Woodrow Phoenix talks to Gill Roth for the Virtual Memories Podcast, episode 389

Who’s driving whom? With Crash Course [published in the UK as Rumble Strip by Myriad Editions] British cartoonist, artist and designer Woodrow Phoenix examines what cars do to us: physically, mentally, and environmentally.

In Virtual Memories podcast episode 389, Gil Roth talks to Woodrow about the evolution of Crash Course, the stint in LA that inspired it, the visual and design choices that make it a haunting piece of art, and how he reconciles driving his Mini Cooper One.

Woodrow also discusses growing up in South London, what being Black means in the UK and US, his compulsion to experiment with styles, why he sticks with pencils and inks, and his typography and design background and how they inform the semiotics of Crash Course.

Listen again now.

Woodrow Phoenix and The War on Cars Podcast

With its stark and beautifully hand-drawn images of roads, traffic symbols, cities and highways, Crash Course [published in the UK as Rumble Strip by Myriad Editions] takes aim at the ways in which cars have shaped the built environment, politics, and even the human psyche, largely for the worse.

Crash Course unpacks the term “road rage,” explains why traffic accidents are anything but, and dispels the notion that people can be neatly separated into categories such as motorist, cyclist or pedestrian. It also examines the dangers of SUVs, the perils of driverless cars and the recent and growing trend of vehicles being used as weapons against demonstrators in places such as Charlottesville, Virginia.

In this episode of podcast The War on Cars, Woodrow Phoenix talks to Doug Gordon about the unique combination of artistry and journalism that makes Crash Course an effective polemic, one that will hopefully persuade people to think carefully about their responsibility when they get behind the wheel of a car.

Listen to the episode in full.

Woodrow Phoenix exhibits some work

Woodrow recently exhibited extracts from his graphic novel, Rumble Strip, at an exhibition called Sequential City, which is part of this year’s London Design Festival. The exhibition was held at the offices of Baxter & Bailey, a design firm in Hoxton Square. There is an interview with Woodrow talking about London and the effect the city has had on his work, which you can watch here.

Woodrow Phoenix

Woodrow Phoenix grew up in south London with four sisters. He is a comics artist/writer whose constant experiments with the form appear in newspapers, books and magazines in Japan, France, the US and South America. His strips have featured in The Guardian, the Independent on Sunday and the Observer. His handbound, one-metre square artists’ book/installation containing a large-scale, hand-rendered graphic novel called She Lives has been exhibited at venues around the UK with extended residencies at the British Museum and the Cartoon Museum.
His first work with Myriad was the short story ‘End of the Line’, for The Brighton Book, a mixed-media anthology published by Myriad in association with Brighton Festival. He went on to create the much-acclaimed Rumble Strip, an exploration of the complicated psychology between people and cars. It was reviewed in The Times as ‘One utterly original work of genius. It should be made mandatory reading for everyone, everywhere.’ Rumble Strip has been translated into localised editions for France, Brazil and in a vastly revised edition for the US, renamed Crash Course.
When not making comics, Woodrow is a book designer, illustrator and maker of typefaces. He is a visiting lecturer on the MA in Children’s Books and Graphic Novels at the University of Middlesex.