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Eder Castillo: Mecánica Nacional (vista exterior) Artistas/Videos: Jason Mena: Fault Line (línea de falla), Eder Castillo: Mecanica Nacional, Karmelo Bermejo: -X, Guillermo Vargas “Habacuc”: Persona sin educación formal caminando con zancos hechos de libros apilados, Nadia Granados “la Fulminante”: La Fulminante Detonando Montreal / Cabaret Callejero, Victor Hugo Rodriguez “Crack”: Planas, Andrea Mármol: Otros Paramos / Julia, Jorge Linares: Trafico Aéreo Las [...]

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Today is the 183rd birthday of Charles Dodgson, aka Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice in Wonderland.

This year is also the 150th anniversary of that children's classic. To celebrate this momentous occasion, many organizations are putting on special exhibits. Here are a few of the more notable ones you might like to add to your calendar.

February 12 to Spring 2015 (Poughkeepsie, NY)
Vassar College: The Age of Alice: Fairy Tales, Fantasy, and Nonsense in Victorian England.

June 26 to October 11 (New York, NY)
The Morgan Library & Museum: "Alice: 150 Years of Wonderland"

July 4 (Oxford, UK)
Alice's Day at Oxford

September 15 to November 15 (New York, NY)
Grolier Club: "Alice in a World of Wonderlands"

October 9 to October 11 (New York, NY)
Lewis Carroll Society of North America: "Alice in the Popular Culture"

October 14 to March 27 (Philadelphia, PA)
Rosenbach Museum & Library: Alice in Philly-land" and "The Dream of Wonderland: Alice at 150"

For additional exhibitions and performances, check out the events database here.

And in you'll like to read more about Lewis Carroll and his most famous creation, here's a link to my book on the topic: Alice's Wonderland: A Visual Journey through Lewis Carroll's Mad, Mad World.

And to make this day even more special, here is a link to a video podcast of my interview with Mr. Media about my book: What Did Alice Know and When?

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If Karen Green wasn’t a rock star comics librarian before last night’s opening gala, she is now!

So: the gist:
A few years ago, 2005 to be exact, the Ancient & Medieval History and Religion Librarian at Columbia University noticed a need for graphic novels to support the faculty and curriculum of the University. She began to systematically meet the needs of her patrons, while also selecting texts for the general collection.  (She says the collection started with 3 volumes.)

Then, in 2011, Chris Claremont donated his archives to the University.
This was followed by gifts from:

• Al Jaffee
• Wendy and Richard Pini’s Elfquest archive
• The Kitchen Sink Press archive

…among others.

But… Columbia has been in existence since 1754. What else might exist buried deep in the archives? In the rare books collection? Elsewhere in the University?

Well, quite a bit!

This exhibit collects an amazing assortment of items…  Lots of original art, rare books, correspondence… and ephemera as well.  (Yes, you not only see Wendy Pini’s Red Sonja costume, but her meticulous sketches and planning!)

Some highlights:

• correspondence from Stan Lee to Denis Kitchen
• a comics script from Jerry Robinson
• original editorial cartoons from the Pulitzer Prize committee
• the sketches and final art from the Al Jaffee fold-in Batman variant
• the original art from Wendy Pini’s appearance in Elfquest (wow… the screens!)
• Chris Claremont’s notebooks
• The first page of the script to “Days of Future Past” (which includes some backstory I never considered before…)
• an entire display of “proto comics”, including Ward, Töpffer, and Busch
• William Moulton Marston’s contract for when he was a professor at Columbia
• comics produced by recent students and alumni (WOW)

The highlight for me?  An “underground” comic (featured on the exhibition poster) from 1766, libeling a Kings College professor.  The plot?  He gets a female student drunk on spruce beer (yes, pine tree beer!), gets her pregnant, then pays for her abortion!  The comic was confiscated, and used as evidence in the college’s disciplinary action against the students!  You can read the sordid tale here.  (SFW)

The exhibition opened Monday, with a reception last night.  Here are some photos taken from the cheap seats, with a bit of commentary:

Chris Claremont, Karen Green, and Sean Quimby chat before festivities begin.  Mr. Quimby,  is “fresh off the bus” from Syracuse University, having just been appointed Director of the Rare Book & Manuscript Library.  He gave his bona fides as a long-time comics fan, holding up a much-loved copy of the X-Men graphic album “God Loves, Man Kills”.  (Syracuse itself has a decent archive of comics artists!)

Chris Claremont gets the ball rolling, as each participant was given two slides and five minutes to speak.

Wendy and Richard Pini.

Andrea Tsurumi

Alexander Rothman, creator of poetry comics

Peter Kuper.

Gregory Benton.

Sophia Wiedeman

Forsyth Harmon.  This is a boxed set of comics titled “Broken Up”, produced while she was a student at the Leroy Nieman Center for Print Studies at Columbia.  As at other art schools, comics storytelling is cross-pollinating with art techniques at Columbia to produce new and interesting work!

Tom Motley.  With Al Jaffee in the audience, Motley teased a double fold-in.

Riaki Enyama.  Yes, that is her comic!  Using the Japanese Emakimono storytelling scroll tradition, she chronicled her experience as a foreign student at Columbia.

Paul Levitz.  The Jimmy Olsen of comics professionals!

…and, a teaser from Karen Green, of a forgotten cartoonist: Amram Scheinfeld.  What’s his story?  Visit the exhibition and find out more!

The event was recorded, and should be available online soon!

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I was invited to Una Volta, the comics festival at Bastia, Corsica, to run a cardboard robot workshop and meet French comic artists. It was great! I met some lovely, brilliant people. Check the link to see who they were - I'll just forget someone if I list them here. They were all great. The work was amazing. I felt honoured to be there, and I laughed my head off because everyone was hilarious. I especially enjoyed making use of some echoing dungeons under the Citadel where the exhibition was held, singing quite dreadfully in harmony.

I was very proud to see my drawings from "Cheese Belongs to You" and "Sleepwalkers" framed up, I've never exhibited pencil drawings before.

The Robot Workshop was a big success, despite my terrible Franglais. I had very good assistants.






I doodled a lot to distract myself from all the socialising. Socialising at Festivals is hard. These are doodles on demand, just people telling me what to draw so they can laugh at how fast it happens.



 We went to the beach looking for treasure.


There was a panel talk. It was brief, so I didn't bring up the one thing that bothered me: how come that half the children in my workshop were girls, many of the organisers were women, there were girls and women all over the festival, taking part... but when I looked through the books on display, pretty much all of them were about men having adventures. Strange.

Otherwise, I absolutely loved the whole event. You wouldn't believe the amount of tasty food we were fed constantly. Look, there even was bacon at the panel talk.




 I came back early in the morning of my birthday and fell asleep in a nest of balloons. Yay!

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If you want to find out what THAT's all about - well, in other words, Madeleine Tucker's show Olympik Phever has been extended for a week at Son Of Loft, Lithuanian Club, North Melbourne (just around the corner from the North Melbourne Town Hall).

The show features sports of sorts, songs, videos, and yet another ridiculous costume, to which my pimping today carries a clue. To tell you any more would be a total spoiler. But I cannot get the accompanying song out of my head today, mainly because I've been singing it to my nieces while their mum and dad went along to chuckle.

Well done, team (Maddy, Danny, Rena, Sarah). Go you good things.

Tickets available here.  And yes, still a cosy venue.

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Marne Lucas “Aunque el sueño es un fenómeno muy extraño y un misterio inexplicable, mucho más inexplicable es el misterio y el aspecto de nuestras mentes confiere a ciertos objetos y aspectos de la vida.” Giorgio de Chirico “Las imágenes y las formas no son sino objetos secundarios y agradan o disgustar sólo en la memoria.” Francis Bacon Solemos hacernos cuestionamientos existencialistas como, ¿quienes somos?, ¿porqué somos? y ¿para qué somos? Podemos asumir que estas preguntas están fundamentadas en la falta de información en cuanto al origen de la humanidad y sobre lo que sucede cuando morimos. Ahora bien, mientras vivimos, intentamos de diversas manera encontrar el por qué a todo esto y a mucho más. Está en nuestra naturaleza e impregnado en las necesidades de vivir, el “tener”. [...]

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Maja Ruznic This past August 9th as part of its monthly activities Trailer Park Proyects opened two new individual exhibitions: “Conglomeraciones Cínicas” by Ivan Girona and “Messengers” by Maja Ruznic. Both exhibitions were presented in individual trailers so as to provide each artist an individual and separate space.[...]

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Hey there, hoopla, daughter's circus is in town again. It's that fringey time of year...

I have enjoyed all of Maddy's posters so far, but I really love the retro look of this one, designed by Rena Littleson.

Facebook has the details.

Fringe has the tickets.

Be there quickly, as the venue is cosy 

Olympik Phever is performed by Madeleine Tucker, and was developed by Madeleine Tucker and Danny Cisco: 

It's the middle of the Olympics and bespangled entertainer Madeleine Tucker has been given her big chance to shine, filling in as the presenter for a late night Olympics TV special. With interviews, live ads and musical numbers, she’s set to cram in as much high-quality entertainment as she can!

Not one for sports fans, this colourfully kitsch extravaganza will pay surreal homage to the faded world of variety television, with catchy songs and segments galore!


TICKETS ARE ON SALE NOW now NOWW noooowww
 

If you can't make it to the show, you might like to take in some of Maddy's videos at her blog. (Look for Rodney The Goblin.) 

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Hey, did you know that Grayson Perry's tapestry exhibition is still running at London's Victoria Miro gallery?



You can catch it until 11 August! If you want to watch the television documentary about it In the Best Possible Taste, you've missed the first episode, but you can catch Episode 2 for one more day and Episode 3 for eight more days on the 4oD website.

Here's the guest book entry I left behind; I thought the show was okay...



Ha ha, no, it was brilliant. And since so many of the tapestries had mobile phones stitched into them, and lots of other people were taking photos, I felt it would be all right to release my inner tourist and go all happy snappy.



If you don't live in Britain, you might not have heard of Grayson Perry, but he's pretty much known by everyone here because of his fabulous frocks and bonnets, and his pink motorcycle with a shrine on the back for his teddy bear, Alan Measles. In his latest revealed project, he's been creating a series of six tapestries which explore the different class tastes of British people. For example, how do people in the working class decorate their houses? Decorate their skin? Why are souped-up cars so important? Here's the first tapestry, The Adoration of the Cage Fighters:



As you can tell from the tapestry's title and set-up, Grayson's drawing heavily on established religious imagery. And he's also using as a template William Hogarth's series, The Rake's Progress, but following the life of his own character, Tim Rakewell. (If you're ever in the John Soane Museum in London, be sure to look for these eight paintings, hidden in an ingenious secret cupboard.)




I love all the details of recognisable patterns and paintings and bits of furniture. Grayson has a way of drawing that looks part folk art, part indie comics (which I suppose are also folk art), and it's both very appealing and often amusingly grotesque.



Here are the magi cage fighters. Tattoos really get my British husband's back up. I get such a sense of glee pointing out interesting ones to him and admiring them, because I can see it almost kills him to talk about them as legitimate art forms, but he doesn't want to sound priggish either. Yeah, that's a class thing.



Here's the a detail of the second tapestry. It has so many talking points. That model plane reminds me of one my dad got my sister for her birthday. They went out flying it with her then-boyfriend, and after she broke up with the guy, my dad kept going on dates with him to fly that thing. My sister was so not amused by this. I think the plane's still in my parents' garage.

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Nayda Collazo-Llorens, REVERB, Installation View. Medios y Ambientes includes the work of eight artists who use and expand notions of space to challenge the preconceived limits of objects and artistic mediums. Working in diverse techniques and media such as painting, photography, mixed media sculpture, video, architecture and installation, the work proposes the spectator relationship as a central theme by creating diverse environments of total immersion.[...]

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Rafael Miranda, participative action. “The future is there," Cayce hears herself say, "looking back at us. Trying to make sense of the fiction we will have become. And from where they are, the past behind us will look nothing at all like the past we imagine behind us now.” William Gibson, Pattern Recognition If we are today merely fiction, then, the narrative of life begins to unfold in the interstices of time, space and distance. Science fiction, or perhaps we should consider it just fiction, attempts to collapse the temporal space between the present and the future. [...]

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Installation view Duplicitous Storytellers is an exhibition whose point of departure posits rewriting as a conceptual strategy. A repositioning of the notion of the author— the product long-standing research on the construction of genre and figures, as well as historical and artistic movements—resounds in a dialogue among exhibition pieces.[...]

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Today was the closing party for MONSTERVILLE! This morning I tried to figure out which outfit would best suit my Monster cake shop, and decided this one would do nicely, it looks like a whole tub-full of sweets piled up on top of my head. (I got it at the Vintage Fair in Birmingham's Custard Factory from Julia Gandy at hOle button jewellery.) Dylan Owen on Twitter said it looked like my brains are exploding out of my head, which pretty much sums up Monsterville; it was a mind-blowing project to work on.



So I trotted back to the Discover Children's Story Centre in Stratford, northeast London, for one last fearsome hurrah.



There were three of us illustrators who worked with the Discover team to make it happen: Neal Layton, Ed Vere and me. Neal's wife just had a baby, so he couldn't come, but Ed and I had another wild Monster Draw-off. It was SO much fun!



We drew loads of 3-minute monsters, including 'Cutest Monster in Pyjamas' and 'Silliest Monster in a Car'. I didn't get photos of many of them, but here's Ed's 'Monsters in Love' and my 'Most Disgusting Monster'.




Ed gets very competitive. Here we are, sabotaging each other's paper.



It was a great party! Here are some lovely outfits from the day, including a fab-looking member of staff (Discover, can you remind me of her name?) and our excellent DJ, Laura Holden.



I couldn't get a non-blurry photo of the 1950's themed disco, but you get the general idea...



Ed and I had a wander through our creation with Director Sally Goldsworthy, quite sad to see it all come down, but thrilled we could be a part of it.



Considering the monster village had to be rebuilt almost every day, with the kids going nuts in it, it's amazing how well it held together. But when we looked closely, we could see a bit of wear and tear. Here's the window display in the Lolliplops cafe; apparently someone has chewed off the eyeballs on top of the cake.



And Ed's most excellent miniature cinema. He might get to keep that.



The party was part of a week's festivities for The Big Write, so there was lots more fun stuff going on today, including a Giraffes Can't Dance presentation by illustrator Guy Parker-Rees.



Chris Haughton also had an event (you might remember I went to his textiles launch not long ago). Both Ed and I are fans of his work, an

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