I was very fortunate in my youth to study with one of the great drama scholars, Rolf Fjelde (1926-2002), at Pratt Institute in the late 1980s. His “translations (of Henrik Ibsen)were heralded by Harold Clurman as ‘the truest to the original and unexcelled for theatrical performance.'” (Concorde Theatricals, online) He taught me, in the two semesters I took his course in Ibsen and another on theater from the Greeks to the modern era, so much that impacts my work today. Specifically, as a visual artist taking his courses, I realized that telling stories that must be told is what I was meant to do. However, I was a painting major in grad school.
Pictures is what I made. Not so much stories.
I left New York City in 1992, and regrettably lost touch with this remarkable man. I became a high school and college teacher in Florida, and developed a great deal of my teaching around the things I learned from Professor Fjelde. I began to weave a series of stories during this time that have become the comics I am now writing and illustrating. Like Ibsen (without pretending to exist on his level) I write about the things I know and as a critique of what surrounds me. Ibsen knew Norwegian things, as I know the things I observed growing up in the South and the Midwest. I was in Mississippi in 1963, as a ten-year-old, and what I saw.
What I saw.
When I retired from teaching full time, I took some time to reflect on what I’d been writing in bits and pieces, and in August of 2018 I began writing and drawing Blueboy Brown Comics. I wish Rolf had lived to see it.
Works Cited
Rolf Fjelde. Concord Theatricals. (n.d.). Retrieved March 17, 2022, from https://www.concordtheatricals.com/a/2285/rolf-fjelde