"Boys and Girls Grow Up" Revisited

Back cover of "Boys and Girls Grow Up" Number 4, 1984 by Amy Crehore (Breck Girl)
Tom Campagnoli, co-editor and publisher "Boys and Girls Grow Up"

Front Cover "Boys and Girls Grow Up" Number 4, 1984 by Amy Crehore

I spent the Thanksgiving holiday in Virginia this year and it was unseasonably warm. The temperature was a perfect 73 degrees and sunny.

My return trip cross-country from VA back to OR took me 24 hours door-to-door. I won't go into the details here, but the airline was kind enough to provide me with a suite in a fancy new Hilton in San Francisco to make up for hours of waiting and missed connections.

While in VA, I visited some of my best friends like Tom Campagnoli. He and I actually published a comic book (much like the early "Blab!" issues) in the first half of the 80's called "Boys and Girls Grow Up". Somehow we managed to keep it going for 5 issues and had it distributed by Last Gasp. Comic artist Peter Bagge (creator of "Hate") wrote a review of our book in an issue of R. Crumb's "Weirdo".

"Boys and Girls Grow Up" was especially sweet because it was a collection of comic art done by some of our closest art school buddies. We all went to V.C.U. in Richmond. From what I hear now, V.C.U. has grown to be one of the largest art schools in the country, if not the largest.

Richmond is also the home of "The Drama" art magazine. I saw some issues of "The Drama" at a Richmond gallery and shop called Quirk along with designer toys and many other cool and unusual things while I was there this past week.

Good ol' Richmond, VA.

The Art of Amy Crehore

Hokum Images

I came across these images on forums recently.

They made me laugh.

It's hokum, folks!

Leslie Garland Bolling's Nudes (1898-1955)

The Library of Virginia recently held an unusual exhibition of masterful wood carving: figurative sculpture by an obscure artist named Leslie Garland Bolling. He was an African-American self-taught artist who lived in Richmond and made more than 80 carvings of working people and nudes from the period of 1926-1943. His nudes are particularly wonderful in their stylization of women's curves. A lot of feeling went into these pieces.

In this series of photos, you can see him working on one of these pieces in his home studio.(Credit: Bolling Carving "Queen of Dreams", Harmon Foundation).

Read more about him and view more works on the Library of Virgina website here:

Leslie Garland Bolling

Pagebull.com Launched

A unique new search engine was just launched on November 28, 2006. It shows a layout of 12 different screen shots per page with highlighted search words. Here's what a search of my name looks like on Pagebull:

Pagebull.com

(Thanks to Marshall Sponder at webmetricsguru for the link)

Published!

Cover by Jonathan Rosen

I finally got my copies of the new "Blab! 17" in the mail this week.

It was a long wait for me - a couple of years almost since I first started doing sketches for "The Banana Eater". The drawing took me months to work out. I decided that Devil's Island would be my backdrop and I had to do some research on plants, animals and people. I also had to make it really entertaining.

The painting was finished in June or July 2005, it was shown in the first Blab! Art Exhibit of Sept. 2005, and has just now been published in Nov. 2006.

The Art of Amy Crehore

Magritte at LACMA

The Rene Magritte exhibit opens November 19, 2006 at Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
There will be 68 works by Magritte. The exhibit was designed by John Baldessari and it looks super cool. Hope to make it down there before it closes.

Read about it here and see more images:

LACMA

Thomas Woodruff is Back!

Root Hare Painting copyright 2006 Thomas Woodruff from Freak Parade

There was a gorgeously painted fashion spread in "Swindle" magazine a couple of months ago and now this: an art show at Illinois State University Galleries.
Thomas Woodruff

is back in full force with a new large-format book out

called "Freak Parade" available through Last Gasp.

These are the paintings that he was working on over the last five years.

His work glows with animated, super-magical otherworldliness.

He paints a fanciful universe of weird beauty with an incredibly unique touch, using richly layered paint and subdued colors.
Lucky were the people who got to see this show Sept.25-Nov. 5, 2006. I already know what I want for Christmas this year! I saw some of his series paintings in person at the art museum in Eugene, OR and I will never forget those baby heads and sacred scrolls.

Check out the paintings here:

Freak Parade by Thomas Woodruff

and buy the book!