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Theme: Live drawings of the

human experience!
 Hey, everyone. If it's cool with you, I'm just
going to draw for a little bit. Story has always
helped me understand the human experience.
Growing up, I took solace in the books that I
would read, and those book characters that I
met offered me friendship. Characters like
Ralph S. Mouse from Beverly Cleary's "The
Mouse and the Motorcycle." Snoopy, Garfield.
They offered me companionship as I dealt with
the trauma of my mother's lifelong struggle
with an opioid addiction, the fact that I didn’t
know who or where my birth father was. Story
has also helped me understand my family's
history. My grandfather, who raised me, would
hold court in the living room, regaling me with
stories of life during the Great Depression. And
telling me all about his parents who had
 emigrated from Poland. Now, my great
grandparents died many years before I was ever
born. But through these stories that were shared
in our home I always felt like I knew them.
Now creating my own stories, that offered me
an escape portal. You see, it was a home that
was filled with so much dysfunction. My
grandparents drank a lot. There was a lot of
yelling, a lot of chaos, and I controlled none of
it. From the pages of my comics, I was the one
calling the shots. Creating my own worlds,
creating my own characters. Sharing them with
my friends and family members. I thrived off
that creativity. Now my mother was an
incredibly talented artist. And even though she
spent a majority of my childhood incarcerated,
she spent her time drawing cartoons and
 mailing them to me. And these cartoons that
arrived from prison from my mom, it was her
way of, you know, it was her way of letting me
know that she loved me and letting me know
just what I was capable of. Now bearing witness
to the stories of others helped me put life into
perspective. When I was a teenager, I
volunteered at a camp for children with cancer.
And I spent several summers after that working
there as well. And of all the kids I met over the
years, the kid that sticks out the most in my
memory is Eric. Eric was the very first kid that I
was charged to care for. I was 16 years old. He
was four and had recently been diagnosed with
leukemia. Now ... Despite his thinning hair,
despite the shunt in his chest, this boy wielded a
Power Rangers sword and went after life with
so much energy and an ear-to-ear grin. Now, in
my years of working with kids with critical
illnesses at camp, I was often lauded, but that
just always felt unnecessary and backwards,
because it just felt like such a selfish endeavor.
I was given a front-row seat to some of the most
remarkable stories in human history. Eric died
shortly before his sixth birthday. Twenty-five
years ago. You know, there isn't a day that I
don't think about him, there isn't a day that I
don't think what he meant to me or what he was
able to do with his short life. And I do remain in
touch with his family. When I visit his grave
site, I don't bring flowers. I bring a Power
Rangers action figure. 've recently completed a
graphic memoir recounting my time working at
camp. And working with this population. And
 that time with Eric. Now, creating a graphic
memoir is a daunting experience. There is, of
course, the physical labor of a book that is
hundreds of pages long. That has multiple
panels of art on every single page. But it's the
emotional toll that is the most difficult to deal
with. I'm face-to-face with these loved ones that
I've missed. I'm in that room again and often for
the first time dealing with stuff I had never dealt
with at the time. Now I went into this process
knowing full well how intense this experience
would be. I'd previously created a graphic
memoir called "Hey, Kiddo," about my own
childhood and my mother's addictions. So I
know what you're all thinking. Books for kids
about a parent with heroin addiction, pediatric
cancer. And yes, I'm just chasing all of the hot
 trends in children's literature. But when I was
working on "Hey, Kiddo," even though the
most important people in my life had since
passed -- my grandfather, my mother --
production on that book brought me closer to
them. And the same now has happened with
Eric via "Sunshine." We all have loss in our
lives, and we all have pain in our life, and that
can be so incredibly difficult. And I know all
too well that ... No matter how much I talk
about these people, no matter how much I write
about them, no matter how much I draw them,
there is nothing that I'm going to do that's going
to bring them back to this Earth. I miss them.
But I take solace in knowing that their stories
are being shared and that they are being
remembered, because my grandfather was right.
Stories keep people alive and real to us. Thank
you. (Applause).

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