Friday, December 26, 2008

Illustrations by Jeremy Mericle



When I asked him to draw the cover for issue one all I told him was I needed something that would take up the whole cover and not leave too much white space. Not that I dislike voids but I just felt like having something big with a logo feel to it. Jeremy is a versatile illustrator. A graduate of MIAD (Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design) he came to the conclusion that most of the modern art coming from academic institutions relies less on anything put on canvass and more on what the artist puts on paper in mission statements. Illustrators have the luxury of allowing stories to dictate goals. As an illustrator his preference for narrative allows him to work with short fiction but his knack for picking out interesting images enables him to work with poetry as well, in fact, his thesis was drawing illustration for the poetry of Omar Khayyám. Another example of this is his work for Jonathan Lohr’s first chapbook Watertown’s Plank Road. The images Mericle chose from the short manuscript demonstrated his skill as an illustrator as well as the understanding and insight that is required to work with poetry in order to enunciate, but not overshadow, the written word. In addition to these contributions he also drew an excellent illustration for the story "Flying Saucer Nights" by Jim Hazard in Burdock the Two. He is currently at work on his own children's book.




Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Burdock 5 gets some press!

I'm so lazy with updates but luckily the Shepherd Express is on the ball. Click the blog title for the article. It's a nice write up. Thanks to Aisha for taking the time to do something I should have done! With any luck in a few days I should have some contributor info up.