Issue 003 Features: Margie Powers

I’m Margie Powers, a senior at the University of Alabama working to get her BFA in digital media and drawing! Inside the classroom, I make an effort to learn and understand the technical side of art. I also use my time in the classroom to experiment with different materials and try different techniques under the guidance of my professors. I do a lot of investigational work and I often try to incorporate a narrative into my pieces that, if the idea works and I feel like there is more to develop, I bring outside the classroom into my personal work.

My personal work focuses on sequential art-- which is the modern, fancy name they’ve given to comics so that people will take it more seriously. I’ve been interested in comics since I was a little kid. My grandmother and I used to read the comic strips in the newspaper together when my mom would drop me off for the day. Both my mom and my dad worked, so I got to spend my summers at my grandparents’ house with my sisters and cousins. My eldest cousin also liked to read comics, but he read the Japanese version, manga. It was these two influences that fostered my continued interest in comics throughout my childhood, but it was my eldest sister’s love of writing that made me realize that I had the power to make my own comics. So that’s what I did! I started drawing all the time, just little stories about my day or the adventures of this humanoid cat-thing I created named ‘Cleek.’

My love of drawing continued through grade school and into high school, which is where I got my first experience in the “fine arts.” I eventually continued my education of the fine arts at the University of Alabama as a BA and then a BFA, but it wasn’t until I read Art Spiegelman’s Maus that I realized fine art and comics could not only peacefully coexist, they could rock each other’s worlds. And also comics were something to take very, very seriously—as an art form, of course, I love funny comics just as much as the next guy. I started doing some serious readings on comics and I was even able to attend a lecture given in Birmingham by Scott McCloud, who is like the head honcho in comic theory. I started reading as many comics, graphic novels, manga, and Sunday strips as I could get my hands on and digesting them with a critical eye. I also started consuming as many stories in whatever medium that I could find.

I feel as if for me the magic of comics lies in the story. The narrative is important because the stories we tell each other reflect who we are and what we value. Especially in today’s world, knowing who we are is important because it allows us to meet the unknown not with fear, but with hope and excitement because we know our story. And we can be eager and open to learning the stories of others. I’m actually working towards creating my own story/web comic this year and I’m entertaining the idea of getting my masters in sequential art at SCAD after I graduate from UA. Who knows? I’m at that exciting part of my life where I’m free to go anywhere, so I’m going to do some serious soul searching to figure out where I want to be. But wherever I end up, I’m certain it’ll be one helluva story.