We were fortunate to meet a gent named Heath Row at Google with great taste in books, comics, and zines (and the cred to match!). With his help and through the Authors@Google program, we arranged for Travis Millard to give a talk yesterday about his work and the book we published, Hey Fudge, at Google’s offices.
Travis Millard, Mark Dischler (Narrow Books), and myself.
Travis talked for about 40 minutes about his art and how he’s found an audience for it: the why and how of the galleries and companies that have sought him out. (Travis told me he gets emails from young artists and art students all the time asking how he’s “made it”, and it’s a task every time to explain that his career has been more about sitting at the drawing board than a by-the-numbers “this is how you become a professional artist” plan.)
So the talk Travis ended up delivering was sort of a letter to the kids who email him. He talked about his early days drawing as a kid, his blessedly failed efforts to get and keep a job as a designer, the dumb or ballsy moves (depending on your attitude) he took when first asked to do things he’d never done before (album art, animation, magazine illustration), and the odd sorts of anchors that ended up being more important than he could’ve guessed, like bar bathroom art installations he did at the Max Fish bar in New York and the Little Joy bar in LA.
It was a funny and informative talk, and with luck, Google will put the entire thing up for viewing on the web soon. For me, it was nifty to see a Google office, and Mark and I got to meet Travis’ art buddy, Kiel Johnson, whose work I’d seen before and dug. (We also got to check out Kiel’s feature spread in the new issue of Hi Fructose magazine.)
Mark, Mel Kadel, and Kiel Johnson checking out Hi Fructose before the talk.
Artist Josh Cochran has been kicking ass as an illustrator for a while. Not long after we’d gotten him to agree to provide illustrations for the second volume of our Two Letters anthology series, he was featured on the cover of Communication Arts, which is a kingpin of magazine coverage on design and advertising. And since then, he’s been creating art for everyone from the Discovery Channel to McSweeney’s to Wired to the New Yorker.
Tomorrow he’ll be accepting three awards—that’s right, count ‘em for a hat-trick—from the Society of Illustrators for his work, including one for his cover for the Criterion Collection DVD of John Huston’s Wise Blood adaptation. (Full details here.)
Josh provided the wrap-around cover art (pictured above) and illustrated several stories for our anthology, which you can pick up from the Narrow Books webstore.
Smart Gals are now in their tenth year of organizing events that celebrate books and the artists and authors who make them. They’re commemorating the anniversary with an unusual sort of installation piece at the Barnsdall Art Park, and I’ll be privileged to help out with a “quiet” reading.
The Smart Gals have installed their Reading Preserve—a “sanctuary for the endangered act of reading actual books”—before at the WeHo book fair; this time the preserve will be part of both the Los Angeles Municipal Gallery’s ongoing “Actions, Conversations, and Intersections” exhibition and Smart Gals’ own anniversary. (They’ll also be showing all of the awesome bookmarks Smart Gals commissioned their Speakeasy reading events over the years—shown here at left is the bookmark Esther Pearl Watson made for our event a few years back.)
On Thursday, February 4th, 2-3 pm, I’ll be quietly reading a book (from my library, but not written by me) in the preserve, surrounded by comforting pillows. You can join me or… watch me?
Other participating authors include Janet Fitch (White Oleander), Aimee Bender (The Girl in the Flammable Skirt), and Cecil Castellucci (Boy Proof). You can find more from the reading preserve author schedule.
One cool thing is that on Sunday the 7th, the Smart Gals will include writing from the participating authors (for example, from me, an excerpt from my novel in progress) on hand-made pillows that will become permanent elements of the reading preserve. Outstanding, right? Forever printed on a pillow…
RSS Feed