Pen, Paper and Punk with Wazaloo

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Image courtesy Wazaloo

"Angel Witch" by Wazaloo

"Angel Witch" by Wazaloo, Micron Pen on Bristol Board

Sarah “Wazaloo'' Kennedy creates art primarily by means of pen and ink, often reflecting European Medieval, traditional Japanese and horror or macabre elements in her drawings. Fueled by punk ethos, she has a passion for making art for her friends and community with the goal to evoke visceral feelings through her work. Wazaloo vends at local events from time to time and has prints available for sale on her website.

Art has been part of Sarah Kennedy’s life for as long as she can remember. Her first commissions trace back to 5th Grade. “There was never a time where I wasn’t always compulsively drawing,” she remembers. “I grew up pretty poor and didn’t have a lot, but I always did have paper and crayons.”

“Wazaloo” is a word that Kennedy made up and would first become her nickname, then eventually her artist name. “My sister and I would create a lot of imaginary worlds and make up stories when we were kids,” she continues. “I even made up a place called “Wazalooland” with a bunch of magical creatures (laughs).”

Wazaloo has extensively studied European Medieval and Japanese artistic concepts, which together are a nod to her cultural identity. “The very detailed stippling I do is more on the Medieval side, but with the Japanese style I like to do a lot of simplistic figures and clean lines,” Wazaloo explains. “I’ll unconsciously try to marry the two, but then realize when I’m looking at it that I'm emulating styles that I like.”

Goth and More

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Photo courtesy Wazaloo

Wazaloo

Wazaloo

Pen and paper is her main format although Wazaloo has dabbled in other media like painting, sculpture and sewing. Commissions over the years have seen Wazaloo making flyers, zine illustrations, album artwork, tattoo designs, and comics as well as a coloring book. “It’d be cool to get back into doing comics again sometime,” she contends.

Imagery in Wazaloo’s art has encompassed goth, nature, spirituality, skeletons, demonic creatures and more. She first became interested in drawing grisly subjects after seeing the art of a Japanese Hiroshima survivor, Keiji Nakazawa, depicting the horrors of what he saw after the bombing. “I remember seeing it when I was pretty young, probably like 12, and it stuck with me forever,” Wazaloo recalls. “I wanted to make something that could be powerful like that.”

Wazaloo enjoys stippling for its meditative, repetitious process. “A lot of people see it and think I’m powering through doing it or something, but really it’s relaxing for me,” she affirms. “It’s something I need to do in order to function as a person.”

One of Wazaloo’s latest pieces is an illustration of “The Thing” made for Alive and Fine’s “A Night of John Carpenter” back in October. “I’m actually not even a big horror movie person,” she laughs. “But I love John Carpenter because of the political things that he says through his work. “The Thing” deals with trusting people and how things in a group or in society can go wrong, and the gore is just there to make you feel something.”

A current project of Wazaloo’s is her “Zodiac” series, which features plants and animals in representations of the different astrological signs. It is a commission by Wazaloo’s place of work, Orchard Street Press; she is about halfway done with the series. “The designs I’ve done take a lot from 17th Century European style,” Wazaloo notes. “I’m spending like a month studying the traditional symbols and reading books about each sign. I have a great book called Alchemy: The Medieval Alchemists and Their Royal Artby Johannesburg Fabricius that explains what a sign represents as it relates to the development of a child’s mind and the alchemical process, so I’m trying to put all of that into the image.”

She also created the artwork for a split EP between California hardcore punk acts S.O.H. and Basuko released last July. The illustration depicts two Komodo Dragons fighting.

Anarcho-Punk

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Photo courtesy Wazaloo

"Komodo" by Wazaloo

"Komodo" by Wazaloo

Wazaloo is vocalist of anarcho-punk band Destros, who started playing shows this past fall and just completed their first recordings. Principled by community care, the band prioritizes shows that benefit mutual aid initiatives and social justice causes. Wazaloo’s lyrics are staunchly anti-capitalist, anti-racist and decolonial in nature.

Comparing expression through music to drawing, Wazaloo finds the creative processes quite similar. “The way the music sounds will feel like shapes to me,” she describes it. “When I vocalize, the shape of my mouth feels like the shape of the sound, and I try to make the sound similar to how I would make the composition in a drawing. I’m thinking about big spaces and negative spaces and dense areas and repetition. It’s like I’m drawing with sound.”

Destros play Promises this Friday for Stand Up / Fight Back III benefiting local resource MKE Trans Health. They kick things off at 6:30 p.m.

While music has been her primary focus over the last few months, Wazaloo plans to get back into doing commissions for fellow bands and her community. She is designing artwork for Destros’ coming releases as well.

Visit Wazaloo’s website at https://link.edgepilot.com/s/5efb6402/c20cO8e1OUeBo6PSHa8hPg?u=https://wazaloo.com/ or follow her on Instagram @wazaloo.art to view her work or get in touch.