They are illustrators. Hear them roar in numbers too big to ignore.
Illustrator militancy is relatively new. Formerly, the breed took its second-class status for granted. If illustrators were discussed, they were the ones talking. In the art context, nobody gave them much thought. Illustrators were around (some good, some clever, most bland or annoying), illustrating things – advertisements, company announcements, greeting cards, t-shirts, comic strips.
Cartoonists proved the most unruly. Between R. Crumb and Art Spiegelman, they battered the opposition into a puddle, becoming a rising tide carrying all (drawings of) boats.
The question now is not whether it’s illustration or art. It’s what kind of illustration it is, and what kind of art.
Friends of the Nib at Vermillion Gallery features the drawings and prints of 31 Seattle illustrators (mostly cartoonists) who meet weekly “to chew the fat and scratch the
paper. “
As a group, they’re a wonder.
Take David Lasky: His ultimate graphic novel is one page, six panels. Lasky draws as if his pen swallowed a ball. All of his lines have bounce. What’s really distinctive is his writing. He channels Kafka by way of Donald Barthelme – pared to the bone, funny with a low-grade fever of the tragic.
Then there’s Kaia Chessen, busting out of the frame but with a feeling of heirloom.
Nobody puts Ellen in the corner. For big, clean and sexually charged graphics, she can’t be beat.
Through March 4.
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