Lynda Barry at SAIC

Lynda Barry

Lynda Barry, of Ernie Pook's Comeek and One! Hundred! Demons!, graced the stage of SAIC's Columbus building in Chicago, Illinois, on November 15th. She spoke and joked about her working process, her desire to reclaim art-making for everyone and her new book, Picture This. It was the one artist lecture I've attended that could properly be described as 'rollicking.'

Or download: MP3

ARTY PARTY

Arty Party is out!

Arty Party is a collection of cartoon ha-has about contemporary artists like Lynda Benglis, Joseph Beuys, Chris Burden, Jenny Holzer and Gordon Matta-Clark. Cornballs like William Wegman and Dale Chihuly are in the mix as well. Arty Party is 8.5 x 5.5 inches with a card stock cover and is completely hand drawn by the talented, farcical, slapstick Sara Drake. It also contains an essay I wrote on the art world, seriousness and class dispositions that ends with the line, "I'd rather a Jacques Tati than a Jacques David."

Arty Party started when Sara was having trouble writing one panel gags for her comics class. The easiest answer to this was, of course, to make fun of artists. I posted the initial three we made together here. We were tonally and visually inspired by The New Yorker cartoons but also by the over-the-top stupidity of Johnny Ryan's Angry Youth Comix and Ivan Brunetti's Haw!. The material came directly from the History of Art 541 course taught by Kris Paulsen that I took last fall. The class was based on David Joselit's book American Art Since 1945.

This is a blogger who wrote about Sara and Arty Party.

This is Bad at Sports which blurbed Arty Party.

Order Arty Party online here.

Arty Party is available at the following stores:

Quimby's (Chicago, IL)
Boxcar Books (Bloomington, IN)
The Curiodrome (Bloomington, IN)
Mahan Gallery (Columbus, OH)
Used Kids Records (Columbus, OH)
Wexner Center for the Arts Store (Columbus, OH)
Wholly Craft (Columbus, OH)

Arty Party is also available in person from Sara and I for $3.00.

Women's Comics Anthology

                      Front and back cover wraparound by Sara Drake.

Women's Comics Anthology, a zine I co-edited as part of the Ladydrawers project I am helping Anne Elizabeth Moore with, is now available to download for free on 'the Internet.'

Women's Comics Anthology is a gendered content analysis of a random sample of comics anthologies. Some of the statistics derived from our study are deeply troubling and call for soul-searching introspection of behalf of comics editors, publishers and artists. For instance, women comics makers only accounted for 16% of total contributors to the anthologies we reviewed. Indeed, more women appeared as naked characters in the anthologies than as clothed creators contributing to them.  These facty-facts, propped up by anecdotal accounts in extensive interviews collected under the Ladydrawers project, paint the comics industry as systematically inequitable and largely divided among gender lines.

Women's Comics Anthology is also a comics anthology, largely drawn by women. Each statistic collected was illustrated by a different artist. Contributors include Ramsey Beyer, Candace Corbin, Chelsea Dirck, Sara Drake, Emil Emanta, Karla Hewitt-Blackie, Ingrid Olson, Leslie Perrine, Alma Vescovi and most of Moore's Ladydrawers class at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Download Women's Comics Anthology at Pressing Concern Books: here.

Xerox Candy Bar: "Beware The Ides Of March!" Issue

Xerox Candy Bar is a comics-centric contributor based magazine run by School of the Art Institute students and edited by Ingrid Olson and Sara Drake. This issue is themed on and published for "THE IDES OF MARCH." An Arty Party comic about Joseph Beuys that Sara and I collaborated on is included in the mix. Xerox Candy Bar also features Ingrid Olson, who made the Greco-Roman delight that is the cover, Orion Martin, Bill Cleveland, Beth Hetland, Ian McDuffie, Jeni Crone, Vanessa Hoff, Ryan Ingebritson, Mario Martinez, Sarah Smith, Lyra Hill, Anna Gorman, Ben Bertin, and many more.
Unfortunately, I did not scan in the mini-comics which also come with Xerox Candy Bar.

Check out Xerox Candy Bar's site here.

Xerox Candy Bar is named after a poem by Richard Brautigan:

Xerox Candy Bar

Richard Brautigan

Ah,
you're just a copy
of all the candy bars
I've ever eaten.

Implied: An SAIC Creative Writing Guild Publication March 2010

I recently had a story published with an illustration by Sara Drake in the School of the Art Institute of Chicago's Creative Writing Guild's publication "Implied." The issue is thematically arranged around the word "Implied", which, I guess, is implied. The issue was edited by Jeni Crone. The Creative Writing Guild's site can be found here. Issues are currently free for pickup at SAIC.

Ascent of the Behemoth Showing at SAIC

A poster I made for Cassandra Troyan's and Stacie Sell's "Ascent of the Behemoth." It's a three part video which is showing at the Flaxman Theater at The School of the Art Institute in Chicago on March 16th at 6:00 PM. The showing is free. See part of the film here.

Chicago Zine Fest & Comic Symposium of Chicago

My friends in Chicago are throwing two, count 'em, two, big time events celebrating print culture - The Comic Symposium of Chicago and The Chicago Zine Fest. The two events overlap as the symposium is on March 11th and 12th and the zine fest is on March 12th and 13th. The Comic Symposium of Chicago was organized by Sara Drake and Ingrid Olson and is happening at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Speakers include Sarah Becan, Jeffrey Brown, Christa Donner, Surabhi Ghosh, Beth Hetland, Nicole Hollander, Paul Hornschemeier, Joey Jacks, Lucy Knisley, Ian McDuffie, Bernie McGovern, Anne Elizabeth Moore, Anders Nilsen, Laura Park, John Porcellino, and Jeremy Tinder. The symposium is organized into four topic discussions - Professionalization, Identity, Comics & Art, and Independent Distribution and Publishing in Chicago. It happens from 4:30 to 7:00 on both days.