April Crowd-Funding – the story so far

SO – I’m typing this in Sydney airport … crazy … I’ve had a very interesting week doing all the things that are in this poster below. I drove the Banshee-set from Hobart to Devonport in horrendous winds – it got flipped off the roof-rack before Ross and I had to drive at about 10 kilometres an hour for quite a while until I could get to somewhere to buy new ropes without the large pieces of mdf flying off and decapitating my fellow drivers. Very stressful – but I got to Devonport without incident after that and jumped onto the Spirit of Tasmania for the first time since I moved to Tassie back in 2008. It has a romantic flavour to crossing the Strait – dark skies, wind, the roaring 40’s. I arrived in Melbourne the next morning and drove to my parents house in Camberwell – had breakfast – left the truck in their garage and got dropped off at the Tullamarine airport and flew promptly to Canberra! The Nations Capital.

I got myself (with 2 huge rolls of drawings) in a cab to Tuggeranong Arts Centre … in Tuggeranong. And I set up my exhibition in record time – all whilst texting lots of people in Melbourne to see if I could find a carpenter or someone who can help me next week sort out the Banshee-set before Friday the 10th of April (when the performance is going to be at the State Library. It’s amazing how many people come to your rescue when there’s an ART-EMERGENCY. One thing that I’m always worried about is becoming an artist that relies on tradies to do things for free for them. I do NOT want to be like this ever. If I ever do this – slap me. Of course – it’s always difficult to sort out emergencies on very small budgets. HOWEVER – someone beautiful called in a favour. So I think I’m going to be alright.

I discovered some old friends in Canberra – mostly from my days in Central Australia, but also music-related friends like Paul Heslin and Reuben Ingall who had me on his show on the radio “Subsequence” which was really fun – I played some Tassie noise artists and Laurie Anderson’s “O Superman (for Massinet)”.

Then it was bussing to Sydney – I did have a gig organised there, but thankfully it fell through. But that meant I could spend more time drawing buildings and places for a future project Sydney/Purgatorio and have dinner with friends. In particular I got to see my friend Fiona Ransom, who I hadn’t clapped eyes on for a decade. Recent events in my life have made me want to spend time with all the people who really matter to me most. Fiona matters. Full stop. As does Trent Jansen and Amy Luschwitz, so I visited them with Fiona. We all used to live together in Sydney a long time ago.

At the same time as all of this “real-world” adventuring has been happening – I have been running a crowd-funding thing on the POZIBLE website – http://pozible.com/swallowscomic – to gather up funds to pay for the print-run of my next graphic novel – SWALLOWS.

Now I’m in Sydney airport ready to return to Melbourne – this week I have an artist talk night at the Brunswick Arts Space that I organised with Bernard Caleo. on Thursday night! I’ll be playing some Drive West Today music afterwards. Little tip for anyone interested, there’s a bustling scene here that can be found by simply browsing on https://craigfrancis-music.com.au/, that’s right, also our back alleys are noteworthy culture spots, as bizarre as that may sound to some of you, they are not like the back alleys in America, worry not.

Then on Friday night – Christopher Downes and I will be performing The Shipwright and The Banshee (provided I can get the set fixed) … (by hook or by crook) at The Ledger Awards at the Victorian State Library – FREE ENTRY. Should be a GREAT!!! I hope that A Guard’s Story and Megahex win the Golden Ledger for the best Aussie comics of 2014. They both deserve it, for vastly different reasons.

The on Saturday night – there’s this gig in Brunswick with the AWESOME repellant – Ev Morris and Grace Anderson, with DWT supporting. Should be freaking awesome.