Press Release - File Under: Pop Opens July 10

Zombo Gallery
4900 Hatfield Street
Pittsburgh, PA 15201

June 8, 2009
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Michael Devine [412-904-3703, zomboco@aol.com]

Zombo Gallery Celebrates Two Years in Lawrenceville
with Wayno's Latest Show, File Under: Pop

PITTSBURGH -- Zombo Gallery, Pittsburgh's home for hipster art and culture, celebrates another year of quirkiness with its second anniversary show, File Under: Pop, opening July 10, 2009.

Zombo Gallery, the creation of local entertainer and impresario Michael Devine, has become a showcase for artists of unique vision, and is Lawrenceville's hottest spot for unusual art happenings.

Wayno, Pittsburgh's rock & roll cartoonist, returns with File Under: Pop, his third solo exhibit at Zombo. His previous Zombo shows included the sold-out Squaresville in 2007, followed by 2008's door-buster, Stubble & Smoke. The current show features forty black & white portraits of musicians and other entertainers, originally created as illustrations for the Rhino Records division of Warner Music Group.

File Under: Pop highlights a different facet of Wayno's eclectic but always-recognizable style. In contrast to the loose, scruffy look of his previous exhibits, these portraits display a clean and economic "cartoon realism." The artist describes them as "Roy Lichtenstein without the halftone dots."

The show's title was inspired by the instructional text that appeared on record sleeves in the early days of LPs, as well as the Pop Art aesthetic that informs all of Wayno's work.

File Under: Pop also includes larger paintings based on some of the black & white portraits, limited edition prints, and an exhibit catalog in the form of a coloring book. Wayno chose the coloring book format to encourage the audience to take part in the creative process. "Even if they don't actually color in the book, thinking about how they might color it will give viewers a different take on the images."

Gallery owner Michael Devine said, "I'm always excited to see what Wayno comes up with for us. We're both interested in unusual music and art. I like to say that Wayno and Zombo are a perfect combo!"

The File Under: Pop opening reception is on Friday, July 10, 2008, from 6:00 to 9:00 PM. Normal gallery hours are Fridays from 5:00 to 7:30 PM, Saturdays from noon to 4:00 PM, or by appointment.

Zombo Gallery includes a retail area featuring custom T-shirts, DVDs, CDs, and recorded air checks of Devine’s radio show, which is heard Fridays from 10:00 AM to 3:00 PM on WRCT 88.3 FM.

Wayno is a cartoonist, illustrator, artist, and writer based in Pittsburgh. His clients include The New Yorker, Nickelodeon Magazine, McGraw-Hill Books, The Guardian, Table, and The New York Times. He is a member of the Pittsburgh Society of Illustrators and the National Cartoonists Society, and is a founding board member of the ToonSeum, Pittsburgh's museum of the cartoon arts.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has called Wayno "Pittsburgh's go-to guy for rocking illustrations," and Pop City Media referred to him as "a household hipster name."

For additional information, call 412-904-3703, or visit http://www.zomboworld.com

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Bizarro meets Wayno yet again!

Today's Bizarro comic is my third collaboration with the swashbuckling cartoonist Dan Piraro.


I wrote the gag, and gave Dan a drawing to work from, which he improved upon greatly. I'm really pleased with the way Mister P brought this gag to life. In my original sketch, the characters looked more like Easter Island heads, which are pretty funny in their own right, but they aren't tikis, and I should know better.

Make sure you track down the paper, so you can see the hilarious title block that runs alongside the panel.

And, I like the joke too.

iPhone Brushes App

The iPhone's new Brushes application is pretty spiffy, and it has a companion program that allows you to export you painting as a video showing all of the brushstrokes along the way. Here's one where I tried to use a style similar to my acrylic paintings:

Preview of File Under: Pop

Below are two sample pages from the File Under: Pop exhibit catalog and coloring book. All 40 portraits from the show will be included in this comb-bound book, along with fun facts about each subject. It will be a limited edition, probably 100 copies, and will sell for $10.

Full list of portraits:

• David Bowie
• Lenny Bruce
• The Cars
• Johnny Cash (Folsom Prison era)
• Johnny Cash (American Recordings era)
• Cheech & Chong
• The Clash
• Bootsy Collins
• Dick Dale
• DEVO
• Bob Dylan
• The Everly Brothers
• Aretha Franklin
• Allen Ginsberg
• P.J. Harvey
• INXS
• Spike Jones
• Chaka Khan
• Jerry Lee Lewis
• Charles Mingus
• The Monkees (group)
• Micky Dolenz
• Davey Jones
• Mike Nesmith
• Peter Tork
• Richard Pryor
• The Ramones
• Roy Rogers
• Todd Rundgren
• Sam & Dave
• The Smiths
• Sonny & Cher
• Dusty Springfield
• Television
• They Might Be Giants
• Don Van Vliet (Captain Beefheart)
• The Velvet Underground
• Bob Wills
• Stevie Wonder
• Ed Wood
  

All pieces are 9" x 9" overall (live image is about 6" x 6"). They're professionally framed with acid-free backing, conservation glass, and a spacer to keep the glass off the art. The show opens July 10, but I'll offer pre-sales to blog followers. Send a message if interested in seeing any portrait and getting a quote.

File Under: Pop (Wayno's new art show) opens July 10

The Bacon Strip for April 2009

Here's another comic for the Bacon of the Month club. It's included in their April package.


The club is a division of The Grateful Palate, and is a must for serious carnivores.

Bizarro meets Wayno, again

Today's Bizarro comic is another collaboration between the artist Dan Piraro and me. I wrote the gag and Dan drew it in his distinctive, twisted style.


This is the second one to be published, and there are at least a couple more to come. One of them will be a nice, big Sunday panel.
It's a real treat to work with one of my favorite cartoonists.

My first published Bizarro gag can be seen here.

Recombinant Timmy

While rummaging through my disorganized "filing system," I ran across the pasteup for Recombinant Timmy, an experimental dada/cutup comic I published in 1989 as a "secret publication." These were oddball books that I distributed to friends, but never advertised or sold. This one was one of my favorites from that group.

To produce the comic, I dismantled a copy of Timmy #715, a Dell children's comic published in 1956. I cut about half the pages into individual panels, and then cut out the word balloons from the remaining pages. I put the panels and balloons into separate bags, shook them up and pulled enough to make a minicomic. I pasted up the balloons and panels in the order that I pulled them, and printed up the resulting mess.

Surprisingly, it produced a nearly linear story, complete with what could almost be a punchline at the end.

The cover is an "intentional" collage made from the original comic's cover.

Here's the front of Recombinant Timmy:


...and here's the cover of the source material:


The minicomic was simply Xeroxed onto colored bond paper, but the original pasteup was, of course, full halftone-dotted color. After twenty years, it's aged and yellowed quite nicely. It's pretty fragile, and I'm going to scan it for my archives.

I'm considering doing a 20th anniversary laserjet reissue, in color. It would probably be very limited, and would be signed and numbered. If there's enough interest, I'll look into it seriously.

Alter(c)ations

I recently found a small stash of my old self-published minicomix, including this one from 1988.

Alter(c)ations was one of my "secret" publications. These were printed in editions of 50 copies and were never advertised or sold. I gave them away to friends or sometimes threw them in with an order of other comix.

The images were made from magazine pages (and one "McHale's Navy" bubblegum card). I defaced the source material with white-out, X-acto blades, correction tape and ink. That's a little rubber stamp image of Hedorah (the Smog Monster) in the corner of the next-to-last page, and it looks like the background on the final page is an enlarged photocopy of a Pep Boys ad.

Bizarro Meets Wayno

Today's Bizarro comic is a collaboration between the artist Dan Piraro and me. I recently wrote a few gags that Dan liked enough to use in his panel, and this is the first to be published.

Dan's one of my favorite cartoonists, and it's a kick to see my joke rendered in his style.

Thanks, DP!