.new moon rising.

i've just finished illustrating and designing i love the moon, the forthcoming record from hudson valley singer-songwriter helen avakian. the covers and liner notes include some new drawings based loosely on helen and her songs. the album is scheduled for june 27 release from the artist's own highwater music imprint, and can be ordered and further explored over at her site.



helen is a dizzyingly talented guitarist, and the songs and arrangements on this latest release give her ample opportunity to flex her fingers. i did my best to translate the album's emotional tenor into something visual, and felt i had been reasonably successful in that ambition, although it quickly became clear that helen does not share my view of her work as overwhelmingly subdued and contemplative. between you and me, i don't think she's listened to the album very closely.

.all around stumptown.

manning my table with a smile and a ribbon. photo: greyaenigma

so stumptown was ai'ight. kinda stiff and sceney, but hey, i count any trip from which i return with a backpack full of comics as a trip well-taken.

some favorites:
(this list is in progress; i'm still working my way through the spoils of my oregonian conquest)

:: tessa brunton's in the tall grass, number two. honest, sweet, and personal, and containing perhaps the most incisive and thoughtful discussion of grace kelly's vagina i've read this year. also, this girl is a sweetheart.

:: minty lewis's ps comics 4 and just this side of heaven. hilarious and heartbreaking. seriously. brilliance.

:: i suspect sarah oleksyk is going to be pretty famous pretty soon; she's a freakishly talented cartoonist. every line in ivy, chapter one is both beautiful and meaningful; the faces and gestures and expressions they form are uniformly astounding in their clarity and emotional content.

:: owl and other comics, number one by josh shalek of welcome to falling rock national park is both charming and incredibly quotable; good for a week's supply of away messages and status updates, at least.

:: my only complaint about alec longstreth's mccloud-esque art history lesson phaze 7, #013 is that it should be much, much longer. i feel certain i would have fared considerably better in old art 105 if our textbook had been longstreth's art through the ages.

:: and while getting schooled, i was fortunate enough to happen upon the darling severine leibundgut and her breathtaking scratchboard drawings for "traveling through inertia," an exploration both literal and theoretical of durer's "melancholia I." the reproductions in vancouver's cloudscape anthology robots, pine trees, & broken hearts, while still beautiful, do the originals no kind of justice.

:: andy hartzell's stylish adaptation "the shepherdess and the chimney sweep," in the typically classy and high-quality seventh issue of papercutter, is a formal gem; the (scratchboard?) illustrations of the heirloom cabinet and its details, in the style of wood-carvings, are particularly cool and creepy.

:: i'm also quite enamored of neil brideau's delightful, detailed, gorey-esque illustrations in his mini the trugglemat. not only does this kid draw awesome van-gogh-through-a-photocopier stars, but he is a seriously stellar fellow to boot.

:: to be honest, i'm not always entirely certain what's going on in liz greenfield's autobiographical comics, but the drawings in i live in a box are so jubilant and expressive and charming that i love every page and panel. also, my new jellyfish button totally rules.

:: i really, really wish there were a second issue of barry deutsch's lilting, elegant hereville.

:: and while it hardly needs an endorsement from me, julia wertz's fart party #07 is roughly as good as the previous 7 1/2 issues, which is to say, fucking awesome.

other highlights included scott mccloud displaying what appeared to be genuine interest in my book, craig thompson sincerely trying to feign interest in my book, and selling a copy of my book to these people:

doctor nebulous and ticker. photo: evan nichols

i shared a table with eddie perkins of atomic panda, a talented fellow from california, who not only saved me from passing out multiple times with his magical bottomless bag of rice crispy treats and bananas, but also traded me a seriously saucy comic from his younger, broker, nom-de-plum-ed days. (without giving away too much, let me just say: hot cat-girl-angel-on-cat-girl-angel action.)

eddie with his felines-fatales, me with my robot friends. photo: lovemotionstory

eddie was particularly horrified to see how long i spent on a sketch requested by one of the dudes from cosmic monkey comics, who came by, picked up a few copies of tick, and asked if i would draw him "what space monkey means to [me]" for the store's wall.


this, dear friends, is why i don't do doodles when i sign stuff.

while bumming around town with my host jed lazar (co-founder of the imminent soupcycle sensation) and fellow traveler joe victorine (d.p. to the future stars), i had the good fortune to make the acquaintance of the inimitable malcolm rollick, an absurdly talented singer-songwriter who recently left her anti-folk roots behind and transplanted herself to portland. she was kind enough to show me a bit of the pdx scene, and even dragged me to a couple open mics, where i tried out some of the new stuff i've been working on (exclusively in the shower, up to that point; this is what drunken bravado gets me). i'm feeling kinda better about these songs as a result, probably, of the freakish niceness of pacific northwesterners; i may even throw a couple demos up here at some point.

good times. i'll miss you, sweet portland, and your ample bike lanes and your allergy-inducing lushness and your clean, if vaguely patchouli-scented air. way not to suck.