Sam Ombiri here – I was looking through old issues of The Believer hoping to find Dash Shaw and Jesse Moynihan’s comic about Lost. I didn’t know what issue of The Believer it was in, but as I was setting aside some suspects, I saw a portrait Charles Burns did of this one person whose work is typically really awkward and really lame. I bought it since it was just 50 cents per issue. I lucked out and found the Lost comic as well (pictured below).
(You can read the Lost comic – titled Spiritual Dad – HERE, at the bottom of a 2011 Jesse Moynihan interview conducted by Frank Santoro for The Comics Journal. – Sally)
I’ve been thinking about this quote, or mix of quotes, but I can’t say from whom they are from (and I really, really changed it from the original). Still, it’s great to hear him/her saying this stuff –
“Things will not always have a conclusion, be it jokes without punchlines, or reading books that have pages missing or put in wrong places. All information is accessible now, it’s tough to choose which information is worth anything, but I prefer for things to be awkward…my spelling is terrible…and my grammar is worse (laughs). I don’t know how it all affects my work… I don’t want to make things people would intellectualize, but instead it’s all about a feeling.”
I feel it’s more less the last part that I find myself somewhat agreeing with, though the beginning at certain points leaves me a bit dubious. (I reworded the last part of the quote, the quote itself wasn’t sequentially reworded from the original.) Actually the last part where the person talking hesitated to intellectualize a feeling, I took from this one cool guy, Jeffrey Leiser, who in his list of favorite Criterions, said, for the Three Colors Trilogy, something like “I don’t want to intellectualize this, it should be celebrated as a triumph for cinema.”
I think he’s working on an opera right now. His brother Eric is super rad too.
To conclude, here is a piece of a drawing I was working on:
-Sam Ombiri
—————————————————————————————————
Sally Ingraham here. If you’re in Pittsburgh this coming weekend, be sure to check out the 6th annual Pittsburgh Zine Fair and catch up with Sam Ombiri at the Pittsburgh Comics Salon table! He’ll be holding it down, joined by a few other frequent attendees of the monthly comics salons. PZF is at the Union Project on Sunday, October 16, from 2-8pm.
Check out the work of Jayla Patton, another Pittsburgh cartoonist and the creator of the PZF poster (above) HERE!
—————————————————————————————————
Starting today, the Comics Workbook team is officially spread across the globe – with Frank Santoro in the U.K. for The Lakes International Comic Art Festival, joined by Aidan Koch, Connor Willumsen, Oliver East, and Jack Brougham among others. There is still time to buy tickets to the workshops that Frank, Aidan, and Connor are giving – HERE!
Meanwhile, Comics Workbook will be represented in force at Cartoon Crossroads Columbus, in OH, with Sacha Mardou, Whit Taylor, Kurt Ankeny, Alyssa Berg, Juan Fernandez, Caleb Orecchio, Emil Friis Ernst, John Kelly, and me (Sally Ingraham), running around leading workshops, moderating panels, interviewing folks, documenting the event, and tabling at the expo. I was getting confused myself about which direction we’re all going in this weekend, so I made a comprehensive list of who is where, when – check it out HERE. See you there!
—————————————————————————————————
SPX has started posting videos from this year’s panels – here’s thee great Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez being interviewed by Bill Boichel, owner of Copacetic Comics here in Pittsburgh, PA:
—————————————————————————————————
Over on The Comics Journal yesterday Dan Nadel included some thoughts on Dash Shaw’s new film, and Ben Jones’ exhibition at The Hole, among his other news links.
“Ben’s new show was fascinating because it was a rare instance of a cartoonist making comics that function as narrative drawing in a contemporary gallery space. These are not enlarged images (e.g. Shrigley), murals, or groups of drawings (Pettibon), but rather straightforward canvases that take a new approach to the comic medium. The show consists of oil stick-on canvas 3 by 3 foot cartoon panels assembled into narrative blocks (or 6 by 9 foot “pages”). They manage to feel as intimate as his notebook-sized comic strips and yet take on a new, somewhat ominous meaning — their dumb subject and large size a visual equivalent to, say, the comedy of Eric Andre or Will Ferrell. On a technical level, the work functions because his line is distinctly warm, his cartoon forms basic, and his sense of space and scale adaptable to large spaces. ” – Dan Nadel
More HERE.
—————————————————————————————————
Ronald Wimberly has a show at the Columbus Museum of Art, and will be speaking on Sunday there in conjunction with Cartoon Crossroads Columbus – he’ll be talking to Ohio State University’s Jared Gardner – 2:30-4pm at the museum.
—————————————————————————————————
Have you seen the recent collaboration between Frank Santoro and master jeweler Airi Maeno? Check out the Pompeii Medallion HERE.
Yes, we are still trying to get Connor Willumsen to The Lakes International Comic Art Festival – this way please!
—————————————————————————————————
I’m eager to get on the road and on my way to Columbus, so I’ll leave you for the moment. I’ll be back tomorrow with the first round of pics from CXC, and Sam Ombiri will be back next Thursday with his Pittsburgh Zine Fair report and other good stuff. Cheers! – Sally