Who creates Buttercup Festival?
I do. During Series 1 I used the pseudonym Elliott G. Garbauskas, but I reverted to my own name with Series 2. I was born and raised in Massachusetts, spent fifteen years living in Yorkshire, England, and returned to Massachusetts in 2022.
How can I support Buttercup Festival?
If you enjoy Buttercup Festival, becoming a patron on Patreon is a great way to support the comic. You can also purhcase shirts and prints from TopatoCo, and original artwork from me. Also, very important, mention it on social media, and at laundromats and cocktail parties.
What do you draw with?
I am loyal to Zig calligraphy markers, and use these for most of my black and white drawing. I use Faber-Castell Pitt artist pens when I want a more consistent line, a rollerball pen for frames and lettering, and Sharpies (or sometimes India ink) for filling in large black spaces. I have a few different white gel pens for drawing white-on-black (especially star fields), and correction fluid pens for larger white marks (and for correcting mistakes). Color strips use a variety of media: watercolor, gouache, acrylic, crayon, pastel, and colored pencil.
What else do you do?
I have published two collections of poetry, now both out of print, and my work has appeared in journals such as Nimrod, Hayden's Ferry Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, PN Review, Ambit and Dark Mountain, and anthologies such as Wretched Strangers and New Poetires VI. I have also produced poetic projects and collaborations with illustrator/printmaker Laurie Hastings: see the poetry page for more details on all of this.
I collaborate with composer Joel Rust on operatic work. In 2016 we were awarded Jerwood Opera Writing Fellowships from Aldeburgh Music, and are now looking for partners to help us bring the resultant creation, The Conifers, to the stage. During the lockdown winter of 2020 we wrote A Man Drags the Carcass of a Deer, a online mini-opera, working with an amazing international squad of creators and singers as part of the #OperaHarmony project.
In 2018 I finished a PhD at the University of Sheffield, and a book grown from this research was published in 2019 by Cambridge University Press. I've published other academic articles here and there. My research encompasses religion/theology, epistemology, Transcendentalism, and the relationship between humanity and non-human nature.
I teach, and I love it.
What is Renaming of the Birds?
Renaming of the Birds is an illustrated storybook about a young clerk who is assigned to rename all the birds in his town. I self-published Renaming of the Birds in 2013 with a Kickstarter campaign, and it has now sold out. The book takes the form of a journal kept by the clerk, and proceeds through a whole year, as he ventures farther into the woods, looking for new birds to rename. He ends up sleeping outdoors, travelling all around, building a winter den and going a bit crazy. The same character appears in a little two-page color piece I did for the poetry-comics anthology Over the Line.
Any plans to reprint Renaming of the Birds?
Not right now.
Can I publish Buttercup Festival in my student/indie/non-profit thing?
Sure! Buttercup Festival has appeared in many print publications down the years, and I'd be happy to help it appear in yours.
Can I email you?
Of course!
