Anchor Graphics
@ COLUMBIA COLLEGE CHICAGO
VOLUME 3 NO. 2
SUMMER 2009
2
ANCHOR GRAPHICS
COLUMBIA COLLEGE CHICAGO
recent events
1
our mission
Anchor Graphics @ Columbia College Chicago is a not-for-profit
printshop that brings together, under professional guidance, a
diverse community of youth, emerging and established artists,
and the public to advance the fine art of printmaking by integrating
education with the creation of prints.
GLOBAL IMPLICATIONS:
THE 2009 SGC CONFERENCE
By all accounts the 2009 Southern Graphics
Council Conference was a smashing success. Between March 25 and 29, Chicago
was overrun with printmakers as attendance
reached almost 1800 people. With events
and exhibitions at nearly fifty different locations, this was truly a citywide effort. A special thank you to all the coordinators, hosting
organization, volunteers and attendees for
making this year’s conference so special!
STUDENTS FROM GREENWOOD ELEMENTARY SCHOOL VIEW PRINTS THEY CREATED ON VIEW AT COLUMBIA COLLEGE.
support
Funding for Anchor Graphics is provided in part by contributions from individuals, the Illinois Arts Council-A State Agency, the Chicago Community
Trust, the Terra Foundation for American Art, the Oppenheimer Family Foundation, the Packaging Corporation of America, and Target.
contents
PHYLLIS MCGIBBON PROOFS A PHOTO POLYMER PLATE DURING HER RESIDENCY.
2
letter from the director
david jones
3
relocation: mccarthur binion
james iannaccone
7
what is happening here
chris dacre
11 this thing called blab!
bill north
14 upcoming programs
If you would like to make a donation to Anchor Graphics please contact us at 312-369-6864 or anchorgraphics@colum.edu.
Donations can also be made online through our website at colum.edu/anchorgraphics.
ON THE COVER: CHRIS DACRE, WAR IS FUN, INSTALLATION AT LULUBELL TOY BODEGA, TUCSON, AZ, 2007
PHOTO BY TOMIKO JONES
BROAD SHOULDERS
AND BROTHERLY LOVE
East coast style met Midwest sensibility in
Broad Shoulders and Brotherly Love, a group
exhibition at the Hyde Park Art Center of
print-based work sampling the archives of two
of the most highly respected national nonprofit organizations dedicated to innovative
techniques and concepts in print media. Both
Anchor Graphics and Philagrafika selected an
outstanding variety of work from the other’s
residency and invitational portfolio programs.
Digital prints, silkscreen, woodcut, lithographs, engravings, linocut collages, printed
paper constructions, and smoked paper
prints presented in this show demonstrated
the experimental trends in printmaking today.
This exhibition was on view January 18 –
March 29 at the Hyde Park Art Center.
WINTER WORKSHOPS AND
DEMONSTRATIONS
As part of its educational mission, Anchor
Graphics has presented a number of
workshops and demonstrations over the
past several months focusing on various
print media. Workshops and demonstrations were conducted in collaboration with
Columbia College, the Columbia College
Alumni Association, the Center for Book and
Paper Arts, Monroe Elementary School, the
Minneapolis Print Club, Homewood Flossmoor
High School, Harold Washington College, the
Smart Museum of Art, Wheaton College, the
University of Chicago, Oak Park River Forest
High School, Greenwood Elementary School,
and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
2
ANCHOR GRAPHICS
COLUMBIA COLLEGE CHICAGO
recent events
3
Letter
from the Director
[ continued ]
DAVID JONES, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
OF ANCHOR GRAPHICS.
Dear Friends,
Warm weather and summer have finally come to Chicago. We have had a
busy year with the Southern Graphics Council Conference bringing over 1,700
printmakers to the campus of Columbia College. I was struck by how many friends
we all have in common and how close the community actually is. I am amazed
at how enthusiastic everyone is about the possibilities of printmaking. It was an
incredible event and if there were ever any conversations about printmaking being
dead, they were dispelled during this conference. As our 2009 Artist-In-Residence program gets underway, I continue to be
impressed by the caliber of artists selected to participate. Out of all of our
activities at Anchor Graphics I find our AIR program the most stimulating. We,
staff and artists, are offered new opportunities to problem solve, talk about
aesthetic concerns and share who we are with one another. It is really about that
space where ideas can germinate and blossom. After the artists leave it is often
we who are enriched by their time here. I find that by having these individuals in
our midst I am challenged, inspired, and encouraged to take creative risks in my
own life and work.
If you are reading this newsletter it means that you are curious about prints and
printmaking, either it’s history or it’s varied processes. If you want to learn a
bit more about the work created in our shop, we invite you to drop in and look
around. We hope that perhaps, in some way, when you leave Anchor you will be
as inspired as we are when working with students, faculty and artists. Sincerely,
David Jones
Executive Director
MCARTHUR BINION WORKS ON FILMS TO BE SHOT ON TO PHOTO LITHO PLATES TO CREATE HIS PRINTS.
Relocation
BY JAMES IANNACCONE
THE ELECTION OF
Barack Obama has lead some to speculate on the possibility of a post-racial America. While most would agree that this ideal is a ways off, it is
remarkable to note that just 70 years ago many African Americans were still sharecroppers, working the land much as their families had done since the end of the Civil
War. Sharecropping was not the most economically efficient form of farming however,
often leading to debt and bankruptcy for both the farmer and the landowner. The forward march of industrialization brought with it mechanized farming techniques, which
by the 1950’s would further diminish the profitability of such practices to the point of
their virtual extinction, at least in the US. Sharecropping still persists in areas of India,
Pakistan and parts of Africa. The collapse of the sharecropping system in this country left hundreds of thousands of farmers out of work. Like 1.3 million of their fellow
Southerners had done since 1915, they would eventually head to the North or to the
West in search of greater economic opportunity and racial equality as part of the Great
Migration. Between 1940 and 1970 an additional five million people would resettle
and by its end, the African American population would be thoroughly urbanized with
over 80% residing in cities across the country.
Among the families participating in this exodus was that of McArthur Binion.
McArthur was born in a three-room row house in Macon, Mississippi. It was home
to eleven people, had no running water, and only a wood stove to provide heat. At
age three, he and his siblings were sent out into the fields to pick cotton. In search
of greater prosperity for the family, his father and uncle headed for Detroit in 1951.
Finding employment at the Cadillac plant, they become part of the then thriving auto
industry. The rest of the family soon followed and by the time they reached Detroit the
Binion family numbered eighteen, all of whom would occupy a two-bedroom house on 8
Mile Road. Since then this road has become a de facto dividing line between Detroit’s
[ continued on page 4 ]
2009 ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE
PROGRAM OFF AND RUNNING
Our 2009 Artist-In-Residence program is
under way. We have already had three wonderful artists working on some spectacular
projects. As Anchor’s first resident of 2009,
Phyllis McGibbon created a series of photobased prints that continued her recent work
with collaged postcards. Contained within a
suitcase, this set of modified souvenirs acts
as a visual essay prompting questions about
place, space, global interdependence, and
the legacy of the grand tour. Chris Dacre was
also in the shop working on several prints.
You can read more about Dacre’s work in this
newsletter. Most recently Michael Barnes has
been working on several lithographs depicting
weapons from throughout history diseased by
excessive violence and abuse of power. Stay
tuned for more on upcoming 2009 Artist-InResidence lectures and receptions.
SCRAPING THE SURFACE LECTURE
SERIES COMPLETES ITS FIFTH SEASON
The Scraping the Surface Lecture Series continues to draw crowds wishing to learn more
about print media. This past season featured
lectures by James D. Sullivan, who discussed
the subject of his book On the Walls and in
the Streets: American Poetry Broadsides from
the 60s; Jim Sherraden, Manager of Hatch
Show Print, who talked on the history of this
Nashville based letterpress founded in 1879;
Victor Margolin who presented on various
types of World War II propaganda from posters and buttons to comics; and Lea Rosson
DeLong, independent curator and author, who
spoke about the late lithographs and drawings of Grant Wood. Scraping the Surface will
return in October for its sixth season.
MCARTHUR BINION
DRIVING THROUGH MISSISSIPPI IN CHICAGO (DETAIL)
14 COLOR LITHOGRAPH
22 ½” X 26 ½”
2009
OPPOSITE PAGE:
MCARTHUR BINION
DRIVING THROUGH MISSISSIPPI IN DETROIT
14 COLOR LITHOGRAPH
22 ½” X 26 ½”
2009
Such personal stories embedded within the shared history of a larger population
form the underpinnings of McArthur’s art. Using events from his own life McArthur
strives to tell the story of his family and that of so many others who found
themselves in similar circumstances.
predominantly poor, African-American neighborhoods and the wealthier, mostly white
northern suburbs, and became the title for
the semi-autobiographical film of rapper
Eminem. At the time, however, the Binions
would be the first African American family in
the neighborhood. McArthur would continue
to push racial boundaries by becoming the
first black person to graduate from Cranbrook
Academy of Art with a Master of Fine Arts
degree. In 1973, McArthur’s personal migration would also continue when he left Detroit,
headed for New York where he would stay till
1991 before moving on to Chicago.
Such personal stories embedded within
the shared history of a larger population form
the underpinnings of McArthur’s art. Using
events from his own life McArthur strives
to tell the story of his family and that of so
many others who found themselves in similar
circumstances. Such personal histories act
as a starting point to be distilled down to a
more graphic form, a simplified geometry on
which layers of pigment and meaning can be
built up much as people build up experiences
over the course of their life.
At Anchor Graphics, McArthur has produced two lithographs. Both start with a layer
of artifacts that come from a very specific
and personal history. They use pages from
the personal address-book he kept while in
New York City. Before the days of cell phones
that could store such information internally,
these pages listed the names and phone
numbers for personal friends and professional contacts. Separating the six pages
in each print is a t-shaped grid of repeated
images. For Driving Through Mississippi in
Detroit the image is of Aretha Franklin. Here
the Queen of Soul represents the entire city
of Detroit as well as her own individuality.
Like McArthur she spent her early days in
the south before moving to the Motor City
where she would become the figurehead for
a cultural and musical movement that would
become synonymous with the city itself.
For Driving Through Mississippi in Chicago,
McArthur chose an old photograph of the
house where he was born. Though located
in Macon, Mississippi, this house acts as a
representation of Chicago as seen through
a filter of dislocation. McArthur has noted,
“There’s a particular area in Chicago that had
the rural reminiscence of Mississippi and is
now totally demolished due to developers.
Some of the former residents continue to
come back everyday to vacant lots to socialize, to sites that were once their homes.” For
McArthur and the Chicagoans he speaks of,
reminiscing about a former dwelling is more
than simply thinking about a building. It is the
desire to return to a community that no longer
exists in a physical sense but still lingers
in the hearts of its former inhabitants. Over
the images of Aretha Franklin and the house
in Macon is dropped a layer of transparent
black, to shroud them in a fog of nostalgia
and the diming of memory. Over the phonebook pages are layers of colored marks. The
colors are selected from a particular box of
crayons McArthur used to make drawings
with as a kid. The patterning imitates kente
textiles of Africa, a sacred cloth of kings
produced by the Akan people of Ghana.
Legends say that kente was first made by two
friends who went off hunting in a forest only
to become distracted by a spider making its
web. After two days of intense scrutiny the
friends returned home and began to weave
like the spider. This story along with many
other important Akan myths are called anansesem, which literally translates to “spider
story” but can also be taken figuratively to
mean “traveler’s tale”. Taken in this context
the timeline of the story recounted by McArthur
through these prints is extended back beyond
his own lifetime to the forced migration of his
and so many others’ ancestors.
McArthur’s work not only records social
history but also cultural history. In addition
to African textiles it references western art
of the 20th century. His geometry is influenced by modernism and has connections to
minimalism, at least in appearance. Though
McArthur’s looser, more expressive, and more
personal handling of materials combined with
his narrative ambitions distances him from
such artists. The rough handling of materials
also gives it the physicality of action paint-
ing and an ethos earned through hard labor,
like that of a field hand or factory worker.
Specifically, McArthur’s art brings to mind the
urban grids of Mondrian. Landing some where
between the figurative and the abstract, both
attempted to balances the narrative of image
with the expression of pure shape and color.
Though McArthur’s work often takes on the
added challenge of trying to simultaneously
represent both the city and the countryside.
At its heart McArthur’s art is a document
of change, personal change for him and his
family, and historic change for the country
and the world. It maps demographic and cultural shifts while telling tales of travels taken
by him and millions of others.
McArthur Binion is full-time faculty in Fine Art at
Columbia College Chicago. He has exhibited widely in
New York, Detroit, Chicago, and Italy, with work is in
the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in
New York and the Detroit Institute of Art. More
information can be found at mcarthurbinion.com
The Installations of Chris Dacre In His Own Words
HAT IS HAPPENING HER
CHRIS DACRE
AIR FORCE WON
INSTALLATION
ROSARIO, ARGENTINA
2007
IT’S IMPORTANT FOR the stuff that I
deal with in my work to know a little bit about
my background. The key piece being that right
after high school I joined the air force to get
away. There was nothing really there after
high school so I found this as a way to get
out and travel. I’ve always been really interested in the iconography of the military, the
airplanes, tanks and things. I always liked to
watch movies that dealt with this and to hear
stories from some of the old guys who have
been in the military. It was very interesting for
me to hear about the camaraderie and the
things that took place on the battlefield. So I
joined the air force. I was guarding airplanes
for a while then I was an EMT. I was in a total
of eight years, four in active duty and four
in the reserves. After the air force I moved
around a little bit. I always liked art but I
never knew you could do it as a career. I still
don’t know if you can do it as a career but
I’m trying. So I ended up going to school and
got a graphic design degree as an undergraduate and then I went to graduate school for
printmaking. I graduated from the University
of Arizona in 2006.
When you are in school you are encouraged to experiment to find what you are trying
to say. So I was in this experimental phase.
I was working on all these different bodies of
work. I do a lot of collage work on the side.
I use these collages to take my mind away
from larger projects, to formulate ideas and to
experiment on a smaller scale. So I collect a
lot of books from thrift stores like textbooks
and children’s books, things that have a lot of
graphic imagery in them. Things that I can cut
out and use in collages. I happened across
this one book, which is a children’s dictionary. So I started experimenting and making up
this series of characters to interact with the
characters that were already illustrated on the
page. I ended up doing one for each letter of
the alphabet.
[ continued on page 9 ]
COLUMBIA COLLEGE CHICAGO
9
CHRIS DACRE
ABORT MISSION BUBBLES AND RAINBOWS
LITHOGRAPH
19 1/2” X 32 3/4”
2009
CHRIS DACRE
WAR IS FUN
INSTALLATION AT LULUBELL TOY BODEGA
TUCSON, AZ
2007
“What is the point of war? What is
happening here?” These people are
fighting these people, and these
people are fighting them and nobody
is fighting anybody in particular.
I finished this whole series of children’s
pages and was at this point where I had all
these great characters. It felt strange to hit
upon something and then be completely done
with it. So I was talking to one of my friends.
We were throwing back and forth ideas and
he suggested that I make dolls out of these
characters. That didn’t really appeal to me
but the idea of taking them off the page did.
I was really excited to get in and start pulling
some of these characters out. I had a silkscreen kit that one of my friends had given
me. I had never done silk-screen before. I
thought I would learn silk-screen and print
some of these characters. I used felt because
I was going to try to sew some of them
together. I hand cut them out and I stacked
them up. I noticed that they stuck together.
Then I put up a little sheet of felt on the wall
and I just stuck the characters on. It was kind
of this epiphany that somebody had already
thought of before, when they invented the
church felt boards, but at the time I didn’t put
two and two together.
I created characters and used all this
imagery that I’ve always been drawn towards
like tanks and airplanes, trucks and explosions, for my thesis show. I lined the walls
with sheets of felt trying to create different
landscapes within a larger overall mural type
wall piece. I created these things that look
like mountains, gray sky, a little cityscape, a
puffy cloud coming out of a little tank, a pink
piece where this rocket launcher is launching a rocket out. The intention of the overall
installation was to ask the question, “What is
the point of war? What is happening here?”
These people are fighting these people, and
these people are fighting them and nobody is
fighting anybody in particular. They’re just all
kind of fighting. It’s asking the question, “Why
is all of this taking place and what is the
point?” There is no objective but there is all
this chaos and battle.
After my thesis show I did a collaboration
with two other artists. I made a fairly largescale tank out of felt. It was my first attempt
at making a three dimensional sculpture. One
of the other artists had done paintings directly
on the walls around the tank. Both this piece
and my thesis show were really good jumping
off points for me.
This took me into creating my first really
put together show. I pulled my tank out and I
had my thesis work. Inspired by the collaboration, I wanted to start doing wall paintings,
taking some of my characters and blowing
them up large. So I created an installation
at a toy store in Tucson. I fixed up the tank
and created all these little tanks that are the
same size as the felt tanks used on the wall.
I wanted to start to bring pieces off of the
wall and out on to the ground. So I had the
smaller tanks lined up following the big tank.
I created this wall painting and started doing
all this stuff that had been going on in my
mind. Everything started coming together at
this point. All these different elements could
be used.
I lined up a two-month residency in
Argentina. I went down there with no supplies,
because as soon as it was done I was going
to travel for six more months and I wasn’t
going to carry around all this stuff. I came up
with the idea to use papier-mâché in a large
scale way. Since I had made a tank, I wanted
to see if I could make a large airplane that
was suspended from the ceiling with things
that were readily available. So I created this
airplane that was 8’ x 8’. Its just papiermâché; there is no internal structure. For the
wings I had to borrow some Styrofoam from
the rooftop of the neighbors. They had these
big sheets that would go in as insulation. So
I took one of those and used it for the wings.
The wings and the tail are Styrofoam but
everything else was newspaper. Everything
was found at the place. I was modeling this
airplane after Air Force One. I had read a
couple of books on how the U.S. has gone
down to Central and South America and done
a lot of harm in those places for the benefit
of the U.S. So I created this airplane, with
this shadow that is an American flag and created these little parachute with pantyhose
testicles coming out of the back. The idea
was of this airplane flying over the landscape
with the shadow staying underneath it and
pooping out these little testicle things along
the way. Leaving them in the wake while the
shadow and the airplane keep on going. When
we had the opening I think people didn’t really
know how to take it. I think they thought I was
really proud to be from America, which I’m
not saying I’m not. But it wasn’t that. As you
can tell I deal with a little bit of political stuff,
which can be really touchy. At the end of this
I was like what am I going to do with this big
8’ airplane so I decided to see if it would fly.
[ continued on page 10 ]
COLUMBIA COLLEGE CHICAGO
THIS THING CALLED BLAB!
BY BILL NORTH
DAVID JONES AND CHRIS DACRE
PROOF ONE OF HIS WOODCUTS.
We walk it through the town and decide to
light it on fire and toss it off of this walk way.
It started creating all this smoke and we took
off. It burned all the way till a fire truck came.
When I got back from that trip my girlfriend who is a photographer and video artist,
and I had been talking about doing a collaboration piece. We were both living in Tucson at
the time getting ready to move up to Seattle.
So we took this space over and I built this
helicopter out of cardboard and tape. We
found a ceiling fan and Plexiglas blades that
were mirrored. They were each about 6’ long.
I attached two of those to the fan as helicopter blades. This exhibition was dealing with
the air traffic in Tucson. There’s a big military
base there with all these A-10 and big C-130
aircraft flying overhead. There’s helicopters
from the police flying around everywhere with
their spotlights on the neighborhoods. So we
wanted to have the spotlight coming out of
the helicopter and we installed a projector
inside. It had all working parts, the rear rotor,
the top rotor made from the ceiling fan. There
was another projection coming from the rear
wall dealing with things that are in flight. We
also had some airplane silhouettes so the
shadows would get projected onto the rear
wall. We had two sound systems with helicopter and airplane noises just cranked all the
way up. People would be talking then all of
a sudden wersssshhhhhhh and you couldn’t
hear any thing. We wanted to give this presence of what it is like. It was a big issue that
was going on for years in Tucson. They finally
made the planes stay higher up when they
come in to land. It was a tight space and
when the opening happened there was a lot
of people that came in and they didn’t really
know where to go. It was weird to see people
all huddled up. There was a lot of tension in
there. This was a one-day installation. We
set it up for ten days, had a one night only
opening and then took it down the next day
because we were moving. I like the idea of it
being very temporary. If you’re there, you’re
there. If not, then you can see it in a picture.
I’m starting now to get into sound and
video. I want to start to create structures that
videos can be displayed on. I started doing
these stop animation pieces. They are little
test pieces that I’ve made that hopefully can
be put into my installations along with sound.
I’m thinking like some military type cadence
sounds. One idea I had was to project them
onto a wall then put a big piece of cloth or
board or something in front of it with two holes
that you have to look through like binoculars.
You’re just taking a little glimpse of this larger
battle. Or to build a little tent with a monitor
inside that you have to get down on the floor
to see.
For the residency at Anchor Graphics, I‘ve
been working on two wood cut pieces and a
lithograph. My original intention was to print
them onto felt but I don’t think they will translate well. I think the prints themselves could
be incorporated into the installations. I don’t
want everything to have to be felt. I want
to be able to incorporate other materials. I
don’t want there to be this huge juxtaposition
between this piece of sculpture and the rest
of the installation. I don’t want it to look like
they are two separate things.
I always try to work with materials that
are in or around the environment and let
that inform the work. I don’t go out and buy
things in particular. It’s all supplies that I
find. Like in graduate school when people
leave and they just dump whatever they have
in their studios. I’ll go and pick out all these
supplies. If I move and I don’t want them,
I’ll do the same thing. I’ll dump them and
let somebody else pick them up. In graduate
school I maybe spent $500 total in supplies
all 3 years I was there. I would go forage for
things. That’s how I’ve always worked. I really
like the idea of using recycling for my work.
Chris Dacre was an Artist-In-Residence at Anchor
Graphics May 5–27, 2009. This text was taken from
a presentation he gave at the end of his residency.
More information on Chris Dacre can be found on his
website chrisdacre.com.
©2006 RYAN HESHKA, FROM SUN RAYS OF DEATH, BLAB! #17
BLAB! WHAT IS IT? Ten inches square. One-hundredtwenty pages. Once a year. “It’s like The New Yorker for
mutants,” proclaimed the Los Angeles Reader. “A place open to
a wide variety of voices and styles, where the best of a number
of worlds mingle, flirt, and make art,” observed one writer. BLAB!
is an annual anthology of visual art produced by Chicago-based
graphic designer and art director Monte Beauchamp.
From its beginnings as a self-published, one-shot fanzine
devoted to EC Comics over twenty years ago, BLAB! has evolved
into a highly regarded venue for contemporary artists working in
sequential and comic art, graphic design, illustration, painting,
and printmaking. To be clear from the outset—BLAB! is not a
comic book, and it is not about comic books (though it once was).
BLAB! is a place where some very serious artists have some very
serious fun. It is a playhouse on paper Beauchamp has built for
himself and the artists he invites to join him.
But, it is not just fun and games. BLAB!’s influence has cut
a broad swath across contemporary visual culture. It has helped
launch many artists’ careers. It has introduced American audiences to important contemporary European graphic and comic
11
12
ANCHOR GRAPHICS
COLUMBIA COLLEGE CHICAGO
©2001 THE CLAYTON BROTHERS, FRONT COVER, BLAB! #12
artists. It has been a sustained force in blurring the boundary between alternative graphics and mainstream illustration. It has been
a staunch advocate for the creative freedom
of illustrators, graphic designers, and other
artists-for-hire. And, not least of all, BLAB! is
a significant forebear of the current generation of visual arts anthologies.
The history of BLAB! comprises two distinct periods: 1986 to 1992 (#1-7) and 1995
to the present (#8-18).
Soon after graduating from Southern
Illinois University with a degree in graphic
design, Beauchamp set out for Chicago to
begin a career as a graphic designer and art
director. By the mid-1980s he was a highly
successful art director in advertising. Though
he found the creative aspect of advertising
work challenging and satisfying, the politics of
the industry was distasteful to Beauchamp.
His wife at the time suggested he create a
comic book as an outlet to vent his mounting
dissatisfaction. Beauchamp had a different
idea. He would create a fanzine about comics.
His idea for BLAB! was based on a belief held
since high school—”that if it wasn’t for MAD,
the sixties counterculture never would have
happened.” As Beauchamp recalls: “I thought
why not write the core artists who formed
the counterculture and see what they had to
say about it within the context of memoirs. I
wanted them to talk about it... blab all they
wanted, which then gave way to the title.”
By 1994, Beauchamp had tired of the
digest-sized format of BLAB!’s first seven
issues, finding it restrictive and no longer
challenging. He wanted to design BLAB!
anew and brought the request before his
publisher’s editorial board. They said no.
BLAB! #7 had just won a Harvey award (the
comic industry’s equivalent of a Grammy),
and the board was reluctant to tamper with
the annual’s award-winning format. So that
was it, Beauchamp thought. BLAB! was done.
Beauchamp recalls: “It was no big deal when
they did. I didn’t lose any sleep over it...
We’d had a good run, and were going out in
style—with a Harvey.” Several months later,
his publisher telephoned him to ask when he
could expect the eighth number. Beauchamp
©2000 STEPHANE BLANQUET, FROM THE OAK SORROW, BLAB! #11
replied there would be no eighth number,
explaining that after the editorial board’s decision regarding his request to change BLAB!’s
format he had no desire to continue the publication. The publisher rescinded the board’s
decision and agreed to a new design.
BLAB! re-emerged in the summer of 1995
with a new format and a significant shift in
editorial focus. Beauchamp considered the
new BLAB! as completely distinct from the
first seven numbers and his changes were
more than formal and cosmetic. From #8 forward the annual saw a significant reduction in
the number of prose pieces. These were limited to several illustrated fiction or non-fiction
stories related to popular culture or topics
of historical interest. The most significant
change in editorial vision was Beauchamp’s
decision to prominently feature the work of
illustrators. This was a direction that would
have significant ramifications for the annual
and would come to define its special place
among visual arts anthologies.
Generally, BLAB!’s readership was
delighted with the make-over. One enthusi-
©1997 GARY BASEMAN, FRONT COVER, BLAB! #9
astic reviewer of the eighth number praised
Beauchamp’s emphasis on “aesthetics over
intellectuality,” exclaiming: “Simply put, BLAB!
looks like a fuckin’ million bucks.”
Except in rare cases, all of the work
appearing in BLAB! is created for BLAB!. As
Beauchamp has explained: “I want only new
work created from scratch. It enables me to
visually orchestrate the issue.” He is fond of
referring to the annual as a “jam,” an improvisational visual conversation between himself,
the artists, and their work.
Between the covers and among the pages
of any given issue, one will find an eclectic
gathering of stylistically varied work by illustrators, comic artists, graphic designers, studio
printmakers, and studio painters. Work produced by artists more closely associated with
illustration mingles with that created by those
better known in the world of galleries and
museums, as well as contemporary alternative comics artists. BLAB! is a level and egalitarian playing field in this regard.
BLAB!’s distinctive character resides in
Beauchamp’s commitment to the work of
illustrators and his privileging of the visual
experience above all else. As he has stated,
BLAB! is a place “to relax your mind and be
stimulated by pictures, not words. It’s a package of entertainment.”
On the question of influence, Beauchamp
notes: “The key distinction that separates
BLAB! from all the other BLAB!-styled anthologies on the stands these days is that it was
never inspired by another publication... I
didn’t see somebody else’s mag, dig it, and
then set out to imitate it. BLAB! was never
influenced by ZAP, or ARCADE, or WEIRDO, or
RAW. These publications certainly caught my
fancy in their day, but not to the point where
they spurred me on to create a similar publication.”
BLAB!’s twenty-three-year-long presence,
the longest tenure of any currently active
anthology, has helped sustain a viable market
for the anthology form. This, in turn, has given
rise to publications like THE GANZFELD and
the more singularly comics-oriented KRAMERS
ERGOT. Through a steadfast commitment
to Beauchamp’s pluralist vision, BLAB! has
13
©2003 CAMILLE ROSE GARCIA, FROM PHARMACEUTICOOLS, BLAB! #13
quietly staked a significant claim for the legitimacy of illustrational, comic, and sequential
art as valid and serious forms of personal
creative expression. By providing artists from
a variety of backgrounds (commercial illustration, comics, studio art) a forum within which
to engage visually with a multitude of images
and ideas, BLAB! has enriched the work of its
individual contributors and the visual arts in
general. In doing so, it has shown a range of
traditionally marginalized expressive practices
to be worthy of the same level of consideration accorded any other creative activity. And
that’s just for starters.
Excerpted from This Thing called BLAB!: Notes
Towards an Understanding by Bill North, originally
published in BLAB!: A Retrospective from the Beach
Museum of Art; ©2009 by the author. Works by
artists appearing in BLAB! was featured in the
Midwestern BLAB! exhibition curated by Monte
Beauchamp and Anchor Graphics on display at the
Averill and Bernard Leviton A+D Gallery, June 18–July
22, 2009. For more information on BLAB! visit
blab-world.com or blabshow.com
Anchor Graphics
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CHICAGO, IL 60605
312-369-6864
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Midwestern BLAB!
June 18 - July 22, 2009
This exhibition focuses on the work of
five artists from the Midwest who have
been featured in the pages of BLAB!
Edited by Monte Beauchamp BLAB! is
an annual anthology that collects the
freshest and most unique in cutting-edge
comics, illustration, and graphic design.
Its contributors come together from all
corners of the contemporary art world to
push the boundaries of visual culture. This
exhibition will showcases the work of Don
Colley, Tom Huck, Teresa James, CJ Pyle
and Fred Stonehouse who share more than
simple geography. Their work taps into a
dark narrative, that is both savage and
beautiful, to present a magical vision of a
gothic Midwest. This exhibition is co-curated
by Monte Beauchamp and Anchor Graphics.
It will be on display in the Averill and Bernard
Leviton A+D Gallery, 619 S. Wabash Avenue
in Chicago.
More 2009
Artists-In-Residence
Scraping the Surface
Lecture Series
Throughout the summer artists from across
the country will continue to come to Anchor
to work as Artists-In-Residence. Please stop
in the shop to meet the artists and see
the projects they are working on. Here is a
schedule of this summer’s upcoming artist:
The Scraping the Surface Lecture Series will
return in October for its sixth season. As the
idea of the multiple expands in directions
never before thought possible these
lectures seek to engage in the contemporary
discourse on printmaking, focusing on
subjects that fall outside of the traditional
fine art framework and often incorporate
aspects of popular culture. Lectures planned
for the coming season will include the
comics of Winsor McCay, the graphic design
of the Black Panther Party, and political
posters from the Lebanese civil war.
Alan Lerner, June 29–July 18
Anne Muntges, July 19–August 8
David Teng Olsen, August 16–September 5
Stay tuned for information on Artist-InResidence receptions and lectures!