- - - - Copyright 2003 Micromedia Limited
- - - - SECTION: v.22(3) Ag'03; ISSN: 0831-2559 CBCA-ACC-NO: 5841175 LENGTH: 627 words HEADLINE: The bear facts (Record in progress) BODY: Marcel Dzama had already published some drawings in McSweeney's when he motored to Minneapolis to meet the magazine's editor and publisher. But the fact is they didn't directly meet when they first met, either. Dave Eggers was introduced to a bear, or at least to a person wearing a bear's suit. Dzama was inside the suit, responding to a Web site contest offering prizes to anyone who came to Eggers's midwestern reading dressed as a panda. A brown bear was the closest Dzama could come to the requested species. He happened to have the costume in the trunk of his car after it was used for film DZAMA, a cinematic narrative in which his drawings come to life. Dzama went to Minneapolis to reverse the process: his life became one of his drawings. ''I think I distracted him a bit during his talk,'' says Dzama. ''But he said he liked it because he wasn't doing a traditional reading anyway.'' Eggers appears to like what Dzama does. When he compiled his Top Ten list for the influential art magazine ARTFORUM, he listed the Winnipeg artist as his favourite. That initial interest, combined with the bear encounter of a close kind, led to ''The Berlin Years,'' a beautifully produced portfolio that includes reproductions of 32 drawings, as well as a facsimile version of one of Dzama's notebooks. The reproductions are so good that if it weren't for the lack of root beer lingering in the air (Dzama uses diluted root beer syrup as ink), you would be hard-pressed to tell the portfolio drawings from their real sources. Certainly the characters are signature Dzama; a Siamese quartet performs an operation that leaves one of them separated like a side of beef; Dracula delivers a Canadian version of ''The State of the Ghoulian Address''; a tree man offers a cigarette to a bedridden patient; and out of single, bloodless incisions in the bellies of a Great White and a Hammerhead shark tumble an improbable menagerie of animals. But nothing is really improbable in The Drawn World According to Dzama. The word that his grade-school teacher illustrates on the black-board is ''decapitation,'' and when a skeleton man operates a surface pump, what gushes from the spout is blood and not water. The fact that the liquid emanates from a malevolent, smiling Humpty Dumpty, who is buried underground, gives you an idea of how grotesquely brilliant is Dzama's universe. He is the brother grim. Dzama's initial idea for the form the publication would take went through a number of changes, from a children's book to a double-sided publication, but it was Eggers who ultimately came up with the boxed drawing idea. Dzama's contribution came in the addition of the scrapbook. ''I was becoming more obsessed with my own notebook,'' says Dzama, who ended up sending Eggers 50 drawings from which he chose 32 for the portfolio. The remaining drawings were used to design the box and spine, which forms a miniature totem of animal and human hybrids. The whole package is impeccably bizarre, a triumph of matched content and design. ''The Berlin Years'' is not the only contribution Dzama has made to McSweeney's weird publishing empire. He also did 40 drawings for the chapter headings in Nick Hornby/Songbook. ''I like Hornby's writing, so it was exciting''--although Dzama admits the pace was a bit hectic. ''I drew all 40 illustrations in three days, so I did feel pretty burnt out after doing them.'' Burnout, though, seems improbable. His scrapbooks are brimming with possibilities. ''I have a backlog of ideas in the notebooks,'' he confides, ''so I'm fine. I can fit six drawing ideas on a page.'' JOURNAL-CODE: 0733 LOAD-DATE: October 20, 2003 - - - -
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