Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Parris Ashley. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Alright, Parris thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.
As I’ve grown into middle age, I wonder what really matters in life. I realize its meaning is to live it as well and as long as possible with people you love and doing something you love.
I have certainly enjoyed the notoriety and excitement that comes with mural making but I realized that it wasn’t really my passion.
I returned to Western Maryland and spent much time asking, “What do I really want to do?” I remembered that my first real love of art stemmed from reading comic books and watching Japanese animation. I was fascinated by the endless storytelling possibilities.
Since age thirteen I’d dabbled in comic art, but I never really dedicated myself to it. I’d start creating art, but stalled at finishing an exciting, contained story. So I decided to “go back to school” so to speak, this time using YouTube instead of a college campus.
It took two years of continuous research on storytelling, character enneagrams/arcs, film directing, and history to begin my story. What pulled me through was a passion for a project meaningful to me.
My comic is called Damn-Nation. It’s about the inhabitants of a generation ship, the Metatron. It is a massive stellar spaceship housing generations of ten thousand people on an eighty year voyage at 98% the speed of light. Four hundred years pass on earth, due to time dilation, and a competing Earth force catches up to them. In the ensuing war everyday citizens are embroiled in a horrific war atrocity.
Damn-Nation is about how human rights violations breed further crimes that curse entire nations and peoples with hatred and strife for generations. It’s a condemnation of apartheid states.
It’s about the main character, a military analyst, and her path to redemption. Now living as an untouchable beneath an android city, she has to overcome their prejudice to lead her people against an evil army enhanced with alien tech.
I hope to be finished with issue One next year.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?
Often I hear people poo-pooing science and education, leading to the false idea that very skilled or talented people were just born or destined to do what they do. Like they were just struck by lightning.
Granted, I have an IQ that is so high I don’t like to tell people what it is because they always react with jealousy or disbelief, but that’s not all.
My parents worked their butts off to make sure that my sisters and I always attended the best schools available. They moved us up and down the east coast in search of better job opportunities. They did not tolerate mediocre performance in school. They made sure that we always received proper nutrition, and ate our vegetables.
I put myself through college. I studied every form of art that there is. I studied art and history throughout the ages. Through a study of psychology I learned to avoid the logical fallacies that trap so many today in self destructive patterns (Straw man arguing, the ‘No true scotsman defense’, confirmation bias.)
I have refused to ever stop learning and always consider that I might be wrong. I have learned to give ALL people the benefit of the doubt and consider the reasons for their failures and STOP trusting my first instinct. As a result I am the best there is at what I do. For every hour I spend painting, drawing or writing, there are at least 24 spent in education and research.
Don’t knock science and education. The recent surge in AI generated art PROVES that it is a scientific endeavor, not based on instinct or intuition.
Alright – so here’s a fun one. What do you think about NFTs?
Non-fungible tokens have a place in the world and in art, but their weakness is the fact that the WAYS they make money are rarely understood. Just how the stock market bubble continually grows and bursts because people don’t understand it.
For example, once I finish digitizing my comic book, which will take at least a year to finish drawing and three years to write, I will combine every page, sketch and note into a high-quality Non-fungible token (just a password to a website holding the image) for about $10,000 each. The value will increase as more issues are created. If I can manage to create a successful, enclosed series this will also help immensely.
This method provides a sure-fire protection against HQ bootleg copies. I can easily sell license rights all over the world. And I always get paid for access. But I’d better tattoo that password on myself, because losing access to your NFT wallet is death. If the server holding it goes down, I’d better make sure my original files are backed up. I’ll have to hire an accounting firm and a website designer. Easy money? I don’t think so.
So the NFT is worthless by itself. It’s worth will be determined by the value of what it contains.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @parrisashleyart
- Facebook: Parris’ Art
Image Credits
Artist Photo taken by Carde Cornis of Druid Heights Baltimore.