Chris Ware Waxes Philosophical on Chicago Tonight

Chris Ware (SAIC 1991–93, HON 2019) was featured on WTTW's Chicago Tonight in his home studio in Oak Park. Ware comments on everything from working in the Midwest to perceptions of time and self and how lucky he feels to be a professional artist. "There’s also sort of a native modesty to the Midwest that suits cartooning and suits the sort of solitude that it demands," he says. Ware, who worked on his latest book Rusty Brown for 16 years, says "Life is a long time...I wanted to try to capture that sensation of holding stories within you and retelling them to yourself over and over again and that kind of weird dislocation that you get when you think about, 'Oh geez, that was 30 years ago that that happened but it feels like it just happened.'"

Of his art of choice, Ware again waxes philosophical, saying, "The fundamental result of comics is to produce a sort of music in the mind, I think...I’m a barnacle on the whale skin of society and I feel very privileged to be there."