thrilled to premiere the second Owen Pallett video i made! thanks again to Owen for having me on, for being a dream collaborator, and for trusting me to bring visuals to the world of Spectrum. we hope to do more of these at some point. hope you enjoy ‘Fire-Mare’. xox
koyama press provides grant
i’ve been announced as the recipient of a Koyama Press Provides grant! i’ll be putting this towards the printing costs of a new comic next year. ❤️🖤 seeing the Koyama Press table at my first TCAF in 2010 gave me a push to take making comics more seriously, and made me excited to live in Toronto. publishing a book with Annie years later was a dream come true. being able to count her as a mentor and friend, maybe even more so. though it’s sad to see KP wind down this year, i’m thrilled to see the KP Provides program take off. i guess...i better...get to work!!
owen pallett - 'paragon of order' music video premiere
very excited to share Paragon of Order, the first of two music videos i’ve illustrated for Owen Pallett off their new LP Island. huge thanks to Owen for having me on board!
nightlifers tote!
there’s a brand new tote for sale over in the store, featuring an array of nightlife icons (left to right: Sister Dimension, Divine, Grace Jones, Cookie Mueller, Leigh Bowery, Klaus Nomi, Peaches, Lady Bunny, Sylvester, and Lady Miss Kier). it was a ton of fun to put together, and i hope you enjoy it!
how does it feel in my arms? reviewed
My Ley Lines comic, How Does It Feel In My Arms?, got a nice write-up recently on High Low Comics. big thanks to Rob Clough for his thoughtful review — check it out here.
weekly comics for now magazine
in case you’re not following, i’m continuing to make weekly comics for NOW Magazine, out every thursday! click here to check ‘em out.
getting through today
for this week’s issue of NOW, i put together the cover, and a new two-page comic called Getting Through Today, which is available online. it was challenging finding a way to reflect on something that’s unfolding and changing so quickly, but i’m proud of how it came together in the end. i hope you enjoy, and that it can bring you some moments of levity. big thanks to Daniel and Kevin for their direction.
britney jean 2116
as a little treat for you all during these strange, indoorsy days, i’ve decided to share a short comic of mine from a few years back! “Britney Jean 2116” originally appeared in Babybel Wax Bodysuit (which somehow got nominated for an Eisner!). i’m still fond of this story, and would love to expand it into something larger someday. hope you enjoy!
beaver mural write-up
in a moment that has made me feel like Not A Spring Chicken Anymore, an OCAD student asked me to write up some thoughts about the mural at The Beaver for an assignment on Toronto nightlife. i was happy with how the write-up came together, and thought i would share it on here, in case any of you are interested. ❤
....
Like many before me, I first flocked to The Beaver as a curious baby-gay seeking a west-end alternative to the Church and Wellesley nightlife scene, where I’d felt like a bit of an outcast. I became a Beaver regular in the early 2010s, shortly after the bar’s co-owner, the beloved artist/DJ/promoter Will Munro passed away from cancer. I’d never had an opportunity to meet Will, but I felt the heaviness of his loss hanging over the queer community.
Fortunately, The Beaver carried on, thanks to both those in Will’s scene and a new generation of keen and transgressive nightlife freaks. I was studying at OCAD at the time, and the prospect of illustrating event posters felt like an exciting change of pace from my class assignments. I linked up with an emerging drag collective, the House of Filth, and became one of the regular poster artists for their infamous monthly party, Bad Tuck.
As the years went on, The Beaver staff and regulars became my buddies. The former bar manager had proposed I paint a mural referencing Will Munro and Jeremy Laing’s Virginia Puff-Paint installation, but the owner expressed concern that it might alienate the bar’s more normie brunch crowd. The owner became less involved overtime, and in 2016, Lee D’Angelo, a prominent local tattoo artist who bartended at the time, began drawing on the walls of the washrooms and back hallway in an effort to breathe some new energy into the space. Lee generously offered me a wall of my own, so I drew one of my comic characters kicking over a condo complex.
Lee, myself, and a few other local artists had thoroughly decorated the back hallways, but I was still keen on the idea of creating a proper mural right by the dance floor. This time, the current bar manager was able to give me the OK, and I in fact had free reign to do whatever I wanted! I was given a key to the bar, and over two or three weeks, I would let myself in, throw some music on, and paint throughout the days.
The mural came together organically. I wanted it to feature the “queerdo canon” and serve as a tribute to The Beaver’s mandate, and to Will’s spirit. There’s a range, from larger cultural figures (Bjork, Liza Minnelli), to queer art icons (Klaus Nomi, Sylvester, the Cockettes, Leigh Bowery, Pickle Surprise), to local legends (General Idea, Virginia Puff-Paint). Across from the mural, I re-created one of Will’s final pieces, an Egyptian god with Tom of Finland’s head, watching over the dance floor. It’s a powerful, haunting piece from a body of work exploring his own mortality.
Will died almost a full decade ago now, and the new baby-queers flocking to The Beaver may not even know who he was — and you can’t blame them. So much queer history isn’t reliably documented or institutionally preserved. It’s often up to us to keep the stories alive. Hopefully the mural can serve as a reference point, and a celebration of what’s come before — energy that can be transferred to the next crop of nightlife freaks and whatever they have in store for us.
here (in the washroom at the gay bar)
I’m at work on some new comic things for 2020, and thought I’d share a page that might grow into several pages! Richard McGuire’s Here is one of my all-time fav comics, and I’ve always imagined doing my own version that’s set in the washroom of a gay bar (if those walls could talk!). here’s the first instalment!