So now the cat is out of the bag: Project X is A for Autocrat, the Trumpian ABC I am completing this week. Adding new image to the top of this post to mark same. More to come soon!—7/8/20.

About five weeks ago I embarked on a project to capture my revulsion at and more importantly mount a case against the conduct of our government—in particular, the current Administration. I have been working around the clock since, along with my collaborator, graphic designer Scott Gericke. The end is in sight, and the project—the first glimpses of which will begin to appear tomorrow—will be available later this summer. (The images in this post include process shots and prior projects, noted below. No spoilers.)

I have made a lot of projects in my life, and some of them have been pretty good. That said, nothing I have ever made has produced the kind of response that this one has, at least as viewed by a handful of people in preliminary form. We live in a divided time. Some will not be pleased. But I have said and drawn what I mean, and I am pleased to be wheeling this project into view.

More to come on that front, and soon.

I have addressed “current events” before, but usually through satire and allegory. The above-mentioned allegories include: Cry Mustardville, a suite of prints (1995) addresses civil war and mental health, composed against a backdrop of Rwanda and the destruction of Yugoslavia; Sam the Dog (1997-99), a newspaper serial for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch [reconsidered in 2014, as the Ferguson protests exploded] addressed urban and surburban politics, and which briefly had an existence as an online animation property; Scenes from Starkdale, Ohio, an experimental animated film (2005-06) explores “islamo-fascist” anxiety and consumer culture.

D.B. Dowd, project in development, 2020.

In 2008, as I wrote in my book Stick Figures: Drawing as a Human Practice (2018, Spartan Holiday Books in association with the Norman Rockwell Museum), “I went outside and started looking at things. Material facts. Cars. Buildings. People. Nonfiction.” I did so because I had gotten sick of commentary, of people shooting their mouths off.

“For two years I filled up sketchbooks with no real sense of what the drawings were for. I see now that I was working out a way to situate myself in a landscape in defiance of placelessness, resisting what would come to be called “the cloud.”

I labored to re-embed myself in things and stuff as a bulwark against gaseous, disorienting chatter. Under the circumstances, a heroic materialism…What is, is. Look hard. Describe first. Interpret second.”

My upcoming project is grounded in reporting. None of it is fiction, although I use association and metaphor to sharpen the rhetoric. All told I see it as perfectly in line with my post-satirical career. I have found myself thinking about two aspects of the project which feel new to me: First is conceptual compression. Composing the text has felt like writing haikus, and choosing image vocabularies has required precision. Second is the use of a well-established cultural form, and one strongly associated with children. The reasons for that choice are sound.

I look forward to bringing out Project X in the next several weeks. Stay tuned!

Incoming: Project X!