is to see what isn’t work­ing. I use a light­box and usu­ally for com­mer­cial work use pho­toshop to tidy and col­our. I work with cheap pho­to­copy paper and a .25 rotring pen. I like to feel more pre­cious than the mater­i­als I work with.

5 / What does your workspace/studio look like?

My aim is to keep everything bare of stuff so I don’t get dis­trac­ted… So here it is pic­tured as I want you to see it. I like to blend domestic and work so my stu­dio is also our spare room, there’s a bed at the other end. I have my dad’s old draw­ing board.

6 / Explain what the Lay­deez who do com­ics do.

No no no! it’s Lay­deez DO com­ics as in Lay­deez do lunch….Myself and artist Sarah Light­man www.sarahlightman.com run monthly meet­ings in Lon­don at the Rag Fact­ory. These are graphic novel for­ums. The focus is on works of an auto­bi­o­graph­ical or domestic nature and on cre­at­ing a friendly and cre­at­ively stim­u­lat­ing atmosphere.

It began with an idea of hav­ing a read­ing group, and we thought it would be bril­liant to invite people from the world of com­ics and graphic nov­els whose work we like to give present­a­tions. We intro­duced 10 min slots for cre­at­ors to present what they do and also intro­duced an invited guest blog­ger each month. It’s been really inspir­ing and fun, we’ve all been intro­duced to some fant­astic work and met some very inter­est­ing people.

It’s import­ant to cla­rify that we are not a sep­ar­at­ist women only group but we are women led. The key to the group’s suc­cess is the extraordin­ary diversity of back­grounds of the people who come along. For example film­makers, writers, anthro­po­lo­gists, act­ors, aca­dem­ics, lit­er­ary types, med­ics, graphic design­ers, fine artists, com­munity artists, anim­at­ors, illus­trat­ors, stu­dents, as well as people from the com­ics and small press world. Oh yes and every­one is welcome.

http://www.laydeezdocomics.com

7 / What are you work­ing on at the moment?

I am work­ing on a graphic novel, Billy, Me & You for pub­lic­a­tion by Myriad Edi­tions http://www.myriadeditions.com/?location_id=195 in Septem­ber 2011. It is about how I, and the people around me, made sense of the world after my two year old son died 15 years ago.

At the time I kept a writ­ten journal. I have revis­ited this to trans­late into a graphic novel. So it’s not being done from a raw per­spect­ive, but in ret­ro­spect. It is the most reward­ing cre­at­ive thing I have ever done and I’m enjoy­ing the exper­i­ence a lot. I have been pub­lish­ing chapters of it in Liquorice Magazine, (start­ing in Issue 2) my fam­ily magazine, which I star­ted with my then 11-year old daugh­ter Sally in 2008 with con­tri­bu­tions from John, my hus­band. http://www.liquoricemag.com

8 / What are your ambi­tions for the future?

I’d like to work on cre­at­ing fur­ther graphic nov­els and devel­op­ing Liquorice Magazine. I’d like also to con­tinue to embed the per­sonal into the aca­demic and the aca­demic into the per­sonal. I look for­ward to car­ry­ing on with Lay­deez pro­jects with Sarah too.

9 / What advice would you give to an aspir­ing ama­teur cartoonist?

Was it the Hob­bit who said the worst times make the best stories….so…go out there and if any­thing rub­bish hap­pens to you in your life just see it as good material.

10 / What do you think of the health of the UK com­ics scene at the moment, and what do you think it can do better?

It’s an excit­ing time. People are com­ing into the field from other dis­cip­lines and are bring­ing a lot of refresh­ing new view­points and influ­ences. This is impact­ing on the sub­ject mat­ter and the form as well as how comic based works can be used. I think this is cre­at­ing some­thing of a zeit­geist by tak­ing com­ics out of its fan-based ghetto into a wider world. I sus­pect the UK will begin to develop a unique voice in its com­ics, in the way it has in other areas such as fash­ion, art and music. It’s an excit­ing time.

Could do better?…er…to be read in a quiet voice…where are the women?

11 / Where is the best place to buy your work?

You can pre-order Billy, Me & You from Amazon

Liquorice Magazine is avail­able from http://www.liquoricemag.com

And from the Liquoricemag Etsy shop  http://www.etsy.com/shop/liquoricemag

Thanks Nic­ola! Now, pay a visit to Lay­deez Do Com­ics, buy some com­ics and fol­low Nic­ola on Twitter!