Duke CIT Presentation

“Some things you don’t believe till you see them in the mirror.”

“The landfill of masks will never happen.”

Derek Ballard has previously appeared in Faesthetic, Typhon, and The Drama magazine.  He’s got some awesome future comics energy.  Here’s a new chapter of Moon Boots, his porno comic from another dimension.  This 4 page story will also appear in Cartoonshow, his new self anthology coming soon.

“Life is a chessboard with one piece and one square.”

The 3rd annual Floating World Animation Fest features senses shattering video art and psychedelic animation from the secret world of motionography. 3+ hours of mind melting, soul loving psychedelicanimation… this summer’s ultimate videocation!

Rustic 21st century minimalism by Superbrothers.

Floating World Animation Fest 2009 - Holocene, 1001 SE Morrison, Portland OR - June 25th

“Do not hang a man and be surprised at his reaction.”

“The best way of getting into something is to think of it as mischief.”

Authority takes everything. It nails the puddle of wine to the table.

The 3rd annual Floating World Animation Fest features senses shattering video art and psychedelic animation from the secret world of motionography.  3+ hours of mind melting, soul loving psychedelicanimation… this summer’s ultimate videocation!

Remembering the New World Order with ‘CHAMPIONS’ by Mato Atom.

Floating World Animation Fest 2009 - Holocene, 1001 SE Morrison, Portland OR - June 25th

“Let us forget the past - this is the only way to be genuinely surprised.”

“A sniper is like a genius - it’s not enough to be one, you have to be one at something.”

“One thing you’ll say for skeletons, they’ll always give you a smile.”

Smoke Signal #1 cover by Travis Millard

From our friends at Desert Island:

Desert Island is starting a free all-comics newspaper called SMOKE SIGNAL, which will debut in June.  The paper will have a circulation of 1000 and will be available at a few choice locations in Brooklyn (and via mail-order through our website).

In an effort to raise funds for this community-based project, we are hosting a fundraising concert at Union Pool on Memorial Day, May 25th, featuring performances by Uninhabitable Mansions, Boogie Boarder, Darlings, and Ambergris.  All proceeds will go towards the printing costs for the newspaper. PLEASE COME AND HELP MAKE THIS NEWSPAPER A REALITY!

Smoke Signal fund-raising concert
Memorial Day - this Monday!
Union Pool
484 Union Ave Brooklyn, NY
8 pm - $8 admission

For more information and links to the bands, please view our blog at http://tinyurl.com/smokecomix

Expert illustrator and longtime WFMU art contributor Drew Friedman recently launched a new website featuring his fine art prints (with the help of Irwin Chusid and Barbara Economon).

For those of you who may not be familiar with Drew's work, he was the creator of WFMU's semi-grotesque mascot, the Old Codger, contributed illustrations for our Crackpots & Visionaries cards, and designed a WFMU t-shirt and bumper sticker. Drew and his brother Josh Alan once guest-hosted for Kaz on WFMU in the 1980s, as well.

Dave the Spazz calls Drew "one of the funniest stipple cartoonists of the '80's and '90's is now one of the funniest illustrators of the 21st century. His work is as hypnotizing as Basil Wolverton's at his best. Drew Friedman is the Albrecht Dürer of liver spots."

“Most books are so well written they barely have any effect on the reader’s senses.”

“Break your own heart - I’m busy.”

Comics and history go together so perfectly, and we’ve got the pictures to prove it.  Check out Michael Deforge’s website for more artwork and awesomeness!

The end of Pink Tombs. Wherein pre-natal wisdom is rerevealed and remembered once again. Pete says he’s going to celebrate this comic’s completion by going to sleep for 3 months. Read the first couple chapters here and here. Thanks for the artwork Pete, this is my favorite one yet. I see you’re already wearing your spacesuits, time machine is set for cruise control, let’s go!

From Matthew Thurber:

Hi, Rebecca and I have started a gallery in our living room. It opens tomorrow with a group show of Eamon Espey, Carlos Gonzalez, Haisi Hu, Jenni Knight, and Jonny Petersen. Come by and have a beer with us tomorrow!
http://www.ambiguousmass.org/interesting/interesting.html

MUSIC YOU CAN SEE:  Eamon Espey / Carlos Gonzalez / Haisi Hu / Jenni Knight / Jonathan Petersen

Opening Reception Friday, May 15, 6-9pm

Interesting Gallery

33 Crooke Avenue #2B

Brooklyn, NY 11226

“Originality irritates so obscurely that people may have to evolve to scratch it.”

Here’s the second oversized edition of King Top, the latest from Panayiotis Terzis!  Every now and again you catch glimpses of something big, bigger than nature?  You sense invisible hands, giant fingerprints, tectonic plates smashing together, mountain ranges piling up like stacks of pancakes.  And you wonder, what’s he building in there?

“There’s no such thing as a normal angel. It’s never done that way.”

“How many times does a man have to shave before his chin gets the message?”

“Reading the time is like sticking a knife in the river. And that was your first mistake.”

My "Awesome Internet Images" folder has been filling up lately thanks to these sites.

Designer Logan Walters loves him some Wu Tang, but hates him some Wu Tang album cover art. And so he dipped into the history of Blue Note and is working on remaking all the Wu Tang albums in that legendary style. (Via Animal New York)

Another nice design project is Spacesick's "I Can Read Movies" series in which 70s book covers meet classic geeky films.

The University of Nebraska library offers up an online archive of government produced comic books. This includes everyone from Charlie Brown to Captain America to Wonder Woman and Superman pitching various public service announcements. But it's the lesser known projects that really grabbed my interest: WISHES & RAINBOWS, a trippy kids story from the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston; THE STORY OF BANKS, in which a group of hippie teens learn how to use a bank; the EC style drug scare comics HOOKED and TEEN-AGE BOOBY TRAP; and the truly lame superheroes SPROCKET MAN (he rides a ten-speed and carries a giant gear shift) and RAY CYCLE: RECYCLING SUPERHERO (he's from Connecticut). (via Slog)

If you like to make fun of your childhood self for loving computers, Star Wars, and all things nerdy, you can put your own photos up for all to see on Dork Yearbook.

More embarrassing than an airing of your kiddie laundry is the world of Awkward Family Photos. Take a break from Mother's Day and see what some truly uncomfortable family situations are like via the site that kicks the Olan Mills love up a notch.

The best one of all is NSFW, and therefore, after the jump....

Exciting news from our friends at Picturebox, new books from C.F. and Brian Chippendale!  Observe this growing trend in small press publishing - smaller print runs, but also an awareness that just about every new art comics that comes out these days is essentially a limited edition.  That in itself is worth noting.  These are increasingly the best books on the shelves, but small press seems to be getting smaller and smaller distribution-wise.  Publishers like Picturebox recognize that this also allows more precious hand made details to go into the products.  It’s the equivalent of seeing your favorite musician in a small, intimate setting.  Vinyl and comic books, you’re an art collector/supporter and you didn’t even realize it.

We have two amazing graphic novels scheduled for November 2009 and February 2010. They are fantastic, vital works of art and we need your help to release them.

Powr Mastrs 3 (104 pages, 5.75” x 7.75”) continues CF’s visionary narrative about the complex relationships between mysterious beings in a place called New China. If ‘n Oof is Brian Chippendale’s 650 page, 5” x 7” magnum opus, a sprawling, hilarious tale of two pals wandering through a desolate, hostile landscape.

These two books are among the best graphic novels of our time, but they need your support. Like a lot of publishers, PictureBox is looking for new ways to navigate the current terrain. To that end, we are attempting to raise the money for these books ahead of time. It’s all an experiment these days.

So we are looking to you, as a community of readers, to help make these books a reality. Everyone that orders advance copies of one or both of these books (up until August 1) will receive the book itself and a signed silkscreen print upon the books’ releases. Everyone that orders in advance by June 20, 2009 will have their names hand-lettered in the book with their corresponding level of support (see below). We need about 400 of you per book to step up and help make this a reality. Let’s come together as a community.

“I’m afraid I’m serious.  Bats only attack sick animals, such as your future.  We’ve changed our mind in the middle of the grand experiment.”  I wonder what he’s doing now?

Lint’s idea of an acceptable hero was a spider with multiple eyes like rally car headlights who, when issued an order, would jet tears of mirth from the entire bank of eyes.  Characters such as Felis Arkwitch and The Caterer’s Jack Marsden are fine examples of such tricksters.  I wonder what he’s doing now?

The Caterer dragged Pearl Comics Group into a legal hell when its hero spent the whole of Issue 9 on a killing spree in Disneyland. I wonder what he’s doing now?

“The Caterer was a strange one - he didn’t have any special powers, he was this blond grinning college kid as far as I could make out. He sometimes pulled a gun …But it was strangely hypnotic, I must say. We had fan mail.” - illustrator Brandon Sienkel. I wonder what he’s doing now?

Aidan Koch just completed school and she’s looking forward to a productive and creative summer.  Her talent just seems to grow and develop at an exponential rate.  I sense she’s tuned into the source of endless love, the gift that keeps on giving.  She’s working on a follow up to her thesis project (Love Poems) called Night Poems and she also just finished a new comic called Yes.  Little Flashes is a new work she created just for Arthur, celebrating the ephemeral/eternal beauty of divine existence.

We’d like to get to know Aidan better; here’s some excerpts from an interview she did in March 09 with Privelidge House:

Which influential artist would you like to ask for advice?
I once wrote some fan mail to Mark Todd and Esther Pearl Watson and sent them a copy of my latest comic at the time. They were delightfully responsive to it. I think just understanding that the artists you admire are often just sweet, hard working people is enough to be an influence to me. Advice is good, but motivation seems key.

If you had to put up one piece of artwork on your wall and stare at it for a year, who would it be by and why?
Honestly, I have this dog painting from a thrift store that was done in like ‘72. It’s an amorphous husky face and I think it would have to be the one. There’s a lot of art that I love and am influenced by, but when it comes down to it, I’d rather just laugh. It’s one of the best paintings I own.

Tell us about your creative process.
Usually I start with an agenda for painting or drawing. What am I doing? What am I looking at? What is it for? If I’m just going at it, the color palette I’m using is the most important part in creating a piece I like. There are very particular shades and tones and saturations that I use. They’re usually the same no matter what medium I’m working in and generally never fail me. Or I just use pencil and am pleased. There’s a lot of different feelings though that take hold of me and make me want to produce specific work. Sometimes they are simply circumstantial (being stuck in a location for an extended amount of time for instance) or I have a particular show coming up,or sometimes I’m really angry or hopelessly depressed, or sometimes I just don’t know what else to do with myself. There is no special environment necessary for me to work. Sometimes very personal is good. Other times, I just want to sit and draw people and buildings and coffee for hours and listen to conversations. I guess I’m a very skillful adapter.

Do you ever find weird connections between life and art?
It’s the same! The biggest thing I’ve noticed with myself is that my style, and wardrobe, and objects, and everything I surround myself with mirrors my artistic maturity. Or maybe it’s the other way around. These changes can be seen in palette, patterns, line quality, media, and seriousness. I look at pictures of myself and can pinpoint what I was painting at the moment. My interests and style change a lot, so there’s a lot for me to investigate into.

Which of your own works are you most proud of/ is most meaningful to you and why?
My comics and zines actually. I love some singular pieces, but I’ve emoted the most in the works I distributed. Knowing that I’m exposed to an audience for such an extended amount of time, in a variety of locations is terrifying. I’ve done some books that were very specific to me.

Do you think there are boundaries you would never cross in your art making?
I don’t think I can make any such claims at the moment. I only know that I will never give up drawing.

Do you have any magic cures for creative blocks?
I wouldn’t say I have blocks so much. I can always make work that I’m okay with. For work that I feel amazing about though, it’s usually essential that I am feeling a bit out of place or particularly self reflective. Things that I create while basically freaking out are usually what I relate to for the longest.

Which art mediums and brands do you prefer to use?
Gouache is lovely. Rives BFK & lightweight. Sometimes stonehenge. I pretty much exclusively use moleskin notebooks because they have toned pages and just look smart.

Which direction do you see your art heading in the future?
Expanding into space and the invisible.

I first discovered Steve Aylett’s smirking comic creation back in the pages of Arthur #17. I wonder what he’s doing now?

I first met Blaise here at my shop in Portland.  He was actively interested in a specific new wave of minimal, experimental art comics.  I always enjoyed these discussions, and now that he’s moved to Brooklyn the dialogue continues because he is now a part of, and helping to shape the art comics scene that we admired.  You can see more work on his website and also get his first book directly from him, or a number of cool shops that carry it.

“Conversation” is the next section from Kevin Hooyman’s new book, “LOVE TO LIVE“.  That’s what I’ve been saying this whole time!