PopPreview: Substrate
Available now at Kelly Howlett.com

By Kelly Howlett
Limited Edition Journal/Sketchbook
6" x 9", 100 pages - Black & White
$ 15.00 U.S. - Available Online
Only 500 Signed & Numbered Copies

Substrate is a collection of sketches, musings and other works by artist Kelly Howlett and featuring an introduction by writer Joshua Dysart. Kelly is a painter/illustrator and self-publisher who may still be working her way into the comics medium but is ingrained into the inspirations of fellow artists.

We asked Kelly to share some samples of her new collection with us, but first, here's a small excerpt of Joshua Dysart's introduction for SUBSTRATE.

"I believe solipsism to be important. It is not everything, but it is, profoundly, something. I find that when I stretch in, towards the hyper-personal, I'm more likely to receive a sign of God's existence than when I look for external inspiration. The work in this book, Kelly's work, lives and breathes in the personal, in the recognition of the self as containment for the divine. Even her portraits of others are really just explorations of her own sensuality, malaise, and sense of hope. She finds the all-inclusive in the singular. The trick of all our most relevant art.

I originally saw Kelly's work at the Detroit Comic Book Convention several years ago. She had produced a zine called, *"She Said"* and was pimping it proudly. I liked the zine. It was a scattershot of images and text. Obsessed with the female face and mildly interested in the feminization of technology (Kelly is a geek with a capital G). It was rough, not fully formed, but there was a great sense of Lo/Fi power that hummed off of it's Xeroxed pages. I'm a sucker for the documentary sensibility and above all things that first zine was certainly a document. She had drawn on top of printed out emails and other collected "brass tack" scraps from her life, grafting her women and their fierce certainty across the American Typewriter font minutia of daily existence..."

"...This is the paragon issue of *She Said*. Which means it's nothing less than a pure expression of feminine power. And I don't mean power maculated with masculinity as a metaphor for strength either. It seems that in the art and narratives that surrounds us these days, the most common stand-in for feminine gumption is a quick turn towards violence. But not here. In this book, strength is flexed in glances. Kelly's faces possess oceans of sexuality, anger and peace. She erotizes form and tragedy."

-Joshua Dysart (Swamp Thing, Conan and the Midnight God)


The images shown here are samples from Kelly's SUBSTRATE, highly detailed sketches which she considers an exercise while others may see a complete and fully rendered illustration, some are accompanied by notes which act like code so that later she can decipher what occurred that day to inspire her entries. Kelly has a unique style, using text as a design element and offering no explanation, simply taking a piece of herself and offering up something personal, but in the end it's the art that really matters to her.

The following is an example of the text accompanying the piece seen to the right:

"That makes me an awful person, doesn't it?
She wants me to feel bad about this and I don't
At this point, I'm not sure I can
I'm much better at putting myself down and
I'm not intimidated
3.24.06
5:27pm"

The following are just a few samples of what's contained within Kelly's 100 page sketch journal, available for sale on her website, Kelly Howlett.com. Be sure to check it out for more on Kelly, her art, as well as glowing reviews from the likes of Jim Mahfood, Christopher Shy and Eric Powell. SUBSTRATE is available now.

 

SUBSTRATE is self-published by and copyright Kelly Howlett.


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