Slingshot Litareview, which is the blog supplement of The Dispatch Litareview, just published my story "Milton Friedman Switches Trains." The story features an illustration by a descendant of Sir Francis Drake, Sara Drake. Go look at it plz.
For background/killing yourself purposes, I present the titular character:
Temper that with this if you feel weak.
Showing posts with label MORE SELF PROMOTION. Show all posts
Showing posts with label MORE SELF PROMOTION. Show all posts
3/2/10
9/8/09
ROY G BIV Artist Talk / Amelia
HERE is the link to a mp3 of my artist talk from earlier this summer. It is an (muffled, tangential, incomplete) explanation of a show that was at the ROY G BIV gallery during July of 2009.
This is the link to photos of the show.
And this is this (FROM):
We're (Amelia) playing D.I.T. Fest in Kent, Ohio on September 12th. Here is the lineup:
Friday Sept 11th, 2009 @ 6PM
@ the Vineyard (154 N. Depeyster, Kent, OH 44240)
6:00-6:20 – Zax Kelly
6:25-6:40 – Gabz Ciofani*
6:45-7:05 – Adam Klopp
7:10-7:30 – Ancestors
7:35-7:50- Ben Ryant*
7:55-8:15- Gabe Wolf
8:20-8:35 – Jordan Castro*
8:40-9:00 -General Ledger
9:05-9:25 – Toby Foster
9:30-9:50 – Nicholas Megalis
9:55-10:10 – Ryan Eilbeck*
10:15-10:30- Richard Wehrenberg Jr*
10:35-10:55- Letters to the Moon
11:00-11:15 – Matt Whispers*
11:20-11:40 – American War
*denotes poet
@ the Kent Stage Alleyway @ 11:45PM (175 E.Main St, Kent, OH, 44240)
11:45-12:05 – Bobby Stevens
12:10-12:30 – Andy Cook and the Wanderloons
12:35-12:55 – Pheramones
1:00-1:20 Annabel
Saturday September 12th
@ the Vineyard 1PM (154 N. Depeyster, Kent, OH, 44240)
1:00-1:20 – the Ghost of Asa Phelps
1:30-1:50 – Ashley Brooke Toussant
2:00-2:20 – Two Hand Fools
2:30-2:50 – Playoff Beard
3:00-3:20 – Signals Midwest
3:30-3:50 – Destroy Nate Allen
4:00-4:20 – Higher Fives
4:30-4:50 – Positive
5:00-5:20 – Dustin and the Furniture
5:30-5:50 – Saintseneca
6:00-6:20 – Busman’s Holiday
6:30-6:50 – Reverse the Curse
7:00-7:20 – Asinine
7:30-7:50 – Bethesda
8:00-8:20 – These Aren’t Candles
8:30-8:50 – the Menzingers
9:00-9:20 – the Sidekicks
9:30-9:50 – Underdogs of Nipomo
10:00-10:20 – Amelia
10:30-10:50 – Endless Mike and the Beagle Club
11:00-11:20 – Delay
11:30-11:50 – No Target Audience
This is the link to photos of the show.
And this is this (FROM):
We're (Amelia) playing D.I.T. Fest in Kent, Ohio on September 12th. Here is the lineup:
Friday Sept 11th, 2009 @ 6PM
@ the Vineyard (154 N. Depeyster, Kent, OH 44240)
6:00-6:20 – Zax Kelly
6:25-6:40 – Gabz Ciofani*
6:45-7:05 – Adam Klopp
7:10-7:30 – Ancestors
7:35-7:50- Ben Ryant*
7:55-8:15- Gabe Wolf
8:20-8:35 – Jordan Castro*
8:40-9:00 -General Ledger
9:05-9:25 – Toby Foster
9:30-9:50 – Nicholas Megalis
9:55-10:10 – Ryan Eilbeck*
10:15-10:30- Richard Wehrenberg Jr*
10:35-10:55- Letters to the Moon
11:00-11:15 – Matt Whispers*
11:20-11:40 – American War
*denotes poet
@ the Kent Stage Alleyway @ 11:45PM (175 E.Main St, Kent, OH, 44240)
11:45-12:05 – Bobby Stevens
12:10-12:30 – Andy Cook and the Wanderloons
12:35-12:55 – Pheramones
1:00-1:20 Annabel
Saturday September 12th
@ the Vineyard 1PM (154 N. Depeyster, Kent, OH, 44240)
1:00-1:20 – the Ghost of Asa Phelps
1:30-1:50 – Ashley Brooke Toussant
2:00-2:20 – Two Hand Fools
2:30-2:50 – Playoff Beard
3:00-3:20 – Signals Midwest
3:30-3:50 – Destroy Nate Allen
4:00-4:20 – Higher Fives
4:30-4:50 – Positive
5:00-5:20 – Dustin and the Furniture
5:30-5:50 – Saintseneca
6:00-6:20 – Busman’s Holiday
6:30-6:50 – Reverse the Curse
7:00-7:20 – Asinine
7:30-7:50 – Bethesda
8:00-8:20 – These Aren’t Candles
8:30-8:50 – the Menzingers
9:00-9:20 – the Sidekicks
9:30-9:50 – Underdogs of Nipomo
10:00-10:20 – Amelia
10:30-10:50 – Endless Mike and the Beagle Club
11:00-11:20 – Delay
11:30-11:50 – No Target Audience
8/18/09
Anne Elizabeth Moore's essay for This Is A Comic Book.
This is another essay for the catalog pictured above (still available at the Mahan Gallery for $5.00 (US)) in which Anne Elizabeth Moore considers the ongoing academic institutionalization of comic making and some of the consequences of it.
"THE PROBLEM OF PROFESSIONALIZING
Just a few short years ago, young adults with the gumption to really stick it to their parents could handily do so by announcing at the dinner table that they wanted to grow up and become comic-book artists. For decades, jaws of fathers the world over would slacken in disbelief, slowly hardening again into expressions of pure fury before sparks flew. Mothers, wanting always to be supportive, dear, but still, perhaps, wondering if that’s quite the best thing for you, considering, you know, the danger, would press their lips together tightly and wait for this rebellious phase to pass. The more traditional housewives were pummeled with visions of endless days at home with little to fret about but daughters trapped in the drawing mills of one, or the other, major comics publisher, or sons toiling away behind tables in convention halls, hassled endlessly by older men in science fiction outfits, giant animal costumes. It is lucky they did not know the truth: that their children would more likely simply not have jobs. Younger siblings would secretly, silently rejoice. More than one premeditated crime spree has been hatched during such conversations. Families rarely recover from such moments. It is no coincidence that underground cartooning and divorce both achieved their heights of popularity at roughly the same time period.
8/4/09
J. Caleb Mozzocco's essay "IN CONTEXT"
This essay is part of this ZINE available at the Mahan Gallery & Wexner Center Store.
"In Context" by J.Caleb Mozzocco of everydayislikewednesday
Comic books have no place in an art gallery. That’s not a reflection of their worth compared to more gallery-ready media like painting or sculpture, but a simple statement of fact—there’s no place to put a comic book in an art gallery.
Oh, you can tear out a page, frame it and hang it on a well lit wall next to a little placard detailing who made it and when and out of what, but then it’s not a comic book anymore, it’s a piece of found visual art. That page you tore out is, after all, just a small part of a comic book, divorced from its context, removed from the way it’s meant to be experienced, and forced to become something one contemplates in a vacuum. Hanging it on a gallery wall is an alchemical process, and whether you’re turning the low
medium of comics’ lead into high art gold, or vice versa, you’re transforming it from a comic book to a piece of a comic book.
I suppose it’s a little like the difference between a stuffed deer head trophy hanging on the wall of a hunter’s den, and a real, live, whole deer. Technically the former is part of the latter, but there’s an awfully big gap between the two all the same.
As a medium, comics are pretty much gallery-proof. The ideal way to “display” a comic book in a gallery would probably be to set one on an end table next to a comfortable chair for a patron to read at their leisure. But even then, they’d be reading it in a gallery, which is a pretty different experience from reading it in the comfort of their own home. Or park or coffee shop or train or library or bookstore or wherever they read comics, or would read a comic if they did read comics.
The gulf between seeing a deer in a zoo and seeing it in the wild isn’t as wide as that between the trophy and the live deer, but it’s still a gulf.
We’re getting into territory that art people talk about at parties, near the beginning of the evening when it’s all polite shop and small talk, before the wine starts to take effect. You know, Ceci n'est pas une pipe, quantum physics and the idea that the act of observation alters reality, tree-falling-in-the-woods territory.
It’s a concern for all media I guess. Are paintings painted to hang on the walls of people’s homes, or in museums, or galleries, or the cover of The New Yorker or a greeting card? Can individual paintings move between those contexts without altering their meanings or effects on the viewer?
But I think the fine art world’s ever-increasing interest in comic books, now a serious, non-ironic interest as opposed to that shown by Andy Warhol/Roy Lichtenstein/Pop Art, only
underscores the peculiarity of the comics medium, the thing that separates it from other fine arts and other pop or commercial arts.
It’s a little of this, little of that - a composite sort of medium, something of a duck-billed platypus compared to the more thoroughbred media one usually associates with the art gallery.
The medium of Comics-with-a-capital-C, by whatever you want to call it, consists of works that are each whole, atomic units. A comic book isn’t a page or two, it’s all the pages, and if it’s a series, maybe it’s all the issues in that series. And it’s not even just what’s on those pages, but what happens in the reader’s mind while turning those pages, and between the panels as their eyes cross the borders of white space between them.
Looking at a page of comics art in a gallery then can be a little like looking at a still from a movie. It may look nice, but it wasn’t created to be looked at like that.
But then, galleries don’t even always just show the pages, but the art went into the creation of those final pages, making what can be hung on the wall a component of a component.
This isn’t intended to be an argument against curators and gallery owners in the fine arts world who wish to keep trying to display comics and comics art. I certainly don’t mean people shouldn’t put comics up on a metaphorical pedestal, even if they don’t fit on a literal pedestal as easily as a sculpture might.
Rather, this is just a reminder that there’s only one way to really experience a comic book as a comic book. When you go to a gallery to see an exhibit of comics art, you’re seeing some of the art that goes into a comic, you’re seeing a drawing that will eventually be an element in a comic, but you’re not experiencing comics.
These are pieces, blue prints and rough drafts for the actual finished product, each being displayed as found objects and/or recontextualized as fine art drawings. And that’s often something to see, as the pieces blue prints and rough drafts can be works of beauty.
Much is made of the words by which we talk about this medium, perhaps in large part due to its relative youth, the fact that it was quite accidentally created in the mid 1930s by a couple of shady businessmen
who were trying to figure out how to make a buck off the popularity of newspaper comic strips, and that it wasn’t until after the last third of the 20th century that anyone really started talking and writing about it as a distinct art form.
The biggest difficulty in talking about comics is by what name should we call the things we’re talking about—Comics? Comix? Graphic novels? Graphic books? Picture novels? Sequential art?
None seem quite right, despite the fact that the book-publishing industry, which has in the last decade glommed onto long-comics-with-spines as a hot new genre, seems to have settled on “graphic novels.”
The problems with the term “comic books” center on that first word, “comic,” a word which implies something that is humorous and/or ends happily. As inappropriate as that may seem when applied to many works, the “book” half of the term works surprisingly well in a lot of contexts. Because comics, like books, are something you have to read to really appreciate.
"In Context" by J.Caleb Mozzocco of everydayislikewednesday
Comic books have no place in an art gallery. That’s not a reflection of their worth compared to more gallery-ready media like painting or sculpture, but a simple statement of fact—there’s no place to put a comic book in an art gallery.
Oh, you can tear out a page, frame it and hang it on a well lit wall next to a little placard detailing who made it and when and out of what, but then it’s not a comic book anymore, it’s a piece of found visual art. That page you tore out is, after all, just a small part of a comic book, divorced from its context, removed from the way it’s meant to be experienced, and forced to become something one contemplates in a vacuum. Hanging it on a gallery wall is an alchemical process, and whether you’re turning the low
medium of comics’ lead into high art gold, or vice versa, you’re transforming it from a comic book to a piece of a comic book.
I suppose it’s a little like the difference between a stuffed deer head trophy hanging on the wall of a hunter’s den, and a real, live, whole deer. Technically the former is part of the latter, but there’s an awfully big gap between the two all the same.
As a medium, comics are pretty much gallery-proof. The ideal way to “display” a comic book in a gallery would probably be to set one on an end table next to a comfortable chair for a patron to read at their leisure. But even then, they’d be reading it in a gallery, which is a pretty different experience from reading it in the comfort of their own home. Or park or coffee shop or train or library or bookstore or wherever they read comics, or would read a comic if they did read comics.
The gulf between seeing a deer in a zoo and seeing it in the wild isn’t as wide as that between the trophy and the live deer, but it’s still a gulf.
We’re getting into territory that art people talk about at parties, near the beginning of the evening when it’s all polite shop and small talk, before the wine starts to take effect. You know, Ceci n'est pas une pipe, quantum physics and the idea that the act of observation alters reality, tree-falling-in-the-woods territory.
It’s a concern for all media I guess. Are paintings painted to hang on the walls of people’s homes, or in museums, or galleries, or the cover of The New Yorker or a greeting card? Can individual paintings move between those contexts without altering their meanings or effects on the viewer?
But I think the fine art world’s ever-increasing interest in comic books, now a serious, non-ironic interest as opposed to that shown by Andy Warhol/Roy Lichtenstein/Pop Art, only
underscores the peculiarity of the comics medium, the thing that separates it from other fine arts and other pop or commercial arts.
It’s a little of this, little of that - a composite sort of medium, something of a duck-billed platypus compared to the more thoroughbred media one usually associates with the art gallery.
The medium of Comics-with-a-capital-C, by whatever you want to call it, consists of works that are each whole, atomic units. A comic book isn’t a page or two, it’s all the pages, and if it’s a series, maybe it’s all the issues in that series. And it’s not even just what’s on those pages, but what happens in the reader’s mind while turning those pages, and between the panels as their eyes cross the borders of white space between them.
Looking at a page of comics art in a gallery then can be a little like looking at a still from a movie. It may look nice, but it wasn’t created to be looked at like that.
But then, galleries don’t even always just show the pages, but the art went into the creation of those final pages, making what can be hung on the wall a component of a component.
This isn’t intended to be an argument against curators and gallery owners in the fine arts world who wish to keep trying to display comics and comics art. I certainly don’t mean people shouldn’t put comics up on a metaphorical pedestal, even if they don’t fit on a literal pedestal as easily as a sculpture might.
Rather, this is just a reminder that there’s only one way to really experience a comic book as a comic book. When you go to a gallery to see an exhibit of comics art, you’re seeing some of the art that goes into a comic, you’re seeing a drawing that will eventually be an element in a comic, but you’re not experiencing comics.
These are pieces, blue prints and rough drafts for the actual finished product, each being displayed as found objects and/or recontextualized as fine art drawings. And that’s often something to see, as the pieces blue prints and rough drafts can be works of beauty.
Much is made of the words by which we talk about this medium, perhaps in large part due to its relative youth, the fact that it was quite accidentally created in the mid 1930s by a couple of shady businessmen
who were trying to figure out how to make a buck off the popularity of newspaper comic strips, and that it wasn’t until after the last third of the 20th century that anyone really started talking and writing about it as a distinct art form.
The biggest difficulty in talking about comics is by what name should we call the things we’re talking about—Comics? Comix? Graphic novels? Graphic books? Picture novels? Sequential art?
None seem quite right, despite the fact that the book-publishing industry, which has in the last decade glommed onto long-comics-with-spines as a hot new genre, seems to have settled on “graphic novels.”
The problems with the term “comic books” center on that first word, “comic,” a word which implies something that is humorous and/or ends happily. As inappropriate as that may seem when applied to many works, the “book” half of the term works surprisingly well in a lot of contexts. Because comics, like books, are something you have to read to really appreciate.
8/2/09
CURE-TOR NO-TE
For this recently put together publication:
Which the gallery is selling for $5.00. I plan to release all of its written content in the following weeks on this blog. First, the curator's note I wrote:
"THIS IS A COMIC BOOK CURATOR'S NOTE
Rene Magritte’s “This Is Not a Pipe” tells us we are wrong about something we know we are inherently right about. This is a Comic Book does the opposite. It tells us we are right about something we inherently know is not true.
Representations (like a page unstuck from a comic book) activate all conceptions one has about the “real” object (and its platonic form). But amputation, decontextualization, and museumification serve to separate us from objects even as they allow us to physically be close to them. In the case of comics, the platonic form is the comic book: 32 pages, glossy cover, stapled, newsprint, and if possible, with slight yellowing. But that’s not what we get at exhibitions about comics. That would be too simple. In this paradox is a metaphor for the shedding of meaning that occurs to objects that have been ripped out of their historical, cultural, and physical roles and inserted into any one of the hundred of thousands of white-walled rooms across the world (some of which are inside buildings that used to serve an idiosyncratic, functional purpose in their society. Now: gallery).
Viewed as if it was not the product of an unreliable narrator, This is a Comic Book amply presents examples of several divergent paths comics have followed since the boom in independent, individual viewpoints (as opposed to collaborative creations from large companies) occurred in the late 60s(and mid 80s (and late 90s))). This includes work in abstraction, “art-school” comics, autobiography, genre re-imagining, mini-comics published independently, and web comics – as well as work that negates any discernable classification by entirely challenging what we think makes up a comic book.
But that is not “A Comic Book.” Or even representative of the majority of the comics industry; it’s barely representative of the “Indie” and “Arty” comics that typically interest the New Yorker/Book Forum stereotype. It is instead a selection that touches the lines, jumps the gutters, and succeeds in contradicting itself over and over again. We see things as new which are deeply ingrained in tradition (Dorothy Gambrell, Phonzie Davis) and things as old which break new ground at each successive turn (Chris Day, Conor Stechschulte). We see the mastery of “technique” in Nate Powell’s work but also the mastery of “technique” in Anders Nilsen’s. We are challenged by initially inscrutable narratives but also enveloped inside worlds that seem so much like our own. In other words, the selection is scattershot: just like the meaning and practice of comics.
Like independent music in the mid to late 80s, comics are in the midst of a creative revolution. And when the major labels came calling for that music, typified by bands like The Butthole Surfers, The Replacements, and Sonic Youth, they morphed it into a stultifying something else altogether, “Indie.” That co-optation by the major tastemakers denuded what was interesting about independent rock – namely its independence. Like punk rock, which loses all meaning when it is shrink-wrapped and footnoted, the immediacy of these comic visions is obscured against the white walls of the gallery. But this work, like the independent bands on SST and Subpop in the 80s, is undeniable. It calls out for public scrutiny and art world acknowledgment, not despite its “low” art pedigree but because of it. That relationship, the tenuous line between acceptance and co-optation, is at the heart of this exhibit and its accompanying catalog. We hope you enjoy it.
Jimi Payne & Colleen Grennan"
Which the gallery is selling for $5.00. I plan to release all of its written content in the following weeks on this blog. First, the curator's note I wrote:
"THIS IS A COMIC BOOK CURATOR'S NOTE
Rene Magritte’s “This Is Not a Pipe” tells us we are wrong about something we know we are inherently right about. This is a Comic Book does the opposite. It tells us we are right about something we inherently know is not true.
Representations (like a page unstuck from a comic book) activate all conceptions one has about the “real” object (and its platonic form). But amputation, decontextualization, and museumification serve to separate us from objects even as they allow us to physically be close to them. In the case of comics, the platonic form is the comic book: 32 pages, glossy cover, stapled, newsprint, and if possible, with slight yellowing. But that’s not what we get at exhibitions about comics. That would be too simple. In this paradox is a metaphor for the shedding of meaning that occurs to objects that have been ripped out of their historical, cultural, and physical roles and inserted into any one of the hundred of thousands of white-walled rooms across the world (some of which are inside buildings that used to serve an idiosyncratic, functional purpose in their society. Now: gallery).
Viewed as if it was not the product of an unreliable narrator, This is a Comic Book amply presents examples of several divergent paths comics have followed since the boom in independent, individual viewpoints (as opposed to collaborative creations from large companies) occurred in the late 60s(and mid 80s (and late 90s))). This includes work in abstraction, “art-school” comics, autobiography, genre re-imagining, mini-comics published independently, and web comics – as well as work that negates any discernable classification by entirely challenging what we think makes up a comic book.
But that is not “A Comic Book.” Or even representative of the majority of the comics industry; it’s barely representative of the “Indie” and “Arty” comics that typically interest the New Yorker/Book Forum stereotype. It is instead a selection that touches the lines, jumps the gutters, and succeeds in contradicting itself over and over again. We see things as new which are deeply ingrained in tradition (Dorothy Gambrell, Phonzie Davis) and things as old which break new ground at each successive turn (Chris Day, Conor Stechschulte). We see the mastery of “technique” in Nate Powell’s work but also the mastery of “technique” in Anders Nilsen’s. We are challenged by initially inscrutable narratives but also enveloped inside worlds that seem so much like our own. In other words, the selection is scattershot: just like the meaning and practice of comics.
Like independent music in the mid to late 80s, comics are in the midst of a creative revolution. And when the major labels came calling for that music, typified by bands like The Butthole Surfers, The Replacements, and Sonic Youth, they morphed it into a stultifying something else altogether, “Indie.” That co-optation by the major tastemakers denuded what was interesting about independent rock – namely its independence. Like punk rock, which loses all meaning when it is shrink-wrapped and footnoted, the immediacy of these comic visions is obscured against the white walls of the gallery. But this work, like the independent bands on SST and Subpop in the 80s, is undeniable. It calls out for public scrutiny and art world acknowledgment, not despite its “low” art pedigree but because of it. That relationship, the tenuous line between acceptance and co-optation, is at the heart of this exhibit and its accompanying catalog. We hope you enjoy it.
Jimi Payne & Colleen Grennan"
7/26/09
TURIN'
The band I'm in, Amelia, is going on tour with baby Ryan and baby Austin's band, Delay (I think someone else is in it too?). This is important because I finally get to go to both Maine (where I will live someday, collecting lighthouses - wearing heavy sweaters with shorts) AND Brooklyn. Also I will eat a hot dog in Allston + Candace will be present. In Akron we will visit my boyhood home at the Akron Aeros' stade. Here are the dates:
August 6th - New Brunswick, NJ 7pm @ Meat Town USA
August 7th – Allston , MA 8pm @ House Show
August 8th – Brookyn, NY 8pm @ The Fort 1414 Lincoln Place W/ Landlord, Bad Blood, Witches
August 9th – Worcester, MA 8pm @ 11 Forbes St.
August 10th – Portland, ME 8pm @ 176 Coyle street w/ Dylan Bredeau
August 11th – NH @ TBA
August 12th – Syracuse, NY 8pm @ Castle Rockmore, 113 West Borden Ave. W/No Connection
August 13th – TBA
August 14th – Akron, OH @ TBA
August 15th, – SOUTHWEST FOLK FEST! http://www.myspace.com/southwestfolkfest 2 day fest! Aug. 14th and 15th, $7 each show @ Church of Rock 4300 Howard Ave.,
August 16th - Chicago, Il @ The Fun House w/ Arkansas? (Their last show EVER.)
August 18th - Columbus, Ohio @ The Monster House w/ The Winslows, State Lottery
August 19th - Columbus, Ohio @ Bernie's Distillery (dreams do come true) w/ The Winslows, Tin Armour, New Creases, Papermoons
September 4th - Columbus, Ohio @ Monster House w/ Cars Can Be Blue, Lemming, Lovely Eggs
THIS IS OUR ROADIE:
This is what we looked like playing Berea Fest:
AUSSI:
Mark Bouchet's "Watershed" at the Venice Biennale. Genius.
August 6th - New Brunswick, NJ 7pm @ Meat Town USA
August 7th – Allston , MA 8pm @ House Show
August 8th – Brookyn, NY 8pm @ The Fort 1414 Lincoln Place W/ Landlord, Bad Blood, Witches
August 9th – Worcester, MA 8pm @ 11 Forbes St.
August 10th – Portland, ME 8pm @ 176 Coyle street w/ Dylan Bredeau
August 11th – NH @ TBA
August 12th – Syracuse, NY 8pm @ Castle Rockmore, 113 West Borden Ave. W/No Connection
August 13th – TBA
August 14th – Akron, OH @ TBA
August 15th, – SOUTHWEST FOLK FEST! http://www.myspace.com/southwestfolkfest 2 day fest! Aug. 14th and 15th, $7 each show @ Church of Rock 4300 Howard Ave.,
August 16th - Chicago, Il @ The Fun House w/ Arkansas? (Their last show EVER.)
August 18th - Columbus, Ohio @ The Monster House w/ The Winslows, State Lottery
August 19th - Columbus, Ohio @ Bernie's Distillery (dreams do come true) w/ The Winslows, Tin Armour, New Creases, Papermoons
September 4th - Columbus, Ohio @ Monster House w/ Cars Can Be Blue, Lemming, Lovely Eggs
THIS IS OUR ROADIE:
This is what we looked like playing Berea Fest:
AUSSI:
Mark Bouchet's "Watershed" at the Venice Biennale. Genius.
7/24/09
ARTIST TALK
Tomorrow (Saturday) at 2:30 I'm giving an "artist talk" at Roy G Biv gallery for my show. I think maybe 5 people will be there. I'm planning to thrill those 5 people with stories about how my main influences are Wizard of Oz, the 60s, and thinking about drugs. And talking about the socioeconomic implications of the Xerox print. I'll be wearing non-prescription frames.
Maybe someone will film it and I'll put it here. It will be really embarrassing though because I'm trying not to be ironic or coy. Saying what you actually think about something is always a bad idea.
Maybe someone will film it and I'll put it here. It will be really embarrassing though because I'm trying not to be ironic or coy. Saying what you actually think about something is always a bad idea.
7/21/09
SEVERAL REVIEWS MY ZINE HAS RECEIVED
Though my zine, PUNK ZINE, came out a year ago I just received two new reviews of it. The sentiments which seem to unite the reviews include, A: My Zine is big. B: There is a "cut and paste" aesthetic. C: The name of it "is already taken." D: It is hard to read.
I say bullocks.
NERVHOUS RECORDS from Malaysia SAYS:
Punk Zine –the Art/History issue (A3/English/copied)
This is my first experience having and reading an A3 size zine, it feels like reading a tabloid but the font size is humongous. So, the first page is where the editor James Payne tell us about why he do an art/history issue and why he named his zine ‘punk zine’ and why he choose to focus on his town, Columbus. He made great interviews with Phonzie Davis (zine and comic artist), Johnny Rattail (punk artist-mostly flyer art/design) –cool art!, Andy Hinton (another active flyer designer), Geoff Hing (one of the key members of Defiance, Ohio) one of my favorite folk punk band, Jason of The Neil House (a house hosting many-many punk shows) and Matt Reber (New Bomb Turks). Most part of the interviews is about the good old days, history, punk before internet existed, and Columbus scene. A review of The Evens’ show at Chop Chop gallery, some more writings and some reviews on comics and records complete the zine. This zine is rad, and punk! Dig this if you’re into folk punk, poppunk, bike punk and punk art. James Payne 115 W.10th Ave (The Monster House), Columbus, Ohio 43201 USA or aj_payton@hotmail.com or myspace.com/totallysweet
GIVE ME BACK SAYS:
PUNK ZINE - The Art History Issue - 11 x 17 - 48pgs - Free
This is huge! It has a good and sloppy cut & paste style that works on this scale - occasionally I was like "ok, this maybe doesn't have to be this big" because it was like pixilated or something, but who cares? Overall it looks awesome. I can't believe it's free. I think it was like a college art project, like with funding or something. Anyway, I enjoyed the narrow, local focus - all the interviews and features seem to all be connected with their native Columbus, OH. There are interviews with flyer makers, historic punk house dwellers, and band members. The editor admits in one interview to it being their first time, but if that has any impact on these interviews, it's not a hinderance. I especially appreciate the scope of the interview subjects, not being limited to bands or celebrities, yet narrowed by local revelance. You might guess from the name, that there is a certain amount of arrogance to this project. There's a little of that, but I like it when young punks decide that it's time to reinvent shit. This scene gets stale fast and can always use some shaking up, you know. In the intro, they criticize the review sections of zines like ours, basically saying that in trying to review so much, we over simplify descriptions and force things into boxes. I agree with that, and I hope their zine inspires more local punk zines. I look forward to an issue two. Highly recomended. FIL.
RAZORCAKE SAYS:
PUNK ZINE
three stamps and mailer, 17” x 11”, copied, 46 pgs.
By Keith Rosson
Thursday, August 21 @ 00:00:00 CDT
Man. So obviously a labor of love and so totally unreadable. Turns out that having twenty-some individual 11” x 17” pages stapled on the edges—again, there’s no spine here, we’re talking a stack of pages stapled together—makes this fucker nearly impossible to open, much less read. Still, it’s got a nice cut and paste aesthetic, gloriously sullied halftones and a lot of passion. Focusing almost entirely on the
BLACKCLOUD SAYS:
When I first heard Jimi was making a punk-themed zine, I was worried. It’s difficult to write about an abstract topic you’re apart of and it tends to turn out … well, cheesy.
Fortunately Punk Zine is more of a recent history, some of the last 10 years, of Columbus punk and not a this-is-why-punk-saved-my-life type of tribute. Thank god.
The history is not definitive, but appealing because the events discussed are still relevant, but beginning to yellow with age, unknown to most of the younger crowd. Does your typical youngster know the Legion of Doom stopped a war? That Defiance, Ohio once lived in Ohio?
The zine’s greatest strengths are its diversity in subjects and the balance between the history of Columbus punk and Jimi’s own personal history. The latter I enjoyed more because Jimi has been someone on my get-to-know-better list for a while now (yes, I really do have mental lists like that.)
Through question-and-answer interviews, he focuses on everything from local comic book writers and artists, to punk-house leaders and old-time rockers from a different era.
Some interviews drag on, but his humble style creates a depth that makes it worth wading through the murk to see what’s discussed later.
Reviews, which make a small portion of the zine, are the weakest link. For the most part, Jimi chooses media he likes and patronizes it. Much of the writing is academic sounding which is too bad because he has an engaging and personable voice when interviewing.
One review where he is objective is The Evens show at the Chop Chop Gallery in 2006, and he talks about Ian Mackaye signing autographs.
“I would equate (Ian Mackaye signing autographs) to walking in on your parents having sex,” Jimi writes. “As the product of their sex you know they must have previously had sex and probably still do just as you realize someone at some point has asked for Mackaye’s autograph.”
Not only does Jimi take on a punk icon (rightly so), we also learn about Jimi being a “product” of Mackaye’s music.
The style is very zine-like – cut-and-paste, flyers, photo copier art, ect. – yet still original. The layout is clear and easy to navigate. While that sounds like a backhanded compliment, it’s sincere because too many zines read like choose your own adventure books.
One judgment issue I have is the size of the zine. It’s fucking huge at 11” x 17”! While the size makes the zine stand out (more like dominate any helpless normal-sized zine that happens to also sit on top of your toilet), it’s cumbersome to read, kinda like a newspaper.
Getting your hands on a copy might be difficult. Jimi said he’s only printing 200 copies and I’m sure most, if not all, have been distributed. Not sure why he’s setting a limit. The diversity of subjects will create a demand and get his work in the hands of more people than your typical zine.
Looking forward to the next issue, but don’t skimp out on copies of this one: it’s a keeper, one of the best of the year … if you’re from Columbus.
You can order it from Microcosm. If you feel so inclined after all this. I think I am making a new one in the fall.
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