We were lucky to catch up with Bridgett Spicer recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Bridgett , thank you for being such a positive, uplifting person. We’ve noticed that so many of the successful folks we’ve had the good fortune of connecting with have high levels of optimism and so we’d love to hear about your optimism and where you think it comes from.
I find that optimism and resilience go hand in hand. And for both, I lean on faith and humor.
Optimism is looking up. Literally and figuratively; I find that as long as I can laugh, my sense of humor pulls me UP. And writing funnies (comic strips, ie. humor on paper) keeps me elevated, so to speak.
And my faith in God keeps me going. I know that I’m looked after; I know that whatever happens, I can look up and talk to God. He’s always there pulling me up when I fall. He dusts me off, pats me on the back and says “Keep going, Brig; I’m right here.” And I have a tendency to “fall down” (fail) A LOT, but I always get back up. I call this “the Charlie Brown factor” where you just keep at it, whatever IT is. For me, IT is cartooning, and I’ve been at it for some time. I just keep waking up everyday and putting pen to paper and (Apple pencil to iPad), drawin’ out the funny.
Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
I draw a comic strip called Auntie Beeswax. It’s a sweet comic strip of a humorous nature… and it can be found on Instagram. It got started and ran for three and a half years in the Willamette Week in Portland, Oregon. I also make zines, buttons, cards and the like; I sell these at street fairs, various local shops and galleries in Portland as well as on my website.
Auntie Beeswax (and her clutter of cats and her charm of bees) live on the Sunnyside; that’s literally the neighborhood where she resides in the fictional city of Roseport. Bee’s upbeat and cheerful attitude is in direct contrast to her down-trodden melancholy niece, Mallory (who needs an offbeat silly auntie in her life). Bee tries to use her sweet disposition to help Mallory see the bright side of things.
In 2025, Auntie Beeswax is moving from a one panel weekly comic to a more daily comic strip. A forthcoming bound collection of the one-panel comics is due out in the Spring and a new website is on the way. Whew! Look out for Auntie Beeswax!
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
In high school, my art teacher required that each of her students carry a sketchbook to be turned in at the end of the semester. This changed my world. I quickly found that focused drawing everyday helped me not only sketch the world around me, but it gave me a place to write down thoughts, feelings and ideas. I’ve kept a regular all-the-time sketchbook ever since! It’s evolved into an external hard drive of sorts, capturing any and all things from to-do lists to art-spy sketches of cafe people to journaling deeply-felt emotions. My whole life is recorded in my sketchbooks. It sharpens one’s drawing skills and allows artful expression at the same time!
Humor is an important quality that I’ve nurtured over the years. I was always kind of a silly kid, but when I got to high school, I made an observation: everyone liked the “funny kids”. I always wanted to hang around the people that made me laugh; I wanted to BE the one who made people laugh. I used to have a button that read “Being crazy keeps me sane.” It was true! I found that being silly was a way to get though life; I gravitated towards funny things and found that humor comics spoke to me… they were visual funnies. And throughout my life, I’ve found a sense of humor to be a really good coping mechanism… because laughter really is the best medicine.
Having a sense of empathy is important. As a cartoonist, you have to be able to connect with readers; you have to be able to put yourself in someone else’s shoes, capture a situation, and illicit an emotional (and funny) response. So being able to find a heartstring and pull at it is an important skill.
My advice …
-Carry a sketchbook and draw in it DAILY. Be like Linus and his security blanket; take it with you everywhere; draw everything! Draw people on the bus, a crooked tree, the neighbor’s cat, a soda can on the sidewalk… let nothing escape your gaze and your drawing hand!
-Be an observer… pay attention to people. Engage with and learn from others. Collect stories that you hear and see if you can find a lesson or a pearl of wisdom, or something you can identify with. Ask questions and be curious. There’s so much life all around us.
-Stay on the Sunnyside of life. Don’t surround yourself with things that bring you down like depressive music and media violence; you become what you think about and you think about what you see and hear. Try to find the funny in all situations and laugh as much as is humanly possible.
How would you spend the next decade if you somehow knew that it was your last?
I’ve recently discovered that I have ADHD… something that, looking back over my life, makes absolute sense! In school, I struggled with time management, procrastination, and focus. I got lost easily. When reading assigned texts, I had to reread them over and over because it “wouldn’t take” … my brain just went somewhere else (especially if the subject matter was uninteresting to me). But early on, I discovered that I loved to draw and really worked on developing my skills. In school, I spent copious amounts of time on creative art projects and found avenues to use my drawing skills. I used to say that I was just extremely right-brained. In high school, I got in the habit of carrying a sketchbook, and this was immensely helpful to me; it became a visual storage unit as well as a journal. Today it helps me process my world; I never leave home without it.
Today, I still deal with procrastination, managing my time, crippling indecision, emotional weirdnesses and a whole big bag of now-explained behaviors. But knowledge is power. I’ve made a list of all the ADHD symptoms I experience, and am researching strategies to help with issues (ADDitude magazine is a great resource). Everything goes into my sketchbook, of course, which now number 179!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://bridgettspicerart.com
- Instagram: @auntiebeeswax , @brigtoon
- Other: https://Patreon.com/bridgettspicer
Image Credits
all photos by Bridgett Spicer
so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.
