Pop Baby Cthulhu?
There’s something about this simple graphic I just love. Pop Baby Cthulhu Surfer Tat vibes.
Question
It would seem more and more that being an artist in this world means having to dance to the tune of social media addiction. It’s exhausting and I’d love to say I’m off that junk and clean, I ain’t. And frankly I’m kinda scared too. You see, since I no longer have a brick and mortar and since I don’t have any kind of regular gallery or publishing representation, I tell myself that soc med is necessary to survive as an artist, to remain seen and active if not relevant.
Without soc med how do I gain traction? No one swings by blogs anymore if they ever did….so here I am.
New Zines for Expozine 2024
I have made three new zines for this years edition of Montreals rollicking zine fair.
Thematically, these are charged with the beauty and brutality we witness routinely in our world.
I’ve only made forty of each and these will be available exclusively in person at the fair.
This year I also made a little description card so folks not into chatting can have a guess about what’s going on at my table!
Have Art Kit, Will Travel !
Hello Everyone!
I’m so pleased to announce that I’ve been designing various Creative Collaborative Art Experiences to share with individuals or with groups!
I need to take my creative drive and my Art Kit and connect with folks who want to make art but may need a helping hand!
These aren’t lessons as much as they are play dates! I’ll come to you and your friends (or we can meet in a park or café too) and we’ll make art together!
Can’t wait to see you.
Billy
I Walk Around A Lot : Slideshow & Talk
Inside My Face Is A Mask That Does Not Change
INSIDE MY FACE IS A MASK THAY DOES NOT CHANGE
signed and numbered edition of forty. 52 pages, various stocks and sizes, rubber stamped and embossed detailing. $20
Only available in person.
Here's a photo of me with my dad, Mihalis Mavreas, in his hospital room the month he died, sometime in September 2018.
It's cropped. My brother and my son are in the background playing.
I miss him even though he aggravated the heck out of me at times. I have lot's of petty and some not so petty complaints about him. I also love him and wish he was around and healthy so I can foist my kid onto him and watch them do their thing.
It's been a year plus and grief is strange. My mom, who I visited yesterday for the first time in too long, has her ups and downs. She wore a white t-shirt under her black blouse for the first time yesterday, she said.
Greeks are heavy enough as it is without death around. With death, holy cow.
That's all I've got for now.
New Zines
Today I harvested the finished zines from my local copy shop, Papeterie Zoubris on Parc Ave. Demetra Z. did a great job putting my books through the machines and I am now a week ahead of being fully ready for Expozine 2019.
This is going to be my first Expozine since leaving the organizing team several years back. I burnt out a bit with the whole process and gave myself some time to heal from zine fairs. This year i'm only tabling on the Sunday. I'll have these new books (pictured above) plus a couple of other concrete poetry titles of mine published by above/ground press in Ottawa.
The antibiotics in my gut are making me feel woozy....oddly hungry and nauseous at the same time. It's not a good feeling to have underlying the accomplishment of 6 new zines. I take these damned things at the suggestion of my gastro-enterologist, we're trying to find out what is at the root of my problem. Maybe it's a stubborn bug that's been throwing me off.
This fucking thing has been throwing lots of chaos into my life. It's making me edgy of course which rubs off on the family. My 6 year old is throwing near daily tantrums and i am not being my best self about it. I get mad too and then we have two kids, one 6 and one 51 yelling at each other.
The zines. Sure, I got them printed. The material has existed for a bit, all done at different times these last few years. Although I am happy to have them, there is still some need that keeps gnawing at me, the need of the unwritten novel or the unlived dream. I'm not sure which. I collect art. My own art. I collect projects and series of drawings, monotypes, collages, poems, comics, whatever...I collect these small stacks of my creations hoping that something - anything - will happen.
What is it I hope for? I hope someone will sweep into my life and take my art and give me money and glory. I dream of some phantom agent coming in and leading my work into the hands of publishers and curators so that I can relax. So that I don't have to sit retail to make a living - selling my own art.
So what would I do, now that my art has found a premium art house publisher dedicated to making and distributing my work? Would I still sit shop at Monastiraki? No. I would not. I'd move out of here and create a home studio and work from home. My home? does it have a room I can use for a studio> Of course not. We'd have to move but no problem, big money is coming in now at this rain of fire global time and I can afford a sweet home in Outremont. My Mom can even live here, it's so big. I'm losing my mind!
Keep making art, Mavreas.....but why? What for? It's some sort of stand in for something else...So often on this blog I've gone on about needing to write more and here I am months later writing a bit more. For what? more drops in the void.
I still haven't taken up running. That would probably tire me out in the right way.
It's like I make art as busy work, as a stand in for something still out of reach. I am productive and prolific and often satisfied. right now I am not. iI can make cool stuff and thing whatevs more stuff. How can I even begin to untangle myself from this store studio I've built? I don't know what's mine anymore. I have a giant cave full of riches I can't easily liquidate.
Ok. Venting done. I sat here to describe the news zines and instead I've described my unease.
Here's what i posted on FB about these new books:
Six new books ready in time for Expozine. Sunday only. Details below:
Untitled Abstract ed. of 20
The Realms - comic about Becoming ed. of 60
QuoteUnQuote - suite of concrete poems ed. of 100
The Burden of Possibilitie - autobio comic about pathways ed. of 100
Untitled Abstract ed. of 40
ACCEPT - chapbook length full colour visual poem ed. of 100
available at Expozine and at Monastiraki
$5 each except Accept $8
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