A Study Hall Notebook From the 12th Dimension

So. Melissa Brown and Mat Brinkman at M+B Gallery. Mat Brinkman is one of my favorites. Definetly my favorite of the fabled Fort Thunder artists from Providence, Rhode Island. He doesn't show that much it seems, and the plethora of drawings he had at this show was more work of his than I've ever seen in one place.

Do yourself a favor and google 'Fort Thunder' if you're not hip to this super-influential group of artists and musicians. Let me put it this way: If Gary Panter was shot in a rocket to a distant moon, and a thousand years later we found his descendants, long since having created a new world and culture out of whole cloth, what they wrought would look something like the output of the Fort. And Brinkman and his otherworldly imagery from a study hall notebook from the 12th dimension is my favorite of the bunch. His only solo published book that I know of is Teratoid Heights, and I forgot to bring it for him to sign, though I did get to meet him. He's from Texas like me. I also got to meet Dan Nadel, mastermind behind Picturebox Inc., who publish much of the Fort Thunder and related books and whatnot, along with many other super amazing things. I can honestly say that Picturebox probably gets more of my money more than any other book publisher. So there.

I first discovered the work of the Fort years ago in Houston, when The Comics Journal did a huge feature on them in one of their issues (Oct 2003 issue). There in my lonely Houston apartment, at the tail end of my undergrad education, the story and work of this group totally took hold of me as something unlike anything I had ever previously encountered. Here was a group of young artists creating as purely as possible, eschewing labels or categories that could pigeon hole whatever is they chose to make, be it posters, prints, comics, sculptures, performances, or music. My first hand encounter with Brinkman was the cover of Kramers Ergot 4, which was another eye-opener to this strange new world.

Their legacy continues -- Ben Jones, Paper Rad, C.F., as well as the original Fort dwellers continue to produce work, much of it published by Nadel and some others. Do yourself a favor and immerse yourself in this rich body of kookiness and spread the love.

Oh yeah, I met and talked with Winona Ryder at the opening. She was very nice.

These are the highlights of what I got, Fort Thunder-wise, if you feel the need to come over and drink some beer and look at some books. I have a clipboard if you need to check something out.

Wunderground: Providence, 1995 to the Present -- This is the catalogue of a show put on by RISD in 2006 celebrating the history of the Fort, its artists, and current artists that continue in the same spirit.

The Comics Journal #256 -- This issue's feature, from October 2003, explains the whole Fort deal, and has interviews with a few of the artists involved, including Brinkman.

Teratoid Heights -- Nice, weird, chunky book by Brinkman that is pretty representative of his output.

Ninja -- Super huge mega-comic by Brian Chippendale that features some more recent stuff intermixed with childhood drawings. Very cool.

Maggotts -- Also by Chippendale. A labrynthine adventure through some of the most obsessive and insane drawing you'll ever see.

Paper Rodeo -- This is the comics newspaper put out by some of the Fort artists that featured work by the above mentioned cats. I have 3 or 4 issues.

Lightning Bolt, Mindflayer, and Forcefield -- Three bands featuring Brinkman, Chippendale, and others. I have albums of all three. All noisy, calamitous, kookiness. I think Lightning Bolt is the best.

I have some other related stuff by some other related artists, but I'm about to list the better part of my library here. What's above should get you started. Enjoy.

Donkeybutter

Hey kids. Well, Follow the Hawk is live. If you didn't get a copy at the EVER EXPANDING PIZZA BIG BANG, then shoot me a line and I'll give you one. The next one I make will cost you though. Behold the latest donkeybutter:

Here's a link to a dude hating on Gary Panter. COMEDY!!

So the video below was something I used to catch on public access in San Antonio, where I was raised and reared. It was one the first videos I ever downloaded over the internet. And its back. It was so funny that I would stay up late with my old friend Tina Bloom and watch genuine broadcasts of Robert Titlton preaching and just add our own fart noises at appropriate times. Good times.


Adbusters article about hipsters. Heh. So what's hipper than adbusters writing an article shitting on hipsters? Its like a snake eating its own tail, man.

PHILIP GUSTON IS GOD. No link, just, it's true.

So, Afterall magazine hosts free underground sci-fi movies on the roof of a hotel downtown? One flick is aparently directed by Joan Jonas? Who wants in on that?

Have you been reading Seki City LA?

And for you're amusement, some pics of Where The Magic Happens™:

The Vortex

My parents sent me a Transformers birthday card.  So now you know a little something about me. So I've given the Panter books a look see.  Its good to have touchstones -- art and artists that you know your identifying with, totally consciously.  Nothing is created in a vacuum. Back when I lived in Santa Ana, me and my pal JJ got caught in a Gary Panter / Jonathan Lethem / Philip K. Dick vortex.  Everywhere we went, it seemed everything was pointing towards the work of those three fellows, to the point where we met them (well, Panter and Lethem) during the fabled Masters of American Comics show back in November of '05.  They both are big PKD devotees; Panter interviewed him for Slash magazine back in the day, and Lethem has admitted his influence so much he wrote the introduction to a recent Dick collection.  I was already a Panter and PKD fan, JJ already a Lethem fan -- to find out we were living in the town where Dick lived his last days began to weird us out.  An old Houston artist friend of mine, Mark Flood, told us we were in a vortex, half jokingly, and we knew.  I began to wander about Santa Ana, trying to figure out where Dick used to live.  I tried to make it a point to let everyone in that town know that he lived and died there.  Cal State Fullerton, where I was attending grad school has his original manuscripts archived at their library.  Add to that our friend Bob had a connection to the missing PKD robot head that was making news at the time.  

The new issue of Jonathan Lethem's latest work, the comic book Omega the Unknown, sports a Gary Panter drawn cover.  Now I am in LA, where down by the Nokia Theatre, video billboards begin the visual future for the town envisioned in the Dick-adapted Blade Runner.  It goes on and on.

I seem to be in some Euro-art-comics vortex now.  But that's a whole other post. But it's not hard to see the connections............

Save the Taco Truck

So the man is trying to shut down the taco trucks in LA.  The one behind my building makes the deadliest breakfast burrito in the galaxy.  There ain't a thing about it that's Mexican except the tortilla.  I have seen the dude unwrap a Kraft American single and put it in the thing.  It's delicious.  But more than one a week is a death wish.  But what a way to go.  But this post is only partially about the Great Taco Truck Skirmish of '08.  Its about Gary Panter.  I just got his new two-volume slipcased monograph (published by the fantastic Picturebox, Inc) in the mail today.  I had to go to teach soon afterwards so I only got to glimpse it.  Much like taco trucks, I identify Panter's work with Los Angeles, him being part of Slash magazine and knowing PKD, his Paul Rubens connection, and try not to look at Jimbo: Adventures Paradise and tell me that's not LA.  I have a particular affinity with him being from Texas, like me.  I've met the man a few times, and can do a decent impression of him.  He sounds Californian.  He lives and works in Brooklyn, now.  I'm sure I'll have more to gush about him once I have some Glenlivet and give the new monograph a once over, but for now, I just wanted to give a 'fuckin' a' to taco trucks and Panter.