Lynda Barry Is a Total Sweetheart

Robert Boyd

Cartoon genius Lynda Barry sells little pieces of original art on Etsy. And the prices she charges are incredible. Her artwork is worth way more than what she charges as far as I'm concerned. When I heard that she was selling her work so affordably, I instantly checked out her Etsy page and bought two pieces that looked absolutely charming.

Today I got this:


Yes, Lynda Barry gift-wrapped her art! I unwrapped it and found this:



Oh boy! Extras!

And this was in the envelope:




Actually the book, Satan Is Real by Charlie Louvin just happened to be on my bed when I took this picture. But everything else was in the envelope that Lynda Barry sent me. The two pictures of Marlys are photocopies. The two on the left are the ones I ordered, and the owl and the monkey are totally unexpected gifts.  Pretty darned wonderful, don't you think?

Well, the least I can do for the generous Ms. Barry--one of my favorite cartoonists since the early 80s and an American treasure--is to suggest to you all that you purchase her brilliant books and buy some of her wonderful art. (And check out Satan Is Real if you're a fan of old-timey country music.)

The Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival

I mentioned back in September that I was going to the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival. I went, had fun, took photos. I also got a lot of books and comics, and I'll be writing about them in the coming month. But this post will be about the experience--and I'm writing it mostly as an excuse to inflict my terrible photos on you all. (If you want to see much better photos of the event, read this.) Now Pan readers who come here for the art coverage might find their eyes glazing over. But this festival is relevant to art lovers--it was put on and attended by a bunch of people who view comics as art, and among them are many who cross-over to the gallery world, whether in their own practice or just as people interested in art. I still think there is a distance between these two worlds that doesn't need to be there, but the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival certainly represents to largest overlap of comics and the fine arts world. (Many in the comics world would cringe at this. But I guess what I want, and what I think this show represents in a way, is a comics world that is engaged with serious culture as opposed to one that is only engaged with the kitsch of the world, which is what you would mostly find at the San Diego ComicCon, for example.)


Gary Panter, Matt Groening, Bill Griffith and a bunch of other people

The people who were there were amazing--guests, exhibitors, and attendees. This is a young person's show, but the organizers made certain that a lot of people of my generation and of older generations were present. The show was put together (I think) by Dan Nadel of Picture Box, Gabe Fowler from Desert Island, and comics scholar Bill Kartalopoulos. Nadel is one of many people involved in comics who has been working on creating a new history of comics. By this, I mean trying to imagine a different canon. He has work in this regard in his two books Art Out of Time and Art In Time and to a certain extent in what he publishes in Picture Box. This kind of project is appealing to me. People are always reclaiming history (aesthetic or otherwise) to understand the present. See for example art critic Rapheal Rubenstein's The Silo.

Why this is relevant is that this show featured older guests--an attempt, maybe, to school the young hipster guests. Hence guests like Mark Alan Stamaty, who is not someone who is well-remembered in comics despite the fact that he produced a number of brilliant books over the years, especially the great MacDoodle Street.



Mark Alan Stamaty

He shared a panel with Jordan Crane, Brian Chippendale and Keith Jones, mostly on the subject of horror vacuii. 



Mark Alan Stamaty, Jordan Crane, Keith Jones and Brian Chippendale

The panels were quite nice. Lynda Barry and Charles Burns were great--Barry is hilarious in person. While Sammy Harkham (editor and publisher of Kramer's Ergot) and Francoise Mouly (co-editor of Raw and current art editor of The New Yorker) tended to ramble, they were entertaining.



Sammy Harkham and Francoise Mouly



Kim Deitch

So this revised history puts underground cartoonists like Kim Deitch in a pantheon.



Charles Burns and adoring fans

And creates a situation where a cartoonist like Charles Burns gets mobbed.


For me, it was great to see old friends like Jordan Crane...

 
Jon Lewis and Sam Henderson...


Doug Allen...



Jessica Abel and Matt Madden...


And Jason Little...



Little was debuting his new book, The Motel Art Improvement Service. I'll definitely be reviewing it later, but one thing that is really interesting about this book and the preceding volume, Shutterbug Follies, is Little's familiarity with contemporary fine art. Here he was dressed, as he always does for conventions, in an extravagant outfit. He used to include a straw boater or top hat with costumes, but he told me that when he would wear a top hat, he would end up getting bothered by steampunk fans, thinking that they had found one of their own. (Fiction fans may be interested to know that Little is married to novelist Myla Goldberg. The main character in his graphic novels is named Bee, which can't be a coincidence, can it?)

The space was packed with humanity. Despite temperatures outside in the 30s, it got really toasty in the church hall where the festival was held. Little asked me to spot his table so he could go to the restroom and shed his longjohns. This is what his table looked like from the driver's seat perspective.





Pat Ausilio

I think this is Pat Ausilio, who did a comic called Abstracted Comics. I liked this because despite the fact that it was 80-something degrees in the building, he kept his toque on. That is hipsterism above and beyond the call of duty.



Johnny Ryan

This is Johnny Ryan, the lowbrow cartoonist embraced by highbrow comics lovers.



Bob Sikoryak

This guy was so hardcore that he worked on a comic while attending a panel. Tight deadline, I guess. Update: This is apparently Bob Sikoryak.


Chris Pitzer and Josh Cotter

This is Chris Pitzer (proprietor of AdHouse) and one of the artists he publishes, the excellent cartoonist Josh Cotter.


Ben Catmull

Ben Catmull had a space right next to Jason Little's.



Gabrielle Bell and Tomasz Kaczynski

This is Gabrielle Bell and (I think) Tomasz Kaczinski. Bell was selling her original art, which is literally the smallest original art I have ever seen except maybe for Drew Friedman. In addition to selling individual pages, she was also selling individual panels. As I understood it, these were panels she completed but decided not to use. I bought one of those-- 2.75" square.

One final photo. I stayed in a hotel two blocks from the festival. And just around the corner was Desert Island, which I have to say is my ideal comic shop.



It is filled 100% with art comics and pretty much nothing else.

A Curated Comics Show: The Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival

This December, I will be attending The Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival, which is kind of a big deal for me because I haven't been to a comics convention outside of Houston for many years. This has partly been a result of no professional need to go (I no longer work in the comics business), no particular desire to go, and not enough money. But lately I've been getting the ache to check one out. I almost went to TCAF and SPX, but in both cases, they both conflicted with things I wanted to do here (the Art Car Parade and the Fringe Festival). But this time I bit the bullet and bought a plane ticket for a long weekend in NYC. I'll spend one day hitting galleries and museums, and the next day at the festival.

I don't know much about the festival, except that this is its second year and that it got a very good reaction after the first year. But its biggest distinguishing feature is that it is a "curated" show. I'm not sure exactly what this means--I've been told details will be published on their site. But if I am correctly inferring the situation from the comments in this article, it sounds as if the organizers decided who they wanted to have exhibit and invited only those people. This is exactly how a curator might curate a group exhibit in an art museum. But here, we are not talking about exhibiting art (although I believe that will be part of the festival), but setting up tables to sell stuff--comics, original art, etc. In short, this is a dealers room-style show where the dealers have been selected by the organizers. (The "dealers" in this case will be artists and alternative comics publishers.)

A curated festival is highly unusual in the world of comics. It caused a degree of argument and upset among the commenters in the article by the Beat.  But I think this was mainly because folks aren't used to this approach in the realm of comics festivals. In other kinds of art festivals (and in pretty much all group art exhibits), this is a common practice. For example, the Bayou City Art Festival is juried, even though it is a completely commercial event. Exhibitors are judged on the quality of the work they have for sale and on the quality of their booth design. But comics festivals--even ones that are deliberately alternative--are governed by a powerful sense of tradition and inertia.

The difference between the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival and the Bayou City Art Festival is that in the latter festival, potential exhibitors submitted a proposal, and the final selection was chosen from among the proposals. The BCGF apparently dispensed with the first step and solicited exhibitors they wanted. The upside to doing it this way is that you remove one difficult, time-consuming step from the process. The downside, however, is that you may miss out on a great new talent whose work you were hitherto unaware of.

But that is not a fatal flaw. In fact, I would say that every possible selection criterion for a festival of this sort is inherently flawed in some way. The traditional "first come first served" approach for comics conventions favors people who are already familiar with the comics world, who are, in a sense, insiders. It also doesn't guarantee the highest quality exhibitors, nor exhibitors who will be just right for the market the organizers are trying to reach. The BCGF curated show method also allows the organizers to reach out to potential exhibitors who might not ordinarily consider exhibiting at a show like this. It allows them to narrowly focus the festival for a specific kind of comics fan. I think this a completely reasonable, grown-up way to go.

As I find out more about the show, I will report it. And, of course, I will blog about the show itself when I go. In any case, it looks like it will be lovely. The guests include artists like Lynda Barry, Gabrielle Bell, Charles Burns, Jordan Crane, Renee French, Mark Alan Stamaty and Adrian Tomine and many more.

There Is a Documentary Being Made About the Center for Cartoon Studies

There us a documentary being made about the Center for Cartoon Studies. Click the thing above to see the trailer. They are trying to raise money to finish it. You can read more about it here.

I didn't recognize everyone in the trailer, but recognized Art Spiegelman, Charles Burns, Jason Lutes, Lynda Barry, James Sturm and James Kochalka. I wonder if they all teach there?