George Porteus – NESTED NARRATIVES
Find pamphlets at the info booth (while they last).
There are distinct strata to existence. The quantum scale constitutes the atomic, which comprises the molecular, giving rise to the cellular, the multi-cellular, etc.; each level churning forward through time at its own pace, concentric cycles enveloping a subjective present. Perspective binds us to our experience, but through the study of these varied scales, we may transcend ourselves with an expanded awareness.
This awareness, far from revolutionary, typically manifests as a vague underlying notion, a soft, consistent rhythm perpetually obscured by all the noise at the human scale. An age-old method for overcoming the din has been through mindful experience of Nature, a visceral engagement with a temporal ecosystem of which we are only a small, tiny part.
'Nested Narratives' is an attempt, via the accessible comics form, to recognize the present as it reverberates through us, and to map this awareness in overt terms, using the ecology of Stone Quarry Hill Art Park as an archetypical case-study. In comics there is a link between the relative length of a panel (frame) and what the reader may perceive as the stillness or rapidity of the moment it depicts. Like in the performing arts, the rhythmic pacing of these ‘beats’ acts as a subliminal metronome, but unlike performance, comics must transpose Time into Space. Frames also have an ulterior connotation not often explored in narrative comics, that of the ‘reference frame’ in physics. In this context, the frame denotes the perspective scale, which then determines the temporospatial experience. This glyphic duality is exploited in the piece by the relative size and subject of each panel, with the spatial organization of all panels hinting at something close to an objective, allocentric perspective; the greater Reality, everlasting.
This piece was conceived, developed and produced during the tumultuous summer of 2020 specifically for the Stone Quarry Hill Art Park's 'Personal Programs' series. Special thanks to Perfectly Acceptable Press (Chicago) for their expert risography services, as well as artistic director Sayward Schoonmaker, for her indispensable guidance and support.
George Porteus is a Chicago-based artist, author and illustrator whose wide-ranging printed output explores the outer limits of disambiguation, conflating sequential narrative and information design with a sincere love for the craft of drawing. Whether zine, comic, print or pamphlet, his work engages a surreal polyrhythm of representation and abstraction, multimodal content that recontextualizes the familiar amid the strange in a bid at deeper truth.
Reared along the Massachusetts coast, George attended college at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore as part of its undergraduate illustration program. There he found his first exposure to the elastic subculture surrounding alternative and independent comics, seeding an interest that fully blossomed after relocating to Chicago, where the cultural nexus of artmaking, printmaking, activism and an outsider/DIY ethos has fostered a robust and devoted underground community.
Each year since 2015, George has produced numerous comics, zines and other printed goods with the Risograph, an eighties-era Japanese technology and descendent of the mimeograph that has inspired a domestic subculture all its own. In addition to these modestly priced self-published titles, which have been peddled locally at events like the Chicago Alternative Komics Expo (CAKE), Zine Mercado, and the Chicago Art Book Fair, his work has appeared in 'Lumpen' (Chicago), 'The Smudge' (LA), 'Resist!' (NYC) and, most recently, 'Zeitschrift' (Berlin).