My Inbox is Starting to Bulge

I've been working quietly on the National Young Writers' festival for some months and it is now getting close to the stage where I will have something to show for it.

For those of you that don't know about what happens in Newcastle, NSW, on the labor day long weekend in October check out the video below. More soon!

National Young Writers Festival
This Is Not Art Festival (the mothership)

The Corner Hotel - til 10 July

Close up.













Passerby has a read.













Additional orange/black band stickers not part of original art. Initially I was annoyed, but on closer inspection they had the cheek(respect?) to place the stickers in the line of vision of the characters on the two occassions they look off into the distance, a very awkward attempt to make like the stickers were part of the story.

Imagine My Art Here...

It maybe that right this moment one of my comics is up on the side of The Corner hotel, Swan St, Richmond, Victoria, Australia.

It was supposed to go up anytime between 29 May and 5 June, so it should be up now.

It will be up there for 3 weeks.

Check-it-out! 1.3 x 4 m of goodness!

More info at: http://www.stripbillboard.com/

Another Podcast Appearance

Here is a recording of me talking at the Tasmania Book Prize forums back in the beginning of April.

http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2009/04/03/2534114.htm

I had trouble getting the audio file to play, so leave me a comment if you have any luck!

Superheroes & Schlemiels: Jews and Comic Art

This Will Eisner looks great, I wonder if it is an original featured in the exhibition, I hope so.

03 May – 30 August 2009
Jewish Museum of Australia
26 Alma Rd, St Kilda Victoria 3182

The exhibition features reproduction and original works by Joe Shuster and
Jerry Siegel (Superman), Jack Kirby and Stan Lee (Fantastic Four and X-Men), Will Eisner (The Spirit and A Contract With God), Harvey Kurtzman (MAD) and Art Spiegelman (Maus).

Also included are original never-before-seen works by local Australian Jewish comic artists: Nicki Greenberg, Bernard Caleo, Andrew Weldon, David Blumenstein and John Kron.

Kid's Program ($5 Museum entry, plus $5 for materials):
Sun 7th June - Andrew Weldon
Sun 5 July - Sarah Howell
Sun 2 August - Mitch Vane

http://www.jewishmuseum.com.au/exhibitions.htm

Comic Book Funny Returns!

My betrothed, Mr David Blumenstein, is once again organising Comic Book Funny as part of the free program of Melbourne Comedy Festival events at Trades Hall. I will be contributing artwork to the calendar mentioned below.

Dates and times:
5pm - 6.15pm Every Saturday in April

Week 1: a genteel exhibition launch and informal comics salon, directed by Mme Josephine Waite. All welcome.

We expect also that lady comic artists will be on hand to sketch attractive male comic artists for the upcoming art-calendar, THE SEXY MEN OF AUSTRALIAN COMICS 2009-2010 FINANCIAL YEAR CALENDAR. Twelve steamy months of hot cartoonist man-meat, as depicted by women who share their comics passion.

Watch the ladies draw, or do some drawing yourself.

Week 2: a very special Intimate Conversation between long-awaited interstate guest Gerard Ashworth (Modern Murder, Electric Ferret) and local comics broadcaster John Retallick (http://thecomicspot.blogspot.com/).

Week 3: join two of the funniest, filthiest cartoonists in Australia for a chat about why poos, wees, farts, boinks, taints and scrotes are really, really funny.

Week 4: the unexpected launch of THE SEXY MEN OF AUSTRALIAN COMICS 2009-2010 FINANCIAL YEAR CALENDAR! Your host is the dashing Bernard Caleo.

Where: Bella Union bar, Trades Hall
Corner Lygon and Victoria St, Carlton, Melbourne.

Once Again We Wonder About The Future of Books?

I'm appearing as part of the program of events surrounding the 2009 Tasmania Book Prizes which will be taking place as part of Ten Days on the Island, Tasmania's international arts festival.

The panel I'm talking on is titled
"Publishing and New Technologies: What is the future of publishing in Tasmania in an online world?"

Wednesday 1 April, 1pm – 1:45pm
Commissariat Store, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery , Hobart
(entry via car park off Davey St)

I'm hoping we can provide some specific visioning of what the Tasmanian Literature and Publishing scene will be like in 10 years time.

(The above image is from Penny-arcade.com and was brought to my attention by Aden Rolfe, one of the directors of the Critical Animals festival).

Lets Get It Strait Costume Ideas

This week I put together a document noting down my ideas for costume designs for the community performances to take place on King and Flinders Islands. I had to think of things that would be cheap, quick to manufacture, allowed for fast costume changes in some cases, and with the older kids didn't make them look too dorky.

The design above is a little silly, it is a lighthouse, and it will be worn by the King Island kindergarten students and, importantly, was inspired by a costume designed by one of the older students during my workshops at the school.

Ten Days on the Island program launched

The Ten Days on the Island program featuring Lets Get It Strait is now out.
www.tendaysontheislands.com

Halloween

Apparently my local supermarket doesn't believe in either Halloween or selling pumpkins that aren't pre-cut into portions, so this year I reverted to the far older British tradition of carving turnips to create lanterns to ward off the bad ghosts.

"The turnip lantern is the festival light for Halloween and is the ancient symbol of a damned soul."

Turnips are much easier to carve and have a lovely luminosity when you hollow them out enough.

Ugly, Drunk and Stupid exhibition @ Town Hall Gallery, Hawthorn

The other exhibition that happened in my absence was Ugly, Drunk and Stupid at the Town Hall Gallery, Hawthorn, Victoria.

Curated by Jo Waite and Bernard Caleo the exhibition was part of the 2008 Melbourne Fringe Festival.

The format for the show was a portrait of an "Ugly, Drunk, and/or Stupid" character and a landscape format comic featuring this character.

I decided to use as the starting point the caricature of Paris Hilton I drew during one the Zine Cloud word game exercises back in June where I ended up with the words "Paris Hilton, "Smoking" and "Sword".

The resulting comic is the first I've done in a long time that aims to be funny and has a lot of words. Overall I was pretty happy with it.

Broken windows aside the opening apparently went well with a fine collection of secondhand sherry glasses provided by Jo.

More photos.

B&W exhibition @ This Is Not Art

"Pat’s favourite comic: A tie between Sarah Howell’s silent comic and Tim Molloy’s Mr Unpronounceable."

- from curator Pat Grant's wrap up email (this email totally made my day).

Images 1. single panel detail.
Image 2. installation shot of exhibition, mine is the very white three page comic sandwiched between Ben Constantine's 12 page work and Mandy Ord's 4 pages.

Alice Springs

October has been a big month of travel for me (with large periods of no Internet access). The first six days I spent in Alice Springs at the biennial Regional Arts Australia conference, then I was on Flinders Island for a week and then King Island for two weeks.

I'd never been to Alice Springs before, and it surprised me in many ways. Firstly the landscape isn't nearly as flat as I anticipated, with dramatic red rocky hills framing the town, and secondly this was the first time I had been exposed to a strong and everyday indigenous cultural presence in a community, limited as this experience was by the context of a conference.

Alice Springs left me filled with confusion, sadness, and hope about who we are as Australians.

On the art side of things I met some amazing people, it was particularly good to meet other youth arts workers at the impromptu lunchtime YPAA (Young People and the Arts Australia) meeting.

Primarily by the end of the 4 days of the conference I simply felt stronger in who I am and what I do because I had spent this time surrounded by 950 people who care about the same things I do.

I won't be at TINA this year but my art will be.

Zine Cloud @ TLWW

The Zine Cloud collection will be on display throughout Tasmanian Living Writers week (15 - 24 August) at the following branches of the State Library: Launceston, Burnie, Kingston, Glenorchy, Rosny, and Hobart, as well as at the Tasmanian Book Fair at the IXL Atrium, Hunter St, Hobart on Sunday 24 August.

The display will consist of 1 x set of the 4 individual posters, 1 x larger collated poster, 4 copies of the zine publication that collects highlights of the individual zines.

For more info and pdfs of selected images go to the Tasmanian Living Writers Week website and click on the Zine Cloud link.

Poster designed by Nicole Robson.

Part 1.

Images by Mardi Nowak of before and after installation of my work titled "Part 1"

Team Up, Thoughts from Sarah Howell

An interview with me about the Team Up experience is now on the Hawthorn Town Hall Gallery blog, followed by one with my partnered artist Alix Halpern.
http://www.townhallgallery.blogspot.com/

Photos by Mardi Nowak.

Team Up Exhibition

An exhibition resulting from a mentoring project involving 10 artists (5 pairs).

Opening 6-8pm, Thursday 8th August Open Wed - Sat, 12-5pm until 30th August Town Hall Gallery, rear, Hawthorn Town Hall, 358 Burwood Road, Hawthorn VIC http://www.townhallgallery.blogspot.com/

The above picture is one of my preparatory sketches, photos of the show will be will be posted here shortly.

Zine Cloud

23 – 27 June I co-ordinated 4 teams of zine creators and art teachers to deliver a statewide (Tasmania) program of workshops called Zine Cloud, the results of which will be available during the 2008 Tasmanian Living Writers' Week, 15 August - 7 September.

In a week we produced over 60 zine publications.

I had the pleasure of being one of the South Eastern team's artists along with Nicole Robson and Felicity Copeland-Brown.

Other artist teams where:
North West: Pat Grant, Karlee Foster, and Michelle Best
North: Jo Waite, Ingrid Reynolds, and Lisa Drinkwater
South:Leigh Rigozzi, Sarah Badcock, and Peter Young.

The resounding feedback from everyone, artists, teachers, and students alike, has been that the week was intense but highly rewarding. We were all kind of buzzing for about a week afterwards.

The Zine Cloud project is a partnership between arts@work and the Tasmanian Department of Education.

Thank you to everyone who was involved in this project, it was amazing!

Photo of North West team's zine creations was taken by Karlee Foster.

I've been attending this...

Street Press @ City Library
Starting Wed 14 May > Wed 9 July 2008
6 > 7.45pm.

To book ring 96589500

This is an opportunity for all of those interested in any aspect of Street Press from zines to comics, from magazines to blogs, any genre and any level, all are welcome.

Whether you're a budding writer, designer, editor, artist, programmer or photographer, there will a space for you to meet the like minded, exchange ideas and learn new skills .

http://www.citylibrary.org.au/streetpress.htm

Good group of people, things are just getting underway.