Archive for the 'lowbrow art' Category

Busy Beaver Founder Christen Carter & Co-Author Ted Hake Celebrate BUTTON POWER: 125 Years of Saying It with Buttons ONLINE 10/2

Published on September 2, 2020 0 Comments
Oct ’20
2
7:30 pm

“Social media is today’s most popular platform for self- expression, but the button preceded it as a way to tell others what was on your mind and as a tool to help spread an idea. No other form of wearable expression has yet to replace the humble button – and unlike social media, a button is something you can literally stand behind.” – excerpted from BUTTON POWER: 125 Years of Saying It with Buttons by Christen Carter and Ted Hake

Punch line. Political Statement. Conversation piece. Souvenir. From the campaign trail to the rock tour, BUTTON POWER (Princeton Architectural Press) collects a people’s history of American culture told through the pin-back button. Lively commentary from two of America’s foremost button experts shows how the small but powerful button reveals the events and movements that outraged, amused, and inspired us over time, from the solo flight of Charles Lindbergh to the Black Power movement. In this chaotic time of protests and presidential elections, this book offers a glimpse into the cultural movements that make up our rich history. Artists, athletes, actors, politicians, punk and pop musicians, and mascots of the past 125 years make cameos, including Rube Goldberg, Muhammad Ali, the Ramones, Shirley Chisholm, and Bette Midler. The first book of its kind, BUTTON POWER is a rich visual feast. Each colorful spread chronicles defining moments in history through colorful photographs and artifacts. This collection will be an essential pick for fans of pop culture, visual culture, and design.

Don’t miss this virtual event celebrating BUTTON POWER: 125 Years of Saying It with Buttons by authors Christen Carter and Ted Hake!

ABOUT THE AUTHORS:
Christen Carter is the founder of Chicago-based Busy Beaver Button Company and has produced more than 50 million buttons for bands, artists, political campaigns, non-profits and more. In 2010, she started the Button Museum, dedicated to telling American history through pin-back buttons.

Ted Hake is the founder of Hake’s Auctions, America’s first auction house to specialize in popular culture artifacts. He has written seventeen collectors’ guides that span presidential campaign items, vintage Disneyana, and comic character toys. Ted has received the American Political Items Collectors Lifetime Achievement Award and is a member of the Theodore Roosevelt Association Advisory Board.

Fri, October 2nd, 7:30PM CST.

This virtual event will be on the Quimby’s Bookstore’s You Tube Channel: youtube.com/QuimbysBookstore

Stay tuned to quimbys.com/store for book ordering & swag to accompany your book (!!!) while supplies last.

NO RSVP necessary.

Here’s the Facebook Event invite for this event.

In advance, Christen Carter gave a us a preview of what’s going to happen at the event!:

 

Erick Lyle talks Streetopia at Quimby’s 10/20

Published on September 24, 2016 0 Comments
Oct ’16
20
7:00 pm

streetopia

After San Francisco’s new mayor announced imminent plans to “clean up” downtown with a new corporate “dot com corridor” and arts district–featuring the new headquarters of Twitter and Burning Man–curators Erick Lyle and Chris Johanson brought over 100 artists and activists together with residents fearing displacement to consider utopian aspirations and plot alternative futures for the city. The resulting exhibition, Streetopia, was a massive anti-gentrification art fair that took place in venues throughout the city, featuring daily free talks, performances, skillshares and a free community kitchen out of the gallery. This book brings together all of the art and ephemera from the now-legendary show, featuring work by Swoon, Barry McGee, Emory Douglas, Monica Canilao, Rigo 23, Xara Thustra, Ryder Cooley and many more. Join Lyle to consider the effectiveness of Streetopia‘s projects while offering a deeper rumination on the continuing search for community in today’s increasingly homogenous and gentrified cities.

“Streetopia’s projects were futuristic, idealistic, historically sensitive, and surprisingly practical. They offer enough ideas to keep anyone who cares about public life, culture, and art busy for the next decade.” –Chris Kraus, author of I Love Dick, and Where Art Belongs

“Streetopia is a squat, dense little brick of a book, loaded with colorful photographs and reproductions of documents from the exhibition…Reading Streetopia will prepare you to think about what such an exhibition would entail, and why it’s so necessary.” — Seattle Review of Books

Erick Lyle is a writer, curator, musician, and underground journalist. His work has appeared in Art in America, Vice, California Sunday Magazine, Huck, LA Weekly, Brooklyn Rail, the San Francisco Bay Guardian and on NPR’s This American Life. Since 1991, he has written, edited, and published the influential punk/activist/art/crime magazine, SCAM. More info: onthelowerfrequencies.com

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Thursday, October 20th, 7pm – Free Event

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Gilbert Hernandez Talks About Marble Season 4/18

Published on March 2, 2013 2 Comments
Apr ’13
18
7:00 pm

MARBLE.case-webJoin beloved cartoonist Gilbert Hernandez (LOVE & ROCKETS) as he launches his new D+Q graphic novel MARBLE SEASON, his first semiautobiographical story of his childhood. Hernandez will present a fascinating slide show “From Funnybooks to Graphic Novels” featuring the comics of his childhood, in addition to a Q+A and signing.  These silver age comics not only influenced MARBLE SEASON, but also set the course for Gilbert, as well as his brothers Jaime and Mario, to become the legendary comics creator they are today.

MARBLE SEASON is the first ever semi-autobiographical novel by  acclaimed cartoonist Gilbert Hernandez of Love & Rockets, and is also his first graphic novel for Drawn & Quarterly. Meet Huey. He’s the middle child of a big family, growing up in a California suburb in the 1960s. He stages Captain America plays in the backyard and treasures his older brother’s comic-book collection almost as much as his approval. Set against the golden age of the American dream and the silver age of comics, MARBLE SEASON is a subtle and deft rumination on the redemptive and timeless power of storytelling and worldbuilding in childhood.

“Perhaps no other current creators of comics recognize (or vividly remember) the ways actual kids think, talk, or even stand and walk as accurately as the Hernandez brothers, and no other comics artists so delicately intertwine moments of childhood trauma with the goofy logic that otherwise sustains kids when they begin to sense that they live in an irrational world.”
—from the afterword by Corey Creekmur

“Gilbert Hernandez is one of the great craftsmen of modern comics.”—New York Times

Praise for Palomar: “These deeply influential tales, a sort of Archie-comics-meets-Marquez melange of complicated pan-American inter-relationships, are a comix epic.”—Time

Praise for Gilbert Hernandez: “He…[should]…be considered one of the greatest American storytellers. It’s so hard to do funny, tragic, local and epic, and he does all simultaneously, and with great aplomb.”
—Junot Diaz, Los Angeles TIMES

Need some help getting up to speed on the rich history of Los Hernandez Bros? Need a quick “How to Read Love & Rockets” 101 of sorts? There’s a helpful Love and Rockets Guide at the Fantagraphics website!

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“Mitch O’Connell: The World’s Best Artist” Book Signing & Slideshow With Book Designer Joseph Allen Black at 3/21

Published on February 16, 2013 0 Comments
Mar ’13
21
7:00 pm

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Humorous and masterful, Mitch O’Connell: the World’s Best Artist by Mitch O’Connell, (Last Gasp Publishing) is a career-spanning retrospective of work from the king of kitsch, Mitch O’Connell. This full-color, 284 page tome—resplendent with a foam-filled, vinyl, glitter-enhanced cover—collects all the good stuff (the crappy art is under lock and key) from this prolific pop artist. If you appreciate the finer things in life, such as beehives, boobs, and big-eyed kittens, you will not want to miss this book.

 “I am stunned by how remarkably talented he is … I’ve been jealous of him for over 30 years!”-Mark Frauenfelder, Boing Boing

“What David Lynch might read to his kids at night! Great!” – Boston Globe

Mitch O’Connell’s work has been featured in such places as: Playboy, The New York Times, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, GQ, Entertainment Weekly, Newsweek, and Juggs. He has made campaign art for Coke, McDonalds, KFC, Kelloggs, and more. His tattoo designs can be found on bodies belonging to people with impeccable taste the worldwide. His previous books include Mitch O’Connell Tattoos, Pwease Wuv Me, and Good Taste Gone Bad.

Mr. O’Connell will  be joined by the book’s designer Jospeh Allen Black.

For more info: mitchoconnell.com  lastgasp.com and jospehallenblack.com

Thursday, March 21st, 7pm – Free Event

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Scott Campbell Discusses Great Showdowns

Published on October 4, 2012 0 Comments
Oct ’12
20
7:00 pm


Since the beginning of time, there has been struggle. The epic clash of being against being. Tyrannosaurus Rex vs. Triceratops. Giant Squid vs. the Sperm Whale. The Circle vs. the Square.  The struggle is forever. It makes the world turn around. These are the struggles that make us stop what we are doing and sort of check things out… wondering what the eff. Scott C. chronicles some of the greatest confrontations in FILM HISTORY. The greatest moments of melee. These are the GREAT SHOWDOWNS. And they sort of enjoy that they are the great showdowns.

With equal parts style, humor, and insight, Scott C. has delighted an international fanbase with his unique watercolor paintings, illustrations, and drawings. Amazing Everything: The Art of Scott C. is his first monograph, the best and most imaginative works of art in his emerging career.

Admirers and collectors seek out Scott C.’s appearances at such diverse venues as Comic-Con in San Diego and Galerie Arludik in Paris to see his unusual depictions of pop-culture subjects and original creations: Victorian-era dinosaurs at high tea; lumberjacks and their sometimes-awkward relationship with trees; and ninjas lounging in their living room at home. These and other reflections of Scott C.’s artistic vision have kept him on the radar of such pop-culture trend outlets as Flavorpill and Hi-Fructose.

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