This interview was conducted in the summer of 1999 by Jess Latham.

Fawn Gehweiler

JESS: Fave music? I just got the new Stereolab CD, I highly recommend it!

FAWN: Yeah! I just got the new stereolab, too. I like the first half tho,’ the free-jazzy, tropicalia kind of stuff, more than the rest of the record…what else? I’ve been listening to a lot of ‘Os Mutantes’, and early ‘T-rex’, like all the elf songs, um, all the ‘Deviants’ reissues, Brian Eno-the ‘before and after science’ record, a lot of bootlegged CDs of crazy Japanese stuff, all that are like 220 b.p.m, created with sounds from video games, and samples from like Disney movies – that stuff makes me so happy when I’m working, and drives my roommates insane!

JESS: Fave movies?

FAWN: I like so many different movies it’s crazy – not very many lately though… I love the 60’s A.I.P pictures – ‘Wild in the Streets,’ ‘Psych Out,’ I still haven’t seen ‘Riot on Sunset Strip’ in it’s entirety (anybody with a copy-email me!), but that’s definitely one of them! ‘Beyond the Valley of the Dolls’, for sure…almost every Godard movie ever – especially ‘Masculin Feminin’, ‘Weekend’, and ‘Alphaville’. all the late 70’s j.d. movies ‘Over the Edge’, ‘Little Darlings’, I just rented ‘Foxes’ with Jodie Foster and the girl from the runaways in it, but I haven’t watched it yet. I’m trying to see more stuff from the Czech new wave too – ‘Daisies’ is one of the best things I’ve ever seen.

JESS: Fave Books?

The Pill - Cruel Ways: 45 Sleeve

FAWN: I haven’t read a lot of fiction books lately. There are so many on the market and they’re all sooo bad. I like when kids write novels and send them to me, and a lot of writing that people put up on websites is great. Momus has a new essay on his site like every day. I always read anything new by Francesca Lia Block and William T. Vollman. I read magazines like a fiend. I buy like 20 different ones every month, and I still have to go sit at the newsstand all day and read all the ones that I didn’t buy, it might be like an obsessive disorder or something, I guess…what else? I just got a library card in my new town (yay!), so right now I’m reading the Charles and Ray Eames book. They’re artists and furniture designers and totally inspiring (plus there are all these photos of Eames chairs that make me drool, and a book called ‘No Place Like Utopia’, plus a bunch of picture books of Las Vegas and Tokyo and one of American roadside restaurants that are totally beautiful. I love architecture and urban planning books more than anything (the armchair architectural theorists and angry men of urban planning write the best books!), almost any book that MIT Press puts out has proven to be good, esp. the ‘zone’ collection, which I faithfully haul around with me every time I move, even though they’re the heaviest things I own…

JESS:Fave TV shows?

FAWN: I’d probably have more favorite TV shows if I had cable, or got more than one channel, or had grown up in a house with television…that said though, I have to admit that I’m one of the last holdout 90210 watchers that I know, and have been caught on numerous occasions defending Tori spellings acting. My friends think I’m just saying that cause once she wore a shirt that I designed on the show (while she broke up with her boyfriend and caught her Mom having an affair
or something), but I seriously think that she’s the Lucille ball of the 90’s…

JESS: Who are some of your favorite artists and illustrators?

FAWN: A lot of my favorite artists are people I don’t remember the names of, so I’ll describe them in a really abstract and roundabout way until someone either gives up or figures out who I’m talking about, like i love the girl who does some stuff for Wallpaper magazine, and also did Target’s back to school catalog, and last years Screaming Mimi’s ads, Lisolette something, i think – her stuff is amazing. I like the other Illustrator who does a lot of stuff for Wallpaper, too – Jordi Labanda. Michael Economy rocks. I think that guy Kaws who paint little cartoon skulls over bus bench supermodel pictures and then carefully bolts them back in place is pretty amazing. So many of my friends are artist and illustrators that are so great, too…

JESS:When did you first become interested in drawing?

FAWN: I’d say I’ve been drawing pictures pretty much my whole life, my Mom said I used to sit at the table for hours at a time with stacks of paper and just crank out pictures. She sent me this huge folder full of ones she kept, and some are from when I was like 2, and you can totally see that it’s a chicken, or whatever it’s supposed to be. I drew all these series drawings, like the bunny collection, and the fairies, and the praying mantises, I guess hundreds of them sometime when I was really little…

JESS: What comic books would you recommend to someone who is new to them?

FAWN: There are so many good anthology comics out right now, that I would advise someone to pick up something like that first. ‘Non’ , ‘Girlfrenzy’, and ‘Top Shelf’ are great ones! Highwater Press is doing a lot of amazing stuff, longer self contained books, stuff that’s better to pick up than a novel a lot of the time…my friend Craig Thompson just put a book out on Top Shelf – ‘Goodbye, Chunky Rice’ that’s amazing. there’s a ton of other stuff that I’m just not thinking of right now…

JESS: You finished Bomb Pop while living in Kentucky, and Seth tells me you will be moving to Kansas soon. How do you feel about moving around so much and does it affect your work? I am living in Alabama so I hear a lot of people say well you should be in New York or LA, do you get a lot of that? I know your living in California, but when you were in Kentucky was there prejudice against you, or was it hard for people to take you seriously as an artist?

Bomb Pop Comics & Stories

FAWN: I love moving to small towns! I think it affects my work in a positive way, because the ratio of how much ‘real’ work I’ve got to do to pay the rent suddenly goes way, way down, and I have all this time to be productive and do art… I came back from Kentucky with enough paintings for two big art shows, and I wrote a teen novel that’s still packed in a box somewhere. I guess the downfall is that the stuff like the art shows is all back in the main cities – L.A.,San Francisco and New York or whatever, so I could have a million paintings hanging in my house in Kentucky that no one will ever see, or I can go back to the city, which sucks. This time around, I’m going to try to stay in the country and just keep in really good touch with everybody. I think the website will help, I’m gonna eventually turn it into an online art gallery there, where people can see and buy the paintings. I’ll send out flyers or whatever, just like a regular art show. I’ve never really noticed a prejudice against my being from a small town from art directors or whoever, but i move around so much, anyway, that I’m never really associated with a single town, so even though it’s like Louisville, Portland, Austin, Lawrence, Kansas or wherever, maybe it seems almost jetsetty or something! when i was leaving San Francisco this girl gave me a lecture about how the sacrifice of living on filthy streets and getting robbed and working 3 jobs and paying like $2000 rent or whatever is one we have to make to be taken seriously as ‘artists’ cause we live in San Francisco. Whatever.

JESS: You recently did some illustrations for the August issue of Teen magazine, have you done anything else for any major publications? Have you had any new offers since then?

FAWN: I totally wanna sell out to teen magazines for a while. I don’t even care. I’m gonna have a sticker in with (I think) the December issue of ‘Jump UK’, and hopefully a monthly comic for a few months, but that’ll be through cosmic, and will be sort of an ad for them, too…as soon as I’m less busy, I’m gonna barrage every teen magazine on the market with portfolios, hopefully get a lot of jobs, and then take like a year off to sit around on my porch and drink lemonade.

JESS: What are some recent projects you are working on? Do you have another comic book planned?

FAWN: Um, I’m still doing some stuff for Cosmic. A series of five shirts. My friend Liz Baca is designing and I’m doing the drawings on for spring 2000. Then I’ve got this secret project, stuff I’m starting to work on myself for spring, these high concept handbags and dresses that are all made out of felt and fur and paper. I think the first items are gonna show up at ‘Reading Frenzy’ in Portland for the holiday art show, that’ll be more wintery stuff, and some paintings too. I wanna make more T-shirts soon, my roommates are getting a 4-color silk-screen press, so that’ll be when it happens, maybe a few months. I’m doing a ton of little paintings that I wanna sell on the website, and cheap too! I’ve done a few new comics recently, and mostly sent them off to be in different anthologys, i want a new bomb pop to happen, but the business part of it, dealing with the printing and distribution and stuff was such a pain in the ass, I want someone else to publish the next one, but I’m not sure who to ask just yet. in the meantime, I’m working on some little art books with hand sewn covers, and adding to the coloring book for delinquents…

JESS: Do you spend much time on the Internet? How do you feel about the whole WWW?

FAWN: I don’t think I spend a lot of time on the Internet, compared to most people … like an hour every other day or so, I guess. I pretty much just handle all my email, and maybe check some of my favorite spots to see if there’s anything new. I spend a little too much time on Ebay, which has validated a lot of my really stupid collections, and turned each one into a problem – like i used to have 2 cool old 50’s stuffed poodle radios, now i have like 12 of them and started buying ones that weren’t even radios, just stuffed poodles, and pac-man stuff, now I’ve got way too much pac-man stuff for my own good, and those 3-D Lenticular prints, and the kids books that had them on the cover…all in all I think the Internet is a great thing, it opens up so many lines of communication that would have been way too difficult before – who’s that sci-fi writer who runs an empire from the mountains of Sri Lanka? I can’t remember his name, but stuff like that is amazing. I’m totally scared of the whole message groups and chatting aspects of the Internet, but for like 12 year olds who are into punk rock or whatever, and alienated in their surroundings, there is this whole world of kids to talk to, which I can’t even imagine having when I was a kid, so I think it’s great for them. I love the universal location it provides too, like I could be anywhere now, but I’ve got my email and website in one place, and can check up on it from any library in the country!

JESS: Could you give some insight on how you like to work? Do you have a favorite kind of paper, pencil, ink,etc…

FAWN: Um, let’s see, i usually use smooth Bristol board to draw on, but lately I’ve been really liking vellum too, except that it smears up easier, and somebody’s bound to accidentally rip it somewhere down the line, but it looks so good! I use brushes that are between a 0 and a 000, really small cause I usually work the exact size of the page, but still wanna get detail, and either ’superblack’ or ‘t-100′ inks…

JESS: What fonts were used on the cover and in Bomb Pop?

FAWN: The font on the cover is cut and pasted out of an old Letraset font book – I think it might be ‘Pixie’ though. All the other stuff is mostly rub on letters – I did this way before I had a computer, and wouldn’t even have wanted to go down to Kinkos and typed anything out. I was totally hard-core pro rub on letters. I would find them in thrift stores and old office supply places, buy them all, and horde them like crazy. I love that stuff. I would also collect old typeface catalogs, and Xerox them to cut and paste titles and stuff. I still keep all the pages that I haven’t found the font yet to put on the computer. One day I might just have to make them all myself – is it easy? I did this total 360 from being a total neo-luddite, to buying an iMac like 6 months ago, so I’m new to this whole tech thing…coincidentally though, I think I bought the iMac pretty soon after my supply of rub on letters ran low…

JESS: Do you do any of your work on the computer? What programs do you like to use if so?

Zine Cover 1998

FAWN: I do a lot of my actual ‘work’ work on the computer now, which has kind of created this whole new style, like there’s all this stuff i did for ‘Yum Pop’ that you wouldn’t even recognize as my style, this hyper-cute cartoony kind of style, characters that are like popsicles and lollipops with faces, and cats from outer space. all that stuff was done in ‘Illustrator’, mostly. Sometimes i draw stuff by hand, and then scan it in to color it, that’s also in Illustrator, via Streamline. and i like Photoshop to blend drawings in with actual photos really convincingly. I want to learn some of the 3D stuff, but everytime somebody copies the programs for me, it doesn’t work right…

JESS: What inspires you? (!! kind of a vague question ; P just whatever !!)

FAWN: I’m inspired more than anything by Japanese fashion magazines right now, my friend Liz has to buy them for me now and mail them to me every month, I’m having withdrawals from the Japantown center in San Francisco already…and by these 60s kids books, ‘puppet storybooks’ where they built all these little sets by hand and photograph them, like houses made of candy and stuff. I started doing some stuff like that for ‘Yum Pop’ too, and want to do more, like animation or videos or whatever. I’m inspired by kids who live in really crazy places, like tree houses or houseboats, barns or whatever. punk rock kids who start their own farm, stuff like that, and kids who drive really messed up cars or insane looking bikes – like I saw this indie rock girl in a really jacked up firebird, and a bunch of kids drunk in cowboy hats driving a smashed up Pinto. I love that, I’ve never paid more than $100 for a car, so when I see that, it’s like a secret handshake or something. I’m totally inspired by crackpot theorists, too – like the guy at the bus stop who is so exited about these really messed up ideas or inventions or whatever, and can’t stop talking – those people make my day.

JESS: You mentioned in the intro of Bomb Pop that you were in a band called the Lou Garou and you played Vox organ. Are you still involved in that? Was this your first time being in a band and how was that?

FAWN: The Lou Garou has become a secret and an enigma…we started out as French pop, and ended up as 220 b.p.m. psychotic French high-concept synthesizer pop with samples. We went through 9 different drummers in probably as many weeks, for reasons like being a dumb mod, quoting too many French philosophers in a magazine, dating someone in the band, listening to garage rock, and so on. We became a two piece, with a trusty drum machine, at least 7 keyboards, and shower stall vocals. A million songs are 90 percent recorded, so we’re ready to take over the world. I traded in my Vox for a Farfisa for maximum portability, and now am looking for one of those glossy red Sears ‘panther’ organ instead. my first time being in a band ever was in an art rock jug band when I was 17. We played parties at punk houses and confused everybody, and the Lou Garou would do the same…

Thanks for the interview Fawn! Please visit her website : No Candy!

Images used in this interview are ©1999 by Fawn Gehweiler