and now for something completely different

a friend recently asked me about which graphic novels i could recommend. after creating a long list, i thought about what started me on the love of reading comix... other than than reading the archies and mad magazine bought for me as a kid.

so in honor of the one character and creator to bring me into the world of comix art in the 80s, here's zippy! he's irreverent, funny, and speaks in non sequiturs as he observes the world around him.

fantagraphics bookstore and gallery in seattle is kicking off a bill griffith exhibit today and promoting his new book, welcome to dingburg. wish i could go.

buyolympia gets out the VOTE!

buyolympia does it again ... by popular demand ... more free VOTE posters are available as well as bumper stickers, limited edition silk-screened wood print VOTE signs and t-shirts for sale. request 'em and pass 'em out for FREE!

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when can you get something for free??? buyolympia, a collection of independent artists and designers selling their wares online, is offering free VOTE posters to spread the word and their cause...

from today's promotional email: "... an exciting project we've worked on with Nikki McClure. It's a poster featuring her VOTE paper-cut with space on the side for you to include your own message. The best part? We're giving them away free to anyone who asks.We've printed 10,000 posters and we're giving (and mailing) them to anyone who asks. So tell your friends and let your voice be heard."

i've already put in my order... and while you are there, shop online. i've bought nikki mcclure calendars, cards and baby books, as well as jill bliss cards, journals, and pouches. also, my current favorite, sarah utter's stuff -- reading is sexy -- including mugs made of corn!

art n' fashion -- jersey style

fall is here! time for the annual jersey city artists tour ... my personal favorite stop will be found object art at van vorst park to see the interaction of art and nature in deborah pohl's traffic cone #3: for the birds, see photo above.

note that for both days of the studio tour, the jersey city museum (gallery hours 12pm-5pm saturday and 12pm-8pm sunday) will offer free admission to all visitors.

fall is also the time to break out last year's gear (like i always do) or buy something new ... at rubee's closet ... run there this weekend for 15% off all sweaters and jackets!

new jersey local boy = literary bad boy

growing up in oakland, new jersey, who knew someone from our boring suburban enclave would become such a literary bad boy? maybe you don't know him, but you should... jonathan ames.

a graduate of indian hills high school (though he graduated several years before me), jonathan ames has become quite the literary star (and he was almost a TV star on showtime but the pilot didn't expand into a series)... now he's delving into the graphic novel format (with illustrator dean haspiel who illlustrated the quitter by harvey pekar, an amazing story)... i couldn't be happier! see a recent story/other illustration collaboration "next door neighborless" here.

more about mr. ames on wikipedia... thanks for making new jersey proud... and showing that the typical suburban upbringing is not so predictable!

here in a publishers weekly article, he discusses his new book:

The Alcoholic ended up as a graphic novel (published by Vertigo, which recently announced a plan to put more focus on original graphic novels) through Ames's friendship with artist Dean Haspiel, a fellow Brooklynite. "I was sitting in a cafe in Brooklyn,” Ames said, “and he came up and introduced himself to me, said he was a fan of my writing, and then we fell in love, and eventually adopted several children. We were kind of like Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, except nobody knew it," Ames joked. More seriously, he added, "After meeting at the cafe, we became friends. One of those rare after-age-35 new friendships."

CELEBRATE MAY DAY!

loved this so much, had to share, especially her creative new word concept at the end of the letter. from my favorite comix store in the northwest (portland, oregon), reading frenzy:

Dear Readers,

Happy May Day! Radical historic significance aside, May Day is one of my favorite lesser-recognized holidays. When I was a wee lass we would weave paper ribbons through plastic strawberry baskets, fill them with flowers, leave them on neighbors' doorsteps, knock and run. Did you know you're supposed to get a kiss if you're caught? Pick your neighbors carefully, I guess! In later years this was the day that I moved my bedroom to a roomy second floor balcony and slept al fresco through the end of September. Although the official first day of spring has come and gone, it doesn't really get started for me until the 1st of May.

Two years ago today, I was traipsing around Rochester in Kent, England with dear friends, taking in my first castle, trying not to tread on ancient graves, and enjoying the annual Sweeps Festival. This was my most touristy request - attending a traditional May Day celebration. The rest of the trip was spent exploring relatively obscure roadside attractions, dusty bookshops, fancy chocolatiers, outdoor markets, and oddball museums.

This year, May Day happens to fall on the 1st Thursday of the month, so we have even more to celebrate than usual! We're proud to present an exhibit of recent work by Portland denizen and international animal hero, Nicole J. Georges, entitled I Like To Be Alive. In addition to the art show, we are also celebrating the recent release of the second collected volume of her enchanting and beloved zine, Invincible Summer (Microcosm, 2008). We've been showing Nicole's work for years and it's been a pleasure to watch her evolve as an artist. Even in the early days, she demonstrated a remarkable knack for capturing expression and spirit in her animal portraits, but this show, and in particular the wolves and rabbit pieces, reveal quite a leap in technique. It's going to be hard for me to restrain myself from snapping them up, so you'd better come quick!

So, after all this reminiscing, how about we start a new May Day tradition? Let's all do something fancy for someone else's benefit, for no other purpose than to brighten their day. You could have one intended recipient or perform an act of public fabotage* to benefit any random passersby.

Send in your reports to for a future update. Bonus points for photos and anonymity in your fancy attack!

Your Faithful Proprietress,
Chloe
Reading Frenzy
Portland, OR

*Fabotage is a word that I coined last year to describe a deliberate action aimed at changing something for the better through various methods of improvement and embellishment. While a subversive and possibly illegal act, it should not obstruct, disrupt or destroy its target.

JERSEY SPRAWL

a spring shout out for my friend, a local hoboken artist whose work is part of a new show at the jersey city museum, opening on march 20th...

SPRAWL at the jersey city museum

SPRAWL is a bold, multi-venue exhibition that brings together works by 41 New Jersey artists that focus on the state’s legacy of ‘sprawl’ and its effect on urban, suburban, rural and marginalized landscapes.


Artists in SPRAWL: Mauro Altamura, Aileen Bassis, Pat Brentano, Jason Burch, Brendan Carroll, Hector Canonge, Michael Dal Cerro, Paul Ching-Bor, Lisa Dahl, Tim Daly, Jessica Demcsak, Andrew Demirjian, Dahlia Elsayed, Rebecca Feranec, Jonathan Glick, Patrick Grenier, Susan Evans Grove, Emily Helck, Owen Kanzler, Robert Kogge, Michelle Loughlin, Valeri Larko, Gregory Maka, Megan Maloy, María Mijares, Richard Pasquarelli, Deborah Pohl, Ben Polsky, Debbie Reichard, Bryony Romer, Joseph Gerard Sabatino Roger Sayre, Leslie Sheryll, Nyugen Smith, Roger Tucker, Ana-Mária Vág, Kimberly Witham, Andrew Wilkinson and Bryan Zanisnik.

also, i'm eager to check out the plywood hummer by ryan roa!

and, bonné boche, the colorful, spring flower display of carson fox...

BARISTA BOY MAKES RUSSIAN HEADLINE

ok, i can't translate this for our SG readers, but i wanted to share barista boy's international fame. barista boy created a series of photographs entitled it's only a game using a chess board and chess pieces. each photo illustrates a theme with a clever layout to evoke the idea. then he published a glossy book of all the installation photos. stop by emack and bolio's aka mola to see him, get a drink special and peruse the book.

i hope barista boy will explain to our readers what the review says and how he was discovered!! check out more of his creative installations here and at his "lame space."

LANDFULL

with all the holiday madness and super overconsuming, it's easy to forget our planet earth, groaning under the weight of all our disposable stuff... i just saw this video on new magazine's website, produced by jersey city's own le arsenal, a video/audio group. a strong, stark reminder of the work we need to do every day to try and lessen our impact on the environment.

GET YOURSELF SOME ART

bags, by beth dow

i recently visited the jen bekman gallery on 6 spring street in nolita (i guess that's the neighborhood's trendy name) for the obsessive consumption exhibit. it's a tiny space but she packs a punch of art in there. i'm eager to check out the new photography exhibit by beth dow. i love the stark image with puffy white flower-like plastic bags.

(but hurry... it ends next saturday!)

"This photographer's New York début is smartly understated—modest but memorable. Dow's images of woods and fields nod to the landscape tradition reaching from Eugène Atget to Robert Adams, and their quiet beauty is underlined by the richness of her platinum-palladium prints. Dealing with the over familiar subject of man's rude intrusion into the natural world, she's not always subtle—stacked logs and felled limbs abound—but she knows when to step back and allow an image to breathe. Her pictures of a lone tree in a row of stumps and a pile of smoking stubble under a sad gray sky aren't just taken; they're felt."


more info on the artist here. and if you love her work, you can get a small print for only 20 bucks or a medium sized one for 200. see the 20 x 200 buying art blog for details. add some art to your home...

color bomb: "fall is here"

a perfect image and feeling for fall... by john f., daddydan's brother. see more of his art here.

described as a "color bomb" online for the tree in his backyard, created in early november. mixed media on graph paper.

thanks john, for a lovely vision to start the day.

365 days of julie doucet

julie doucet is back! well, sorta. she renounced her indie queen of comix status years ago but has been working on illustration projects, poems and other art installations.

next month drawn and quarterly will release 365 Days: A Diary by Julie Doucet. thank god. a year round fix of ms. doucet. not quite another edition of dirty plotte (you need to know your french canadian slang to deconstruct that title) but close enough. here's more on julie doucet, the artist. and finally, see a sneak preview of her diary drawings. i can't wait for its release. in the meantime, i'll reminisce about the adoring fan letters i wrote to her in the 90s, forever unanswered.

reverse graffiti--art less pollution

check out brazilian street artist alexandre orion who creates reverse graffiti and still gets harassed by sao paulo cops. he doesn't tag, he cleans city property. "For over two weeks last year, the Brazilian artist selectively scrubbed soot from the tunnel until the white surface underneath stared through as a cemetery's worth of skulls." read more here about the tunnel of skulls.

see his getaway in this video clip.

bring back the 80s!

maybe i'm obsessing over my 20th high school reunion or just nostalgic for the past but i'm embracing the 80s... the pop shop is back! and i'm thrilled. well, it's just an online store now but that still makes me happy. i spent many an afternoon (& dollars) at the pop shop on lafayette street in the 80s... wondering if i would meet the ultra-famous keith haring. i loved the crazy graffiti art, the spirit & fun vibe of the gallery-store space, and the affordable art. i have so many memories of riding in my parents' car on FDR drive, waiting to catch a glimpse of his 1986 mural crack is wack. i had countless tee-shirts with his cartoon-ish images that promoted social messages. i gave away haring buttons, used haring patches on my ripped jeans and pinned his quirky bright character images on my schoolbags. haring's inflatable "radiant baby" even traveled with me to college and added some much needed chic to my dreary dorm room.

take a look at the site, read about his life, artwork and buy something to brighten up your day, or someone else's...

brief store history:

In 1986, New York artist Keith Haring opened the Pop Shop in downtown Manhattan. Haring saw the Pop Shop as an extension of his work, a fun boutique where his art could be accessible to everyone. For nearly twenty years, the shop continued to be a downtown attraction with floor-to-ceiling murals and affordable clothing and gift items all featuring Keith Haring’s unique icons. In September, 2005, the Pop Shop finally closed its doors to the public. Keith Haring's work continues to be displayed around the world at galleries and museums and in public spaces (view exhibitions and public projects).

barista boy's look away project

(barista boy's accompanying poem to this project. see the video for an expanded and new version.)

Look Away

Look away
And tell me what you see
Or is it better
To ask
What are you avoiding,
While looking away?
Sometimes it is better,
When in doubt,
To stop and look away
Clear the brain from the obvious
In order to find
A better path.
Sometimes it is another
Way to run away,
Ignoring the obvious
And living in a
Fantasy.

...barista boy's new work-in-progress: look away...

barista boy has created a new installation, his latest work in progress: look away. check it out. (by the way, i'm there too, looking away.) support barista boy's work, stop by 517 washington street, emack & bolio's, to get involved.

...to consume or not to consume...

ever since i read not buying it, by judith levine, about a nyc couple who stop buying stuff for a year, i think twice about what i buy-- do i really need this? i tried to write down all my spending every day, and i made rules for what i could buy a la judith. well, that experiment fizzled out quickly (one month). i just kept the guilt going and avoided my favorite boutiques. i seem to only buy the essentials now but i do obsessively buy books and comix as well as handmade cards.

recently i've been reading about kate bingaman-burt who takes obsession to a new level. her artist's statement:

I documented my purchases for 28 months. Every purchased item was photographed at the point of sale or soon after. Every receipt was archived and tagged. All of the documentation was uploaded to my website obsessiveconsumption.com. I created a brand out of the process to package and promote - an infinite loop of consumerism was born.

check out kate's new show at the jen bekman gallery --6 spring street, nyc. and bonus! this saturday kate will speak about her work & exhibition along with author michael perry.

see ya there so we can obsess together...

...ariel bordeaux finds happiness... a comix Q & A

i'm a comix junkie. it started with the archies and then i discovered zines, underground comix and "the girls"... meaning ariel bordeaux & julie doucet (i'm not the first one to think they are sisters)! i read ariel's acclaimed mini-comix series deep girl in the 90s while living in san francisco. we had a brief but thrilling pen pal friendship when she lived on the west coast. (i have one of her original signed drawings!) then we drifted. me back to jersey. and well, ariel, on to seattle. but i kept track of her. drawn & quarterly published her novella no love lost in 1997. then i wondered what next for ariel? but one summer during law school i went to the mocca comix show at the puck building in nyc and voila, there she was, with husband rick altergott, promoting their new collaborative work, the raisin pie series! i gobbled up every issue, but wanted more of ariel's stories and art. what was she doing with her time? i needed solace & comfort, her artwork provided that... so i kinda gave up, happy to see raisin pie and occasional work, such as henparty, a zine for mocca 06, and a story for stuck in the middle, a comix anthology about junior high school hell.

in her latest zine, henparty, ariel talks about her life from 95 to 06, getting back to her roots and her secret to happiness. i was intrigued. so i wrote her a few fan emails, hoping for the best. and she answered. i couldn't be happier.

here's an inside look at ariel's quest for happiness (and panels from her new work-in-progress):

SG: what books, comix are you reading now?

AB: I have so little time to read anything, but I recently subscribed to the NY Times Sunday edition so I could read Megan Kelso's fabulous story, "Watergate Sue" which ran over the summer. Now there's a DanClowes story running, which is of course shaping up to be another fine story.

SG: influences on your art?

AB: Currently my son, Eddie, is the most profound influence on my life and art. Everything that came before Eddie seems too trifling and insignificant to mention ... but, oh, I guess the most powerful "influence" has been my need to share all those icky, sticky issues of insecurity and low self-worth. All the comics of a personal nature that I read in my adolescence helped me figure out that I could achieve this sharing through comics. The whole Twisted Sisters generation of women artists was and still is really exciting to me.

SG: did you think deep girl would achieve such success?

AB: Back when I was an apple cheeked little art school grad with my first mini-comic, I was pure fan-girl nerd all the way. When I got to hand copies to a couple of my big heroes, Pete Bagge and Dan Clowes, in person I was so excited I just about DIED, right there on the spot. And THEN, when they invited me to join them with all the other local artists after the signing ... well, I knew I was on my way! Big city, here I come! Soon, I knew, I would be walking the funky, fungus-infected red carpet to the doors of Fantagraphics! Ah, yes ...

SG: how has your child changed your perspective on creating art and storytelling?

AB: Well, it's funny. Before having my son I had this idea that to have a child meant I'd basically have to quit making art for a number of years, and I was really pretty anxious about that, since I still kind of feel like I have yet to actually begin making comics for real. I did start to think a little differently about it right around or shortly before getting pregnant, I had kind of figured out why I had started to feel like I was stagnating. In a nutshell, I wasn't being really truly honest with myself anymore. I was denying a lot of my needs in life, and that just carried over in my work. So I was on a positive trajectory to turning things around already, and then when Eddie popped out (well, after the first blurry month or two) it just created, like, a big bang in my brain. It's not so much that I didn't "have ideas" before ... it's more like I was seeking a way to bring the immediate experience of life into my work. I'm now a little closer to writing about life as it happens, rather than trying to analyze the past so much. I think because babies are such perfect little Buddhas it helps me with my own mindfulness.

SG: which of your projects, zines & publications are you most proud of and why?

AB: Well ... pride is a tricky word. I can't really look back at anything with a sense of, "Yeah, that's it. I really got it there". I have a sort of affection for some of the stuff I've done, I guess a blend of pity and compassion for whatever unlabeled mental illness it is that I splash all over the page. Recently I did a story for an anthology called "Stuck in the Middle" about my junior high school experience. Some of the stuff in Deep Girl I can look at without wincing too too horribly ... I'm happy that I did Hen Party and Rooster, although certainly there are embarrassing things about both.

thanks ariel! can't wait for the next graphic novel & more of your stories. keep the SG posted, ok?

this is hard to read, collage by john f.

We dance round in a ring and suppose, but the Secret sits in the middle and knows.

-Robert Frost

lucy loves french milk and other stories from paris

in anticipation of our trip to paris, i'm gobbling up travel memoirs (such as adam gopnik's paris to the moon) to reorient myself in the city of lights. as a grad student, i lived in paris for a year and a half (but that was many moons ago) so my french is rusty but memories of parisian living stay close to my heart. (eiffel tower photo by my friend marcos.)

i recently discovered a wonderfully personal and endearing comic journal by lucy knisley about her month long stay in paris with her mom in january 2007. french milk (so named because lucy adores the whole milk she drinks in paris) reveals the struggles and dreams of lucy as she approaches her 22nd birthday while discovering the endless treasures of paris. her journal is a delightful mix of her drawings, stories and photographs of that month and her step into adulthood.

lucy recently took a break from her studies at the center for cartoon studies in vermont to answer her fan mail & share some thoughts with me.

SG: how's life in vermont at the center? what do you miss about home (chicago)?

LK: We've just completed a 100-character design project, for drawing class with Steve Bissette and James Kochalka. We had to make 100 recognizably different characters in a week. It was a great project. Vermont is too crazy of a change from Chicago and New York to really be comfortable yet, but I'm hoping it'll settle after I get used to the skunks and the lack of thai food.

SG: what are your influences, past and present?

LK: I started out reading "Archie" comics and "Calvin and Hobbes" when I was little, so those were probably my most formative influences. When I discovered "Maus," that had a pretty profound impact. Right now, though, I'd say my top gods of inspiration are Hope Larson, Marjane Satrapi, David B., Craig Thompson and Lynda Barry.

SG: how did you get french milk published?

LK: My mother and step-father started a small publishing company a few years ago. So when I came home from Paris with all this material, I originally thought, "I'll take it to Kinkos and make a minicomic from this," but when I counted out the 180 pages, I realized that this wasn't something I could fold and staple. It was surprising, because I'd only taken a month to produce it. So I asked my mom if she thought it was a viable option for self publishing, and she said she was behind it all the way. She even helped me edit it, and laid it all out for me to send to the printer! I sold a good amount of them before I took them to MoCCA (the museum of comic and cartoon art annual festival). I'm lucky enough to be friends with two total comic book rock stars; Hope Larson (a fellow alumni of The School of the Art Institute of Chicago) and Brian Lee O'Malley. They let me take up a little corner of their table to sell a few of my books, and French Milk sold surprisingly well. One of the people who picked up a copy was an editor at Simon and Schuster, who liked it, and showed it to her fellow editors, and then they offered me a deal!

SG: would you go back to paris?

LK: I'd love to go back to Paris, and god knows my mother is dying to completely uproot and move there. She's taking french classes now, and thinking of buying a poodle, to prepare for the move. I'm content with imagining that I'll be able to visit her there. I don't think I'd want to go back to Paris until I had a lover who would come with me. It's so beautiful and wonderful, that it's a little painful to be unable to share it with someone in that way. It was wonderful to share it with my mother, but we were both going through such changes that we were sort of consumed with our own little worlds, and trapped in our heads.

SG: and your next project?

LK: I'm working on a children's book. Very colorful and polished (very different from French Milk). It's about a little girl exploring an attic (which is and was my favorite thing to do). After this finishes up, I'm considering a number of possibilities, but the one that's winning out is a book of recollections from my teen years, when I was switching high schools (four times in three years).

thanks lucy! can't wait for your next book.

check out more of lucy's art, photos & tunes on her website, stop paying attention.

85% smiles (and some money)

i love this. smiles and money. totally brilliant. created by daddydan's brother, john, who is an artist in jersey. see much more of his beautiful & abstract artwork on flickr. he's also planning to show this piece and other small drawings, collages & paintings in october at cafe blend in rutherford, nj.