Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery welcomes the lovely and talented Esther Pearl Watson and her artist cohort Mark Todd on Monday, July 5 from 1:00 to 4:00 PM. Watson will sign copies of her amazing UNLOVABLE collections, among our very favorite titles at the bookstore.

Guests will enjoy an urban barbeque with complimentary hot dogs, beans, and cold beverages in addition to an array of Todd and Esther's affordable books and art. Expect a few surprises as well. Don't miss your chance to meet these extraordinary artists and have a meal on us. What better way to spend a lazy day off?

Note that Fantagraphics Bookstore will be closed on Sunday, July 4, but open 11:30 to 8:00 PM as usual on July 5 for this event. And remember to mark your calendars for Dame Darcy's appearance on Saturday, July 10.

Saturday's Artopia extravaganza was the most festive yet. Thousands of adventurous art patrons strolled through Georgetown taking in everything from Megan's Kelso's Artichoke Tales exhibition to the vintage Georgetown Trailer Park Mall, complete with the mobile Elvis museum and wedding chapel. Circus acts, sideshow routines, carnival games, marching bands, and plenty of food and drink kept everyone wildly entertained.

Fantagraphics Bookstore's entry in the Power Tool Races — a chainsaw-powered 1991 Daniel Clowes-designed Santa Cruz skateboard — won the trophy for... well, some absurd category. Comedian and film director Bobcat Goldthwait dropped by the store after the races to admire the winner before presenting his cult classic feature film Shakes the Clown.

Bands performed on a stage outside the store all day including the Tom Price Desert Classic featuring our beloved Martin Bland on drums. The festivities came to a crescendo with an improvised session of neighborhood musicians including Georgetown Records co-owners Grant Eckman and Martin Imbach, and a cameo appearance by Soundgarden's Ben Shepherd. Don't miss it next year.

Multifaceted cartoonist, musician, performance artist, fortune teller and neo-Victorian culture maven Dame Darcy appears at Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery on July 10 to celebrate the publication of MEAT CAKE, a collection of stories from the first decade of her popular comic book series of the same name. The event features an exhibition of Dame Darcy's original comic art and other creations, an enchanting music recital and a fortune telling session with each book signed.

MEAT CAKE is like a peek into an imaginative, deranged dollhouse filled with fractured fairy tales. An expanded version of the long out-of-print hardcover book, this new paperback assembles the very best of Darcy's work from the first 11 issues of the beloved comic (including "Hungry Is the Heart," the legendary collaboration with Watchmen creator Alan Moore). According to the New York Times, "Darcy's comics are aesthetic manifestos... Darcy is a star. Meat Cake will prevail, as luxury takes over America. And the world beyond." The Los Angeles Times observes, "[Darcy] has created a childlike, otherworldly realm, a land that hovers in the twilight space between the whimsical and the macabre. Ghosts and goblins, foul-tempered stepmothers, lovesick mermaids and charmed forests are all rendered in Darcy's distinctive hand, loose and flowing lines reminiscent of the work of Edward Gorey."

Dame Darcy's appearance on Saturday, July 10 from 6:00 to 9:00 PM coincides with the colorful Georgetown Second Saturday Art Attack featuring challenging visual and performing arts presentations throughout the historic industrial arts corridor. Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery is located at 1201 S. Vale Street (at Airport way S.) only minutes south of downtown Seattle. Open daily 11:30 to 8:00 PM, Sundays until 5:00 PM. Phone 206.658.0110.

Listing Information

Dame Darcy's MEAT CAKE

Art exhibition, book signing and performance

Saturday, July 10, 6:00 - 9:00 PM

Exhibition continues through September 8, 2010

Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery
1201 S. Vale St. (at Airport Way S.)
Seattle, WA 98108
Phone 206.658.0110
Open Daily 11:30 - 8:00 PM, Sundays until 5:00 PM

Don’t miss this: The Artopia cultural extravaganza and Georgetown Music Festival take place on Saturday, June 26 from 3:00 to 10:00 PM. It’s all FREE!

Dozens of bands will perform on several stages, including one right outside Fantagraphics Bookstore featuring the Tom Price Desert Classic with our own Martin Bland on traps. Old school carnival games and confections, aerial circus acts, and thrilling Power Tool Races are among the many attractions. You’ll love the demonic chainsaw-powered Daniel Clowes skateboard created by our curator Larry Reid and daughter Bella. Just don’t get too close. 

Make plans for Labor Day weekend in Seattle now! The Bumbershoot art and music festival promises to be the best in recent memory. In addition to performances by the likes of Bob Dylan, Neko Case, Hole, the Decemberists, Weezer and countless other bands, the festival includes a large exhibition of contemporary Seattle cartoonists.

Organized by Fantagraphics resident curator Larry Reid, "Counterculture Comix: A 30-Year Survey of Seattle Alternative Cartoonists" begins with Lynda Barry's work circa 1980 and continues through the present. The show reveals Seattle as the ancestral home of the alternative comix genre and examines the role comix played in Seattle's youth movement of the 90s, which penetrated popular culture globally.

Hundreds of original artworks, comix and related ephemera by an impressive roster of influential Seattle artists will be displayed including Lynda Barry, Charles Burns, Peter Bagge, Ellen Forney, Jim Woodring, Megan Kelso, Jim Blanchard, Roberta Gregory, David Lasky, Ted Jouflas, Justin Hampton, J. R. Williams, Pat Moriarity, Donna Barr, Mark Zingarelli, Michael Dougan, Jeremy Eaton, Jason T. Miles, and more.

See you in September.

Celebrated Seattle cartoonist Megan Kelso unveils her latest masterpiece ARTICHOKE TALES this  Saturday from 6:00 to 9:00 PM at Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery. Megan burst onto the comics scene in the early 90s with her provocative self-published zine Girlhero. She has since proven herself to be a master storyteller..

The New York Times' recent rave called her new book “…surprising and wonderful” with a “consistently sweet and airy approach [that] provides a likable surface for a story with much darker and stickier depths…” The Stranger says “Artichoke Tales feels like series of expansions. The characters and their world grow to envelop the reader in a singular, charming way.”

Please join us on Saturday to celebrate the work is this remarkable artist. DJ Russ "Fallout" Battaglia will spin platters and complimentary beverages will be provided. The reception coincides with the colorful Georgetown Second Saturday Art Attack featuring visual and performing arts presentations throughout the historic industrial arts district.

Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery is located at 1201 S. Vale Street at Airport Way S. in the heart of Georgetown. Open daily 11:30 to 8:00 PM, Sundays until 5:00 PM. Phone 206.658.0110.

The Georgetown Second Saturday Art Attack welcomes several exciting new participants to our colorful celebration of challenging contemporary art. The June 12 installment promises to maintain the ingenuity and creative diversity that has characterized the Art Attack since its inception.  

Newly minted enterprises debuting on June 12 include: The grand opening of the Georgetown Trailer Park Mall – a cluster of vintage Airstream trailers housing galleries eateries, and boutiques – beginning with the Frida Folk Art Trailer exhibiting Tim Fowler’s paintings of childhood obsessions, bugs and cars, together with a “Trunk Show” by Georgetown metal workers of Steel Toe Studios; the premiere of Yvette Endrijautzki and Jethaniel Peterka’s studio/gallery the Nautilus, featuring an exhibition in the “Steam Room” by the resident artists; the open air Georgetown Marketplace, which in June begins its weekly Saturday appearance, including farm-fresh food, local and imported crafts, antiques, eats and more from over 40 vendors.  

Among the regular Art Attack participants: Megan Kelso’s “Artichoke Tales” book launch party and art exhibition at Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery; new paintings by Rafael E. Caraballo and Ed Craggs at Calamity Jane’s; figurative paintings by Amy Pleasant at Georgetown Art & Cultural Center; students of the Georgetown Atelier present their work at the “End of the Year Show”; Mark Tedin, Kyle Abernethy and Julie Baroh at Krab Jab Studio; Full Throttle Bottles hosts a display of the Hazard Factory’s legendary Power Tool Racers, one of the feature attractions at Georgetown’s Artopia arts festival on June 26.  

Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery hosts an art exhibition and book launch party for Seattle-based cartoonist Megan Kelso’s new graphic novel ARTICHOKE TALES on Saturday, June 12 from 6:00 to 9:00 PM.

A graduate of alternative cartoonist breeding ground The Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA, Megan Kelso burst onto the comics scene in the early 90s with her provocative self-published zine Girlhero. She has since proved herself a master of the cartoon short story with Queen of the Black Black (1998) and The Squirrel Mother (2006), in addition to the weekly serial “Watergate Sue” published in the New York Times Magazine (2007).

ARTICHOKE TALES is a coming of age story about a young girl whose family is caught between the two warring sides of a civil war. Kelso’s visual storytelling, combining delicate line work with rhythmic page compositions, creates a dramatic tension between intimate character studies and the unflinching depiction of the consequences of war, lending cohesion and resonance to a generational epic. The widespread critical acclaim afforded Kelso’s previous work makes Artichoke Tales one of the most eagerly anticipated graphic novels of 2010.

The reception on Saturday, June 12 coincides with the colorful Georgetown Second Saturday Art Attack featuring visual and performing arts presentations throughout the historic industrial arts district. Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery is located at 1201 S. Vale Street at Airport Way S. in the heart of Georgetown. Open daily 11:30 to 8:00 PM, Sundays until 5:00 PM. Phone 206.658.0110. Please join us on June 12 to celebrate the work is this remarkable artist.

Listing Information

MEGAN KELSO: ARTICHOKE TALES

Artist reception and Book signing Saturday, June 12, 6:00 to 9:00 PM

Exhibition continues through July 7, 2010 

Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery
1201 S. Vale St. (at Airport Way S.)
Seattle, WA 98108
Phone 206.658.0110

Open Daily 11:30 – 8:00 PM, Sundays until 5:00 PM

Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery welcomes visionary cartoonist Jim Woodring on Saturday, May 22 from 7:00 to 8:00 PM. He will give a slide presentation focusing on his latest work WEATHERCRAFT and sign copies of the book, which debuts at the event.  

Jim Woodring’s idiosyncratic aesthetic has earned him an international following as both a cartoonist and visual artist. He was a recipient of the prestigious United States Artist Fellowship in 2006 (with frequent collaborator Bill Frisell) and was an Artist Trust-Washington State Artist fellow in 2008. His work is published and exhibited worldwide, finding him traveling to exhibitions in France and Australia last year, a residency in Alaska last month, and to Sweden next month.  

Though Fantagraphics Books has published several wonderful Woodring comic book series and collections, WEATHERCRAFT represents his first full-length graphic novel. Employing mystical motifs and enigmatic characters, the book continues the artist’s tradition of imaginative narratives allowing subjective responses from the reader. In a recent review in Vice magazine, Nick Gazin observes, “There’s not much point in trying to sum up the story of this comic. There’s no text, the art is beautiful, and you’re totally consumed by the world he’s created and you exist inside it while you’re reading it."  

Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery is located at 1201 S. Vale Street, minutes south of downtown Seattle in the center of the historic Georgetown arts community. Open daily 11:30 to 8:00 PM, Sundays until 5:00 PM. Phone 206.658.0110.  

Listing Information: 

Jim Woodring presents WEATHERCRAFT

Saturday May 22, 7:00 to 8:00 PM

Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery

1201 S. Vale Street (at Airport Way S.)

Seattle. Phone 206.658.0110

Come on down to Fantagraphics Bookstore this Saturday, May 8 from 6:00 to 9:00 PM to welcome gifted cartoonist Michael Kupperman to Seattle. He’ll be signing copies of the brand new issue of his sensational TALES DESIGNED TO THRIZZLE comic book and other publications. The appearance includes an exhibition of his dazzling original art and a continuous screening of the animated “Snake ‘n’ Bacon” pilot episode.

Kupperman’s unique graphic sensibility combines elements of anachronistic pulp detective magazines textured with references to contemporary art and popular culture. This results in singularly seductive and hilarious comics.

Michael Kupperman’s appearance coincides with the colorful Georgetown Second Saturday Art Attack. In addition to diverse visual and performing arts, the May 8 installment includes the Georgetown Super 8 Film Festival featuring continuous screenings of over 50 three minute films at venues throughout the historic neighborhood.

Saturday’s event features an extraordinary cartoonist, an esoteric soundtrack by DJ “Fallout” Russ, and complimentary beverages. Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery is located at 1201 S. Vale Street at Airport Way S. only minutes from downtown Seattle. Open daily 11:30 to 8:00 PM, Sundays until 5:00 PM. Phone 206.658.0110.