the (old) inspiration box

Where we find a time capsule in the closet

The Past

I’ve always loved the idea of a time capsule. A box or a container of some kind where, years ago, things were placed and then buried or hidden with the idea that one day someone else would find it and presumably marvel at the contents. Usually, they’re inscribed with some sort of instructions, like “don’t open for 100 years.”¹ Other times, they’re just left to be discovered, like a message in a bottle, washed up on a beach.

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In 1980, my seventh-grade English teacher asked the students in our class to bring in something we could contribute to a time capsule that would be opened in twenty years. My mother and I discussed what sorts of things we had or we could easily obtain that might be interesting to a seventh-grader in Pasadena, Texas, in the year 2000. The year 2000 seemed like the future, and I had no idea what to contribute. How about a pen? I knew about computers and wondered whether future students would still use pens. Maybe my old sneakers? Would kids wear sneakers or just fly around in their jetpacks in the year 2000? I have no idea what I ended up bringing to school that day, and I wish I’d been there when it was opened and the students found… a ballpoint pen or an old sneaker. Twenty years seemed like such a long time in 1980.

The Present

Last week, I discovered that the closet right here in my studio is full of time capsules. I have archival boxes full of notes, sketches, and artwork from books I’ve illustrated. I have wooden crates of sketchbooks and journals dating back to 1986. I have shoeboxes and notebooks of photographs and transparencies. Portfolio cases containing the pieces I used to look for work as a graphic designer in New York City in 1990 and San Francisco in 1994. There’s a huge yellow file cabinet that I filled with job folders and picture reference when I began freelancing in 1995. This cabinet was the beating heart of my illustration business until children’s books took over around 2010. The business end of my work moved over to my literary agent at Writers House at that point, the picture reference was replaced with being able to google anything, and the sketches and job folders became much too large (dimensionally as well as thickness) to fit into a file cabinet. I’ve barely touched this file cabinet in more than fifteen years. It sits there like an illustration tomb. Or maybe not like a tomb, that’s depressing. But a time capsule.

Sitting among these other boxes and crates and cabinets in this closet is a box labeled The (Old) Inspiration Box. In this unassuming white cardboard box are pieces of paper — printed matter, ephemera, faxes, cards, letters — that I began collecting when I moved to New York City from Texas in 1987. The most recent item in the box is a small printed calendar from 2003, which is also the date on the mailing label on the box itself.² Before this box, these things lived in a series of manila envelopes that I carried with me from New York City to Paris, back to New York, back again to Paris, then to Fort Worth, where I lived with my mother and sister for a year, then to San Francisco, and then, finally, to Philadelphia in 1999.

I came across this box last week when I was looking for an illustrated booklet that I had picked up in Paris in 1991. The booklet wasn’t there³. But the things that were made my head swim. It was, indeed, a time capsule. Sure, some of it was the equivalent of a ballpoint pen and sneakers, and as I emptied the box on my desk last week, I wondered what it was about this magazine photo or postcard that I thought was so interesting at the time. But other things brought me right back to where I was as both an artist and as a twenty-something in the 1990s, curious and sentimental, saving pieces of paper that somehow meant something right then before the internet and its total recall made everything available all the time.

Here. I’d like to show you some of it.⁴

In no particular order:

(Mainly because Substack seems to be numbering at random)

1. I was a graphic design major at Parsons, but I took an illustration elective my final semester that, upon reflection, set everything I am doing now into motion. The class was taught by Lilla Rogers, who I ended up working for for six months as her assistant. One of the assignments in her class was to design a rubber stamp for promotional cards and envelopes. This is the ink drawing that I used to have the stamp made.

   

2. Two theatre posters I designed in 1990. One was for my friend Kati Koerner at Wesleyan University, and the other was for some students at NYU.

   

   

3. The most surprising thing I found, notes for my first graphic novel, Frederick & Eloise. This is the only thing I removed from the box, as it properly belongs with the other Frederick materials in the Frederick box, which is itself a different sort of time capsule.

2. Staying with the Frederick theme, this is cardboard cut from the first box of actual Frederick & Eloise books that were shipped to me from Fantagraphics when the book was published in 1993.

   

3. My badge from the 1992 San Diego Comic Con. I met Gary Groth of Fantagraphics at the 1991 version, and by 1992 the book was soon to be published. I felt like a pro.

   

4. A postcard from Gary Groth at Fantagraphics, encouraging me to get moving with what became my next graphic novel, Dear Julia, (he misspells Dear Julie). In the end, Gary wanted to publish it as a complete book, when I felt I wanted to split into four smaller volumes. So Black Eye did the volumes, and then Top Shelf collected it. Not sure why Fanta didn’t publish the collected graphic novel.

   

5. A promo for my first autograph appearance at a mall in Austin, Texas.

   

6. Some calligraphy that I swiped from Lilla Rogers while I was working for her. Her hand-lettering is amazing.

   

7. A fax that I sent to Lilla from Paris in 1991. Remember faxes?

   

8. I bought an old typewriter in 1991 when I moved back to Texas, and used it to write little dumb short stories. I kept a few of these. I still have the typewriter.

   

9. This might be my favorite thing in the box. Ticket stubs for visits to the Eiffel Tower, the Cooper Hewitt, the Empire State Building, and the World Trade Center, all in 1988. The small ticket bit on the top left I can’t identify. Anyone?

   

10. I don’t know why, but I kept these stickers from my first Apple computer I bought in 1995. That was a colorful logo.

    

11. Photocopied Sendak drawings from The Juniper Tree and Zlateh the Goat. At this point I really only knew his more famous chidlren’s books, and these drawings blew my mind. I had them pinned and taped to the wall above my drawing table for years. Now, I have the actual books right here next to me on my bookshelf.

    

12. I cut and saved these newspaper stories from the 1990s. They’re absurd, and were inspiration for stories I was writing for my comics.

    

    

13. Drawings from my little sister. I lived with her and my mom near Fort Worth for a year after leaving Paris, in 1991. She was eleven then. Now she’s almost 44 and in Seattle. I wish she still sent me drawings.

    

14. A photocopy of a poster designed by Alexey Brodovitch. I first saw this on the bulletin board in art director Laurie Szujewska’s office at Adobe Systems, where I worked for a time in 1993. I pulled it off of her wall, copied it, and returned it without her knowing. This last year I got to see an actual version of the poster at the Barnes Foundation at a Brodovitch retrospective. I love this piece so much.

    

15. There are a lot of photos like this, that I saved, that became visual reference and inspiration for my Dear Julia graphic novel.

    

And so much more.

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The Future

There is a fine and fuzzy line between merely saving stuff and becoming a hoarder. Sacha and I both have stacks of books and photos and other things that we’ve saved, that remind us of people and places and memories. I know I need to start rooting through this stuff and figure out what to do with it all. These drawings and clippings and pieces of paper are, or at least were, important to me. But will they be important to anyone else? My kids? No, I doubt it. So what to do with things like this? What to do with my boxes of sketches and drawings and books and notes? What does one do with the time capsules that we accidentally create as we live our lives?

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In a comment recently, reader

dr bob

suggested a cheap magnetic ipad cover to make the drawing-on-glass experience better. The one he recommended was this one, and I think it’s working quite nicely. If you also don’t like drawing on glass, give it a try. Thanks, Doc.

I’ve posted a couple of new bug drawings on my shop for sale. I’ve lowered the prices of these.

It’s been ONE YEAR of Random Orbit! My first issue, about our late great Cyrus, went out on Nov 17, 2023. I had 120 readers at that point, mostly friends and family I’d added myself (haha). This issue is my 30th, and there are 627 of you out there, now, presumably reading. For this, I thank you, and I’d like to give you this discount code for 10% off anything in my webshop until Tuesday Dec 3. RANDOMORBITYEAR1

Lastly, as constantly requested by my wife, here is some cat content. Basil and Maple doing what they do.

Thanks for reading.

1. I always wonder if someone happened across this in, like, eighty years, would they be able to resist? Would they have to? Are there rules? The curiosity would be too much for me. Wouldn’t it be like peeking down the stairs on Christmas morning?

2. The mailing label says it came from Modern Postcard, where at the time I and most illustrators I knew had their promotional cards printed.

3. I have to say, this is driving me crazy. It should have been there. There is no where else that makes sense for it to be. It was illustrated by Benoit Jacques and is so cool.

4. I promise you that none of this will mean as much to you as it does to me. If it did, you’d have kept it in an envelope and then a box yourself. Some of it is so weirdly personal that it would either be embarrassing to me or to someone else, so I’m leaving these things out as well. I’m choosing things that are easily explainable, or maybe just odd and curious in a more universal way.