Today we’d like to introduce you to Dwayne Carter.
Hi Dwayne, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I started producing Madness Zines in 2008. In my Madness photo novellas, I create familiar but fictional narratives of an irrational world. Things may feel familiar because I use well known Dallas landmarks such as the Dealey Plaza and Fair Park as settings. In my alternative dystopian Dallas universe, familiar environments may be damaged or destroyed by our collective actions.
My stories are populated with artists and performers easily recognizable from the local arts community. I am lucky to have creative friends willing to play an entertaining and adventurous role. I often use their real names in the parallel universe of the zines.
In the stories, artists can appear as insane, guilty of villainous actions and sometimes seem to revel in the destructive nature of their irrational choices, as in “Greed” (2023) or selfish “Desire” (2025).
My other themes have included: “You’ve Been Living in a False Universe!” (2018), “Collective Madness” (2013) and “Midway to Madness” (2010).
In “irrational.city” (2015), I recreated Dante’s journey through hell, except I placed the journey in Dallas. Instead of crossing the River Styx, they cross the Trinity River. Instead of the rings of hell we see familiar Dallas locations like the Dealey Plaza, DMA, the Nasher, Dart Stations and Fair Park. Dante and Virgil have been replaced by Kitty and Juan Diablo.
“irrational.city” was also the title of a 2015 exhibition I organized with local and international artists at the Bath House Cultural Center. The work ranged from Dada-esque performance and installations to apocalyptic figurative prints.
While my central passion in art is drawing, I use Photoshop to weave photos, drawings and paintings to create stories of an alternate Dallas. Some friends will call my projects comics or graphic novels, but I refer to them as photo novellas, drawing from the tradition of Mexican comics I would find at used bookstores while growing up in Waco.
Each photo novella zine takes me over a year to produce. I have eleven now. I let my ideas brew slowly, giving me time to think about my experience of current events in Dallas and the world.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Working as an artist has its ups and downs. After finishing my MFA degree in Norman, Oklahoma, I moved to Dallas in the early 1980s. In those younger days, during a rough economy, I tried to live cheaply so I would have more time in the studio creating figurative narrative paintings.
Early on, I did a lot of the art for Deep Ellum clubs, partly so I could get in free. At one point, I had art on the walls at most of the early Deep Ellum clubs including Theater Gallery, the Prophet, Club Clearview, Café 500 and Club Dada. It was an exciting time with a lot of interesting local music and a new community emerging. I would often paint art live in the clubs.
Many early Deep Ellum patrons in the 1980s will remember my art from Club Dada. For the façade of Club Dada, I co-created a row of mask like faces with frequent collaborator of the time artist Greg Metz.
During the summer of 1988 for second anniversary of Club Dada, I created a large painting that hung inside for many years featuring the faces of over 200 patrons and performers including members of the New Bohemian, Brave Combo and other popular groups of the time.
Another personal highlight was the 1984 “Left Right, the Political Show” at 500X. My role was both artist and curator. The world was focused on Dallas because the 1984 Republican Convention was held here. The exhibition gave artist the freedom to express their own individualism and ideals, a timeless concern. The exhibit was documented as part of “DallasSites” at the Dallas Museum of Art in 2013 as being “widely popular” and noted that some artists gained national attention.
In the mid-nineties, as the digital revolution took hold, I moved to Richardson, started teaching Multimedia/Digital Art full time at Richland College. I began making digital art, interactive Flash animations and digital videos.
My animations in the 2011 Aurora Festival in the Dallas Arts District gained an exposure to the over fifty thousand people that passed through.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I am a figurative narrative artist, painter, zine maker.
Zine Fairs started springing up before Covid and have come back strong after Covid. I enjoy the being part of this new and diverse grass roots community of artists and writers. The Houston Zine Fair and Denton Zine and Art Party have growing audiences. Houston has over 200 vendors and over a thousand visitors each year.
Early on, I thought of zines as an alternative to showing art in galleries, but they seem to go well together. Recently my painting “Tens and Twenties” was in the Latino Cultural Center “Hecho en Dallas” exhibition, and a complete set of my zines was exhibited in “Book Art” at UT-Dallas SP/N Gallery.
I have also shown my paintings, digital prints and zines at alternative spaces like Theater Gallery, Plush Gallery, RO2, Kessler Theater and community-based locations like the Bath House. Perhaps, the title of my solo exhibition “Damaged Goods” at the Fort Worth Arts in 2023 is a fitting expression for my journey through art, life and our collective culture.
Before we go, is there anything else you can share with us?
You can find Madness Zines at MFA Gallery, RO2 Gallery and Awesome Comics.
Purchase online at: https://madness-zines.square.site
My art is also on view at: www.dcarter.art
Pricing:
- $5 each zine
Contact Info:
- Website: https://dcarterart.com/
