Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Wehman Bros.' New Book Of Fun, Magic & Mystery. 1905




This wonderful catalogue/sampler for Wehman Bros. of New York is chock full of excerpts and ads for many of their joke books and parlor games and such.
I was particularly struck by the illustrations gracing their myriad books featured on the back cover. They remind me of some the ink work from american underground comix of the 60s but, of course, they date from at least 1905.
I've separated individual illustrations for a better look.
& please don't shoot the messenger regarding the blatant racism depicted on some of the covers and their wording.
Dutch jokes ?

Wehman Bros. Books Part 1



Wehman Bros. Books Part 2





Wehman Bros. Books Part 3





Wehman Bros. Books Part 4





Wehman Bros. Books Part 5





Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Billycan !



















By giving me this postcard, my friend
S.W.Welch reminded me not only of important potty habits but of general life affirmation.

Saturday, November 22, 2008

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

And Another Thing


I'll be at the Helen Pitt gallery in Vancouver for the next few weeks to make art in public. In the hood ? Do drop in !

here's the info :

Billy Mavreas: And Another Thing
Helen Pitt Gallery


Friday May 23 to Saturday June 14, 2008
Reception: Friday, June 6 at 8:00 pm

Montreal-based artist and cartoonist, Billy Mavreas, presents And Another Thing as the second installment of the Helen Pitt Gallery’s Workaday series, a three-exhibition experiment addressing issues of creative process, labour and the performative gesture. For each of these exhibitions, the artists involved will be spending three weeks working live within the gallery space to develop a new project or body of work in situ. Viewers are invited to drop in regularly to witness the evolution of these projects and see the artists at work.

Working largely with a photocopier, but also with sculptural elements and found objects, Mavreas will be creating an improvised, collaged installation that defies the divisions of writing and drawing; narrative and semiology; anthropology and science fiction.

At the Helen Pitt Gallery, Mavreas will, in his own words, undertake “a radical expansion of ideas. An accumulation and sloughing off. A shared play and a solo manic exercise. A turn or phrase, a rant, a monologue, a listening, an encouragement. The texture of things noticed or felt. An array of tenses, dislodged temporal streams. Layered noise. Hidden information. Buried text. Lost meanings. Worlds within worlds.”

Throughout the exhibition, audience members will be invited to participate in Mavreas’ exhibition by coming with photocopiable items (objects, original artwork, pocket or wallet contents) to be incorporated in Mavreas’ project.

Notoriously difficult to pin down, Mavreas’ process-based practice does nonetheless suggest a critical response to Modernism’s severity, reductionism and paradoxical dialectics, engaging instead with its less ordered, more expansive traditions of mysticism and transcendentalism developed by such diverse figured as Wassily Kandinsky, John Cage, René Daumal, and Aleister Crowley. And yet, Mavreas’ work is entirely his own. His distinctive creative universe—often populated with bunnies with keen knowledge of dimensional portals and time travel, gourd-like blobs that conflate the phallus/vagina dichotomy, talismans and runes—evokes a social urgency, a reconsideration of language and action, and ultimately seeks a metaphysical understanding to the hard edges of thought, reason and the structure of contemporary life.

--

BILLY MAVREAS is a Greek-Canadian artist living in Montreal. For almost twenty years, Mavreas has produced rock posters, comics, artist books, visual poetry, installation, mail art, web art, performance, essay writing and guerilla consultancy. His artwork and various projects have been shown and published internationally. He is the author of The Overlords of Glee (conundrum press, 2001), Hell Passport Commentary (Perro Verlag, 2006) and the upcoming Inside Outside Overlap (Timeless Books, 2008) among many others. Mavreas is also the proprietor of his enduring project, Monastiraki, a Mile-End magickal curiosity shoppe and art gallery.

Helen Pitt Gallery Artist-Run Centre
#102-148 Alexander Street
Vancouver, BC, Canada V6A 1B5
604.681.6740 / pittg@telus.net

http://www.helenpittgallery.org/

Contact: Lance Blomgren, Director/Curator

Inside Outside Overlap - My New Book !


I have recently launched, and will continue to launch, my first full length graphic novel called Inside Outside Overlap.
It's published by Timeless Books, Toronto and it's now available for purchase from them and at finer retailers around Canada and the US.

Wednesday, April 09, 2008

Monday, January 07, 2008

Alootook Ipellie


I remember you.


I just found out of the passing of amazing Canadian artist Alootook Ipellie in Sept. 2007.
I was lucky to have met him and publish some of his art in my Monster Island Three anthology. I had hoped for more meetings but alas, such is life.
He was a generous artist and truly important canadian storyteller, cartoonist, artist, editor, publisher, writer, journalist, etc., etc., etc.,

You As A Machine


An awesome cover by Frederick E Sayfarth for a 1955 edition of a basic science booklet by Bertha Morris Parker & M. Elizabeth Downing, Chicago, USA.