Kelsey Westphal & V Vale
California, USA
Writing
Artist in Residence, 2025
↗ www.researchpubs.com
Artist Statement
Vale has been a countercultural publisher, writer and punk anthropologist since 1977, and I (Kelsey) have made comics since I was in elementary school in the 90s. We met in 2013 when I was an intern, and have been fast friends and collaborators since we made our first interview comic in 2014. Our comics are about Vale’s life but also about the city of San Francisco and the Bay Area, the wild and ever-changing nature of the freaks and visionaries that have inhabited it, and the evolution of unruly art throughout history. The unpredictable ricocheting of ideas through relationships is what interests us about alternative cultural networks, however briefly they may exist. They are created and kept up by individuals mutually inspiring each other, not by corporations valuing creators for how much profit they can generate. We hope that our comic propels this spirit forward into the future.
While at Headlands
We will continue our Search for Weird, crafting a graphic narrative that reflects the kaleidoscopic journey of V Vale of RE/Search Publications. We will spelunk through Vale’s archive of personal photographs, publications and ephemera to chart his singular life: from his birth in a Japanese internment camp in Arkansas to his “rebirth” as a trailblazing punk publisher in 1970s North Beach, to our serendipitous meeting in 2013 as fellow members of the DIY art and music scene. We will spend our time remembering, researching, drawing and cataloguing to create the final framework for a unique sequential portrait that will balance archival accuracy with conversational effervescence and graphic experimentation. We look forward to building new relationships with the artists-in-residence and staff amidst the tranquil landscape of the headlands, and looking out over the water onto the Bay Area in all its bizarro majesty.
