I’ll be at the Minneapolis Indie eXpo tomorrow (Saturday, August 21, 9-5). I’m camped out at table 50 with St. Paul artist Dan Wieken and a couple of out of town guests Jon Lewis and Karen Sneider.
Uncivilized Books will debuting two new books during the show. First up is Dan Wieken’s The Petrified Catalogue (pictured above). Dan’s extremely detailed images of decayed and petrified remains of real and imaginary creatures has to be seen to be believed. Here are a few pictures that fail do justice to his drawings. This books needs to experienced in person:
The other book debuting is Structures 1-11. It’s a book of drawings (by me) of imaginary structures. Regulars on this blog may be familiar with some of the imagery. Just check out the ’structure’ tags on this blog:
We’ll also have the usual Uncivilized catalogue, including Gabrielle Bell’s L.A. Diary.
In other MIX related news, I will have a 4 page Ransom Strange story in The Good Minnesotan #4:
and on top of that I’m moderating a panel on comics education. See the program for details.
See you at the Soapfactory!
The date of MIX is approaching soon! I’m excited that Minneapolis has the potential to become the site of a regular indie comics convention. I understand that the table space went really fast, which is indicative of the demand for such an event. But, more on MIX in the future. I mention it only in passing because, during MIX, I’m moderating a panel on Comics Education . I’m pretty new to teaching (I taught my first class at MCAD this Spring), but the topic of comics and education is something that I’ve thought about a lot over the years. I’m going to post some notes over the next couple of weeks to in an attempt to clarify my ideas on the subject. Most of this will be US centric. I don’t know much about how/if comics are taught elsewhere. I also realize that some of this may include inaccuracies and generalizations. I hope to correct these over time. Anyone please feel free to chime in.
First, a little history. Comics or cartooning have been taught for a long time. Historically comics and cartooning schools were mostly designed as technical colleges that taught the skills necessary to get work in the fast paced commercial environment of newspapers, pulps, magazines and comic-books. Some key institutions that embodied that approach were:
- The Art Instruction School was founded in 1914, and is famous for the ubiquitous Tippy the Turtle ads and Charles Schulz. It’s purely a correspondence school and was founded to (in their own words) “train illustrators for the growing printing industry.”
- Cartoonists and Illustrators School was founded in 1947 by Burne Hogarth to educate returning WWII GI’s. It was originally known as The Manhattan Academy of Newspaper Art and eventually became The School of Visual Arts (in 1956). This is the only school on this list that transformed itself from a primarily technical art school, to a ‘proper’ art school as we understand them today.
- The Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art was founded in 1976 by Joe Kubert. Their mission is stated as: “The school is dedicated to aspiring cartoonists who are dedicated to becoming professionals in cartooning, comic book, and the general field of commercial art.”
In all of these schools comics and illustration went hand in hand and on some level were interchangable. The focus was on representational drawing and painting, perspective, pen and ink, drafting, lettering etc. These were the exact skills a student needed to master to create camera ready artwork for commercial printing and publication. As such these institutions were tied to a cheap mass medium: print. Students were encouraged to specialize. The speed of publication required separate people to write, draw (penciller), ink (inker), letter and color a single story. Artists from that era created countless pages of comics for huge & small corporations (many of them unsigned) under strict deadlines, in an assembly line system. It’s a wonder that any great comics managed to be made despite the brutal, fast-paced system.
The commercial quality of the comics is why ‘real’ artist like Roy Lichtenstein could paint panels from a comic-book in a gesture similar to Andy Warhol’s later Campbell’s Soup Can. Comic-book art was generally seen (with some exceptions of course) as anonymous commercial junk for kids. Lichtenstein’s comic-book based paintings became an important defining moment (myth?) for the future of Comics Art in education and it’s relationship with Art and Art Schools. This is something I’ll tackle in the next post.
A partial timeline. Some of these items will not become significant for comics education until later:
1914. Art Instruction School Founded
1947. Cartoonists and Illustrators School founded
1958. Dynamic Anatomy by Burne Hogarth published
1961. “Look Mickey” painted by Roy Lichtenstein
1970. Dynamic Figure Drawing by Burne Hogarth published
1976. The Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art founded
1978. How To Draw Comics the Marvel Way by Stan Lee and others published
The La Mano Second Annual Report: Several local artists & cartoonists joined forces with a few great local bands. The result was pretty great and a lot of fun. My favorite part of the evening was the performance by Arctic Universe. It was a minimalist performance. In the darkness of the concert space, among shimmering cold-approaching-absolute-zero wave industrial synth-pop, a three-walled structure was erected, slowly methodically, deliberately… a flawed and flimsy shelter to protect against the immeasureable immensity of an unfeeling arctic universe. I kept imagining the performance as if it was drawn by Yuichi Yokoyama… it seemed strangely appropriate, in the best posible way.
The event also saw the debut of a new book from my publishing ‘label’ Uncivilized Books: The Petrified Catalogue by Dan Wieken. The book is now available for sale on the UB site. I think it turned out pretty great (if I do say so myself) mostly due to Dan’s amazing, macabre and hyper detailed drawings. Check it out. I will do a more detailed write-up about it in my next post.
Here are some pics from the event, and a few concert sketches:
left: Camden, right: Tunneler presents shop class
Pink Teeth
Arctic Universe
Zinefest Panelists, clockwise from top-left: Tim Sievert, Andy Sturdevant, Andy Sturdevant's leg and Ariel Pate
The 2010 Twin Cities Zinefest came together rather well. I’ve attended the festival since I moved back to the Twin Cities in 2007, and each year the show has gathered steam. This year the duration of Zinefest was scaled back from two days to one day. But, what the show lost in time, was made up it’s intensity. In previous years the two day show felt diffuse and under-attended. Shortening the time focused the show. It felt consistently busy and well attended. In previous years the two day format left a lot room for significant dead-time.
Another thing that struck me at the show was a kind of new vitality. Since the early 00’s the atmosphere at zinefests around the country felt depressed and melancholy. The rise of the internet sucked all the oxygen from the substantial zine ‘revolution’ of the 80’s & 90’s. Attending a zinefest sometimes felt like descending into a camp of nostalgic luddites (guilty as charged). But this year it seemed like there was a new spark. I didn’t detect too much pining for a lost golden age. Perhaps the internet is starting to lose it’s sheen of novelty? Maybe Prince is right…? The internet is starting to… simply be. It’s… something we’re becoming used to. Just because the internet IS, doesn’t mean that other things must cease to be. Also, I think our bodies are becoming tired of the computerized deprivation chamber. Is it a coincidence that the rapid rise of the Internet has been paralleled by the rise of New Urbanism with it’s corollaries of walking and biking? The rise of the virtual mirrored by the return of the repressed: the physical world. This… new physicality (?) seems to be the source of the zine resurgence. Whether this energy is a temporary localized phenomenon (a TAZ?), or whether this is something that can be sustained into the future I don’t know. Perhaps it was simply a good show.
The Zinefest day was capped off by a fun after-party at the Seward Cafe. The party started off with a panel headed by Andy Sturdevant (pictured above). I know a lot of good bands played, but I missed them all because I ended up talking too much in the garden behind the Cafe.
Favorite Zinefest object: Esoteric Bullshit: Cairns by King Mini (pictured below). It’a an 8 page, 3-color silkscreened booklet. The images of abandoned detritus will be familiar to fans of King Mini’s work, but I detected something new lurking in these drawings. As the booklet progresses the discarded objects become increasingly organized and ordered… into new structures… as if the trauma that created these assemblages was being overcome… the apocalypse followed by a renewal… an appropriate coda for the whole show. Update: This is now available via the Etsy shop.
Er… maybe the title is an overstatement. In any case, Kevin Huizenga will be in Minneapolis to give a lecture at MCAD. For those who follow comics Kevin needs no introduction. For those of you who don’t know his work he’s easily one of the best and most interesting cartoonists working today. But don’t take my word for it, come see for yourself! Kevin will speak at MCAD during the student mini-comic Expo on Thursday (Mar. 24th) at 1:00 pm.
Details:
Thursday, March 25th.
1:00 pm
Auditorium 150, Main Building
Minneapolis College of Art and Design
Published on
November 14, 2009 in
Events and News.
Today will be spent at the 8th Annual Book Arts Festival at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts. The usual assortment of Uncivilized Books publications will be available for sale, including Gabrielle Bell’s L.A. Diary and… a brand new mini-comic: Ancient Reading Device (pictured above). More on that after the festival. Stop by and say hello.
Photo by Emilia Kaczynski
I wrote a bit about Handle With Care already. A little while ago, I was able to dispatch a reporter to the exhibition to document the exhibition before it closed. The intrepid reporter was my little sister, Emilia. She just happened to be in Paris studying all things French and she volunteered to go on a fact finding mission to Montauban. Undeterred by the six hour train ride (one way!) she brought back volumes of photographs of the exhibition. After seeing this virtual walk through I’m even more impressed by the breadth and depth of the exhibition. Bravo Laurent! Take a look.
On Saturday (Oct. 24th) John Porcellino arrived in Minneapolis to promote his new King Cat collection, Map of My Heart. He rode in on a weird wind charged with spectral energies. The evening started out at Big Brain Comics, where John Porcellino & Zak Sally held a joint signing. Perhaps the ectoplasmic currents were stirred by the eerie juxtaposition of two old friends publishing work from roughly the same time period. Sally’s Like a Dog and Porcellino’s Map of My Heart exhume old material, reopen old wounds and release the ghosts of the past… ghosts which still haunt both authors… ghosts which haunted the small gathering that convened at the West Bank Social Center to see John speak about his life and work.
Zak Sally roused the poltergeist by a spirited reading of an epic letter (penned by Mr. Mike) from John’s book. As if ordained by malicious spirits, the overpowering sound of a brass band emanated from the floor the moment John took stage to speak. Undeterred he pressed on struggling against the powerful oompa rhythms which permeated the air. I detected a presence in the room… was it the absence of Maisie Kukoc? As he read from the book and illuminated the comics with stories of his health struggles and divorce a change started taking place in the general mood. John no longer labored against the brass cacophony, just the opposite, it became the soundtrack to an exorcism. The painful memories of past struggle transformed via the alchemy of King Cat into a personal lapis philosophorum.
I took only a few pictures. They can be seen in my Flickr stream. Ghost are difficult enough to capture on film. Are digital pixels a better medium? But the presence of ghosts can be detected by the eerie juxtapositions they leave behind.
At the end of event, we learned that the artists who run the West Bank Social Center were about to embark on a ghost finding experiment by constructing a giant cardboard Ouija Board. I think their efforts were successful.
L.A. Diary by Gabrielle Bell
A confluence of events almost as portentous as the alignment of the sun and the galactic center heralding the uncertain events of 2012 have caused the Rain Taxi Book Festival and Fallcon to share the same moment in time if not the same space. Both events will compete for your attention between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. tomorrow (Saturday, Oct 10th) and I will attempt to have a table at both. At the Rain Taxi event, I (as Uncivilized Books) will be sandwiched between Big Brain Comics and Zak Sally’s La Mano Books. Several great authors are scheduled to appear (Nicholson Baker, Lorrie Moore, Andrzej Zagajewski, etc.) but the main event as far as I’m concerned will be cartoonist Gabrielle Bell. In addition to gracing the Book Festival, Gabrielle teamed up with Uncivilized Books to produce a special mini-comic: L.A. Diary. The comic is a collection of diary strips published on her blog. It also contains sketches and an unfiltered glimpse at her real sketchbook diary. We also teamed up on a small Gocco print (pictured below). They will both be available for sale at the Rain Taxi festival and eventually next week copies will be made available online. Of course my comics will be available for sale as well, including the recently released Best American Nonrequired Reading 2009.
Meanwhile, I will also be tabling at Fallcon (Peter Bagge will be there!). On Saturday my presence will be limited, but on Sunday I will be joined by Gabrielle Bell and we will have her above mentioned mini-comic (and print) for sale in addition to my usual junk. Stop by and say hi!
Silver Gocco print by Gabrielle Bell
Click to enlarge
Sometime in the late 90’s, only a few years after I started self-publishing mini-comics, I got my first order from France from someone named Laurent Parson. Over the next decade he would keep ordering the odd mini-comic that I’d happened to be selling on my site. Then a few weeks ago he asked me to participate in a “DIY” comics exhibition that was going to take place at the library where he lived. How could I say no? After a few weeks of emails and idea exchanges I finally sent my artwork to Montauban, the location of the exhibition. Now the show is up and open to the public. It’s called Handle With Care and features the work of several American cartoonists & zinesters: Ron Rege Jr., Jordan Crane, Mark Burrier, Aaron Cometbus, John Porcellino, Minnesota’s own Vincent “King Mini” Stall, JP Coovert and many others.
A still from video about the exhibiton.
The exhibition will be on display for the next seven weeks at the Biblioth√©que de Montauban. From what I can tell it looks fantastic. Take a look at this video. It’s a dizzying array of art and objects. It simply looks amazing. I wish I could go see it for myself. The video has the added benefit of featuring Laurent talking about the show. I don’t understand a word of it, but I can finally put see the face behind all the emails and letters he’s sent over the last decade.
More about the exhibition here and here (PDF 1.8 MB).