Prints & Books

Four new limited edition prints by Stephanie Inagaki

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Four new limited edition prints by Stephanie Inagaki.
Guardians & Reliquaries I
Guardians & Reliquaries II
Guardians & Reliquaries III
The Messenger
All limited to an edition of 20 each signed & numbered
See them all online here

 

Leslie Levings,Shing Yin Khor, and Patt Kelley return to Stranger Factory this September!

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THE SAVAGE – Leslie Levings
A MEMORY OF BEASTS – Shing Yin Khor
SOULMATES – Patt Kelley will run from
September 6th – September 29th, 2019

Opening Reception with the artists: Friday, September 6th from 6-8 PM

Book signing and An Afternoon of Creative Conversations Saturday, September 7th 1-4 pm


Stranger Factory is proud to present The Savage, a new feature show by Leslie Levings!

The Savage is new collection of myths, in which our avatars confront the inadequacies of the world, the relentlessness of destruction, and the hopeful beauty of what comes after. These are Just So Stories for the end of the world, or maybe for the end of a world that never existed to begin with.

Stranger Factory is happy to present Shing Yin Khor in her new feature show at our gallery, A Memory of Beasts!

A Memory of Beasts is a show about the objects we hoard in order to remember our lives. It’s about the keys we keep adding to our key rings, the small rock with a hole in it that we fidget with in our pockets, the shells, the worms, sticks and bones we pick up on our hikes. It’s about grounding, collecting, and keeping.

This body of work also features new critters that are signature to Shing Yin Khor’s work and stories, as well a meet and greet with the artist the following day!

Stranger Factory is happy to present Patt Kelley in his latest feature show at our gallery, Soulmates!

Some people believe that everyone has a soulmate. Another person so suited to you that they must have been delivered by fate or divine intervention. In this show, each piece has a soulmate. A perfect counterpoint. The subject of each work is the destined partner of another subject within the exhibit. Some pieces may go to a home with their soulmate piece, but Kelley likes to think that even if separated, perhaps the pieces will be rejoined at some point in the future.

All shows run fromSeptember 6th – September 29th, 2019
Opening Reception with the artists: Friday, September 6th from 6-8 PM

Join us for the release and signing of Shing Yin Khor’s new book, The American Dream? A Journey on Route 66 as well as
An Afternoon Of Creative Conversations
Saturday, September 7th 1-4PM
Conversations and snacks curated by Shing Yin Khor

1-2pm
Queer Comics and Southwest History
A conversation with Melanie Gilman
(with book signings to follow)

2-3pm
Building Creative Careers
A round table conversation with Ryan Singer, Melanie Gilman, and friends, moderated by Shing Yin Khor.

3-4pm
Divinations for a Creative Path
with Leslie Levings and The Oracle Bird

“If you ever plan to motor west
Travel my way, take the highway that is best
Get your kicks on Route 66.”—Bobby Troup

Route 66 covers a total of almost 2,500 miles, famously winding from Chicago to LA. Established in 1926, it’s been called the Main Street of America, was dedicated to Will Rogers and is an essential part of Americana. Even those who’ve never traveled its roads know it from pop music, the 1960’s TV show Route 66, the Cars franchise, and John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath.

As a child growing up in Malaysia, Shing Yin Khor had two very different ideas of what “America” meant. The first looked a lot like Hollywood, full of beautiful people, sunlight, and freeways. The second looked much more like The Grapes of Wrath—a nightmare landscape filled with impoverished people, broken-down cars, barren landscapes, and broken dreams. Those contrasting ideas have stuck with Khor ever since and help explain their fascination with Route 66. In the spring of 2016, 10 years after moving to LA and 4 years after becoming an American citizen, Khor embarked on a road trip along Highway 66 in a 2010 Honda Fit, accompanied only by their trusty road-trip adventure dog Bug.

On sale from Zest Books on August 6, 2019, Khor’s graphic memoir The American Dream?: A Journey on Route 66 Discovering Dinosaur Statues, Muffler Men, and the Perfect Breakfast Burrito allows readers to ride shotgun for a deeply personal and playful pilgrimage of roadside attractions, abandoned towns, diners, and motels. Like the very best road trips, the book relishes in unusual sites and roadside kitsch, with detours providing arcane trivia and profound observations alike. We visit Oatman, AZ, a former gold-mining town where several Hollywood films were shot. We stop at Two Guns, AZ, the abandoned site of the former tourist trap known as The Apache Death Cave. We take in plenty of iconic landmarks, from Holbrook, AZ’s dinosaur statues to Oklahoma’s Blue Whale of Catoosa.

The American Dream?: A Journey on Route 66 Discovering Dinosaur Statues, Muffler Men, and the Perfect Breakfast Burrito is already receiving accolades:

Khor takes that ‘feeling of desperately searching for something better, for a new start,’ and adapts it to their own ‘pilgrimage’ as immigrant and artist traveling historic Route 66…in whimsical full-color detail.—Booklist (Starred Review)

Breathtaking.—School Library Journal

Offers important perspectives on being an immigrant and American identity.—Kirkus Reviews

Shing Yin Khor’s trip preceded the 2016 Presidential Election by a few months. And as Khor writes, “This comic feels like a record of a time when a brown girl could drive America fearlessly.” It is both the document of one cartoonist’s trip on the open road and a portrait of a constantly evolving America. Khor’s journey echoes the Joad family’s desperate pursuit of a better life out West, and the book takes stock of both the myth and the reality of the American Dream. We invite you to join us on the ride.

Shing Yin Khor is a cartoonist and installation artist. Their work has been published in The Toast, The Nib, Upworthy, Huffington Post, and Bitch Magazine. They make the road trip adventure comic Tiny Adventure Journal, and the tender queer science fiction comic Center for Otherworld Science. They are also the author of The American Dream? A Journey on Route 66 Discovering Dinosaur Statues, Muffler Men, and the Perfect Breakfast Burrito published by Zest Books. They live in Los Angeles.

 

Someone say Halloween and Night Parade?

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Parade_smTomorrow is October 1st and the unofficial start of Halloween season (unless it is all year around like most of us).

What better way to get in the spirit of Halloween and show your love of this best time of year with decor around the house! Kathie Olivas’Night Parade” shows off our favorite holiday with gusto! Come on, it has a glorious pumpkin in the center!

Available now in the Circus Posterus store here for $75.

  • Size: 13″ x 19″
  • Signed & numbered
  • Printed on fine art using Epson archival inks

 

Toy Art 2.0

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The Toy Art 2.0 book is not the first coffee table book devoted to toy art on the market, but it is likely the most comprehensive – not just profiling artists and designers, but also collectors and gallery owners. At 4 pounds, it is also likely the heaviest. Most importantly, it is driven by people from within the toy community! The book is spearheaded by Okedoki, a Canadian artist known for toys such as Benny the Dreamer, with former toy blogger Jeremy Brautman(Jeremyriad) on editing and interview duties.

kathie_brandt

Kathie and Brandt’s page spreads in the book!

Excitedly for us, the Circus Posterus collective is featured a lot in the book. Brandt Peters and Kathie Olivas, Chris Ryniak, and FERG are interviewed, alongside many of our friends. Jeremy is a good interviewer, and includes the usual introductions and surfacey questions, but also digs for details on toy productions, frustrations with the artistic process and common artists myths. Still, even though the seasoned toy community members can find lots of new ideas in the book, it remains accessible and a perfect introduction for newcomers to designer toy art.

Where this book excels though, is spotlighting the gears that make the toy industry run. I loved reading the interviews with Julie B. of Pretty in Plastic, the master sculptor behind some of the industry’s most well loved figures, as well as the essay by Kirby Kerr, although writing about his life as a toy collector and not the gallery director/co-owner for Rotofugi. In addition, several of our own Sideshow community are in the book as well – Stacyjean and Sara Harvey, two wonderful women that we look forward to seeing every year. It is also more than obvious, looking at collectors like Stacy and Sara(and by the way, there are pages and pages of full colour and absolutely drool worthy toy shelves that make it into the book), that collecting is its own art form and passion project.

An outtake from the book of Stacyjean's wonderful collection.

An outtake from the book of Stacyjean’s wonderful collection.

 I’ve always felt that most “art books” are great machines to promote artists, which is all well and good, but the true heart of every community has always been its people…every single one of them, not just the ones selling stuff. As Jeremy told me, “When I came on board the project, I read all 500 pages and started cutting it down to a reasonable amount of text. Along the way, I noticed that this wasn’t a book about the world of toy art ten years ago, but rather the Internet-enabled world of toy art: emphasis on community and collaboration.”

I’ve always been blown away at the toy art community’s willingness to embrace the outsiders, the newbies, and the slightly lost and wide eyed. We’re a community largely based around making art and design accessible, and I think it’s always been one of our best aspects. At the end of the day, our community is the most important thing to us at Circus Posterus, and I am excited that this book chose to highlight the diverse and fascinating community that has evolved around the toy scene in the past ten years.

Quotes from the book:

“We started as outsiders, and forming a group just made sense. Everyone contributes something.”—Kathie Olivas (about the Circus Posterus collective)

“I enjoy art in an accessible form made by people I admire, and I can create a world around me.”—Sara Harvey

“I hope by sharing images of pieces I’ve collected, I’m contributing back to the cycle.”—StacyJean

“It’s an awesome, punk rock response to what we liked as kids.” —Chris Ryniak (about toy art)

toyartbook_cp1

You can learn more about the Toy Art Book, featuring Circus Posterus artists, at http://www.toyartbook.com and purchase it at http://www.toyartbook.storenvy.com.

You can also join our community at The Sideshow forums(one of us. one of us.). We like the stuff you like.

Skelve Masks and more in the CP Store

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MASKS

Remember those Skelve Masks by Kathie Olivas we talked about here? They will be popping up in the CP Store here today! These will certainly fly off the wall, so keep checking back!

Also releasing in the CP Store Print section are two new prints by Kathie Olivas and Chris Ryniak.

Lucifugous by Chris Ryniak
Lucifugous

Masked Crusader by Kathie Olivas
MaskedCrusaderW

A 5 Piece Screen Print Set for all Circus Fans

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Before you get overwhelmed with the awesomeness of Monsters and Misfits III, coming to Takayama, Japan in September, pick up the 2012 Monsters and Misfits II Screen Print Set

This 5 piece set contains iconic characters by Doktor A, Amanda Louise Spayd, Chris Ryniak, Kathie Olivas and Brandt Peters.This amazing set perfectly embodies the legacy of the 2012 Monsters and Misfits show, and is an outstanding 2D companion for many of the recent 3D sofubi releases of Stingy Jack, Stinky Ginger, Calliope, and more. This hand pulled, hand signed, and numbered prints screenprinted by Tiny Bird Press are an edition of 125 measuring 8″ x 10″ on French Speckletone paper.

5 prints are only $125, and can be found in the Circus Posterus Store here. 

Amanda Louise Spayd Screenprint for Monsters and Misfits II

Picture 1 of 6

Over 100 Prints Available in the Circus Posterus Store!

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KO

We are busting at the seams here in the Circus Posterus web store with affordable and awesome prints! Seriously, we have over 100 prints by a myriad of astounding artists such as Dril One, Brandt Peters, Kathie Olivas, Glenn Barr, Chris Ryniak, and more. Besides having a wide range of price points, there are also brand new pieces along with some classics you may have missed out on.

Your shelves may be getting full, but your walls can always use some love. If you want to see all the bounty, head on over to the store here.

Trav Trav Dril BP Barr

 

Jimmy Palmiotti’s New SEX and VIOLENCE Graphic Novel on Kickstarter!

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Following the immense success of his Queen Crab and Retrovirus projects, comic giant Jimmy Palmiotti returns with another exciting Kickstarter series called Sex and Violence. The 64-page graphic novel is about crime, lust and redemption as it follows two distinct, yet similarly-themed stories written by Palmiotti and Justin Gray, and illustrated by Jimmy Broxton and Juan SantaCruz. As the title of the book suggests, it is intended for an adult audience.

Here’s the scoop, straight from Jimmy:

The first story, PORNLAND, OREGON, is written by Justin Gray [ All-Star Western, Retrovirus, Creator-Owned heroes] and drawn by Jimmy Broxton [The Unwritten, The Engine] .  When his runaway granddaughter is murdered, Rick embarks on a bloody trail of revenge through Portland’s internet porn community only to discover he may have inadvertently had a role in her death.

The other story, GIRL IN A STORM, is written by Jimmy Palmiotti [ Painkiller Jane, Queen Crab, Jonah Hex] and illustrated by Juan SantaCruz [ The Resistance, Fantastic Four, The Hulk] and is a story about a NYC female police officer that becomes fascinated with a lesbian couple that has moved across the courtyard from her apartment. What started out as a curiosity out of boredom has become a full-fledged obsession that starts her questioning her own life.

Backers who pledge $25 or more will receive the book with an exclusive, Amanda Conner cover variant, signed by Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray. Your name will also be printed in the book. Other awards are also up for grabs, depending on the amount you can contribute.

For those who are unfamiliar with Jimmy’s work, this is a great opportunity to get acquainted before his upcoming ART OF NARRATIVE comic art exhibition this January at Stranger Factory! He will also be teaching a workshop on character creation and how to sell a project, so do our pal Jimmy a solid by backing Sex and Violence Vol. 1. Fundraising closes Dec. 13; click here for the trailer + more info!

 

Creative Spark’s “Little Print Shop of Horrors II”

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Creative Spark, is a branding agency based in London and for the second time they are doing some really cool charity work. They have brought back “Little Print shop of Horrors” for a second go around to help benefit cancer charities. The re-imagination of film posters is a big scene now, and it is a good time to help do some good. If you would like to get some of these and help out, just look here. The only small problem is that they only deliver in the UK, so get a friend there to hook you up. I am loving the simplistic goodness of many of these.

All proceeds go to Marie Curie Cancer Care.