For the past week, our own Ron Regé, Jr. has brought his unique psychomagic to SAW, the Sequential Artists Workshop, in Gainesville, Florida. Sadly, the Cartoon Utopia Camp 2013 must come to an end, but before it does, you can spend one last weekend basking in the glow of Ron's artistic vision!
Stop by SAW tonight, Friday, March 8th, for a final reception of the comics created this past week in his workshop! From 7:00 to 10:00 PM, you can view the original artwork, and get yourself a copy of the anthology zine. SAW is located at 18 SE 5th Avenue.
And then tomorrow night, Saturday, March 9th, join Ron for an exhibit of his original drawings at the F.L.A. Gallery [ 10 Main Street, Gainesville ]. The opening reception runs from 7:00 to 10:00 PM, and the art show will be on display through April 21st, 2013!
So, come bid Ron a fond farewell with a weekend's worth of fun in Florida!
Two-Gun Zilch is coming... to the Society of Illustrators in New York City for the exhibit The Art of Harvey Kurtzman, a comprehensive retrospective of MAD creator Harvey Kurtzman, opening this Friday, March 8th!
Co-curators Monte Beauchamp and Denis Kitchen have assembled the most comprehensive assemblage of Kurtzman art to date, culled from private and family collections. Highlights include: Kurtzman life drawings from 1941; rarely-seen late ’40s strips done for the New York Herald-Tribune and well as for Marvel’s Stan Lee; key covers, strips and full stories Kurtzman created for MAD, Frontline Combat, Two-Fisted Tales, Humbug and Help!, sometimes in collaboration with fellow comics geniuses Will Elder and Jack Davis. In addition, “Kurtzmania,” numerous rare artifacts and publications never seen by the public, will be on display.
The exhibit runs through Saturday, May 11th in the museum’s two-floor gallery in New York City’s Upper East Side. The Society of Illustrators is located at 128 East 63rd Street.
The half-day of school in Online Commentaries & Diversions:
• Review: Nick Gazin of VICE reads God and Science by Jaime Hernandez. "I think it's cool that Jaime will make a comic with no sci-fi or fantasy elements for decades and suddenly remind us that the world his comic is set in is capable of housing superheroes. I own all of Jaime's stuff."
• Plug: Bob Temuka tries to make you break down into tears at your desk but DAMMIT you didn't let him, didja? Tearoom of Despair lives up to its name by remembering the 'Death of Speedy' story available in The Girl From H.O.P.P.E.R.S. by Jaime Hernandez.
• Plug: Speaking of Jaime, that man is a special guest at new comic show Autoptic August 18th, 2013 in Minneapolis, MN.
• Plug: Opening March 8th is a must-see show of Harvey Kurtzman artwork at the Society of Illustrators in New York. The preview is on Boing Boing and Mark Frauenfelder included the cover page from the story Corpse on the Imjin! (as the title of our current Kurtzman EC collection). "Kurtzman's thoughtful, more realistic and human depictions of war were in stark contrast with the competing gung-ho war comics of the day that glorified war."
We're thrilled to announce a free performance by Lauren Ashley Eriksson at the opening reception and book signing for Geneviève Castrèe's Susceptible exhibition on Saturday, March 9 at Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery.
Eriksson is best known for her band Lake. The group composed the music that plays at the end of each episode of the popular Adventure Time show on Cartoon Network. She'll be performing songs from her forthcoming K Records release Colours. Don't miss this!
Congratulations to Ed Piskor for being awarded the second annual Columbus Museum of Art and Thurber House residency! Piskor follows last year's winner and Fantagraphics creator, Paul Hornschemeier, to Ohio and has a panoply of events planned during his three-week residency. Ed will be staying at the historic home of author and New Yorker cartoonist, James Thurber, and hopefully taking more righteous photographs. Piskor's Hip Hop Family Tree book is currently serialized on BoingBoing before its print debut this fall.
Wednesday, March 20, 6:00-8:00 PM
Young Writers' Studio at the Thurber House led by Ed Piskor. Visit thurberhouse.org for more information
March 15 - June 2, 2013
Ed Piskor's Brain Rot: This exhibition features original artwork from Piskor's comics at CMA.
Wednesday, March 20 2013
Ed Piskor will meet with the high school interns enrolled in CMA's Art Lab program.
Sunday, March 24, 2:00 pm 2012
Artist's Talk and Interview: Ed Piskor speaks about his creative process with interviewer, comics writer, and blogger Jared Gardner, a professor of English and Film Studies at OSU. Free with museum admission.
The Last Vispo Anthology: Visual Poetry 1998-2008 features 148 contributors from 23 countries on five continents, and six of those contributors happen to be from Ohio: John M. Bennett, C. Mehrl Bennett, John Byrum, endwar, Bill Howe, Joel Lipman, and Reid Wood!
The Nelsonville Public Library recently launched an exhibition of 27 prints from Last Vispo! The exhibit was arranged locally by Athens visual poet endwar (Andrew Russ), who has been writing visual poetry since 1990 and publishing some via his IZEN imprint. The exhibit also includes seven large prints of minimalist visual poems originally created for exhibits at Neopolis Gallery in Cleveland from 2003-2005, some poetry in sculpture form created over the last five years, and a few other items.
The exhibit will be on display through Saturday, February 16th. The Nelsonville Public Library is located at 95 W Washington Street.
Here's some more wisdom for ya: Don't miss the art show The Pen-Ultimate Arnold Roth: 60 Years (and Counting) As a Freelance, currently on display at the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art in New York City!
Over 45 original Arnold Roth cartoons are hanging now, highlighting his work from publications such as Sports Illustrated, Esquire, The New Yorker, Playboy, Punch, Southampton Review and many more.
For Roth, every drawing represents an artistic challenge as well as a narrative one. “I try to give myself little problems,” he said. “Brubeck, years ago, was on a symposium and somebody asked him, ‘Would you describe what playing jazz is?’ And he said, ‘It’s getting yourself into and out of trouble.’ “I thought that was a good way to put it. If you’re not doing that, you’re really hacking it, doing the same thing over and over. I always want to push it a little.”
The Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art is now housed in the Society of Illustrators [ 128 East 63rd St in Manhattan ]. This free exhibit can be found on the second floor of the Society’s historic headquarters through March 2nd, 2013.
The great Gary Panter returns to the Fredericks & Freiser gallery in Chelsea for an exhibit of his paintings on Friday, January 25th!
As Gary tells us, "The gallery flooded and has had a lot of repairs and toil to get back in business. My work luckily was on a high shelf and so was not destroyed in the flood and so you can still see it rather than blobs of flotsam."
Support the arts and hurricane recovery, and take a trip to Chelsea for the opening reception from 6:00 to 8:00 PM. Fredericks & Freiser is located at 536 West 24th Street in NYC.
Seattle is once again the center of the alternative comix universe with shows opening all over town this weekend. On Friday, January 11 at Roq la Rue from 6:00 to 9:00 PM is the post-apocalyptic group show "I'll Love You Til The End Of The World" featuring Fantagraphics favorites Camille Rose Garcia and Scott Musgrove. The same evening you'll find "Friends" at Cairo, featuring Intruder artists Max Clotfelter, Darin Shuler, Aidan Fitzgerald, Tom Van Deusen, Marc J. Palm, David Lasky, Nikki Burch, Ben Horak, Jason T. Miles, Tim Miller, James Stranton, Kazimir Strzepek and Alexa Kristine Koenings. (The future of alternative comix now.)
The comix action moves to Georgetown on Saturday evening, with a show of "Paintoons" by John Ohannesian at the One Night Stand Gallery (located directly above Fantagraphics Bookstore.) John has been busy in recent months as a Fantagraphics freelancer faithfully restoring classic strips like Nancy, Buz Sawyer, and Popeye for your reading pleasure. It'll be interesting to see how this exercise informs his cartoon paintings. Across the street at LxWxH Gallery is Bette Burgoyne's "Forest," a 30-foot narrative scroll drawing. And, of course, don't miss the Problematic reception with Jim Woodring at our bookstore. Lots of great surprises await.
Ooh la la! The loveable duo of Fuzz and Pluck are making their French debut this month from our fine colleagues at Éditions Cornélius!
And to celebrate, an exhibition of original artwork is being launched at Librairie Les Super Héros in Paris! Join artist Ted Stearn on Friday, January 25th as he heads to the City of Light for the opening reception and book signing. Ted also reports that 20 original pages will be available for purchase!
Super Héros is located at 175 Rue Saint-Martin in Paris. The exhibit will be on display through Saturday, February 9th.
