One Thousand (And One) True Fans with Artist Lucy Bellwood

Lucy Bellwood, adventure cartoonist and artist extraordinaire, has accomplished significant feats for someone still so young, including developing a loyal and devoted fan base. She is currently working on a book project with Kate Milford about a seafaring adventure graphic novel series with kind and cuddly capybaras.  We talk about the eternal artistic hustle, about Kant's admonition "to not number voices, but instead weigh them." Lucy talks about the famous blog post from Kevin Kelley's "1,000 True Fans," and how to develop and sustain enough people who will stick with an artist through thick and thin and allow them to achieve artistic freedom. We talk about earlier pre-Patreon and Kickstarter artists, Robert Musil and Harry Partch, who were free to create as they chose through the patronage of a small but dedicated group of fans. Featured in a prior issue of the Ojai Quarterly by Kit Stolz for her "100 Demon Dialogues" book, Bellwood has just signed a contract for 750 pages of drawings over the next six years. An Ojai native, Lucy talks about connectedness and being known through several generations, an experience rarely duplicated outside your hometown, even as she's been in Portland, Oregon for the past decade. Always innovative and forward-thinking, one of Lucy's news projects is the "Right Number," an anonymous confessional phone line where callers can leave messages and know that only one person will hear them. Her experience at Reed College was formative and unusual, prompted by an influential teacher in Ojai, and which has led to her prolific and unusual career path. We conclude with Lucy's perceptive insights into the social unrest in Portland, and how it does not line up with right-wing narratives, because the protests are limited to a small, six-block downtown zone and whatever rare acts of violence happens can be laid at the feet of police overreach. We did not get around to talking about the 1908 Tunguska explosion, Sumerian cuneiform or the Antarctic expeditions of Ernest Shackleton. A partial list of references is herein ... - 100 Demon Dialogues (100demondialogues.com) - XOXO (xoxofest.com) - C. Spike Trotman of Iron Circus Comics (https://ironcircus.com, and her XOXO talk: https://xoxofest.com/2015/videos/c-spike-trotman) - Dialup (https://dialup.com) - Danielle Baskin's service that pairs random people. - My Patreon page (patreon.com/lucybellwood) - My general website (lucybellwood.com) - The Right Number (therightnumber.tel) — Lucy's project - PostSecret (https://postsecret.com) - Reed College (reed.edu) - Bookends (http://www.bookendsbookstore.com) - Rebecca Solnit's River of Shadows (https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780142004104)