Inky Improv: Results
Here’s how it worked: Four writers and four artists each got a five word phrase suggested by someone in the audience. They had 10 minutes to draw or write something inspired by the prompt they were handed. After the 10 minutes were up, they handed their work over to a writer (if the prompt began with an artist) or illustrator (if it began with a writer) and that person createed a story or drawing to finish the piece over the next 10 minutes. After this 20 minute period of co-creation, the clock stopped and presentations begin.
Many thanks to writers Miah Arnold, Hank Hancock, and Andrew Kozma and Sketchy Neighbors Katherine Kearns, Devon Moore, Chris Thompson, and Jeff Whiteley for participating!
Learn more about the creative process of writer Andrew Kozma and artist Chris Thompson in this radio interview about A Night of Inky Improv on Houston Public Radio’s The Front Row.
Four of the final products:
by Hank Hancock
Dear God! What a calamity! We never knew we were so reviled, so desperate, and so targeted. I fear the neighbors. I fear the children. Without a culprit, or even some plausible conclusion from the arson investigators, all I have to conclude is that anyone might have it out for us. They took our marble-topped island. They took our three car garage, with the Hummer still in it. They took our own children’s play-tower. They took the home theater. What will we do without the home theater? They took the art collection we’d accumulated over the years from the Bed Bath and Beyond Gallery.What went wrong? Our lawn was mowed, and we lived well within our deed restrictions. The Wilsons down the road park an RV in infront of their split-level, and their home is still standing.
Our bricks are cinders. Our chandeliers have fallen. Our credenza are melted. Our travertine brick patio is no more.
Without a kitchen, we eat out. Usually dine finely. But today we are reduced to visiting McDonalds.
Drawing by Katherine Kearns
by Andrew Kozma
Disco is king! (Long live the king!) And when the king says dance, you dance, or you die. (Or become a banker.) Off in the wings, Muzak loves Disco, but Disco, Disco has never loved Muzak. (When Muzak says dance, you look up, surprised. What about death? It was all so romantic, before.) What if we are just cats in heat? What if we could be cats in heat? (Love was so much simpler then.) When the insect-eyed sun glares at the particle-board night, stars burst into life. (They are smoking. They are smoking and accepting cancer as their savior, or they are on fire.) Oh, I can see through you as through a lead apron. (Our love radiates, and everything in our path starts to die. Not from despair, but from pride.)Drawing by Katherine Kearns
by Kirby Johnson
She told him she liked it rough and that’s how he played. The kids were at their grandparents and the neighbors were out of town on a long vacation so George had at it. It started with a little heavy petting, some name-calling, and spanking. She was the first girl in a long time that had taken an interest to George so he aimed to please. She was so round and white and beautiful. He didn’t want to lose her. He took off his scarf and started whip her with it. He whipped her and she laughed and punched him. George didn’t know what to think but he didn’t want to let her down either. He was bleeding from his mouth. He could taste carrot but ignored it and let his scrawny arms fly, his whip soaring through the air, lashing and lashing.Snowman by Chris Thompson
by Miah Arnold
There was once a man who lived near a great ocean with water so potent that it killed all the vegetation around it for miles. On his twenty fifth birthday he caught six hundred and thirty three sand fleas inside a glass mason jar. Before sealing the lid he whispered his wish inside it: O please lord may I learn to grow pumpkins.He dipped the jar in kerosene, lit it on fire, and then shattered it against the rocks in the requisite manner. He saw the fleas all burst into small firey souls and rejoiced, knowing soon they’d deliver his wish to the overlords.
Nothing happened for weeks and he was so ashamed he tried to throw himself into the sea. Instead of drowning though, he floated beachward time and time again until he remembered the shiny fire or his baby boy and decided that once he recovered his strength he would return to the job of his forefathers: fishing.
He dreamed his pimples were exploding. He dreamed it was Thanksgiving. He dreamed of Mace.
He never did wake up, but when his own son grew to maturity and went searching for sand fleas to end the misery of his life on the water he came across the patch of calabazes that had been his father and knew it was his dad all at once.
The horn above his father’s anus was wide open and he screamed into it “Father, father, it is I your son, come to chase sand fleas!”
He received no reply, and he sat atop the circular glob of his father’s body. He picked a small pumpkin before he left and he understood that once he ate of his father he would have no more excuses.
Drawing by Devon Moore
This event was made possible by Poets & Writers and held in conjunction with Spacetaker’s ARC Exhibition presenting the Sketchy Neighbors in The Saddest Love Story Almost Never Told: Based on a True Idea.