Juneau-raised comic artist to teach, participate in Comic Con

The first comic Dawson Walker ever drew, when he was around five, was called “Sam and Tim” and was all about a boy and his stuffed tiger.

While that comic was pretty clearly influenced by a certain other comic about a boy and a tiger, over the last twenty or so years, Walker has developed a free-flowing style of his own.

“I just made a lot of comics when I was younger and continued making comics in middle school,” he said. “Anytime somebody asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, it was like, ‘Comic artist.’”

Alaska Robotics co-owner Pat Race gave Walker his comic book collection when he was a kid, Walker said, and was an influential figure in his youth. The guest artists Race brought to Juneau, Walker said, helped do away with periods of doubt.

“Just seeing you can make a living off of being a comic artist was just so inspiring,” he said. “When you’re growing up in Juneau, you’re kind of like oh, you love art, and you fall in love with art, but (you aren’t sure if it’s something viable)… That’s why I’m really excited about the Con, too — introducing these (young) artists to such a wide variety of people.” (The Con has special student rates — it’s only $25 for a student, or many students, to get a booth, making it much easier for them to participate.)

Walker graduated from Juneau-Douglas High School in 2010, then went on to get a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. Now, he’s pursuing his Master of Arts in Teaching at the University of Alaska Southeast.

After graduating college, he stayed in Minneapolis for a while, worried about staying motivated if he moved back to Juneau.

Motivation, however, hasn’t been a problem.

“I’ve definitely been really… happy to find Juneau just has such a strong community of artists in all different kids of genres,” he said. “Having a community of artists is just such an important part of creating art.”

Right now, one of the projects he’s working on is taking memories around the central trauma of his mother’s death, three years ago, and turning those memories into dreams.

“I wanted it to be autobiographical, but I’d get stuck. I couldn’t figure out how to tell that story,” he said. Changing memories into dreams gave him the creative freedom he needed. He’s also interested in how people experience memories and trauma, he said.

He wants to create work that takes place in Juneau. Comics and animation, he said, citing Japanese filmmaker Hiyao Miyazaki, allow for a different kind of visual exploration of place than other art forms — they’re limited only by the author’s imagination. Want to skim along Juneau’s rooftops instead of walking along the street? Sure, let’s do it.

“There’s just so many cool little spaces in Juneau,” he said. “And (there’s)… this gap of wilderness and you can just go back forever into it.”

Recently, he’s been trying to return to the way he drew as a kid — “looser, more expressive stuff,” he said. Some who have seen it compare it to the drawings of Shel Silverstein or Quentin Blake.

There’s a spontaneity to it, he said. He tries to just let what he’s drawing come out, instead of trying to perfect it.

In the kind of comics Walker and many other artists create, “it’s just you sitting down and a piece of paper. Nobody telling you what you can draw, what you can’t draw,” he said. “You can really see people’s personality, their identity… It’s the kind of storytelling that, I think, takes a lot of love. You can see that even with younger artists. It’s definitely an art of passion.”

Retaining creative freedom and inspiration while making it financially is “a delicate dance,” Walker said, and pursuing a career in art education has freed him from the need to dance it.

He’s now student teaching with art teacher Heather Ridgway at JDHS but he’s not sure if he’ll be able to stay in Juneau, given cuts to art teacher positions. If he could, he would like to stay (as would Jordan Kendall, a fellow UAS student featured in another CCW article this week.)

“It’s going to be hard to leave JDHS,” Walker said. “It’s been great getting to know the kids and seeing a lot of young comic artists, and artists — being able to encourage them, show them other young artists…. I think the comics community is one of the best artistic communities out there, and it’s very cool to be able to come back after being a part of that and helping to bring part of that to Juneau.”

He’s done work for Minnesota Public Radio, NPR, and even a newspaper in Brazil, in addition to selling it at comic conventions and Alaska Robotics.

He’ll be in a frenzy of classes and printing the week before Alaska Robotics’ Mini-Con, as he’s sold out of most of his work.

Most of what he’s been making are small, handmade booklets like zines, he said.

Beyond the Con, “for me, just getting my book into somebody’s hands, and having them read it — that’s really what I’m after now,” he said. “It’s almost like the book, the story is like ‘Hey, I want to be told’ more.”

At the Mini-Con, he plans on having his memory book and another comic called “Squatters” available. Each is about 30 pages, he said. He’ll also be teaching a workshop on spontaneous drawing, and may try and have a kid-friendly comic, too. (He cautions that not everything on his website is kid-friendly.)

Walker’s work can be found at www.dawsonpiselwalker.com/.

• Contact Capital City Weekly managing editor Mary Catharine Martin at maryc.martin@capweek.com.