Created in Birmingham

After many years of a lovely but slightly out of date website, Hunt Emerson has relaunched Large Cow where he’s selling artwork and archiving cool stuff from the past. Of particular note are pieces from the Birmingham Arts Lab which he was heavily involved with in the 1970’s such as this print:

There’s shockingly little online about the Birmingham Arts Lab other than a few mentions here and there. It’s be good if someone could write a decent history of it, or if one’s already written, stick it online and send me a pointer.

Triffic two part interview with cartoonist James Nash

(Personally It’s a joy to see someone from the Gary Panter / Matt Brinkman school working in the region.)

Picked up a rather strange looking flyer the other day for an exhibition at the Central Library called More Captioned Pictures by Robert Geoghegan.

It’s on the 3rd floor in the Arts and Lit dept and runs until the end of the month.

Lewes Herriot has been consistently uploading art to his Dark Inventory blog for months now and deserves another mention. This one’s title’s The Gilded Mountain:

His artwork is for sale and he welcomes inquiries for bespoke design for album sleeve, book cover design and posters.

He’s from Wolverhampton but I won’t hold that against him.

There’s a small portfolio on Dazed Digital and here’s his MySpace

I also understand he’s involved with the Colour night at the Quadrant Lounge in Wolverhampton, which has me somewhat intrigued. “The primary space for music and thought in Wolves” they call it. Really must pop along sometime.

Birmingham based cartoonist Laura Howell has a new strip starting in The Beano this week, Johnny Bean:

She talked about the creation a bit on her blog which is worth following if you’re of the budding cartoonist persuasion and her site has loads of examples of her work.

As a prelude to this weekend’s Comics Show Waterstone’s on the High St are holding a Comics Evening with signings, demos and tutorials from some of the guests appearing over the weekend. I’m guessing Bryan Talbot will be there, always good value, and artist D’Israeli will be doing a talk.

Comic Bits has a nice profile of Hunt Emerson, one of the most criminally underrated cartoonists in the country (and I say that no matter how rated he was) who lives and works in Birmingham and is performing with his band The Black Country Cats at the opening party of the Birmingham International Comics Show on October 12th.

From the more scratchy whirling dervish anthropomorphics of his early work, that can only be likened to a be-bopping busy bumble bee, through to the sturdier renderings of today where his black are sold and deep enough to swim in, his work is affirmed in its clarity. His panel sequences dance with the reassured understanding of a man who feels rhythm like a musician, and beyond it all, as everyone can see, he is a master at creating irresistibility funny work.

Hunt’s website hasn’t been updated since 2000 (!) but is still worth spending a long while browsing through and there’s an interview here.

Speaking of the Comics Show that launch party has been moved to Bennetts since The Cotton Club on Hurst St appears to have shut down.

Artpeeps is a new group portfolio site for West Midlands illustrators and cartoonists who’ve come out of the Hi8us workshops.

Fifteen artists are featured so far and you can track new additions to the site with this RSS feed. Here’s a piece by Amera Mussa, a Finnish illustrator based currently in Birmingham.

Hi8tus are looking at the feasibility of setting up and running a Comic School cementing their work in supporting comic book illustration through the Stripsearch program.

It’s worth emphasizing that this is at a very early stage - the tender for the feasibility study has only just gone out - but it’s worth noting as there isn’t anything like this in this country, though it was tried in London in the late 80s and early 90s. In the US there are a number of classes and departments at colleges and schools for comic art so it’s not necessarily a pipe dream.

If anyone does take up the tender and wants some contacts for those who’ve tried it before do get in touch as I can probably help you. (Your first port of call will probably be Paul Gravett.)

Here’s the consultancy brief (PDF).

This summer Stripsearch, the project that seeks out and nurtures comic and graphic illustration talent in the West Midlands, is running a bunch of free professional illustration courses under the banner Com-Motion.

Budding cartoonists aged 13 to 19 can create their own comic or animation with professionals including John McCrea, Hunt Emerson and The Brothers McLeod.

More details can be gotten from Jemima Cattel at jemima [at] hi8us.co.uk or on 0121 753 7700.

Image by Michiru Morikawa, a recent StripSearch Finalist. More of her work can be found here.

The Birmingham Mail ran a feature recently on the comic book creative community in the area. It’s a bit of a surface scratching piece, plugging the Out Of The Bedroom show that just finished, but it does give a nice snapshot of a number of people who are actively doing stuff in the region so I figured it worth pushing your way.

via D’log.

Stripsearch, the ongoing project to identify and support comic strip illustration talent in the West Midlands run by Hi8us, is currently touring an exhibition of work produced at workshops run by John McCrea.

Out Of The Bedroom is currently showing in the Custard Factory Reception on Gibb St from 9am-6pm until Feb 9th. The following artists are involved (with links where I could find them)

Simon K Woolford
Duane Blue Leslie
Anthony McClure
Jonathan Dukes
Lee Bradley
Tony McGee
Karoline Rerrie
Nicola Johnson
Abbey Baguley
Lisa Hill
Lizz Lunney
Giuseppa Barresi
Jane McGuiness
Liam Keane
Peter Inscoe

(Note to Hi8us - putting links on your site would be really useful for anyone wanting to contact the artists to offer them work and such, especially emerging artists who aren’t so visible on Google. I’m just saying.)

Full details are in this press release.

MC² is a new comics anthology from The Midlands Comics Collective that was published in November. The MCC is “a group of aspiring artists, writers and other such deviants based in and around Birmingham UK, all of whom are aiming to break into the comics industry - by force if necessary.”

Also of note is the anthology was edited by Hunt Emerson (interview at that link), a veteran underground cartoonist who’s been living and working in Birmingham since the 1970s when he was part of the Birmingham Arts Lab.

The book can be ordered from Amazon and is presumably available in good comic and bookshops in the city.

(via D’log)