Talks

So we're in the last week of the show and I'm a bit sad about it. I'm lucky that I get to go by and see the show often and I'll miss being able to wander around in it...

There's a lot that has been going on and I want to make sure I get it all in the blog before Saturday when the show closes. The first thing is all the talks I've done in the space.

Preview and Opening nights Pedro and I talked a bit (André was too cool to talk!) and I did another little talk at the First Friday for April when SSG had another small reception. Surprisingly there were a number of folks there (Thanks Rob and John), probably because of all the press we got that week - 2 revies and my article with the little book (Thanks Brendan, Laura and Erika). At this talk I mostly said the same things we did at the first talks about how the show happened, why these artists are in the show and how we see this work in the wider art and comics worlds. I tried my best to say things as well as Pedro who did such a great job when he was here.

I did another talk as part of the Virginia Festival of the Book, an annual book festival here in Charlottesville. When we originally pitched this show to SSG I thought it would be great to have it up during the Fesitval and since it all worked out they added us to their official events (Thanks VFB). We were scheduled for opening night when there were tons of events and we didn't get many folks, but it was good to see those who did come (Thanks Greg, Col. & Jenny and Prof. Pike). One visitor, in a completely random way, was someone I barely knew when I lived in St. Louis for a year. It was a LOST moment... Anyway, in this talk I assumed the audience knew little about comics, so I gave a long talk what comics are, a history of them, their place in US, European and Japanese cultures and gave examples of a lot of contemporary work. I then went through each artist in the show, talking about each and showing examples of thir printed work. I thought it went pretty well!

I did one other talk, this time about my own work. SSG does a series called "Artist Forums" where they have artists come in and discuss their work in the gallery. I did it a couple weeks ago, showing some big drawings, collages, books etc. Everyone who was there filled out postcards so they'll get drawings in the mail and I gave them all stickers and lil books. I talked a bit about the "dandelion strategy" of my seed toss mentality (see my blog for a little more on that) and passed around tons of old sketchbooks for folks to look at. One good question - "Why do you do this?" still vexes me (Thanks Andy). Another comment was that I was brave to allow people to rifle through my old sketchbooks. It was a good talk, but, again, sparsely attended (Thanks Martha and family).

I'm not sure why these talks were pretty empty other than there's a lot going on and it's hard to get the word out. There may have been some Warren-fatigue too, I know I was tired of me!

Later, more Warren/André jam drawings, more André art he left in my house and more more more, but next up, the workshops I did in conjunction with the show.