THE FUGITIVES ASTRONOMY CLUB

If these little drawings were simpler, if they focused on color or form, they might be more likely to be understood for their essential character. They might inspire something commonly human. Too many little details collect associations exponentially and new stories are written by onlookers. Who knows where the real story went? Is it the end of them if they become something else? Since they are not real, they are merely curious to see where this transformation goes. The Little Monk, Hester (who collects Sounds), KAT, the revolutionaries, and Honeycombthey have all been one or the other at some point.

Little. This is mostly what the characters of the Fugitives Astronomy Club are. I almost wanted to call them heroes, but it does not apply; they are preoccupied with other things. The fact is, they are a study in powerlessness, and all its unwanted charms. Things do not always end well for them. They are mostly bewildered to be alive, but they have seen and heard everything. I guess this is what I found for them. They are witnesses, and while they may lose themselves, they record everything around them. They are adaptable to the point of annihilation. They are resilient to a degree that most humans would not want to realize.

They were completely an accident. I had given up my painting studio, and was concerned about using solvents where I slept. So I began these pen drawings that took so ridiculously long that they built their own little narratives while I worked. Since they wander, and travel by fate, I began to send them through the mail to people I didn’t know in far off places. They’ve traveled to six continents and wound up in a university in Japan and a cultural center in Uruguay. I suspect they have also been thrown out.