Terry Moore, SIP Issues 51-53

Aah, Strangers in Paradise. Terry Moore's 90-issue, 14-years-long continuing comic about three emotional people, their lives and loves, and the mafia, for some reason. The final issue, no.90, came out earlier this year. Pretty big deal, spending all your creative energies for so long writing and drawing a comic about the same characters, and then ending it. Poor old Terry; I wonder what he's doing now?

I was rather fond of Strangers in Paradise. The day-to-day interactions between the characters were pretty funny, and sweet and convincing, even if the crime underworld and endless romantic drama storylines could be pretty hard to take. And the artwork was just amazing. For some reason I was reminded today of the series of three art nouveau inspired covers below. Pretty amazing I think, and I especially like how the two main characters, Katchoo and Francine, don't quite fit into the style, despite looking very moody and winsome. (I know, right? "Katchoo". Bizarre name; she's the blonde.) Nicely elegant and dramatic, but pretty funny at the same time - least that's how I find it; especially that last one.

My Maiden Voyage, Vol.3 Issue 51.

What I Dream, Vol.3 Issue 52

What I Got, Vol.3 Issue 53.

Moore's covers are often especially good, when not being completely over-the-top and emo, so I might post some more in the future.

The Bookshop at 10 Curzon Street / 84 Charing Cross Road

What a felicitous year when one can read not one, but TWO epistolary memoirs of correspondence to and from London bookshops! If anyone knows of any more of these, please let me know. Three makes a genre! (And I do love finding a genre the existence of which I never previously suspected - like when we came across the surprisingly large 'lesbian mystery' section at Powell's.) So both of these are made up of letters between a bookshop owner and a friend/customer, and one is awesome and one is rather dull.

The awesome one is 84 Charing Cross Road, in case you were wondering. The American author, Helene Hanff, has a decades-long correspondence with the staff of a London second-hand bookshop, which begins with her ordering obscure books and blossoms into charming friendship. It is just about the sweetest book I've ever read. Helene Hanff is so friendly eccentric American, and the bookshop people are so English and restrained but obviously lovely, and the passage of years through the letters has such subtle pathos. I love it, and love it all the more because it's a real-life correspondence. My favourite is when Hanff starts sending food packages to her English friends during rationing, and everyone politely and over-effusively thanks her for the real eggs etc.

The other book is a selection of letters between Heywood Hill, owner of the 10 Curzon Street bookshop, and author and society gal Nancy Mitford. My parents' generation apparently knows all about Nancy Mitford and her crowd, (Dad: "Oh you know, the Mitford gels!" Me: "Nope, still no idea.") In fact, this book was a gift from my aunt and uncle, who are also big into the Mitford social set; it was that 20s 'Bright Young Thing' group, including Evelyn Waugh etc. Anyway, this book is all in-jokes, veiled references to mutual friends, laments over the difficulties of finding a decent servant these days, pretending to be poor whilst blatantly rolling in it, and finding oneself to be screamingly funny on all occasions. I had no idea what they were talking about, and had no inkling as to why I would want to find out. This lot are absolutely not the Algonquin Round Table, and Dorothy Parker would have been about 800 times funnier. Made me want to go read 'Vile Bodies' again, because a satirical novel about the Bright Young Things would make them seem a lot more interesting than reading these letters about them.

Susie is Overcome With Excitement

EIGHT DAYS!!! Eight days!!!!!!! Eight days til I fly to Portland, and you can tell I'm excited because usually I'm very strict about over-using exclamation marks. I cannot believe it's about a week until I take that fab sixteen hour flight to Oregon.

'Course, I have a paper to write before then, and let's not even talk about my dissertation. This paper I speak of is due in the day before I fly, and I've just come up with a subject for it after a good deal of dithering over an area which was an interesting thing to write a paper on, but not enough to do with race or violence for the class (the class is called 'Race and Violence'). Went in to talk to my class tutor today, he seemed to like my idea:

Teacher: "Yes, that seems like a good topic for your paper. I bet you came to ask for an extension too, yes?"
Me (blithely): "Oh no, no extension for me!"
Teacher: "...are you sure?"

He's right, I don't have much time to write this stupid essay. I never learn. Well, much consoled by the fact that in eight days I will see Kai Baby Kai, buy a book or two in Powell's, see if Garon's muscles have gotten any bigger, have some bubble tea, all sorts of fun Portland things. Argh, I wish I was there right now. But for the longest time it seemed like my visit was months away, and now it's eight days! Hurrah!!!

The Revolution Will Not Be Amplified

...is the name of a music blog based in good old Norwich. Tim lent me a copy of it a few weeks back, and I wrote off to them asking if they need any artistic input. (Which they did, it was pretty text-heavy.) Below are a couple of covers I worked out, and which I doubt they will use; I haven't heard back from editor dude. Oh well, at least they were fun to put together. I feel a bit creatively starved if I don't do any art along with my literature stuff. Oh my tortured inner artistic soul!

I am so into the zine aesthetic lately. Or at least my idea of the zine aesthetic, which is probably totally wrong, because I foolishly missed out on the vibrant Portland zine culture. I sensed its presence, and promptly decided I had no time and it was too cool for me. Anyhow, I have a feeling zines involve a lot of collage and photocopying and messy text and lectroset. Do correct me if I'm wrong. The first cover below is a reworking of a Russian propaganda poster, with all the political text replaced with pretty flowers. I actually used virtually the same design for my Dad's birthday card, but figured it was worth repeating; I don't suppose my Dad would mind, if he ever found out. The second was supposed to involve a rip-off of the Jackpot Records logo, but got steadily less rip-off-y. Probably a good thing, I'm breaching enough copyright as it is (hello, this entire blog).

The myspace page for The Revolution Will Not Be Amplified is here. It's a darn good zine actually, they seem to know their shit.

Huuuungreeeee...

Dude, I really need to go food shopping. I know that when I get back to the house, my section of the fridge will yield some parmesan, a carton of borderline dodgy yogurt, three eggs, and half a pack of ravioli. That ain't healthy eating, yo. So tomorrow, or maybe the day after, I am going on an Epic Food Shop. This will be the image of my kitchen after I have made the most amazing trip to a supermarket there has ever been:

"I've got some fucking jaffa cakes in my coat pocket!"

Actually yes, that is true, I do have some Jaffa Cakes. What else do I need? I have cereal and Jaffa goodness. That's pretty much what I live on anyway. Bugger food shopping!

Chris Ware For The New Yorker

I have to say, I know that Chris Ware is great and intellectual and critically acclaimed, a shining beacon for the legitimacy of the graphic novel form, but I find him a bit creepy. Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth is just fucking depressing, and his drawings have such an undercurrent of creep that I'm not really enjoying myself at all. I mean, I like stories of quiet, desperate lives as much as the next girl, as long as they stop short of actually making me want to top myself, while at the same time thoroughly freaking me out.

Having said that, Quimby the Mouse is pretty cool, as long as it keeps basic and retro and I don't start to feel sorry for the poor cat (cat's head?). His covers are also amazingly designed, all 50s and intricate. And I do like these four alternate covers for the New Yorker from 2006:

That first one especially, the colours are just beautiful. I suspect they're all part of a bitingly cynical commentary on the modern Thanksgiving, and most of the imagery is about loneliness and alienation. I choose to ignore this.

House and Garden

I found a couple of completely gorgeous covers from house and garden, both from 1919. Something about the incredibly crisp style and muted but rich colours - a bit like stained glass? Or the look of the world viewed through the bottom of an extremely expensive bottle of port? They don't look too dated at all. I think this style of magazine cover is clearly due for a resurgence.

April 1919

August 1919

Petra Borner

Petra Borner is a London-based Swedish illustrator, who draws, paints, prints, sews, does a bit of textile pattern design. Most of her stuff is a bit cutesy-twee for my taste, including her bio: "I really love walking in the green, having tea- or coffee time with someone special, looking at art & crafts, writing to friends, making & wrapping gifts, collecting china and finding cheap treasures at remote flea-markets!" Ugh, vomit. I do really love her paper-cuts though:

Hallon

Berrie-bush

Swedish Summer

Cherry Temple

Waves

I don't even know how she does these. Anyone know an expert in paper-cuts? I think those last two are paper-cuts too, although I'm not sure. I have the last one with the waves framed on my wall. If Borner's style looks at all familiar, it might be because she's done the covers for a new range of six Penguin poetry collections (Carol-Ann Duffy, Roger McGough, Derek Mahon etc).

Ben Shahn

I came across Ben Shahn when I was looking for inspirational printmakers to copy into my sketchbook for print class homework last year. I was very much into linear etching stuff of buildings and cities at the time (still am actually), so Shahn was super prescient. Some of his work taken out of context is quite poppy I suppose (check out the shopping trolleys below), but I don't see his work as flippant or satirical necessarily, so much as full of energy and appreciation for the shapes of a city. Ok, enough bullshit; look, pretty!

Institutional Perspective, 1951, pen and ink.

All That is Beautiful, 1965, serigraph.

Supermarket, 1957, serigraph in black.

By the Sea, 1968, color lithograph.

Flowering Brushes, 1968, color lithograph.

Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti, 1927.

Years of Dust, 1937, photolithograph.

Shahn is probably a lot more interesting than I'm making him out to be, actually. His art was often geared towards social activism: see the Sacco and Vanzetti print above, and the Resettlement Administration poster. He also trained as a typographer and was a painter and muralist and photographer, all of which is really great even if I happen to be obsessed with only his prints. Shahn was also part of the Farm Security Administration happy band of photographers who documented the American deep south in the 30s and 40s, along with Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans.