An Interview With Eddie Tarr '20

Interviewed by Julia Pepper '20

Q: Where do you get the inspiration for your comics?

A: The inspiration just kinda comes with me. When I was making them once a week, I would stay up until I finished making one. And that forced me to come up with ideas, since the best ideas come when they just farted out of your head. You can’t plan for it. I sometimes do, but a lot of the comics were just “this is how I feel, and this is what I’m doing.”

Q: When did you start drawing and realize that it was a passion?

A: I always considered myself bad at drawing until, this sounds cheesy, I realized you can’t be bad at drawing. If you like what you’ve done and you do it with confidence, people will also enjoy it. At some point, you have to stop trying to draw like other people draw, and stop trying to do things like other people. Find your own way of doing things, and do it confidently. People say my comics are really cool, but they’re not. They’re just my truth.

Eddie Tarr '20 practicing his lightsaber skills

Q: How has your art changed over time?

A: I never considered myself an artist originally. I think that art is such a vague topic. Anything you do can be art. I decided to label myself an artist at some point, but that label didn’t really change anything. Art has made me more confident in my ability to express myself, and it has allowed me to broaden my horizons. I’ve tried different mediums and different things that I never would have tried before.

Eddie Tarr '20 with a goat

Q: How would you describe your art style?

A: It’s definitely more of a mega modernist take. No, I’m just kidding. I mean it is, but you don’t have to paint me as a pretentious art person who would say things like that.

Q: Where would you want your art to be shown and why?

A: I would want my art to be shown anonymously and in the streets of New York. I don’t like museums.

Q: How do you choose if you want to make a hat, a shirt, or a comic strip with your art?

A: If I want to do it, I do it. I wanted to make comics because they’re small and easy. I wanted something I could wear, so I made shirts. I also wear a hat everyday, so I was like why don’t I make a hat? Then I wanted some patches, so I made them.

Q: Do you ever make art with others, or is it a solo process?

A: “I don’t like making art with other people because I don’t like other people’s art.” No, that’s not why. It’s not that I don’t like it, but I don’t plan, I just do. And when you involve other people, it adds a whole new layer. I’ve done it before, and it’s fine, but it's just not as true.

Q: Do you know what you’d like to do with art in the future?

A: Yes. If I could make money off of doing art, that would be cool, but it’s not about the money. In the future I want to make something that can make peoples’ day better. When I was making comics [at the beginning], I was a little unmotivated at first, but then… somebody came to me and said, “I just read some of your comics, and I was in an awful mood before, but it made me feel so much better to read them.'' Hearing that was probably the biggest inspiration moving forward. Seeing that I had the power to make at least one person feel better was enough to motivate me to have a career in the arts of any kind.

Q: Are there any messages or themes you want to show to people through your comics?

A: The main guy is Boot. He’s always sad or whatever. I want people to feel like they’re not alone in feeling that way, because everyone feels like that. Sometimes it doesn’t seem like it, because everyone puts on a face in public and acts like they’re happy all the time, but that’s not the truth.

You can find Eddie’s art...

wherever you can find Eddie! Come up to him and ask for his art, and he will show you or sell you his art. Eddie has comics and also hats and patches. He has screen-printed hand-made shirts for fifteen dollars.

PS: You can also find Eddie at Skate Club, which meets after school in room 309 and is a fun place to hang out, make friends and skate with no judgement.