April 23, 2016
Festivals Extra: A Dozen Photos From PIX 2016
Here are 12 photos my brother Whit Spurgeon took during our sojourn to PIX 2016 on\ Saturday, April 2. It was in a semi-modern looking business-type building on the city's south side. Educational events were held in a nearby library basement.
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My brother and I decided to day trip from Columbus, Ohio to Pittsburgh for PIX 2016. Part of the reason we went was to spend a little bit in time in Pittsburgh itself. My brother had never been; I hadn't spent significant time there since 1991. We had a great time in the shopping/bazaar district near
Wholey's Fish Market. Love that Midwestern architecture.
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Here are people buying fish from their fish market. Whenever I go into a great food market in a city not my own, I'm always jealous that there are people from whom that's just their local market. I really enjoyed the place.
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Here are some fish waiting to be cooked and eaten. This is a very artsy shot, and I like it, so it gets included. I'm not sure it adds much to our story.
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Here's the front room up twin halls leading to the expo space. This gentleman was very helpful. I did not see this lady inside the show.
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A big chunk of the show -- maybe two-thirds of it. Since this is the only one I'm including that allows you see buyers and artists, I'll mention that most of the artists to whom I spoke felt it was a bit slow. This picture features more people than I have working that room in my memory. See Derf there? And then there's a guy with his back turned to Derf's right. And then there's someone talking to that person one more person to the right. That's Rob Rogers, the local editorial cartoonist of skill and honor. It was nice to meet him.
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Derf, hard at work. I admire how Derf supports local and regional shows he'd like to see succeed: he does it in matter-of-fact fashion, and he does it directly, by showing up. I think that's a value that should definitely extend to everyone's local shows, unless you hate them or something (and maybe you do). Derf is jumping back and forth between Europe and Cleveland as
Trashed is rolling out over there to great acclaim.
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This is Bill Boichel's multi-table set up, drawing on the eclectic material at his Copacetic Comics. Copacetic is one of five comic book store every alt- and art-comics fan should visit before they die. It might be one of three.
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And here's Boichel himself, a great angel of comics. I like how certain comics people look like film directors.
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My brother was highly amused that "pierogies" got an aisle shout out in the grocery store across the street. Mmmm... pierogies.
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Holy shit, it's Kaz! I was so stunned to finally meet Kaz everything I might have said to him shot out of my skull and splashed up against the far wall. I mumbled stupid shit at him until we both got quiet and I could slink away.
This new book of his is funny, weird, likable and cool. I hope people don't sleep on it.
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On our way out of the city and back to Columbus through a hideous rain/hail storm, my brother and I stopped by a nearby library where Fran Santoro was doing his Comics Workbook classes. They brought in Bill Griffith as a guest lecturer, and he held forth at length to a mostly enraptured crowd that peppered him for specific questions on technique and tools. It was a lot of fun to see him speak in this mode, very different than the confessional appearances he made last year in support of his book
Invisible Ink.
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A great joy for me at PIX 2016 was getting to hang out a little bit with Ed Piskor, who listened to Bill Griffith with the intensity of a fevered 19-year-old working on his first mini-comic. I got to look at a major side-project and shoot the shit with Piskor, whose
Hip Hop Family Tree continues to sell big alt-comics numbers in a variety of formats. The comics world is better when Ed Piskor is doing well in it.
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posted 6:00 pm PST |
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