{"id":973,"date":"2012-03-25T22:49:01","date_gmt":"2012-03-25T22:49:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secretacres.com\/newsite\/?page_id=973"},"modified":"2023-02-23T16:41:25","modified_gmt":"2023-02-23T16:41:25","slug":"theo-ellsworth","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/secretacres.com\/?page_id=973","title":{"rendered":"Theo Ellsworth"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\nBIO<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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\nTheo Ellsworth<\/span> is a self-taught artist and storyteller living in the mountains of Montana with a witch doctor, their son and a slightly evil cat. He developed his art while wandering the United States in a motor powered vehicle. He is uncommonly fond of clouds, monsters, trees, and impossible objects. He is prone to fits of whimsy, and his mind is filled with preposterous notions, yet he still manages to come across as semi-normal. He spends as much time as possible making comics, art zines, and imaginary phenomenon.<\/p>\n

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\nIN PRAISE OF THEO ELLSWORTH<\/span><\/p>\n

A combination<\/span> of Where the Wild Things Are<\/em>, a fever dream, a pagan woodland ceremony, and a notebook doodle.<\/p>\n

– Pitchfork<\/span><\/p>\n

There\u2019s also some kind of unusual thought process driving Theo Ellsworth\u2019s THE UNDERSTANDING MONSTER: Book One<\/em> (Secret Acres, $21.95) \u2014 not a disorder, exactly, but imagination turned up to fire hose intensity. Ellsworth fills every bit of every page with grotesque patterns and textures and doodles, and his writing is similarly wild-eyed. Nominally an adventure story involving a mouse, \u201cphantom skeletons\u201d and \u201ctoy growth formations,\u201d the book is mostly an urgent (and often very funny) attempt to explain a coocoo-rococo cosmology made up of garbled fragments of role-\u00adplaying games, \u201cTransformers\u201d episodes, relaxation exercises and horror movies. In one sequence, a character wakes up and exclaims that he dreamed he was a house. \u201cThat wasn\u2019t a dream, Izadore,\u201d a voice tells him. \u201cYou really are a house. You\u2019re in a room inside yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n

– Douglas Wolk, The New York Times<\/span><\/p>\n

If you missed Book One, it might not be a problem, because despite the artist\u2019s excessively explanatory dialogue, I\u2019m baffled by the narrative and subtext of this eerie fairy tale (mostly taking place in the mind of an immobilized mummy and involving ghosts, a laughing demon and a three-eyed house gnome). But despite my confusion, I unequivocally enjoyed the bewildering experience of navigating this visual feast, due out in early November. It brought to mind another comparable cartoonist, Chicagoan Edie Fake. I could never follow his Gaylord Phoenix<\/em> but I still consider it one of the greatest pieces of contemporary cartooning. Ellsworth, likewise, has cohesively combined the confounding and convincing.<\/p>\n

– The Chicago Tribune<\/span><\/p>\n

Ellsworth’s weird little tales sometimes read like acid trips of the future, complete with lonely robots and unknown creatures. But there’s also a nice personal story threading through this. I have no idea why this guy isn’t considered a comics God yet. Maybe someday he rightfully will be.<\/p>\n

– The Huffington Post<\/span><\/p>\n

In Understanding Monster<\/em> Ellsworth delves into the minutia of the minutia of his brain\u2019s inner realms, worlds that often function in opposition: colliding, refracting, and splintering. The story depicts the struggle to link these prismatic worlds, to get them working in harmony. He casts the classic quest to Find Oneself in a mythic, phantasmagorical light.<\/p>\n

Oh, there is a plot here: right at the outset our protagonist, Izadore, finds his spirit trapped inside a mouse\u2019s body, while his \u201cPhantom skeleton\u201d calamitously roams free. He needs to escape from \u201cnegative time\u201d and find his way back to his corporeal form to reintegrate his mind\/body\/spirit with the help of a fly, itself inhabited by another spirit, a spaceman called This Way That Way. In his quest, he\u2019s aided by a host of benevolent creatures including one Inspector Gimble, who is his major guide and protector, a group of sentient toys and a green girl named Gill. Standing in his way, however, is a rogue\u2019s gallery of antagonists ranging from the Devil to a pharaoh\u2019s mummy to a group of terrible entities called the Mean Kids in the Walls.<\/p>\n

The perilous quest Izadore undertakes in Understanding Monster<\/em> continues Capacity\u2019s<\/em> exploration and deconstruction of the creative process: finding your true voice, fighting through the negative feedback loop, locating the core of the self, and manifesting it on the page or canvas as honestly as possible. All the characters guiding or opposing Izadore appear to be elements of his personality, with each faction fighting for dominance…<\/p>\n

…Ellsworth conjures up a dizzying array of beautiful, intricately patterned, labyrinthine drawings, perfectly capturing the spiraling sprawl of the narrative within a narrative within a narrative. What keeps this souffl\u00e9 from collapsing is this: no matter how bizarre the proceedings, Izadore\u2019s odyssey always maintains its internal (il)logic. Somehow, Ellsworth manages to make a perfect sort of sense, and we root for Izadore to escape the forces aligned against him and complete his quest. Ellsworth\u2019s deep imagination, as well as his idiosyncratic charm, humor, and sincerity are evident in every passage rendered, no matter how far out into the ether it may be. His trippy psychedelic home movies are projected directly from his head without ever forgetting the heart.<\/p>\n

– Robert Kirby, The Comics Journal<\/span><\/p>\n

MORE PRAISE FOR THEO ELLSWORTH<\/span><\/a>\n