One year anniversary of my blog!

April 22, one year ago, I posted my first entry in this blog!

Let's celebrate with some flowers I saw this weekend.







Also, here are some photos from the UMass exhibition opening.

(I think she's more intent on eating celery)

(These people are actually looking at my pages)

And I end this entry with a photo of a goose with a foot raised (Charles River).

Sequential Art exhibition and Inbound 3 now for sale

Riveting blog update -- birds are finally coming to my window bird feeder!


Also, this Thursday is the opening reception for Sequential Art exhibition at the Harbor Gallery at UMass. (Go to the UMass stop on the Red Line and hop on the shutle...See directions.) There will be free food. Apparently I'm supposed to mention that fact.

Let me put the press release here. That sounds like something I should do too.

Boston, MA (April, 2009) The Harbor Gallery presents – Sequential Art: Comics, Cartoons, and Animation. On view April 10th through May 29th at the University of Massachusetts Boston.

Sequential Art focuses on the production, collaboration, and processes behind comics, cartoons, and animation. The exhibit features 11 artist from the Boston Comics Round Table: Richard Jenkins, Jay Kennedy, Braden Lamb, Ron LeBrasseur, Dan Mazur, Lindsay Moore, Shelli Paroline, Aya Rothwell, RoHo, Charles Schneeflock Snow, and Dirk Tiede and animator Steve Gentile from Mass Art.

The whimsical, grotesque, fantastic, and the everyday are featured. Collectively they break down the super hero archetype, and work to create a new picture of comics in Boston. Intertextuality, imagery, and the use of a clear graphic and literary style make comics easily understandable. But, many readers are unaware of local publications.

Art Institutions and comic shops alike do not yet have a place for these local artists. The Boston Comics Round Table seeks to set a new standard of clarity and vision in the comic world and help local artists compete with larger publications.

There work parallels the skill, and beauty of any major publication.

In summation I leave you with a simple analogy. Major comic publications are like Anheuser-Busch while the local publications are like Harpoon and Sam Adams.
Which one do you prefer?

The Harbor Gallery is a community service of the University of Massachusetts Boston. We are a non-profit organization run by students at the University of Massachusetts.

Opening Reception April 16th 6:00 – 9:00 P.M.

Talks, discussions, and film viewings will be posted on our website www.umb.edu/harborgallery

Sincerely,

Steven Pirrello
Curator

If you have any questions, comments, or high resolution files please contact me: gallery@umb.edu

Links:
www.bostoncomicsroundtable.com/
www.Stevegentile.com



Also, Inbound vol. 3 is now for sale! Featuring my story "Puppy Love Eternal", a tale of celestial spirits, blossoms in winter and 'little critters who remind me of those annoying friends we all know.' (quote from Lindsay)




Here's a press release.....

Boston Comics are for Lovers – Inbound #3, a Boston Comics Anthology

BOSTON, MA (April 6, 2009) – Ah, spring is in the air. To celebrate the season of romance, the hard-working comics artists of the Boston Comics Roundtable have released Inbound #3, a Boston Comics Anthology. The theme of this tri-yearly publication... love and relationships.

Yes, nobody knows perfectly-requited love and totally un-awkward dating like an indie comics artist. Pick up a copy of Inbound #3 and you'll have more than just an evening's entertainment; the book practically doubles as a 72-page how-to guide for all you Mister and Misses Lonelyhearts out there. All for the low price of $7.95.

It's our biggest issue ever! Included in this volume:

* Franklin Einspruch

* "First Kiss" - Robert Sergel

* "Puppy Love Eternal" - Aya Rothwell

* "Fear" - Chris O'Neill

* "Just an Old Fashioned Zombie Love Song" - Eric Boeker

* "Wish Me Luck" - Donna Martinez and Joesph Peters

* "Colossa" - Braden Lamb

* "An Afternoon Session" - Hyun Supul

* "A Winter's Prelude" - Roho

* "The Prince" - Carl Tsui

* "From Afar" - Dan Mazur

* "A Gothic Romance" - James Mobius

Inbound #3 is on sale at your favorite stores. In the Boston area, check out Million Year Picnic, Hub Comics, New England Comics, Comicazi, Harvard Book Store, Comicopia, and more. You can also visit the BCR Online Store (www.bostoncomicsroundtable.com/comics.html). We ship tenderly packaged comics anywhere in the world.

Boston Comicon, Atomic Bean Cafe, Squirrel

Very important blog update: no birds at the bird feeder on my window, but a squirrel poked its head in my open window. Too bad I was right there, staring at it in surprise; the squirrel freaked out and ran away.


Also Boston Comicon and all that.





Some of the more colorful guests I saw.



Actually, this person below is not colorful, technically speaking. Kind of mostly grey and black.




From the Saturday night reception at the Atomic Bean Cafe.


Nice crowd.

We ended up putting the inside inkwash pages of "Mark and the Aliens" on display, because it was a complete short comic. I don't have a very good photo of my pages on the wall, but I'll try and get a picture soon.

Anyway, the Atomic Bean Cafe show will be up for at least this month. Copies of "Inbound" (1-3) as well as "Mark" (and possibly other minis) will be available for purchase at the cafe. The cafe will put 20% of sales into a charity to support artists.





And finally --

This is not the squirrel at my window, but it's similar to what I saw.

Photo I took of a squirrel at Harvard University.

Two gallery shows, online art auction and Boston Comicon

* So next weekend (April 4th and 5th), I will be at the Boston Comicon (Back Bay events center), selling books with the usual Boston Comics Roundtable people. Debuting at the event will be Boston Comics Roundtable’s Inbound No. 3, which has my story “Puppy Love Eternal” in it.

* Atomic Bean Cafe: Now, not only is the BCR celebrating the release of Inbound 3, we are also celebrating our first café art show! Saturday night (April 4th), after the Comicon, there will be an opening reception at the Atomic Bean Café (902 Mass Ave, between Central and Harvard). The show will feature original comics and artwork. If you’re in the area, stop by and say hello!



* UMass Boston: Meanwhile… another gallery show! April 16 (Thursday night), join me at the UMass Boston gallery opening reception of an exhibit of local comics creators' work. Like the Atomic Bean Café, the UMass show will have original pages from my story “Puppy Love Eternal” on display. I think there will be the original watercolors from “Mark and the Aliens”, as well. Also there will be free food.

Here’s some more images from the new story....







* And also, here I am on the internet, selling mini-cards of original art in the Comics for Cures charity, benefiting the American Cancer Society. According to the site, there will be a public exhibition of all the minicards at Comics 2 Games (Florence, KY location) on April 4th 2009.

Meanwhile, visit this link to buy cards and help raise money. Here’s my cards:

An ink of a Dragon creature




The other card is a black and white brush ink of a creature… glowering at you. Or the person next to you.



And some possible news regarding me and Anime Boston, but I'll save that for when I get more details.


Also no birds at window. What gives.

Spring!

Spring is here! Flowers are popping up from the ground, almost as fast as mushrooms after a spell of rain.


I may be part of some upcoming local art shows, showcasing Boston comics creators. Details to follow.

I will also have a story in the upcoming anthology Inbound (no. 3). My story has to do with why I was sketching dogs running around in the snow, as I mentioned in an earlier blog entry.

On other very important news: no birds at the birdfeeder, outside my window. There was one starling hanging around the telly wire. But I think it was coincidence.

Also, I am painting an apple that is not quite an apple.

Clouds on a Blustery Day

Some upcoming things....

* I will be at the upcoming Boston Comicon, April 4-5. Will be hanging out with the Boston Comics Roundtable. Our table will not be round, it will be rectangular, but anyway it will have comics on it.

* I will be at the Maine Comics Arts Festival, May 17 in Portland, Maine. I haven't figured out how exactly I'm going to get there, but details details.

* I have put a birdfeeder outside my window but no birds have come yet. What's going on.



And here's a photo from a few weeks ago, taken above the Charles River.

Stuff I See at MIT

This week's topic: stuff I see at MIT.

In a nearby lab . . .


(This was sketched off-hours)


Stuff that's written on the blackboards in the hallways...



And for the next bit, you have to be a little familiar with the movie "Good Will Hunting". Basically, Matt Damon stars as Will Hunting, a troubled youth who is a genius at mathematics. The title character works as a janitor at MIT, where he goes around solving complex math problems left on hallway boards.

You can watch the big scene here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7b0cLn-wHU

Or watch the first 30 seconds of this clip to get the idea.




(By the way, why so many people are all madly dashing across that particular lawn is beyond me. The lawn is not anywhere near a major parking lot or T station; you have to kind of go out of your way to end up running across the lawn like that. Unless you illegally parked on the Mass Ave bridge... or just crawled out of the Charles River, and ran across four lanes of traffic...)


Anway, to go on a tangent, here's how mathematicians reacted to the movie:




And here's how MIT reacted to the movie.
(Photos taken a few weeks ago.)



Some close-ups.


To the right of this, someone else wrote:




And, finally . . .

Well... first, MIT has a very commendable spirit of community, as this sign demonstrates. And it's true, people really do need to wash their hands, but -- okay I'm just going to show this poster.





The mouth.

Normally I don't give much mind to this sort of thing. But for weeks, every time I walk into a restroom, this.... weird mouth greeted me. This two-mouthed school mascot.

One day, it finally got to be too much. I had to do something.





And that about wraps things up for now.