Archive for the 'art' Category

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Off-Site: Quimby’s Co-sponsors the EX. MONEY. RACE. GENDER Ladydrawers Exhibition

Jun ’13
27
5:00 pm
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Quimby’s Bookstore (and our sister store, Chicago Comics) are proud to be a sponsor of the Ladydrawers Comics Collective exhibition entitled SEX. MONEY. RACE. GENDER, curated by Anne Elizabeth Moore, at Columbia College Chicago’s A+D Gallery, opening June 27th.  S.M.R.G. will also feature a series of workshops that explores hot button topics with everything from site-specific murals to performance to empirical conversations to yes, comics.
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Beginning with the opening night spectacle, the gallery (Columbia’s A+D Gallery, not Quimby’s) will be activated through fun, radicalthinking, and art making, a space to observe and reflect on ideas of SEX, MONEY, RACE, and GENDER.  Instead of creating a catalog for the show, Quimby’s is proud to co-sponsor a comics anthology including work by Robyn Chapman, Danielle Chenette, Clay Harris, Lyra Hill, MariNaomi, Corinne Mucha, Laura Szumowski, Lauren Weinstein.

SEX. MONEY. RACE. GENDER.  The Ladydrawers (of Chicago, IL)

Exhibition & Workshop Schedule

 

Opening Reception: June 27, 5:00-8:00 p.m.

Exhibit closes on July 27th

Curated by Anne Elizabeth Moore

S.M.R.G OPENING NIGHT EXTRAVAGANZA!

Featuring comedy, art making, readings, performance, and much more. Come explore issues of SEX, MONEY, RACE, and GENDER with a sprinkling of humor and pathos through stand up comedy, femcore anthems, live mural making, and interpretations of texts, personal readings (in the bathroom!), and even hula hooping. Join us, won’t you?

Opening Night Performers

Sarah Bell, Blizzard Babies, Gretchen Hasse, Lyra Hill, Elliott Junkyard, Francis Kang, Ever Mainard, Carolina Mayorga, Katie McVay, Yasmin Nair, Polly Yates

Exhibition Participants

Nicole Boyett, Jacinta Bunnel, Danielle Chenette, Gretchen Hasse, Elliott Junkyard, Francis Kang, Carolina Mayorga, Melissa Gira Grant, Lyra Hill, Franny Howes, Nia King, Viet Le, Nicole Marroquin, Anne Elizabeth Moore, Sarah Morton, Liz Rush, Rachel Swanson, Laura Szumowski, Bonsovathary Uoeung, Lauren Weinstein, Sarah Welch, Elizabeth White, Mara Williams, Polly Yates

S.M.R.G Workshops

These workshops are collaborative and exploratory projects lead by outstanding cultural producers and thinkers—all amazing, smart people that you will like very much.

Radical Noticing: Riot Grrrl Press and Contemporary Comics

May Summer Farnsworth and Jamie Davida Lee

Saturday, June 29, 2013 2:00-4:00 p.m.

May Summer Farnsworth will discuss her experiences working on the formation of Riot Grrrl Press in 1993. Cartoonist Jamie Davida Lee will simultaneously lead a silent workshop on making comics and zines.

Lexicon of Sexicana

Esther Pearl Watson and Terri Kapsalis

Thursday, July 11, 2013, 5:30-7:30 p.m.

Speech balloons! Giant boons! Big muscles! The hundred-year-old lexicon of comics was developed by its most prominent practitioners, mostly straight white dudes. It’s time to re-think the language of comics. Esther Pearl Watson and Terri Kapsalis will create a work exploring sexual health based on Mort Walker’s satirical look at comics devices for cartoonists, The Lexicon of Comicana.

Life and Labor

Delia Jean Hickey and Sarah Jaffe

Thursday, July 18, 2013, 5:30-7:30 p.m.

We all know what it means to work, but what extra effort do certain forms of labor extract from us? This workshop explores what it takes to make an honest living, with a particular focus on the service industry.

Boi Band Poser Poster Workshop

Viet Le and Morgan Claire

Thursday, July 25, 2013, 5:30-7:30 p.m.

This workshop challenges identities and identifications through pop and props. Thinking through gender, race, and (inner and outer) space, participants will form and “perform” their own pop bands and solo acts. Fun FOBulous times!

Please note: these events are at the A+D Gallery at 619 S. Wabash Ave, Chicago, Il 60605, NOT QUIMBY’S BOOKSTORE.

Jason Robert Bell Brings The White Feathered Octopus to Quimby’s 6/11

Jun ’13
11
7:00 pm

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Jason Robert Bell, Mystical Rebel Outlaw Baddasss, whose Advance Thothic Practice in Theatomix will one day rule the world, is releasing a limited paperback first edition of his new book The White Feathered Octopus (Tetragrammatron Press, 2012). This book talks about the gritty hard realties of growing up a blinded street beggar in Cairo, 1937, as if a mutant midwifed counterclockwise to the distant Jauntpads of Rocketcityutopia. It is a science fiction novel, written from one giant cryptographic anagram of Herman Melville’s Moby DIck. Not for the faint of heart! Read it if you dare. An erotic sexperiment in Philikdicking ones own mind back from the brink of madness and disability  a biography of lowdown heights, back alley knife fights, and cold uptown delights, the whole while you have the sinking feeling that this all might not actually be happen, as if you are a chess piece on a scrabble board.

In other words, prepared to have your MindPenis Blown!

Mr. Bell will have a limited edition of 12 artist proof unedited copied of his 365 page unreadable sci fi sex, steampimp, one giant anagram of moby dick novel. They will be for sale for $17.766 cents Lumarian, $20 usd. The books come with a digital portfolio of images and the text in complete iPad friendly PDF.

Robin Dluzen, editor in chief of Chicago Art Magazine is having nightmares about:

The White Feathered Octopus – The cornerstone of Jason Robert Bell‘s “One Man Army Corpse” exhibition at Thomas Robertello Gallery is The White Feathered Octopus, a 300-page book written by the artist during a three-month, pharmaceutically laden, bedridden recovery from a medical injury, available for viewers to peruse on a shelf in the gallery.

Not since my adolescent discovery of William S. Burroughs’s Naked Lunch have I felt the same heavy, sinking feeling in my stomach from a work of art, visual, written, or otherwise. The artist is the author, protagonist, and narrator of this digitally composed, fragmented, stream-of-consciousness piece, fluctuating between seemingly autobiographical reality and fantastical nightmares.

Like Naked LunchThe White Feathered Octopus is difficult to read in both structure and the nature of its content, and it is capable of giving a reader actual nightmares (as it did for me). But also like Burroughs’s masterpiece, it absolutely must be read for its courageous and frightening sincerity.

Jason Robert Bell is a Brooklyn-based experimental artist and mystic, who produces paintings, drawings, comics, sculpture, experimental films, outdoor installations, performances, and now text, that are the by-products of a mystical journey, conjuring a highly charged, alternative reality. His work has been exhibited at Postmasters Gallery, New York and Thomas Robertello Gallery, Chicago. Bell received a BFA in Painting from the School of the Art Institute Chicago and an MFA from the Yale School of fArt.

For more info: http://www.tetragrammatron.com/ or cavemanrobot@gmail.com

June 11th, 2013, 7pm – Free Event

 

off-site but of interest: Long-Arm Stapler First Aid: OPENING RECEPTION at Spudnik Press Cooperative

Apr ’13
20
6:00 pm
Long-Arm-WEB
Long-Arm Stapler First Aid: Self-Care In Zines and Mini Comics

Curated by Liz Mason and Neil Brideau
4/20/13 – 5/31/13
 
Opening Reception: April 20, 2013 6:00 – 9:00pm
The Annex @ Spudnik Press Cooperative,
1821 W Hubbard, Suite 303, Chicago, IL
(NOT at Quimby’s)
Whether we’re soothing, grooming or creating major life changes, we’re always involved in some sort of self-care, no matter how big or trivial. Drinking coffee, petting animals, getting stuff off our chests, confronting personal and societal demons, we are perpetually creating a space for our own personal world to exist healthfully in the bigger world. Indeed, the personal is social.
Instead of relying on professional services, one can create change using a DIY mentality, often with the help of some sort of reference. At their core, the pieces in this group show suggest we must be our own proponents for health and well-being.
The exhibit “Long-Arm Stapler First Aid” features pieces by a variety of zinesters and comics artists. The pieces discuss and/or illustrate self-care topics that both help themselves and inspire the reader to be their own advocate in self-improvement. In honor of self-publishing as a means to foster well-being, Spudnik Press is proud to host this exhibition featuring dozens of zine makers from across the country, including Edie Fake, Rinko Endo, Kathleen McIntyre, Ramsey Beyer, Liz Prince, Dina Kelberman, Sara McHenry, Maris Wicks, Beth Barnett, Nate Beaty, Raleigh Briggs, Danielle Chenette, Emilja Frances, Turtel Onli, Trubble Club, Caroline Paquita, Sarah McNeil, Milo Miller, Corinne Mucha, Kitari Sporrong, Missy Kulik, Cathy Leamy, Erick Lyle and more.
Long Arm Stapler First Aid will also include a limited edition exhibition zine, compiled by Liz Mason, encompassing relevant self-care themes in zines and mini-comics such as: healing, grief, fitness, and medical issues. The exhibit will also feature a limited edition screenprint by Ramsey Beyer, published by Spudnik Press.
 
This show brings together an assortment of zines and comics that address health-related issues ranging from mental to physical, personal to societal, and preventative to regenerative, including such specifics as grooming, food preparation, self-defense, coping strategies, defense mechanisms, mental or spiritual development and even soul enrichment. These largely self-published works address, at times, incredibly personal experiences, usually with a large dose of wit.
Unlike a film or a painting, readers of zines and comics are able to engage with these works at their own pace, choosing when they are ready to confront the next page. Perhaps this is what allows authors to broach difficult, and often very personal, topics with great breadth of emotion, honesty, and clarity. Through the combination of words and images, artists are able to rely on multiple modes of communication to bring together the tangible and the cerebral.
Why the long-arm stapler? It’s the symbol of home-stapled periodicals, the best kind of stapler to use for getting to the center of the page that a normal stapler can’t reach. And the very act of making a zine and mini comic (and reading) is considered a therapeutic caring action.
Long live (and maintain, groom and sooth) the long-arm stapler!
About the curators:
Liz Masonis the manager of Quimby’s Bookstore, known for selling a variety of self-published works, as well as the editor and publisher for the zine Caboose.

Neil Brideau is comics artist and comics sommelier at Quimby’s Bookstore, as well as an organizer of CAKE, Chicago’s Alternative Comics Expo.

*Image Credit to Dina Kelbermann

Off-Site Event: Special Screening of Wonder Women: The Untold Story of American Superheroines and Superhero Expo

Mar ’13
16
2:00 pm

 

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SATURDAY, MARCH 16, 2013
2:00-4:00 PM
CHICAGO CULTURAL CENTER
2nd Floor Claudia Cassidy Theatre
With a discussion featuring comics artists Jill Thompson, Lyra Hill and Jenny Frison.
Host: Allison Cuddy of WBEZ/Chicago Public Radio.

(NOT AT QUIMBY’S; AT THE CHICAGO CULTURAL CENTER, 78 E Washington St  Chicago, IL 60602)

Superhero Expo
2:00 PM – 5:00 PM
in the 1st Floor Garland Room
with Brain Frame, Girls in the Game, Quimby’s Bookstore and more.
Featuring the Superhero art show (see details below), Photo Booth (with costumes),
and the Superhero Portrait Slam with Project Onward artists (11am – 4pm)!

Envision Superheroines for the Modern Age!
Renditions will be displayed at the Wonder Women Expo at the Cultural Center on March 16th during and following the screening of the documentary Wonder Women: The Untold Story of American Superheroines. From the birth of the comic book superheroine in the 1940s to the blockbusters of today, this documentary looks at how popular representations of powerful women often reflect society’s anxieties about women’s liberation.

Bring your drawings/paintings/art to the Expo.  Any format for the art is fine.

To consider:
What is her mission?
What does she look like? What is her costume?
What powers does she possess?
What issues does she tackle? Whom is she going to save?
Does she have an everyday alter-ego/cover?  If so, what is her occupation?
What are her personal challenges?
Does she have a sidekick?
What is her mode of transportation?
Special gadgets she employs in her feats?
What is her “kryptonite”?

Presented by WTTW Channel 11 and the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events in partnership with Chicago Foundation For Women, Eileen Fisher Foundation, Project Onward and Quimby’s Bookstore.

Community Cinema is a national civic engagement initiative featuring free monthly screenings of films from the Emmy Award-winning PBS series Independent Lens. Every month in 100+ cities, community members come together to learn, discuss, and get involved in key social issues of our time.

 

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

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