Long-lost astronauts, homicidal bloggers, baseball legends and wayward skaters all find a home in John Pham’s captivating comic series Sublife (published by the always on-point Fantagraphics Books). With only two issues on the street, Sublife has already established an achingly familiar universe in all of its disparate ongoing narratives. Deftly juggling the melancholy of Adrian Tomine’s Optic Nerve with some Cormac McCarthy-inspired apocalyptic action and plenty of skillfully subdued deadpan humor, Pham proves himself a master of multifarious emotions and artist stylings.
Giant Robot 2 is hosting a solo show of Pham’s gorgeously vibrant gouache paintings this weekend, entitled Living Space. Go check it out, and do yourself the favor of picking up a copy of Sublife.
The truly tubular grid of post-its pictured above were inked by incredible illustrator Lisa Hanawalt for GR2’s currently running Post-It Show 4. I helped hang the 1000+ post-its for the show (helpful tip: when hanging post-its on uneven gallery walls, use liberal amounts of double stick tape), and I was so taken by Ms. Hanawalt’s lovably creepy creatures that when it came time to choose just a couple to take home, I couldn’t help myself from including one of her dapper cross-eyed kittens alongside an excellently obscene Johnny Ryan post-it and the crystal-worshiping transcendence of Aiyana Udesen’s piece.
Only afterwards did I realize that this is the same Lisa Hanawalt whose comic strip about Georgia O’Keefe and Johannes Vermeer’s secret obsession with dirty hip hop lyrics in The Believer’s 2009 Art Issue had had me nervously laughing days prior. Not only that, but she’s also the same Lisa Hanawalt whose contribution to Vice’s sweet Where the Wild Things Are mini-comic had pictured the Wild Things gleefully go-cart racing! Interview on that matter here. Pull quote: “I like the [Wild Thing] with the long, orange mane and webbed feet–she looks cuddly but she also gives me the creeps.”
Check out Hanawalt’s brand-new comic book, I Want You, published by Buenaventura Press and currently on sale for $3.96. What a steal!
Mark Giglio is a machine of productivity. The Southern California-born artist runs his studio and workshop, Pen Pencil Stencil, out of Oakland, and wastes no time in cranking out fine drawings, prints, photography, (see below) wallpaper, sculptures (like the nine-piece set of trees made from scrap wood above) limited-edition t-shirt designs, stickers, tote bags and zines. Whew.
Luckily, the quality of Giglio’s work more than matches the quantity. A preference for clean, colorful and minimalist shapes turns each image into a visual treat. Mark’s blog keeps things moving right along with travel bulletins, observations and experiments. It’s almost like being a fly on the workshop wall.
If you find yourself in San Francisco, check out Mark’s serigraphs in PRINTED MATTER 7, Giant Robot’s show that runs from December 5th through January 6th of next year.
The Seafarers is a fun little online series that Kelly Tunstall and Ferris Plock have been animating together. Elevating simple tales of the sea with deliciously rendered illustration an unexpected humor, The Seafarers is the type of irreverent, bizarre, and yet somehow tender entertainment that kids could use more of these days. I was alerted to the existence of this awesome cartoon by Michelle at Giant Robot, who notes: “Kelly & Ferris are busy new parents and still managing to find the time and energy to develop their work, be in the studio, and strengthen their ties with family, friends and colleagues.” Hey, let’s all be inspired by that example and make even more awesome stuff to share with the world! Yeah!
Max Records cut his acting teeth on a pair of alt-rock music videos. After dipping his toes in the water with the warm and fuzzy sing along of Cake’s “Guitar Man,” (directed by the lovely Cat Solen), Max’s second role, in a Death Cab for Cutie video, strongly foreshadowed the young thespian’s capability to take on meditative, emotionally challenging roles with a natural grace. Shot in a tin shed on a shoestring budget, Max manages to convey a sense of loneliness and loss in this wordless performance that echoes throughout the atmosphere of the entire video.
Director Aaron Stewart-Anh contributes to Giant Robot and has helmed videos for bands like The Decemberists, The Album Leaf, and Asobi Seksu. He shot the somber, Silent Running-esque “Stable Song” for Directions, an ambitious project in which the filmmaker enlisted 11 directors to create long-form videos based around each track on Death Cab for Cutie’s 2005 album, Plans. Contradicting the conventions of the music video medium, Stewart-Anh’s project permitted the directors an unusual amount of creative freedom—the songs became scores for a series of short stories and visual experiments, rather than products being marketed by throw-away visuals. Originally released in weekly installments through the band’s website, Directions was almost a prelude to the plethora of indie rock experiments in video that would soon be fostered by the explosion of YouTube.
Lance Bangs, who contributed to Directions in the form of a bizarre and hilarious first-person live concert video, asked Stewart-Anh if he knew any kids capable of playing Max, and the rest is history.
Woah, it’s a total dream team of stupendously talented and darkly funny illustrators! Matt Furie (check out our interview with Furie), Aiyana Udesen, and Albert Reyes have come together for a show at Giant Robot’s San Francisco gallery, and their new work looks beyond the boundaries of rad. This triad of titillating artists have covered the walls of GRSF with hot dogs, wombats, babes, and B-list celebrities. What more could you ask for? Maybe a picture of a Wild Thing leering at Denise Richards? Your wish is Aiyana Udesen’s command. Check it out before the show closes on September 16th!
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