The city of Odda

The literature festival in Odda included this year images as well as words. Illustrators and comic creators were invited, also authors who had gotten their books transformed to films. Very interesting! In the video, a short glimpse of one of the factories Odda is renowned for. Other things to experience are the mountains, the fjord and the waterfalls. An ice glacier, Folgefonna, lies within walking distance of the city. Well, it´s a long walk, but, it´s possible.
Odda was also made famous by the great landslide that took several houses. In fact, it have had several such slides, albeit that was one of the biggest in this century, and since I was a little girl, I´ve heard about the really great slide, not yet occurred, the one everybody fears: a whole mountaintop over Tyssedal (the place where one of the other factories is situated) is prophesied to slide into the fjord, wiping out everything below. I hope it´ll never happen. There is a museum in Tyssedal which contains a great amount of the history of Odda and the whole fjord it lies by, the Sørfjorden (the south fjord).

The great factories, all about melting metal, smoke and fire, has had a great impact on the culture. Many authors from Odda celebrated the friendship and community spirit they had grown up with. It was the workers against "them", the directors, the farmers, the outsiders. The Union and the politics was important. It is still told a story about a first May celebration, when everybody were maching under the flags of their unions, how the communists and the worker´s unions collided and got into a massive fistfight, a long time ago.
People here are great storytellers. And this spirit, combined with the life as factory workers, have given them an unique way of expressing themselves. Several authors, playwrights and comic creators have grown up here.

The Raptus comic festival

At the Raptus festival in Bergen, 11-13 September 2009, many comic creators gathered to meet fans and each others. Milo Manara, Cary Nord, Joe Casey, Charlie Adlard, Vince Deporter, Barbara Canepa, Peter Madsen, Juanjo Guarnido, Massimo De Vita, Thierry Capezzone, Lars Lauvik, Frode Øverli, Ingebjorg Jensen, Arild Midthun, Gunnar Staalesen, myself and Mike Collins, amongst others. It was great fun, I had with me my brand new video recorder, and got some small glimpses of the event. Regrettably, what I got, was just a tiny percent of it all.
I have more footage, and will try to mix something again soon. The people talking in the film are Norwegian comic artists. The bright little kid was a fan of Mike Collins, who drew a fantastic image for him. No wonder he says, "Raptus is great!"

The well of plots

I have a well of plots.
At home, in my cave, there are dozen of dozens of books, notes, sketches and synopses. It dates back from when I was five years old, my mother collected books of my drawings and poems. If my descendants don´t burn it all on a bonfire, some brave souls will have an interesting time searching for the gold nuggets amongst the sand corns.

I read about Thomas Edison, the near-deaf, ADHD child, the inventor, nicknamed the Magician of Menlo Park. In Menlo park, his immense laboratory that covered two districts, contained samples of "everything": 8000 types of chemicals, screws, needles, wires, human and animal hair, silk of all sorts, hooves, shark teeth, turtle shells, rubber, every mineral, etc.
What a well of inspiration!
Our surroundings are playing a role. Heck, our chaotic working-spaces are essential to some of us! I don´t need all those ink glasses on my desk, or the clay figurines, or the bust of Bjorneboe. I would have more room to draw if the stack of wood cases were gone, or the pencils and the colors placed somewhere else.

But I love to see my thingies. They represent possibilities to me!

When I look back, I can see how heavily influenced I was of the environment of my time. The books I read, toys I played with, the films I saw, the comics I bought. The music, my friends. And of course, the nature.

All things beautiful

"As you wander through this troubled world, in search of all things beautiful" ... this is a line from the song "Lullaby" by Dixie Chicks. So fine a song, so great a line. After working so hard, so long, I am out in the world again. When I take the bus to school in the morning, I look at all those beautiful people riding along. Their hair, their clothes, all those different faces and sizes. I am stuck with awe. These god-like beings are living in the same world as me, on the same bus.

And on the school: revelations of authors and thinkers you have heard about, but never got to knew before now. And others, completely strangers, which voices that sound so true. Lands, history, the secret knowledge of looking and judging.
I feel like I have entered another reality, in my old body, but without the old cravings for sex, success and ambition you had when young. I like this hunger for knowledge, it feels so much better than the hunger for money and the trap of consuming habits.

I think my spiritual body will get in good shape here.

The mystery of Orbs

What is an Orb? Relatives of mine took a lot of pictures they suddenly showed up in, around christmas time. Their theory: spirits, coming together when there was celebration and family unions. My husband got an Orb beside him in two pictures, transparent but big. Could it be a long-dead relative coming to say hello?

Our relatives lives by a fjord. The place has an old folk tale attached: Two farmers were driving in a wagon by a horse. Near the "Roesbergura" the horse stopped, and would not go a step further. The men grew angry, and whipped the poor horse, but it stood still even then.
One of the men got an idea this could be something otherwordly, and looked through the steel ring in the horse´s headgear. Then he saw a great wedding crowd crossing the road in front of them. Bride and bridegroom, and the fiddler, and the families. They were small of stature, up to our knees in height, and all clad in blue. Their heads were big in comparison to their bodies.
When the wedding thong had passed, the horse went on by itself.

I have never seen Orbs before. Looks like shining old coins. Dust particles? Why are they only in some pics, not in all? This is an Unsolved Mystery!

I´m a student now!

Life can sure be weird. Two months ago we had debt, no money and no work. After fifteen years in a cellar office, working mostly alone making comics, I decided I needed something else. So I applied for a Master's Thesis in Art Criticism and Cultural Dissemination on NTNU, the world famous university in Trondheim, my home city. To my great surprise and delight, I got a yes, you´re welcome!

At the same time, my old home got sold, our debts got paid and we had some money to live for.

I went to the Matriculation Ceremony at Campus Gløshaugen, and found myself in a sea of very young folks. With my grey locks and fifty-one years I felt a little lost. But the speeches were interesting, and the music great. They have a Jazz line where people learn to compose music.
Later I went to Dragvoll, the campus I am to go to.
I found the library there. O, heaven! A sea of books to dive into, to swim in, and throw up into the air, like old uncle Scrooge did in Carl Barks´s stories! It was fabulous! I got a student card, a theatre card, a film card, a bus card and a card to the Studentersamfunnet, a round red building in Trondheim where they have concerts, political debates, parties and a newspaper and TV production set.

Something new is about to begin. I´m very exited.

Money for nothing

There have been wealthy artists who could support their families and living without worries about future income. So it is possible.

To get paid for all your work? That would have been great. Heck, to get paid for half your work, would have been fantastic. But no one is guaranteed a fee when you create something free-lance. You take the risk, if you´re good enough, or lucky enough, you pull it off.

Sometimes I feel that I should have chosen a safer path. Become a librarian or an archeologist, and have free time to just enjoying other peoples art, to go to theatre plays, concerts, cinemas and exhibitions, reading stacks of comics and books, listening to the music of the world.

It would have been a so much easier life, I think.

I have children to take care of. My two boys are nearly grown up, they are so beautiful and alive, dating girls, playing games, eating, having fun, planning their future. My other children, the comics I have made, has gone into books, but don´t seem to sell well. I can blame the financial crisis, the tough competition of other good comics, that Norway is a small country, etc. etc.

Nobody wants to dissect their children. I am kind of blind to their faults, I think ... I just love them.