Cristy C. Road and News From Nowhere

Yesterday I got the urge to just jump on a train and land somewhere that wasn't Manchester so I spent an afternoon wandering the streets of Liverpool.

After a few hours wandering I discovered News from Nowhere, a radical, workers co-operative bookshop at the top of Bold Street. They stocked books on a huge range of interesting and important topics from political to personal and back again. I really wish there was somewhere like this in Manchester!

I was super excited to see that they also stocked a large amount of zines on a wide variety of different topics. Most of exciting of all though, was the selection of awesome graphic novels that you probably wouldn't find in most other comic book shops. Amongst the graphic novels I found Spit and Passion by Cristy C. Road. I'd come across Road's work before but had never read any of her books.

Spit and Passion covers Road's early teen years growing up as a working class, Cuban, queer girl raised by her Catholic family in Florida in the early nineties. Her art isn't something I would usually be drawn to but after a few pages I was totally sucked in by it. It suited her story perfectly and I now absolutely love it. It also seemed like more of an illustrated memoir than a graphic novel  but it worked incredibly well. 

It was a really awesome read and made me feel both angry (in a good way!) and inspired. In short this book gave me all the feels.

I also bought Twigs and Apples #6 which I'm really looking forward to reading, it has such a gorgeous cover! I might do a post about some of my favourite zines soon, who knows.

Twigs and Apples 6

WebRep

currentVote

noRating

noWeight

Manchester Art Gallery Zine Fair

As part of their Thursday Lates season, the Manchester Art Gallery recently hosted a Zine Fair presenting work by a variety of different Manchester based artists and groups.

There was a good amount of people selling their art in a fairly diverse range of styles and it was great to see such a huge turnout. It's also exciting to see zines continue to rise in popularity and visibility and starting to become embraced by such prominent authorities as major galleries.

I ended up spending over my budget but I regret nothing! My favourite stalls were Project:BABE, John Allison, Joe List, Sugar Paper Zine, Young Explorer Zine amongst very many more. Here is a rubbish photo of some of the marvellous zines and comics and things that I bought.

WebRep

currentVote

noRating

noWeight

Heroes and Villainesses

Heroes and Villainesses wrapping paper design by Jack Teagle (the most awesome wrapping paper design ever)

(...apart from maybe Astro Cats by Ben Newman)

WebRep

currentVote

noRating

noWeight

The First Cut

I recently visited Manchester Art Gallery to see their newest exhibition, The First Cut, a showcase of contemporary papercut  art. 

From the Manchester Art Gallery: 

"31 international artists who cut, sculpt and manipulate paper, transform this humble material into fantastical works of art for our stunning new exhibition.

Wonder at giant sculptures inspired by far away galaxies that spiral from the wall, explore a walk-through forest of paper trees and marvel at miniature worlds that explode from vintage staple boxes or emerge from the page of a book. 

Flocks of birds and butterflies cut from maps appear alongside artworks that feature dark fairytale imagery. Guns and grenades fashioned from paper currency and sinister silhouettes comment on social, political and economic issues."

Wuthering Heights by Su Blackwell

Map of my Entire Life by Rob Ryan, his largest single papercut to date

Wonder Forest by Manabu Hangai

Close up of a gorgeous piece which I forgot to record the title / artist for!

I really enjoyed the exhibition and one of my favourite parts was peering into glass boxes which contained tiny paper mountains. The large scale pieces worked really well in the space and gave a nice contrast and juxtaposition to the smaller pieces.

I also really enjoyed the Clore Interactive Gallery which I believe is a fairly recent addition to the Gallery. We spent most of our time lying in the giant kaleidoscope.

WebRep

currentVote

noRating

noWeight

The House That Groaned / Eden / The Nao of Brown

I've been on a major graphic novel binge lately if you hadn't already noticed. I usually read them in one sitting and have recently discovered that the MMU library stock some, which goes someway towards explaining the rate of my reading them!

The House That Groaned by Karrie Fransman is more like six short stories woven into one by detailing a fortnight or so in the lives of the six inhabitants of an old house converted into six flats. I never really warmed to this, I didn't like the art (apart from the front cover!) and the stories would have been more interesting if they weren't quite so far fetched.

Eden by Pablo Holmberg is a surreal collection of mostly unrelated, unchronological 4 panel comics depicting tiny moments within Holmberg's utterly strange and beautiful created universe. One of the most recurring characters is the strange, royal animal depicted on the cover but apart from her there isn't much that ties the stories together apart from their shared world. The art is stunning - simple, dreamlike and gorgeously coloured, whilst the individual stories are at turns mysterious, funny and touching. I absolutely loved this and will none doubt read it again fairly soon.

The Nao of Brown by Glyn Dillon is the story of a young woman who suffers from the more obsessional and unpleasant side of OCD and her attempts at trying to keep down a job and find love whilst fighting her illness. I really loved this, the book itself is beautiful just as an object with its scarlet edged pages and embossed Japanese 'Ensō' on the hardcover. Both the story and the art are gorgeous. Maybe I'm biased in loving this book so much as I have the same kind of OCD as the protagonist and I haven't before noticed it specifically mentioned in any other fictional narrative. 

WebRep

currentVote

noRating

noWeight

Two Years at Sea

I saw Two Years at Sea at The Cornerhouse a few months ago but never got around to writing about it. It covers a year in the life of a reclusive man named Jake Williams who lives alone in the Cairngorms.

Shot entirely on vintage black and white, 16mm film, the film looks beautiful. Mostly dialogue free throughout the films entirety, often with whole scenes just with, for example, Jake very slowly drifting across a pond on a raft for eight minutes.

It focusses on the small intricacies of Jake's everyday existence within the lonely, vast physical landscape that he inhabits. Although stark and melancholic, the film is ultimately uplifting in giving a glimpse into a extraordinary life that would otherwise remain vastly unknown.

Adrian Tomine

I've just finished reading Adrian Tomine's 32 Stories, a collection of his early work originally published in his Optic Nerve zine that he worked on in the early 90s. This is the first of his earlier stories that I've read and I actually enjoyed reading it more than his later work. The drawing was looser and more spontaneous and some the stories were really funny.

 I read another couple of Tomine's books, Summer Blonde and Sleepwalk, last year and although I enjoyed them, some of the stories were a little too depressing for me. The drawing is also lot more precise and lacks some of the character that I liked in his earlier work.

WebRep

currentVote

noRating

noWeight

More Celestial Maps

Celestial Atlas and Atlas Coelistis

From discovering Urania's Mirror I also discovered Celestial Atlas (1822) by Alexander Jamieson...



Ursa Major

Canis Major, Canis Minor, Monoceros, Argo Navis, l’Atelier de l’Imprimeur, Pyxis Nautica



...and Atlas Coelistis by John Flamsteed (1776)
 

Constellation map of Northern Hemisphere



Urania's Mirror

While I was researching northern hemisphere constellations for my information board for the site project I came across Urania's Mirror. It is a set of 32 constellation cards first published around 1852 and  it has really strange, gorgeous illustrations produced with an amazing, restrained colour palette.

Virgo



Noctua, Corvus, Crater, Sextans Uraniae, Hydra, Felis, Lupus, Centaurus, Antlia Pneumatica, Argo Navis, and Pyxis Nautica



Psalterium Georgii, Fluvius Eridanus, Cetus, Officina Sculptoris, Fornax Chemica, and Machina Electrica

Draco and Ursa Minor



Cassiopeia



Birchfield Close / Mercury

I read Birchfield Close by Jon McNaught and Mercury by Hope Larson this week, both graphic novels (although Birchfield Close is so short it's described as a 'graphic novella').

The art in Birchfield Close is very simple but beautifully coloured, although I felt the story (or lack of) could have been expanded on. The premise of this graphic novella is more of a poem than a piece of fiction and attempts to capture one sleepy suburban late afternoon. It does fairly well at this job but I would have liked even one or two more than the zero lines of dialogue in here.

I'm currently halfway through Mercury and lukewarmly keen so far. Will finish this when I've reached the end of the book!

Updated: Although the second half was quicker paced and had a more interesting storyline, I was never grabbed by this and generally wasn't particularly impressed by it. It tells the somewhat intersecting stories of two girls from the same family, one living in the present day and one in the nineteenth century in Nova Scotia.I wasn't overly fond of the art and found both the story and characters to be fairly boring.

WebRep

currentVote

noRating

noWeight

Harry Potter Studio

On Wednesday I went to the Harry Potter studio tour near London and, although very biased as I'm an unashamedly enormous HP geek, it was absolutely brilliant.

Me and my boyfriend on Hagrid's motorbike awyeah

Although the were lots of parts of the museum that I really enjoyed just in a geeky excited way, some of the sections that most interested me and made me want to create were the Creature Shop and looking at the ridiculously detailed sets and props. (I didn't take any of the following pictures!)

Illustration of the Creature Shop (I'm not sure who by!)

Creature Shop

Friendly faces

After visiting I thought I might like to experiment with making some tactile objects instead of just drawing all the time. When I was in secondary school I wanted to study costume or theatre design at university so maybe it's time to dabble in that side of my practice again. I might have a go at creating a few puppets and sets and having a go at stop-motion. I've been dipping into this book on and off recently too and it has some really exciting ideas in it. 

Also, on a pretty unrelated note, I can't mention going to the Harry Potter studio without including a picture of the Hogwarts model, because OH MY GOD.

It's hard to get a sense of scale from just looking at  a photo but this thing is *huge* and absolutely incredible in its detail. My inner twelve year old was crying with joy when I saw this.