Written by Simone de Vos
In Wobby #41 the theme ‘Get well soon’ plays a central role. The magazine is co-curated by Dutch artists G.C. Heemskerk and Kim David Bots. This issue explores the layered meaning behind the familiar phrase, often found on greeting cards, expressing both the hope of recovery and the reassurance that someone is thinking of you. In this Wobby, thirteen artists offer their interpretations of what recovery means to them and how we can find healing and comfort, both individually and collectively.
“I believe in working together, and: that’s it’s impossible not to work together. All your ideas come from somewhere, we don’t live in a vacuum. The only thing I do is tell everybody where my ideas come from and who inspired me. Gratitude for other people is essential”, G.C. Heemskerk states. They work a lot with their partner (and co-curator for Wobby #41) Kim David Bots. The work of G.C. was published in Wobby #29, and they collaborated with Wobby Club on the project To Riso or Not in 2021. Earlier this year G.C. and Kim David collaborated with other artists on a ‘hospital musical’; a four part experimental exhibition in which they explored different themes surrounding health.
G.C.Heemskerk states: “I think that being sick and being healthy are not that far away from each other as society makes it look. And it confuses me that people with power and narcissistic behaviour (quite a lot, these are men. Sorry, men.) are seen as healthy and successful. And more sensitive people have to get pills and go to therapy. The individual suffers from this and has to work on herself. For me, this sensitivity is something great and important. It’s wrong that society is divided into these groups and that the people with the most power have a great influence on all of this. This is something that keeps spinning around in my head, but I’ll say some positive things as well. Let’s help each other and find each other. Talk to strangers and have more of an eye for people and animals around us.”
For co-curator Kim David Bots, artist and musician based in The Hague, the theme ‘Get Well Soon’ is not only a symbol for being sick. “It’s a bigger theme. In the current state our world is in, it’s also a perfect theme. For me, it could also be a mantra that you can whisper to yourself, like: ‘Everything will be all right’, even though you don’t know that yet”, he states. Kim David Bots was the mentor of the project To Riso or Not for Wobby Club in 2024. He also teaches at the HKU in Utrecht.
Insights
“Working together gives you ideas that you would never come up with by yourself. It helps you get out of your point of view. Other people do things very differently and that’s great”, he says. Together with Marjolein Schalk from Wobby, G.C. Heemskerk and Kim David chose illustrators and artists for this issue.
“Sometimes our tastes were very much alike, and sometimes they were very different. We had to find consensus. I chose people I admire, and that was mainly based on a feeling”, G.C. Heemskerk states. “It was so cool to co-curate Wobby, because Wobby is a community. I love that, and it fits very well with this issue. During this process, I was sick myself, and that gave me a lot of insights. About taking time and rest, and having faith. Marjolein was ill as well, and she still worked on Wobby. It’s inspiring. Also, Wobby is so much more than a magazine. It’s comfort and consolidation. Inspiration and fun; Marjolein made that, and I admire her for that.”
Kim David: “For this number, I chose various artists that I like. For example, Viktor Hachmang. I’ve known his work for a long time. We met in 2018 and became friends. I like the way he tells stories in his illustrations and comics. Recently, he visited me in my studio and showed me his new comic book: ‘L'Arpenteur’ (published by the French publisher Casterman). It is set in a post-apocalyptic world . His work came back to mind while we were discussing potential participants for Wobby. G.C. Heemskerk chose Dutch artist Marijke Klamer, who she met at an exhibition and drawing workshop in WEP in Groningen.”
Strange pressure of greeting cards
“Another artist I like is Leomi Sadler. I’ve known her work also for quite some time, but I don’t know her personally. I like her work, it’s cool. So, this was my chance to ask her to collaborate.”
Leomi Sadler is from Nottingham, UK. She is a cartoonist and artist, and made a five page comic for this issue. Leomi specializes in experimental comics and illustrations, exhibits all over the world, and runs the publisher Famicon Express with her brother. “I was excited about making a comic for Wobby” says Leomi, “because the theme is very close to my work. I made an exhibition a while ago about the strange pressure and insincerity around greeting cards. They are objects and tools for expressing love and feeling and that seems a bit weird to me as well.”
“So, I wanted to express my feelings about this theme and wanted to make my comics at least as interesting as the exhibition I did. But the ideas don't come so conveniently, I don’t get inspiration out of nowhere, so I decided that I had to use a system”, she says. “It’s a good thing that I always have the ‘Mr. Birthday Cake System', a process that I developed during Covid. In that time, I collaged and reworked old, abandoned comic sketches to trick myself into making drawings that looked like comics.”
Mr. Birthday Cake
“The drawings didn’t have a story in them, but when I saw them all together, it suggested a comic world about a new character, Mr. Birthday Cake. He always appears in multiples, which makes things seem more interesting or funny, or menacing. It was based on just notes, trashed sketches, slogans, and phrases that I put down, but when I combined them, it made me feel that I was still a cartoonist.”
“In the end, I was making myself laugh so much with this. I made so many sequences about Mr. Birthday Cake. So now, for Wobby, Mr. Birthday Cake is going to the hospital. It kind of feels like a linear sequence, but each page is kind of a story of its own. For me, drawing is my energy, and having fun is the most important thing. Just like when I was a kid and drew in front of the television, that’s the feeling I want to hold on to.”
The body as inspiration
Visual artist Marnix van Uum from The Hague created the cover for Wobby #41. For him, his body and body parts are the base of his work. “It’s not the resemblance, but more the concept of the body. For me, emotions are the building blocks for new, non-linear stories. Emotions can change constantly, so I take my time for the drawings I make. In this way, I can register as many emotions as possible. Drawing is a great way to do that. It’s really in the moment; every line I sketch is another reaction to the moment. It’s a constant process”, he explains. “During the drawing, I’m focusing on different memories, from myself and the ones other people share with me. The emotional reactions to these memories are the trigger for me to make the drawing and decide how it’s coloured.”
“The theme ‘Get Well Soon’ was a great theme for me. It fits into the work I have already done and want to make. I use my left thumb quite a lot in my drawings. For me, that’s the thumb I don’t use as ‘tool’; it’s uncultivated and not very useful for me as an artist. Like an empty casing with an infinity of meanings. The thumb itself doesn’t mean that much, but I use it so often in my drawings that people make their own story with it. That’s what I like so much about drawing: I love the process of making, and then I’m giving it to the public. They can feel and think what they want, and there is room for fluid stories around it.”
“The lavender in the drawings is a result of my own search for bodily peace. It’s about the promise of serenity that doesn’t always work out that way. For some people, lavender is beneficial; for others is stressful. That’s what the drawing is about: everybody has their association with lavender, and that’s fine. The reality is different for everyone.”