Show at Franklin Art Works

Happy New Year! Some drawings and prints of mine are going to be part of a show at Franklin Art Works in Minneapolis next month. There'll be my Blood Meridian drawings...

...and there'll also be my Pink Meteor prints from John Mejias' second silkscreen issue of Paping. It's a three-print series about an alien invasion that uses transparent overlays to reveal and advance the story (I did the drawings, and John did the printing):

My show will be in the side gallery, but the real show will be in the main room, where Shawn Cheng will have a batch of big, beautiful paintings that will break your brain. I mean, just look at these things, ye gods:

The opening's on Friday, February 17th--hope we'll see you there then, if you're in Minneapolis.

Today is the day an event is going to occur

I'm going to be at the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Fest in Williamsburg this weekend! In fact, today! In about three hours! I'll be at the Partyka table, #19, right next to Sparkplug Books. Look out as well for the excellent Sally Bloodbath, who'll be at table #31 with Kate Beaton.

Also, Shawn Cheng and I drew a two-page story for the new issue of Smoke Signal. It's called "Man vs. Ants." Here's a bit of it:

...and now I am going to try to make enough breakfast to sustain me and Sally until 9pm. Come say hi to us at Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Church, 275, N. 8th st. Sandwiches appreciated.

Blood Meridian drawings at Locust Projects

If you're in Miami, five drawings I made in response to passages from Blood Meridian are on display at Locust Projects in Miami, as part of "How to Read a Book," a group show curated by Michael Wilson.
They'll be there until June 19. Drop by if you're in the neighborhood!

SPX: and otherwise: several things are happening at once

This upcoming weekend is packed full of events, do you hear me? Packed! Some events are nested within others like Russian stacking dolls, while others are up in a different corner like a Malevich painting or zooming in from out of nowhere like a mummy on a skateboard. Events!

(poster by Laura Park, who kills at making posters)

First: Shawn Cheng, John Mejias and I are going to be exhibiting at SPX in Bethesda, MD this weekend. It's the last of the Big Several alternative comics conventions that take place on the East Coast every year, and I am all sorts of excited to be there. We'll be at Table D15, right next to the good people at AdHouse Books and just on the edge of the Vortex of Swellness that is Dustin Harbin and Scott Campbell's table at D1. I'll have a new dollar book collecting the "Head to Head" drawings I've been making for the Partyka site, and I should also have some prints for sale.

While at SPX, you may want to attend these panels, featuring or moderated by my excellent pals:

• The New Action, moderated by friend and collaborator Sean T. Collins and featuring Shawn Cheng, as well as Frank Santoro, Brian Ralph, Benjamin Marra and Kaz Strzepek. It's about action, spectacle and genre in today's art-comics world, and man, just look at that lineup. This panel is a man in sunglasses walking in slow-motion with an explosion behind him.
• Mr. Collins is also going to be on a critics' roundtable with quite a few of the other worthwhile-to-read comics writers out there. They'll be talking about both comics criticism and notable recent books.
• Also of note: Sally Bloodbath, who as co-editor of Always Comix has published some things of mine and Shawn's, will be on a panel about comics and community: friends, drawing nights, conventions and general getting-your-stuff-out-there. Dylan Williams of Sparkplug moderates. Also features the omni-presence that is Frank Santoro, and Robyn Chapman and Benn Ray.
  

...If you're not in Maryland that weekend, but are instead in New York, Partyka's friend and frequent guest Danica Novgorodoff is having a book release party at Rocketship in Brooklyn for her second book, an adaptation of the Benjamin Percy story "Refresh, Refresh." Featuring the holy trinity of books, drinks and a store.







Also up in NYC: Team Macho, a collective of dudes from Toronto with whom we had a fine time at TCAF '05 (they had a 27-toed cat living in their studio, therefore Automatic Fun Time), have a show at Giant Robot.

...Hope to see you at SPX! I think I might actually be done with everything this year and not have to spend the show stapling things behind the table. Probably I will come off as a better, livelier person, but who knows how these things work?

We sat at a table for a while

...So the Brooklyn Zinefest was a good thing. Thanks to everyone who came by to say hi to and buy stuff from John and me, and to the organizers, and to Six Point Crafts Ales for being a sponsor and selling cups of themselves at the front of the room, which helped a slow section of Saturday afternoon pass more quickly. Hurray!
...uh, oh, yeah, also DUB pies, another sponsor, are awesome. I used to get them all the time for lunch when I worked here and DUB was right around the corner. I regret I am unable to report on the crisp, refreshing taste of Minuteman Press or the compact meaty goodness of the Brooklyn Creative League.

(picture from BK Lyceum's flickr stream)

Paping and Partyka at NYC Zine Fest

This next weekend, John Mejias and I are gonna be exhibiting at the NYC Zine Fest. John spent weeks making the new issue of Paping, an all-prints extravaganza that will smack your gob eight ways from Sunday. I ran some of my comics through the copy machine again. We are like Goofus and Gallant, if they appeared in some magazine for people in their thirties instead of Highlights.

The Zine Fest runs from 12 noon to 7 pm on Saturday the 27th and Sunday the 28th at the Brooklyn Lyceum, just off the Union Street R stop. Come say hi! We're your pals.

Guest Panel

Now up at Partyka: Guest Panel....this was drawn at a ramen restaurant in the East Village as a guest panel for Jesse Reklaw's diary strip. You can see the whole thing by clicking on this sentence.

I am the hundredth person to note that MoCCA was hot.

Thanks to Jesse for asking me to be a guest artist, to John, Sean, Shawn, Adrienne and Roger for company behind the table, and to everybody who stopped by to say hi or to say nice things or to give me a carrot cupcake. You're all too kind.

Thanks, Interactive Maps!

Happy Philadelphia Beer Week!

Here is a map of places to get beer:
http://phillybeerweek.org/map_philly.cfm

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Happy Philadelphia Cherry Blossom Festival!

After you get beer, here is a map of trees you can pee on:
http://jasgp.org/cherryblossomfestival/index.php/About-Cherry-Trees/Cherry-Tree-Planting-Sites.html

Knife Salesman/I Went To A Puppet Show

New daily drawings up at Partyka, including today's, Knife Salesman.


In other news, I went up to Brooklyn two weeks ago for the Paping Puppet Show at Desert Island. John hauled the pieces of his puppet theater down from the Bronx in a mind-bendingly small sedan, and then Sean, Adrienne and I helped assemble the thing.

Here are John and Sean talking about how to make the thing stand up. Adrienne's hand is visible at left.

Here is John performing the actual labor required to make a puppet theater stand up. By the way, when I say I "helped," I actually mean "Gabe let me eat a burrito in his store." Thanks, Gabe!

(this image taken from blockmagazine.com)

Following is a picture of the theater as assembled. Most of the action takes place against the backdrop at the very top, with title cards and some supplemental puppeting happening in those recessed square bits on the front face. It's three acts performed to prerecorded narration, music and effects; it's all sorts of charming.


Here's the population of the shop after the show ended. You can see they've been charmed.


Sean and Shawn talking to Peter, the source for the story behind the show's second act:


In the proud Partyka tradition of fucking-around-ery, here's me taking a picture of a mugging Mr. Cheng while Mr. McCarthy tries to cram all the puppet show bits back into John's car.


After the show ended, we ate at the renovated Kellogg's Diner, which wasn't half bad. We also got into a digital camera duel with Roger, who was sitting a few booths down. This is a picture of him taking a picture of us:


Good times. Then I got onto a bus for two hours.

John Mejias is an indie heartthrob

Your friend and mine, John Mejias, has an interview up with Bookslut about Paping #16: The Teacher's Edition.

Also, John and very special guests will be performing Paping Pop-up-Theater at Desert Island in Brooklyn on Sunday, Jan. 25th at 4 p.m. You want to go to there.

They Fought A Running Engagement/Midnight In The Empire

I'm in an art show at Fredericks Freiser Gallery in NYC that's opening this weekend. It has a guy's head blowing up in it:
The gallery's got two rooms: in the front will be "Midnight in the Empire," Zak Smith's solo show. Then, in the back, there'll be a show of collaborative drawing projects, which I'm in, and where you'll be able to see that guy's head explode in all its 11"x14" glory. Anyway, here's some text and images from Partyka explaining it:

" Come see what Zak Smith has been up to in the City of Angels – his solo show Midnight in the Empire opens October 10. As a bonus, two ongoing collaborative projects will be unveiled:

On the Road of Knives...
The "battle blog" wherein Zak Smith, Shawn Cheng, and Nicholas Di Genova take turns drawing monsters fighting each other.

Six Versions of Blood Meridian
The heretofore "secret project" taking the one-picture-for-each-page treatment to Cormac McCarthy's violent masterpiece. Features Zak Smith, Sean McCarthy, John Mejias, Craig Taylor, Shawn Cheng, and Matt Wiegle.

Opening Reception
Friday, October 10, 6–8pm
See you there!"

SPX 07

I'm going to be at SPX this next weekend, October 12th and 13th. I'll be sharing table G6 with Shawn Cheng, Sara Edward-Corbett and (hopefully, if he and his wife and child can make it) John Mejias of Paping.

Here's how to find us: if you are facing Drawn and Quarterly's booth, your butt will be facing the people who are next to us.

One of my minicomics was nominated for an Ignatz award. This is what it looks like:
One of Shawn and Sara's books is up for the same Ignatz. It looks like this:

In summary, things that are grey and have animals on them are up for awards. Please drop by and look at them.

Also: Shawn and I have short stories in the FLUKE 2007 anthology. This should be available from the Weing/Davis/Weiser/Yoder compound at table D10-12A. They're nice, you'll like them.