Looking back, looking forward

Brain Frame 5 blew my mind in March, particularly Sara Drake's performance The Romance of the Tiger Lady. Kelly Parsell's review on Make-Space says it all better than I could. Well said, Kelly! Prior engagements kept me from Brain Frame 6, but I'll be at 7 even if I have to drag myself on my knees.

My first two-color linocut workshop was a dream. Look at that awesome registration! Way to go, ladies!

Evanston Print & Paper's Eat Your Words Edible Books competition was a pun-filled delight! My contribution: Les Miserapples.

SPACE, the Small Press and Comics Expo, in Columbus Ohio! I debuted a new mini-comic, Mare Cognitum, and offered digital prints of illustrations from In the Sounds and Seas for the first time. It was an awesome show full of genuinely talented and friendly people. Would that this group of folks could get together more than just once a year. Since that isn't the case, I'll have to settle for returning next year. 

STILL UP AT THE CHICAGO PRINTMAKERS COLLABORATIVE: the annual $20 print show! You want high quality, affordable prints? Stop by before June 16th! 

Photo c/o this excellent review in TCJ. NATO hype had me paranoid at home during the awe-inspiring Comics: Philosophy and Practice conference at the University of Chicago, but I watched it eager-eared while taking notes at home--so grateful they offered a live stream! The whole event was great, but the panel shown above was gobsmackingly inspiring. Lynda Barry is right: everyone loves a fucking monkey.

* * * * 

COMING SOON:

This is the big one, y'all! Be sure to visit me on June 16 & 17--10 days away!--at CAKE, at 1104 S Wabash on the 8th floor. No new work to debut (darn!) but I'll be there, trying not to geek out with paralyzed excitement by the talented people in the same room. Seriously, check out the panel list and the other exhibitors. How I snuck through the gate on this one is beyond me. 

ALSO, keep your eyes peeled here for information on a new 2 Color Linocut workshop that I'll be offering soon this summer, date (likely in July) TBD. 

Thanks, Xeric Foundation!

 I'm so excited I can barely bring myself to write about this! "In the Sounds and Seas" was selected to join the final group of self-published comic projects to win the 2012 Xeric Foundation Grant. 

Applying to this grant was a huge Hail Mary pass. I had planned to apply for the Xeric in a few grant cycles, once the full project was complete, to propose to print a single, unified, fancy book edition of the story that contains the tale from beginning to end. A friend casually mentioned in January that the Xeric is shifting its focus away from support to individual artists and towards larger charitable organizations, and the final deadline was fast approaching (at the end of February, when I was deep in the heart of crazy illustration). I decided to throw a long pass and try, assuming that a) a lot of other people would submit fractured projects since it's the last grant, and b) judging by the intimidatingly high quality of previous winners' projects, mine would be passed over, or at best appreciated by one of the judges who might send me a personal, supportive rejection letter. It will be a good exercise in grant writing, I told myself. 

But no! ISS got a grant! This means that Volumes 1 & 2, in their current incarnations with hand-printed covers, will be joined into one larger edition for high-volume printing (fewer precious hand-made pieces, so cheaper ticket price!) and significantly broader (/national) distribution, assuming everything goes to plan. This is huge! It also shifts the planned production for the remaining books, but that is a problem to worry about another day. For now, since I've finished doing tiny dances of celebration, and after next weekend's comic expo here in Chicago (more on that soon!), I'll work in illustrating a new cover and working with Salsedo Press on a new mega-edition.

High fives all around!

New mini-comic in progress

Vacation? What vacation? The philosophy here at Monkey-Rope Press is one of upbeat tirelessness! That is to say, I tried taking a few days off after the "Sounds and Seas" marathon and then again after the 3 custom projects and it just felt weird, so back to work for me. I'm scheduled to start In the Sounds and Seas: Volume III after the Chicago Alternative Press Expo in mid June, and until then I'm using the time to try my hand at new smaller projects.

Above are the first two rough scans of pages for a mini-comic set to debut at SPACE (Columbus Ohio's Small Press and Alternative Comics Expo) in two weeks. The book is about Ranger 7, an unmanned rocket that was the first to take close-up pictures of the moon. It was a kamakaze flight: the reason they were so close up is because it was an impact mission. I've been wanting to do a project about space for a while, and I think the allure is similar to the draw of the ocean/nautical narratives I've been working on recently: extreme isolation, extreme feats of technology and craftsmanship and fragility, at an almost inconceivable scale where all of those feats of technology and craftsmanship are ultimately insignificant. I love that Ranger 7 is such a sophisticated, ambitious and world-changing piece of technology that is designed to crash.

While I'm working on this, I'm also collaborating with friend and poet Jessey Nickells on an illustrated chapbook for her poem Things that are Like Baptism. I'm still working out the structure of that book project, but am looking forward to pushing myself with color in my illustrations.

Back to work!