I have no idea if the Munny 2 Show is going on tour like the first one, but I hope so. This year’s entries look absolutely insane! Uberbot has the entire show online with some really excellent photographs so you can feel like you were there, even if you weren’t. If you’re really looking to splurge, they’re also selling 20 of the customs through their store.
You can get some more info, and more photos of the Evel Speederbike at Vinyl Pulse.
If you live in NYC, or just plan to be in the area later this week, you might be interested in attending The Jewish Graphic Novel reception and program. Featuring Peter Kuper, Joe Kubert and others in what appears to be an audience/panel discussion group, it’s being held at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion Museum on April 26th. Could be a nice chance to meet and listen to some pretty prominent creators in a smaller setting than is normally possible.
This exhibit presents original drawings from six prominent Jewish graphic artists – the late Will Eisner, Miriam Katin, Joe Kubert, Peter Kuper, James Sturm, and J.T. Waldman, exploring the themes of anti-Semitism, Holocaust, belief, and survival.
Admission is apparently free with a photo ID. Full info here.
This past weekend, my friend Tammy had the opening for her one-woman art show up in Portland, Maine. I’ve always known that she’s a talented graphic designer with an amazing and distinctive eye for pop culture, and now that I’ve seen her gallery art stylings, I have one more thing to be jealous of. If you’re in the area, you should stop in and check the show out (March 3 through April 4th). If, like me, that’s just not doable, browse her online photo gallery of the opening night festivities. Congrats, Tammy!!
“Good and Plenty 2″ - Mixed Media on Canvas
Game Informer has the skinny on the follow up exhibition to last summer’s “i am 8-bit” show. Turns out that last summer’s classic video game themed gallery showing was so popular it’s spawned a sequel, as well as an upcoming coffee table book. I made it to the first, I’ll be showing up to browse around the second as well.
The original show was so successful, in fact, that it has spun off a nifty paperback coffee table book titled i am 8-bit: Art Inspired By Classic Videogames Of The 80’s. While the book won’t be released for sale until April, we here at Game Informer have already perused one of the early versions of the book. With a forward written by Spin Magazine’s senior writer Chuck Klosterman, and the rest of the book penned by Curator Jon Gibson, it gives a heartwarming look at what inspired each of the artists to create their bitty art. Spanning over 150 pages, the book will contain 100 different selections of art from the show, with a number of commentaries by the artists.
Due to the success of the first exhibit, Gibson has been in preparation for the follow up – i am 8-bit 2.006 - to take place between April 18th – May 19th. The show will return to its original venue at Gallery Nineteen Eighty Eight (7020 Melrose Avenue, Los Angeles, CA).
Below: A detail from Charles Guan’s “Elevator Action” inspired painting.
I’ve always been fascinated by the art used to promote concerts, and still hold out hope that I’ll have the opportunity to design posters for shows someday myself. Back when they were relatively inexpensive, I bought a silkscreened poster or two for my wall, but eventually the public caught on to how badass this form of pop art is and the prices have skyrocketed with some posters pulling in thousands of bucks a pop. Hopefully some of the LA galleries will try to get this show or something like it out here.
“This is art meant to advertise,” says Makholm. “It is meant to go up on a wall for a certain amount of time and be taken down. But that’s the beauty of it. We can still find fabulous artistic expressions and be able to own them; it’s not about how expensive it is.”
One trio of posters advertises three different concert dates for the same band. One shows a happy family out on a picnic, another depicts a stampede of dinosaurs, and the third, a stampede of mechanical dinosaurs. Put the three posters in chronological order and you see that the monsters of both the past and the future are descending onto that innocent picnic. The name of the band? Widespread Panic.
Kristin Makholm says there have been rock posters as long as there’s been rock and roll, but until recently the artistic energy was centered on LP album covers.
“Once the LP started dying out in the mid-1980s what did we have? We had CDs - little small things in plastic covers that never really generated the same kind of excitement or collectibility amongst the fans who were just crazy about the music,” says Makholm. “And so the poster started filling that demand.”
If you’re in the East Village area of NYC between today and November 16, you might want to stop by Giant Robot. They’re celebrating their newly opened gallery with an exhibit featuring work by James Kochalka, Adrian Tomme and Jeffrey Brown. Should have some badass stuff on display.
With the cultural fascination that Mexico has with masked men fighting evil, why is it that they aren’t a bigger comic book market for companies like MArvel and DC? Logically, this market should dwarf the US since they don’t seem to have any problems with the concept of grown-ups wearing spandex and beating the snot out of each other. I suppose it could be a racial thing, what with there not being that many - if any - prominent Mexican superheroes, but then Wolverine being Canadian certainly never seemed to hurt his popularity here in the states. Either way, the whole luchador culture is one that’s endlessly fascinating to me, and I love seeing things like this. Equator Books in Venice, CA is currently running an exhibit of luchador photos in their gallery until December 1, 2005. I can’t seem to find anything indicating that they’re planning to publish them in book form, but I’d be shocked if that wasn’t in the works.
