Soohang Lee
Gabrielle Bell
Issue #38
The comic artist talks about transforming her lucky life into brilliant comic art, her relationship with Michel Gondry, and her English grandmother’s suckerpunch stories
By Mengly Taing
Published: December 1st, 2008 | 12:00am
Life imitates art — or is it the other way around? For comic artist Gabrielle Bell, some days those lines are blurred. It’s a good thing she keeps track of everything in her sketchbook. “I don’t want to divide myself from my art,” she says. That’s not surprising for an artist whose autobiographical comics have been critically lauded for their funny, offbeat depictions of ordinary life.
Gabrielle’s life, however, has been far from ordinary. Although born in London, she grew up in a hippie enclave in Mendocino County, California with no electricity and not another family in sight for miles. Lately, the 32-year-old artist is launching her latest collection of her stories, Cecil and Jordan in New York. She’s also releasing her first film, Interior Space, a collaboration with on-again, off-again beau, director Michel Gondry (an art book inspired by the film is also in the works). It’s a far cry from her days of selling comics on the street or digging for clothes in other people’s trash.
From beneath a hanging light bulb in her Greenpoint, Brooklyn apartment, Gabrielle soft-spokenly talks about her not-so-ordinary life.
VZ: Describe Cecil and Jordan in New York.
GB: It’s actually a collection of pieces I’ve done for anthologies over the past several years. It’s about living in New York, coming to terms with New York, and it’s about women in relationships. All the characters are women and they’re all dealing with men.
VZ: When did you move to New York?
GB: I moved here with my boyfriend, Tony, in December 2001 (He’s in the first volume of Lucky). We lived in a small studio in SoHo together. I didn’t know anyone else besides my boyfriend for six months. I was working on comics and working at shitty jobs. I was an art model for a long time.
VZ: How has unemployment inspired you as an artist?
GB: When I lived in San Francisco, I was working as an actress and at a bookshop. I worked hard on my comics to try to pull myself out of the despair of working at these really dead-end jobs. There was a hope of someday making money out of it, but also the hope of distinguishing myself not just as somebody who worked at a café. It really drove me because I really hated those jobs.
VZ: What makes a good storyteller?
GB: It’s got to do more with how the story is told than what the story is. You can take the most boring story and tell it dramatically. My grandmother was a really good storyteller. Her biggest story was astonishing: It was set during the war in England. Her husband was away, and she had a romantic affair with an American officer. She described how he would come to her house and bring her ... chocolate, bread, and meat because it was all rationed.
Somehow, the English authorities or the American military found out that she was having an affair with this American officer and they threatened to punish the guy. How she described it, though, it seemed like they put the whole war on hold just to have her stop having an affair with this guy. I was in my twenties when she told me this story.
VZ: Do any of your friends or family get upset about being in your comics?
GB: I think they like it. It usually turns into a joke and they tease me about it. I haven’t gotten any complaints. I get more complaints from my friends for not being in them.
VZ: How did you meet Michel Gondry?
GB: It was quite a few years ago. I was still with my previous boyfriend at the time, and I taught his son comics for two years. In those two years, I broke up with my boyfriend and then somehow I started dating Michel. We got together and broke up many, many times.
VZ: What has it been like working together on Interior Design, the short film inspired by Cecil and Jordan?
GB: I don’t collaborate much, but this was the greatest collaboration. We work really differently and that’s probably why we work so well together. I’m very slow and contemplative. Michel is very bounce-forward and very fast. I think he’s challenged me to be more of myself and to refine my stories more.
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