Official announcement:

Midwestern BLAB!
Midwestern Contributors to BLAB! Exhibit at Leviton A+D Gallery
June 18 – July 22, 2009

Image: Don Colley, My Burdened Heart, scratchboard drawing on laminated plastic,
Originally published in BLAB! 15

Monte Beauchamp's annual darling of the graphic design and illustration world is a spectacular collection of cutting-edge comics, illustration, and graphic design. BLAB!'s list of contributors past and present reads like a Who's Who of the contemporary visual art world including Mark Ryden, Chris Ware, Gary Panter, Joe Coleman and many more.

Midwestern BLAB!, curated by Monte Beauchamp, the Chicago-based creator of BLAB!, has included the art works of several Midwestern artists who have contributed significantly to BLAB! and are exemplars of the periodical’s core values. Anchor Graphics at Columbia College Chicago is the co-curator of this exhibition.

“Though BLAB!’s scope is international,” writes Bill North, Senior Curator of the Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art at Kansas State University, in the exhibition’s catalog essay. “The underpinning of its cornucopian visual feast is resolutely Midwestern. BLAB!, a product of the Midwest, boldly affirms the positive view of Midwestern culture. And, in the face of BLAB!, claims of the region’s cultural inferiority ring hollow.”

EXHIBITING ARTISTS: Don Colley, Tom Huck, Teresa James, CJ Pyle, and Fred Stonehouse

WHEN: June 18 – July 22, 2009
Opening Reception: Thursday, June 18, from 50

WHERE: Columbia College Chicago’s Leviton A+D Gallery
619 S. Wabash Avenue
Gallery hours: Tuesday – Saturday 11am – 5pm, Thursday 11 am – 8 pm

COST: Free and Open to the Public
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INFO: Gallery Coordinator, 312.369.8668
Press Inquiries, 312.369.8695

Image: Fred Stonehouse, Four Eyes, 12" x 12", acrylic and collage on wood panel
To be published in BLAB! 19

This exhibition is sponsored by the Art + Design Department at Columbia College Chicago. This exhibition is partially supported by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency and the Efroymson Family Fund, a CICF fund.

• Things to see: Check out the illustrations by Esther Pearl Watson and some other folks we like in this New York Times article from a couple of weeks ago about the economic meltdown

• Review: Le Visage Vert looks at the Monte Beauchamp-edited Devilish Greetings: original en Français; Google translation

• List: Our pal Bully puts Bottomless Belly Button by Dash Shaw at #25 on his annual "Fun Fifty" list

• Things to see: Kevin Huizenga draws in Douglas Wolk's sketchbook

• List: On the Forbidden Planet International blog, Chris Marshall puts Willie & Joe: The WWII Years by Bill Mauldin at #2 on his Best of the Year list

• Things to see: Laura Park reveals her cover for the new Vice

THE 4th ANNUAL BLAB! SHOW
Saturday, September 6, 8:00-11:30 pm
OPENING RECEPTION: September 6th, 8:00-11:30 pm

Check out all the artwork HERE! 

Copro/Nason Gallery and Monte Beauchamp proudly present "THE BLAB! SHOW," the fourth Group Art Exhibition featuring original paintings and illustrations from the forthcoming issue of BLAB! magazine - Monte Beauchamp's periodic anthology of sequential and comic art, illustration, painting, and printmaking.

Artists include: SHAG, TRAVIS LOUIE, RYAN HESHKA, GARY BASEMAN, RON ENGLISH, LUKE CHEUH, GARY TAXALI, FRED STONEHOUSE, ANDY KEHOE, TRAVIS LAMPE, LAURA LEVINE, MARC BURCKHARDT, CJ PYLE, MARK TODD, TOM HUCK, and MANY MORE.

Don't Miss Out!!!! The show continues until September 27.

COPRO/NASON GALLERY (at Bergamot Station)
2525 Michigan Ave #T5, Santa Monica, CA 90404 

Bill North, Senior Curator at the Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas, sends us this link to photos of the exhibit "BLAB! A Retrospective," featuring artwork from the past several volumes of our BLAB! anthology. The exhibit opened last week and runs through November 2, 2008.

BLAB!: A Retrospective opens August 1, 2008 at the Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art on the campus of Kansas State University. The exhibition, organized by the Beach Museum of Art, will be on view through November 2, 2008. It is the first American museum exhibition devoted to the work of BLAB!, Monte Beauchamp's periodic anthology of sequential and comic art, illustration, painting, and printmaking. The exhibition, which focuses on BLAB! #8-18 (1995-2007), features the work of forty-six artists and includes 150 works of art from thirty-nine collections. All of the work in the exhibition has appeared in BLAB!.

Artists in the exhibition: Michael Bartalos, Gary Baseman, Richard Beards, Tim Biskup, Stéphane Blanquet, Calef Brown, Greg Clarke, The Clayton Brothers, Sue Coe, Don Colley, Brian Cronin, Nicolas Debon, Douglas Fraser, Charles Paul Freund, Drew Friedman, Geoffrey Grahn, Steven Guarnaccia, Ryan Heshka, Peter Hoey, Tom Huck, Teresa James, Jeffrey Kamberos, Nora Krug, Peter Kuper, Mark Landman, Laura Levine, MATS!? [Mats Stromberg], Walter Minus, Christian Northeast, John Pound, Archer Prewitt, Chris Pyle, Helge Reumann, Xavier Robel, Jonathon Rosen, Marc Rosenthal, Sergio Ruzzier, David Sandlin, Spain, Bob Staake, Fred Stonehouse, Mark Todd, Chris Ware, and Esther Pearl Watson.

The accompanying 128-page, full-color catalogue was designed by Monte Beauchamp and contains contributions by David A. Beronä, Mark Frauenfelder, Matt Dukes Jordan, and Bill North.

For more information, contact:

Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art
Kansas State University
701 Beach Lane (14th & Anderson Ave.)
Manhattan, KS 66506 • 785-532-7718 

For over a year Bob Staake has been working with London animation studio Wyld Stallyons to produce an animated version of his book Struwwelpeter (part of our Blab! Storybook series). The second animation test is now online for the world to see and dang if it doesn't look great -- Staake's work is beautifully suited to modern animation techniques. (There's also a downloadable Quicktime version. And don't forget to visit Bob's official site for the book.)

More Old Jewish Comedians
By Drew Friedman

This comprehensive collection of portraiture of Jewish comedians is a sequel to 2006's wildly popular Old Jewish Comedians, which earned Friedman raves from Jerry Lewis, Howard Stern, The Believer, Entertainment Weekly and many more, and earned Friedman his own roast at New York's legendary Friar's Club. This all-new collection includes the famous (Woody Allen, Carl Reiner, Mel Brooks, Soupy Sales, etc.), the not-so-famous (Jerry Stiller, Zeppo & Gummo Marx, Larry Storch, Zero Mostel, etc.) and the largely unknown (Molly Picon, Herbie Faye, Jan Milton, etc.). The Reuben Award-winning Friedman, one of the great caricaturists of his age, presents a thorough visual history of the 20th Century's greatest Borscht-Belt comedians through 28 full-page portraits; every crease, mustache hair, and liver spot looks utterly real. As Booklist put it (after the first OJC), "If only we were all funny enough to get Friedman to draw us!" A BLAB! Storybook.

36-page full-color 10" x 10" hardcover $16.99
Order Now!

Shag: A to Z
By Shag

Shag: A to Z presents, quite simply, 26 original paintings corresponding to the letters of the alphabet. Each painting is accompanied by a short verse extolling the pleasures of a hedonistic lifestyle and the virtues of overindulgence. Shag has spent the last decade creating a body of work based on his idiomatic aesthetic preferences, a world of mid 20th century modern architecture and design, populated by hedonists, supplicants, and indifferent women. A BLAB! Storybook.

32-page full-color 10" x 10" hardcover $14.95
Order Now!

RADIO SCIENCE FUNNIES, INC.
Comic book inspired art by
Ryan Heshka
At
Secret Headquarters
Friday February 1st, 2008