Yock Yok!

So Fereshteh Toosi and I have been dating for almost two years, she's an amazing person and artist who often seems to have limitless energy, and is never satisfied with the work she's putting out.  Above is a picture of her from a performance she created for Defibrillator about a year ago. She's currently working on a years-long project, Garlic and Greens, which is a multifaceted mixed-media art piece that grew out of her tenure at ArcheWorks.  Garlic and Greens investigates food traditions, specifically focusing on African American soul food -and its travel North to Chicago during the Great Migrations- as a means to open up a larger discussion of food traditions.

As an extension of Garlic and Greens, Fereshteh was asked to contribute to the ongoing Regional Relationships art series, curated by Ryan Griffis & Sarah Ross.  Fereshteh and I have wanted to collaborate for a while, and thought this might be a great opportunity, so we rolled up our sleeves, and came up with Yock Yok, an investigation to a regional dish from Fereshteh's home town of Virginia Beach/Newport News/Portsmouth/etc. (a soupier version is commonly found in New Orleans).  

Like soul food from most cultures, an exact definition, recipe, history or even spelling is impossible to pin down, and Yock's origins seem to come from circumstance and region instead of having been handed down from infallible ancestors.  We decided to embrace the intangible qualities and history of this dish, which seems to be some sort of mash up of vaguely East Asian and vaguely African American cooking traditions, noodles, ketchup, soy sauce, onion, egg, vinegar and magic!  

Yock Yok comes with a CD, minicomic and screen printed tea towel. The CD features an interview with Joy Mariama Smith, who grew up eating Yock on visits to family in Portsmouth. The minicomic focuses on the dishe's lore, taking rumor and accepting it as fact, taking hearsay and embellishing it, and taking facts and falsifying them.  The tea towel opens the idea of mythology even more, and offers a map of the region in which you can find Yock, the Coastal U.S. South. Also shown on the map are cryptozoological densizens of the area, the great Skunk Ape, the Whirling Whimpus, and visitors like the Amihan and Kappa.  Together the pieces cover the entire spectrum from truth to fiction that family food histories also inhabit.

For a far better description of the project, check out this link.

I think there's still time to join Regional Relationship's subscription program to receive a copy, as well as other awesome projects focused on regionalism.

Big thanks to Fereshteh, Sarah & Ryan for including me on this project.  Look for future collaborations between me & Fereshteh.

2011

Well, look who crawled out of his hole to post a blog.  I've had some fun since APE, including attending the Milwaukee Zine Fest, and meeting my nephew, Ed.  I've been meeting weekly with two different groups to organize the Chicago Zine Fest, which will take place on March 25 & 26th, and the Chicago Alternative Comics Expo (aka CAKE) which will hopefully be in August or October of 2011.  I've been cleaning & weatherizing my apartment, and practicing & writing new songs with my best friend, Josh.  Any way you cut it, 2011 is going to be a big year for me creatively, and I wanted to share some info with you as the countdown to the end of 2010 begins (only 34 days)!

COMICS!
I wont be putting out a whole lot of new sellable comics, not like Spitting Pennies or Write Now!, this year.  Instead I'm going to focus my efforts on two projects:

1. Sock-Monster! As we speak, I have a genius of a web designer redesigning my website, making Sock-Monster the focus of my web presence.  So I'll be updating Sock-Monster on a regular schedule (no seriously) as soon as I can.

2. Minicomic of the Month Club! I'm taking the year to experiment with form by biting off Liz Baillie's idea from 2009, a subscription-based service of a monthly minicomic delivered to your mailbox.  I'll be focusing on expanding my knowledge of book binding, art media, and story telling.  If you want to sign up for the service you can click right here on these exact words.  I'm hoping this will be a challenging and fun exercise for me, and I hope you'll enjoy watching me stretch my muscles a bit.

That seems like not a whole lot for an entire year, but it's along with the other projects listed below, it's going to suck up all my free time (sorry, ladies).   Because of my low imput of sellable comics, I'll be attending fewer shows, this year, only exhibiting at 4 comics shows, and maybe as many zine fests, and I probably wont have anything new on my table comics-wise.

ZINES!
  I really want to start making zines. I consider minicomics a type of zine, but I've never made a text-heavy zine.  My sister Kate made her first zine a little while ago (and it's amazing), and it got me really wanting to try to express myself in a non-sequential format.  I don't have a name for the zine yet, so if anyone has any good ideas (D.Billy, I'm looking at you), gimme.  The first issue will hopefully be about and published by the Chicago Mayoral elections, the second by Chicago Zine Fest (???!!!), that's a pretty tight schedule.

FEST PLANNING!
  As I mentioned before I'm helping organize both the Chicago Zine Fest and CAKE.  Both events will be flat out, straight up amazing, and if you're interested in either zines or alternative/independent comics, they will be not-to-be-missed events.  CZF is coming up fast (3 Months and 28 Days), and planning is furious and fast.  I'm lucky to be organizing CZF with a handful of great folks, Matt, Leslie, Ramsey (who were the other organizers last year), Johnny, Carrie and Jen (who have joined us for year two and are amazing).  CAKE's organizational structure is looser than the zine fest, so to list all the organizers would be a bit silly (not everyone makes every meeting, but they've contributed a great deal, I'm sure I'd forget to include someone).

CIPRC & REVENGE OF PRINT
   The store I work for, Quimby's has joined forces with Atomic Books, Zine World and Xerography Debt to declare 2011 as the Revenge of Print, because like a lot of my friends and I, they are sick and tired of the question "Is Print Dead?"  We're encouraging everyone and their mother to self-publish something, it'll be great.

   That declaration inspired me to act on an idea friends of mine and I have been kicking around for years, the creation of an independent publishing resource center in Chicago.  Portland has a great model for supporting independent publishers that I hope we can learn from.  Chicago has a healthy publishing and printing community, and a lot of spaces that encourage and teach methods of print making and writing, but nothing for the basic zine.  Copy shops in this town are either staffed by unfriendly or intimidating people, or are expensive or both.  The most basic vision for the center would be an office with a copier and supplies for cheap use.  From there we can build up tools and skill sharing to encourage anyone who has something to say to say it.

  What else, any other resolutions for 2011?  All that wasn't enough?! Keep my room clean, maybe?  I'll probably fail at that.

OH!  One last thing, I'm growing a mustache to raise money for public school classroom projects.  I know, it makes absolutely no sense, don't ask too many questions, it'll just make your head hurt.  Instead, visit my grower's page on donor's choose (one of Oprah's favorite things) and donate money to some of these awesome projects.  You can also check out my mustache's progress on flickr.  I have to admit, I've been a little slow getting my money ask out.  The campaign is called Mustaches for Kids or M4K, and it's pretty cool.

ape

The Alternative Press Expo in San Francisco was TONS OF FUN!

As usual, the highlights were the friendships, new and old that I got to enjoy.  I got to hang out with my cousins Edward and Anne on Friday night.  They're really great folks, so it was fantastic to get to hang out with them.  As usual, I shared a table with Kenan Rubenstein, who is a great guy, and a lot of fun to be around.  Next to our table were our buddies Josh Shalek and Reid Psaltis.  The number of good friends inhabiting the show are too numerous to list here, but they are all awesome folks, and they should know how exciting it is to see them whenever I get to.  I also got to meet some new folks, some I was excited to meet, like Anne Koyama, and Michael Deforge.  Others were pleasant surprises like Lea Zalinkis, and Sarah Palmer.

I had some fun food experiences, from a failed trip to buy vegan doughnuts on Sunday Morning, to the most manic and bizarre chinese restaurant I've ever been to, to delicious vegan organic mexican cuisine!

Sorry, it's not much of a recap, but my head is still spinning.  Photos help tell the story too.  Also, check out my photos from the Madison Zine Fest.  I'm trying really hard to get better at taking pictures.

ok bye.

happy bethesday!

Here's a quick update for this upcoming weekend, which if you don't know by now is the 16th annual

SMALL PRESS EXPO in Bethesda, Maryland (which is a block away from the White Flint stop on the Washington DC Metro's red line).

I've been working pretty hard to get everything ready for the show.  I'll have old stand-by's like the Trugglemat, Spitting Pennies, What is This?, and both Alpha City Comics.  I will also have these exciting new titles:

  oh boy, Comics! #1, which debuted at MIX three weeks ago, is a 106-page collection of previously printed comics that have appeared as free comics, online comics and anthology pieces that have not been readily available.

  write now!, debuting at SPX is my newest contribution to the paper-surprise-in-the-mail service, Uncle Envelope.  It's a love letter/tutorial on self publishing for kids, and comes with a zine written by the main character of the comic.

  Also debuting at SPX will be a comic I'll only have available at shows, Secret Formula.  It's an adventure comic printed as a scroll and packaged in a glass tube.  The secret formula is revealed at the end of the strip, and is one you can use.

  I'm excited to be sharing a table with Kenan Rubenstein, a good friend and a great comics artist.  Sharing our room will also be Sam Sharpe.  He'll have a new gag comic and t-shirts?! We'll also labeling our hotel room the "nerd room," a space folks can visit on Saturday night.  While other rooms will have raucous parties and have management called on them, our goal is to be a space for those not interested in getting drunk (though it wont be a dry room, neccessarily) or being loud, but those who'd like to read comics, draw, trade comics, a pretty much nerd out on comics.  It's kinda like the quiet car on the commuter train.

  Speaking of commuter trains, Kenan and I will be taking a mass transit adventure, traveling by commuter train to Baltimore on Friday evening for Atomic Book's SPX-Plosion!  It should be tons of fun.  Especially because one of my best friends from college, Mischlepity (aka Schlep, aka Doghed) now lives in Baltimore will be hanging out with us!

If you're in the general area of North Bethesda, get thee to SPX this weekend!

mix and spx

That's me at the end of MiX, the Minneapolis Indie Xpo, holding my comic that debuted there, Oh Boy, Comics! #1.  MiX was tons of fun! You can check out photos from me and other folks who went on the MiX flickr pool.

I had the great fortune to have Sam Sharpe (above) join me as a traveling buddy and table-neighbor.  He's a real stand up guy, and I had a lot of fun with him.  We left Chicago on a megabus at 10:30 Friday night, getting into the City of Lakes at 5:30 am.  We spent the entire weekend together, and I did not for one minute get tired of his company.  Conversation revolved almost entirely around comics, both singing their praises as well as venting frustrations, and gossiping, it was lots of fun.  On Sunday Sam and I explored a small chunk of the city, walking from the Seward Cafe to the Minneapolis Institute of Art to Big Brain Comics.

I also got to hang out with some really great folks, like Dylan Williams, Aaron Renier (who traveled back to Chicago with me and Sam on the bus), Noah Van Sciver, John Procellino, Amanda Elliott, Justin Madson, Lale Westvind & Ian McDuffie and Jeremy Tinder!  But the kids that took the cake this weekend were my and Sam's (and Dylan's, and John's,  and Noah's!) hosts, Raighne and Meghan Hogan, known to the comics world as 2D Cloud, producers of the Good Minnesotan.  Look, here they are now:

 
They were super friendly, welcoming and accommodating, and hilarious and fun to be around.   They're exhibiting at the Madison Zine Fest in October.  I will be too, so I'm excited to see them again!

The show itself was really well put together by Sarah Morean and Andy Krueger.  They clearly cared about the exhibitors, providing us with pizza (regular, vegan, or gluten free depending on your dietary wants and needs), and fans to keep us cool.  It was hot and muggy that day, but the room I was in stayed nice and cool all day.  The venue was fun, and the attendees seemed really interested in comics, even if they were not regular consumers.  Hats off to Sarah and Andy, they did a bang up job, and deserve a round of applause.  I'm looking forward to MiX 2011!

No sleep for the comics maker, though.  In just two weeks I'll be jumping on a train to our nation's capitol to exhibit for the first time at the Small Press Expo (SPX) in North Bethesda.  I've volunteered at this show -which is commonly known as the premier independent comics show in the country- for the past two years, but now I'll be sharing a table with my comics kindred spirit Kenan Rubenstein, and zinester extraordinaire Caitlin M!  I'll be debuting my Uncle Envelope comic write now! which is both a love letter and tutorial to self-publishing.  I'll also be debuting Secret Formula, an adventure comic, which I probably will only sell at shows due to its secret odd packaging.  I'm still drawing it, but here's a preview of the comic:

Sock-Monster production will (already has) suffer from preparation for SPX, but I'll try my hardest to eek some comics.  That's all for now!

mix one week!

I'm about to bind my new comic, Oh Boy, Comics! #1, above is a photo of 20 copies of the comic waiting to get cut, folded, sewn and then attached to the cover (yet to be determined how thread? glue?). Each cover will have an original drawing and the title will be hand written.  It's 7 signatures, full of 106 pages of comics!  

The comic will be debuting at the Minneapolis Indie Xpo (or MiX) next Saturday at the Soap Factory.

I'm really excited about the other exhibitors at MiX! Justin Madson, Sarah Becan, Aaron Renier, Sam Sharpe, 2D Cloud, Sparkplug Comic Books, B.T. Livermore, Evan Dahm, Ed Choy Moorman, Sean Lynch,  Ian McDuffie, John Porcellino, Chris Yates, Lale Westvind, Noah Van Schiver, Tom Kaczynski, and all the folks I haven't met yet!

I'm having all my original Sock-Monster buttons reprinted, hopefully they'll be done in time.  I'll have all my other comics for sale, and a the free comic, Seven Weeks, which I wrote for the post-apocalyptic reading I participated in at Matilda's earlier this summer.

And last, but not necessarily least, the Donut Cooperative will be there selling doughnuts, including...VEGAN DOUGHNUTS!  If I wasn't already planning to exhibit at the show, I would have signed up with that anouncement. Seriously folks, if you ever want me to do something, and I'm resisting, get your hands on some vegan doughnuts, I'll do pretty much anything for you.

summer reading recap

Last night was the zine reading/fair at the Fun House, and it was AWESOME! All the readings were super super sweet, and I ended up going last, which made me really nervous. I enlarged copies of pages from What is This? and read it out loud with sound effects, and a funny voice for Lucy, the alien. Everyone seemed to enjoy it. Then I traded for a bunch of zines, and a couple of folks insisted on giving me money for my comics, so I made back about half of the printing costs, which was an added bonus I wasn't planning for.

I'll add it to my "I Just Wanna Draw Comics Fund" savings account I'm gonna try to reopen today.

I've got the day off from work, so I'm running some errands, and then heading down to Hyde Park to have a drawing date with Ryan Alexander-Tanner. I'm drawing my page for the Windy City Comicon program, which is a full-sized comic book, with each creator getting a page. I'm also working on Alpha City Comics #2, I'm 10% done with penciling the book.

summer reading and zine fair

On Thursday I'll be participating in a reading of zines and comics at my friend Leslie's place. I've never read a comic out loud, so it should be an interesting experience. I tried looking into the works of the other readers, so as to provide links, but all I could find were myspace pages. Leslie is reading, and she's pretty cool. So that's reason enough to show up to her event.

There'll also be a concurrent vegan baked good swap going on! How could you NOT go?!

1743 Mozart Thursday, July 2, 2009 7pm. Be there!