"Can you imagine!"
A mini-interview with MariNaomi
I’ve learned to not sit down to read MariNaomi’s books before work. This week for example, twice I was in the middle of juicy parts (though what part isn’t juicy?) and realized I didn’t have much time before I had to see clients. Placing the bookmark inside the book was a delicious feeling because I knew I would be able to return later and get right back into it. The book? Their recent graphic memoir, I THOUGHT YOU LOVED ME. Talk about “exit interviews”! I will probably be finishing the book today, after this is posted, but let me just say: There are numerous examples of versions of exit interviews in here. You want the juice? It’s here.
I don’t completely remember how we first met, but I can look back at what remains of the reading series website I used to run, Rhapsodomancy, and see that Mari read December 14, 2014! They were part of the reading series when we had moved from the Good Luck Bar to the Mandrake. Since then, I’ve had the pleasure of seeing Mari socially and in my own house during one of my pre-pandemic holiday tamaleshindigapalooza, where my friends and family used to gather to make tamales.
MariNaomi (they/them) is the award-winning author and illustrator of nine graphic books, including the young adult graphic novel, Losing the Girl, which has been banned in Katy, Texas. Their comics and paintings have been featured in the Smithsonian, the de Young Museum, the Cartoon Art Museum, the Asian Art Museum, and the Japanese American National Museum. They are the founder and administrator of the Cartoonists of Color, Queer Cartoonists, and Disabled Cartoonists databases, and were cohost of the Ask Bi Grlz podcast with Myriam Gurba. They live in the San Francisco Bay Area with their partner and a menagerie of rescue animals.
What project(s) are you working on right now that you're most excited about?
I’ve been touring my book for the past . . . year? Almost! It seems like years plural. It hasn’t been nonstop, thank dog, but it’s enough to not let me hunker down and commit to anything long form, which is probably for the best. The project I want to work on next is a memoir about a traumatic time that I’m not sure I’m emotionally ready to dive into, although I’m almost ready artistically. Months ago, I let myself work on it for six hours straight, which ended up with me in a state of panic and having an emergency therapy visit. My therapist advised me to take it slowly, and I’ve been on a break since then, narratively.
Artistically, I’ve been practicing. I want to do this project using collage, and I’ve been trying to figure out how to do certain things on the iPad. This has resulted in me practicing by making portraits of my close friends using collage, and I’m obsessed! I’ve taken hundreds of photos to use as material. When I’m not assembling portraits, I’m dreaming about it. I’ve made almost thirty so far, and with each one I’ve taught myself a new technique, or improved upon an old one.
It’s funny, because this kind of manic inspiration keeps happening once I think I’ve run out of things that feel new. Hopefully this will allow me to put more faith in the universe the next time I feel burnt out. The flame will always be rekindled?
Who/what are you most recently obsessed with?
I am always thinking about collage now!
I’ve also become obsessed with fountain pens and inks, even though I’m not using them in my art practice as much lately. I recently attended the San Francisco Pen Conference for the second year in a row. I go with my friend Susie Ghahremani, an author and illustrator of cute things who is kind of my mentor on all things inky. She even makes her own pens and inks! When we’re at the pen show, I’m like a squirrel in an acorn store, a dog in a bone store, a bear in a beehive. I want to devour it all! (I read that bears are actually eating the bees for the protein, not the honey!) Susie guides me and shows me what I should be paying attention to. We completely geek out together, and it’s like a drug. I’m getting pen-high just thinking about it.
What's a type of art-making that you haven't yet done that you'd like to do?
My long-time dream is to create a large-scale narrative art installation. I’ve been fantasizing about this for years—in fact, when I wrote and arted my most recent book, I THOUGHT YOU LOVED ME, I pictured it less as a book and more as an exhibit, perhaps with moving parts.
In 2018 (while on tour with Sister Spit) I visited Meow Wolf, and that’s the closest I’ve seen to my vision: A giant space devoted to telling a narrative that the viewer pieces together as they wander through. I would love to take over a skyscraper, one of those empty office buildings gathering dust in downtown San Francisco, and turn it into an art experience. Can you imagine!
You've been posting absolutely effervescent photos of yourself in various outfits on your social media! Tell us more about the role of fashion in your life.
I started instagram.com/marinaomistyle in order to encourage myself to snazz up my outfits a little. I always loved fashion, but I don’t think I got very good at it until my forties. But then the pandemic messed me up. I had health problems, both physical and mental, and stopped paying attention to what I looked like, which may have exacerbated the mental stuff. Once I moved away from a bad situation I’d been in, living in the Los Angeles mountains surrounded by unfriendly people, I was able to start feeling like myself again. I sadly looked at the contents of my closet, beautiful things I’d collected that I now only wore to events, which were few and far between. That was when I decided to make the account, to keep me accountable, and to connect with my faraway friends, to say, “I’m still here.” It gave me a boost.
I’ve been less active on there lately, maybe because I go out more, or maybe because I can’t stop wearing onesies (another obsession!). Or maybe because I don’t need the motivation as much. I still post every once in awhile.
I do feel like the way I choose to decorate my body, my face, my head, is similar to how I paint, how I collage, how I tell a story. Just another way to express myself.
How did we meet?
Oh gosh, I don’t remember the first time! I think we were in similar writing communities online, and when I moved to LA 2013, I attended your events, seeking community. Did I read at one? I think I did! You and I are from a similar time. I’ve always felt connected to you, even though I can get shy around you sometimes because I’m intimidated. (Which is a compliment, so please take it that way—you’re just so cool!) I am always happy to see your face.