FRIENDS OF THE NIB COMICS JAM WITH SPECIAL GUEST KIM DEITCH AT FANTAGRAPHICS BOOKSTORE & GALLERY ON SATURDAY, MARCH 8.

The public is invited to join a stellar group of accomplished cartoonists in the "Friends of the Nib Comics Jam" at Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery on Saturday, March 8 from 6:00 to 9:00 PM. Celebrated cartoonist and visual artist Jim Woodring will preside over the activities, which will include a guest appearance by New York underground comix legend Kim Deitch. Aspiring cartoonists of all ages are encouraged to participate in this lively session, which will include a rare screening of Deitch's 1960 short film "Dial M for Monster."

Friends of the Nib is an informal cartoonist's salon formed by Woodring that meets weekly at Café Racer in Seattle’s Ravenna neighborhood. Acclaimed artists such as Ellen Forney, David Lasky and animator Bruce Bickford regularly attend to mentor emerging cartoonists and network with their peers. The “Comics Jam” on March 8 will feature more than a dozen artists cartooning on-site while offering casual encouragement to public participants.

Kim Deitch is among America’s most prominent and influential alternative cartoonists. The (astonishingly sophisticated) animated and live-action film short "Dial M for Monster" he created as a teenager with his friend Tony Eastman has become legendary among Deitch fans; it was never released, and has only been shown a handful of times in small venues as part of Deitch's multimedia presentations; see below for a two-page comic strip by Deitch about the film. Prior to the 7:30 screening, he will introduce the film with a brief media presentation.

Deitch's work has been featured in Art Spiegelman's RAW and R. Crumb'sWeirdo anthologies. In a recent review of Deitch's Shadowland graphic novel, New York Times book critic John Hodgman observed, "Few underground cartoonists deserve that subterranean title so fully as Kim Deitch. He was there at the beginning of the movement, drawing for The East Village Other in 1967, and his work retains much of that psychedelic, R. Crumb-like earthiness." In addition to Shadowland, Fantagraphics Books has collected Deitch's work in Beyond the Pale and published comic book series including The Stuff of Dreams, Mishkin File, and Waldo World.

Admission is free to the public of all ages.

Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery is located at 1201 S. Vale St. in Seattle's Georgetown industrial arts district. Open daily 11:30 to 8:00 PM, Sundays until 5:00 PM. Phone 206.658.0110.

The "Comics Jam" coincides with the monthly "Georgetown Second Saturday Art Attack." Over twenty-five galleries, studios, nightclubs, boutiques, and cafes participate in this lively showcase of Georgetown’s creative diversity.

LISTING INFORMATION

"Friends of the Nib" Comics Jam with special guest Kim Deitch
Saturday, March 8, 6:00 – 9:00 PM*
("Dial M for Monster" film screening at 7:30 PM)

Free admission

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

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

*It's the inaugural Georgetown Second Saturday Art Attack!
Festive openings, performances and related events throughout the neighborhood

Portlanders (Oregon, not Maine), take note:

Our very own Nico Vassilakis (warehouse manager extraordinaire) has written a book, and he's having a party to prove it! Won't you join us?

WHEN: Feb. 23rd, 7:30pm

WHERE: McLeod Residence
2209 2nd Avenue
Seattle, Washington 98121

WHAT: TEXT LOSES TIME
By Nico Vassilakis
Published by ManyPenny Press

John Olson on TEXT LOSES TIME:

Implicit in the title of this collection is a ceremony of disintegration: shattering, fragmentation. A shedding of time. A shaking loose of the bonds of linearity and sequence. An immediacy of contact with the tools of construction so lucid and unsullied by the seductions of the future and the burdens of the past that the writing becomes a continuous doing and undoing, a joyful participation in the creation of a strange new alphabet of illimitable occurrence, a fetus of meaning in a placenta of ink.

The presentation is twofold: writing as writing (sentences, laminations, thought, “an undulant mind on soft display“), and concrete poetry -- letters arranged in eccentric patterns of visual energy. The writing is playful, probing, and provocative; sentences in paratactic leapfrog with their teasing proposals: “what restrains a superpower after guilt has lost its charm”; “as a windowsill is a place for elbows, so should a beach be a horizontal wonderment with the diesel fumes of military aggression”; “an unplugged brain is more dangerous than any taxpayer.” The emphasis with both strategies -- abstract and concrete, linguistic and visual -- is to advance an experience with language that becomes an ongoing textual genesis, Stein’s “continuous present.” It is also highly entertaining. Vassilakis is a funny guy, a postmodern Socrates with a quizzical cue stick.

This tendency toward showcasing the implements and machinery of language -- what Charles Bernstein calls “the desire for writing to be the end of its own activity, its very thatness” -- is most abundantly available in Vassilakis’s sections of concrete poetry. For instance, the configurations of letters displayed in the section titled “Rubber,” such as the entity on page 136 consisting of Os and Hs and Gs and Ss and Ts (which could spell the word ‘ghosts’ any number of times) (the letters are, in fact, rather pale) resembles some sort of wiggly-wobbly creature from the alphabet lagoon; Jean Tinguely’s Cyclops comes to mind, as do the Martians from War of the Worlds.

Wittgenstein wrote that “philosophical problems arise when language goes on holiday.” In Text Loses Time, language is on a holiday from time: sequence, servility, routine. We enter a hall of mirrors where words refer to one another. Where words bump one another like bumper cars, lean into the dark, return us to trance, the means by which we meander. Most importantly, it provides (I am drawing this quote from the Afterword by Nick Piombino)”, “an exit from the current pervasive cultural tendency to employ meaning and visual space according to needs and desire for personal advantage, corporate profit and social control… refuge in the microscopic details of immediate, unfiltered visual and internal perception…”

Buy TEXT LOSES TIME here.  

The headline is the sound of me drooling...

The Friends of the Nib present a Valentine-themed art show for an evening of canoodling, carousing and commerce at Seattle's Cafe Racer on Valentine's evening (hey, that's today) from 6 to 10 PM. Mr. Woodring provides the enticement and details.

It was a wild time down at our store on Saturday night at the opening party for Ellen Forney's LUST exhibit. Here's a brief clip of her slideshow presentation (NSFW language, or, as someone in the audience shouts, "Dirty!"):

Below, a few photos; for many more, see our photoset on Flickr. Our pal Ben Haley has some great shots on Flickr too.

Fun Funhouse poster by Fantagraphics friend Tim Silbaugh. Bellingham-based DT's features fabulous front babe Diana Blanchard (wife of cartoonist Jim). Tom Price Desert Classic includes Fantagraphics alum/guitar hero Price and Fantagraphics resident genius Martin Bland on drums. Both acts have destroyed our store at recent events. Be there or be sober. 

Seattlest interviews Ellen Forney on the eve of her big party at the Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery tomorrow! 

An enjoyable evening of weird short films, animation and banjo music with Dame Darcy at Show Cave this Saturday in Los Angeles. 1218 1/2 Temple St. 90026. See you there with bows on!