Glasgow / Manchester based illustrator Laura Frame sent me a copy of her book ‘Draw Closer’, compiled by herself and designer Andy Brown as part of their art & design outfit Fusible Front.

The book is a sweet mix of Laura’s illustration, and snippets of poetry by Saul Williams. I’ve no idea where you can pick up a copy but if you contact them via fusiblefront.com, I’m sure they will sort you out– in a non-violent way of course. Photography here by Chalaina Marshall.

Link: fusiblefront.com

Hayzee: will whoop you on Mega Bomberman

This fortnight we’re joyed to present a guest mix of hip-hop and funky-ass music courtesy of Dutch hip-hop producer Hayzee. Real name Ramon, twenty-one year old Hayzee was born and raised in Amsterdam, and earlier this year released The Next Level, an 8-bit computer games themed EP of post-Dilla hip-hop instrumentals. Listen and download the mix below, and check out our interview with the man himself.

Podcast:

↓ MP3: Earz Mag / 12 November 2008 - HayZee guest mix [48MB]

Interview:

EARZMAG: How to did you get into hip-hop music and culture?

HAYZEE: ”I grew up with hiphop all around me. My father used to listen to things like Public Enemy and NWA, and I remember watching Yo MTV raps as a kid. Later I got into Wu-Tang and Tribe in high school, but I always had Hiphop around me.”

EM: What’s your fascination with vintage console games?

H: “Haha Well I used to play a lot of videogames when I was little, and anyone who used to play NES back in the day knows how those tunes got stuck in you head. And that made you want to play even more! I was just part of that whole generation.”

EM: What inspired you to combine those two influences (hip-hop and games) for the Next Level EP?

H: “I first heard it in that track by Oh No - The Ride in 2004, I don’t know if it was ever done before that. I thought that was incredible! To this day I still think it is one of the craziest beats ever made. It was not that particular beat that inspired me, because after that I found out about alot of other producers who made those kinds of beats so I began experimenting, et viola, Next Level.”

EM: Listening through your music, there’s a big Jay Dee / J Dilla influence in there… what do you personally think his contribution to hip-hop was?

H: I think Jay Dee showed people that its ok to just follow your own path. To just do you, rather than go with the main trend or hype. And that is one of the very mindstates of hiphop, so in my opinion he revived hiphop when it was dying.

EM: You’ve collaborated with FS Green. How did you hook up? Do the two of you work well together?

H: We went to high school together, and remained friends ever since, haha. So yeah we work well together.

EM: Mostly your music has been released for free online- what is the strategy behind that?

H: I have no strategy, I’m just a really nice guy! Hahaha. No, I haven’t really thought of it as a strategy, but it is a great way of making a name for yourself. Although I think that at a certain point you can’t do a lot for free anymore. 

EM: What have you got planned for the rest of 2008 / 2009?

H: Appletree Beat Series Vol. 3 is coming up. Me and DJ Fullcrate are working on a project called Lightyears Away, thats going to be released on Little D soundlab.. And I’m also part of a Dutch hip-hop formation called Zwart Licht, that is set to release an album in November.

Links:

myspace.com/hayzee
nalden.net/hayzeeisnextlevel

If you’re a fan of Stones Throw (the CA label famed for off hip-hop artists like J Dilla, Madlib, and James Pants) you’ll like this book they’ve released, by Jason Jägel- an artist long associated with the label- which also comes with a new Madlib 10″.

Jason and I worked together on a few other things, some of them never released, like one of Madlib’s many private-press jazz albums (Monkfunkin by his Monk Hughes group) and some early ideas for a revamped Operation Doomsday cover for DOOM that never quite made it off the ground. I’m glad to see both of those pieces in this new, huge book of his, 73 Funshine. Given all the connections in the artwork, and of course the Madlib EP, I’m glad Stones Throw has this opportunity to offer the book & record right on our website.

Link: Jason Jägel’s 73 Funshine: Art Book & Madlib 10-Inch Vinyl

Stones Throw have also just released a wicked looking heart-shaped vinyl, for the track Just Aint Gonna Work Out by newcomer Mayer Hawthorne. [Video below, Grab the MP3 here]

They also just released Old Money, an album by Mars Volta guitarist Omar Rodriguez Lopez.

Link: Stones Throw Records

Image: the cover of Wire Magazine, November 08'

Here are two odes to the art of copying, which have surfaced on my radar lately and tickled my inner-pirate. The first is this month’s The Wire magazine, ‘Unofficial Channels - a tour of music’s unauthorised domains, from bootlegs to blogs and beyond‘, and its series of mini-essays on the joys of ’sharity’ (full album) blogs, rare tape exchanges, Grime DVDs, internet sound-art archives, John Peel bootlegs, and other forms of samizdat music publishing.

From David Keenan on how guerrilla media revitalises music:

(…) Self-publishing in the form of CD-R and cassette releases is a mark of artistic seriousness. It works as a gauge of how committed any artist is to the specifics of their own vision, that without the blessing of any outside agency the believe in their own work to get behind it themselves, while its ‘unofficial status’ forces critics and fans to fall back on their own judhement; no-one has filtered out the more deserving artists, whether legitamised by taste-makers, major labels or promotional payola. And it gives artists control of every aspect of presentation, so that the packaging itself- the mode of presentation- becomes part of the experience. Flying in the face of unloveable factory pressed CDs or ‘limited edition’ connoisseur vinyl runs of 20,000 units, handmade CD-R and art edition cassettes give music back its talismanic power, facilitating direct, unmediated communication between artist and consumer or, implicitly, artist and artist.

Image: copyfighter Cory Doctorow, in a cape

The second thing is Cory Doctorow: Why I Copyfight, an article from Locus Online.

It’s a wonderful introduction (or an erudite summary, if you’re already in the know) to post-www copyright, and why it’s a totally changed game from traditional intellectual property law. For further reading on the subject I reccommend books by Lawrence Lessig, like Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity.

Then came the early days of the copyfight: the analog period, when VCRs, double-cassette-decks, photocopiers, and other proto-copying technology came along. Now it was possible to do things that rose to the realm of copyright’s regulated activities (copying, performing, displaying, adapting) with stuff lying around the house. Dealer rooms at cons sometimes sported crudely bound fanfic “novels,” teenagers courted each other with mix tapes, you could bring some HBO over to the neighbors’ on VHS cassette and have a movie party.

And yet, there was comparatively little danger in this process. Although these activities were of dubious legality (certainly, the big rightsholder groups considered them technological suitcase nukes, comparing the VCR to the Boston Strangler and promising that “home taping is killing music”), the cost of enforcement was very high. Publishers and record labels and studios couldn’t watch what you did at home and work and parties and cons, not without an expensive network of paid snitches whose salaries would exceed any losses they were experiencing.

Links:

The Wire November 08′ - Unauthorised Channels
Cory Doctorow: Why I Copyfight

If you want to send us music for review consideration drop a line to info[at]earz-mag.com.

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Mystic Man & Eshamanjaro - In Heavy Weather - The Dubstep Remix EP [Fat! Records]

On this four-track EP Fat! Records assign two up-coming producers (Reso and Hektagon) to take on UK hip-hop duo Mystic Man & Eshamanjaro’s In Heavy Weather LP, and give it a fresh Dubstep twist. On A-side Minds I (Braindead Remix), Londoner Reso deconstructs the boom-bap of the original beyond recognition, instead littering a skeletal rhythm with outpourings of bass, toyed-with samples, and synth lines, to nice effect. Hektagon’s mix of The Rambler is more obviously a Dubstep mutation of its album counterpart, intelligently reworking key horn and vocal refrains from the original into a dance-floor crushing beast, which works equally well when accompanied by Escha’s swaggering rhymes, or as a vocal-less dub version (both presented here). Without relying too heavily on the original material, the EP is more a chance for Reso and Hektagon to showcase their own production skills, which they both do here with aplomb.

Mystic Man & Eshamanjaro - The Rambler (Hektagon Remix) [snippet]

MORE INFO / PURCHASE

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Baobinga & ID - Big Monster - The Dubstep Remix EP - [Fat! Records]

Mancunian breaks duo Baobinga & ID dropped Big Monster in March this year, an album which touched on more electronic music genres than you’d find in the record collection of a Wire magazine writer, and this Dubstep Remix EP (following on from two other remix EPs) features the sonic wizardry of producers ID, DFRNT and Hektagon. ID breaths new life into South Manchester Weather, bringing an inverted bass line and cranked rhythm to the drizzly almost groove-less album track, while Hektagon’s The Waterpark remix is sparse and doom-laden, with clattering drums, creaky synth-lines, and a bass that pulsates like a bad migraine. London native DFRNT has two remixes here, the first substituting Big Beat for Dubstep in his take of The Machine, before he drops a sublime remix of Into The Air, melding atmospheric pads and futuristic beats into a smoke-fuelled work of art, reminiscent of the understated ambience which has brought Burial so much acclaim.

Baobinga & ID - Into The Air - DFRNT Remix [snippet]

MORE INFO / PURCHASE

Glasgow’s Winning Sperm Party, one of my favourite DIY labels, have released more music by the quirksome trio Plaaydoh, in the form of a new EP titled ‘Friends’ (I previously wrote about their self-titled EP here). I’ve posted the track ‘Cambodia (Grozny)’ which gets all shouty about the murderous dictator Pol Pott. Nice.

↓ MP3: Plaaydoh - Cambodia (Grozny) [3.14MB]

winningspermparty.com/plaaydoh

Urciuoli Sabato let me know that Glyph.– his Turin, Italy based design studio– have updated their site with a bunch of new works, which are typically innovative and against the grain. 

www.glyphisabox.net

Previously on earz-mag.com:

Urciuoli Sabato / Glyph.

School of Seven Bells. Photo: Ghostly International

↓ Download MP3 [128kbps, 23.3MB]

Sic Alps - Massive Place - U.S Ez [Siltbreeze]
Reverb-drenched alt-rock from San Francisco

White Denim - Shake Shake Shake - Workout Holiday [Full Time Hobby]
More indie-alternative with a 60s feel. This one has a great video

Hudson Mohawke - Star Crackout - Beatsrumental Series #6 - [All City]
New on All City, sublime beats from the Glasgow producer

School of Seven Bells - Iamundernodisguise - Alpinisms [Ghostly International]
Crisp beats and choral delights from the forthcoming Alpinisms LP

Talkdemonic - Shattered into Dyes - Eyes at Half Mast [Arena Rock]
Quick blast of bi-polar instrumentalism, from the duo’s third full-length

Bun - Demo - Demo [Demo / Dublab MP3]
Beats from Japan, grabbed from Dublab

William Parker & Hamid Drake - Earth - Summer Snow [Aum Fidelity]
Forward-thinking jazz / improvisation off the Summer Snow LP

Peche Noire - Voyage en Bmin - Peche Noire Album - [Apple Tree]
Recorded in the Pyrenees by the multi-tasking Dutch ensemble
 
Peche Noir - Nomono - Peche Noire Album - [Apple Tree]
Some of their tracks are so short I had to include one more

Great news! This morning Glenn from FormFiftyFive (where I am an occasional co-blogger) let me know we are merging with fellow design bloggers The Serif, in a move that will make us one of the biggest online resources for art / design / illustration etc.

We’re excited to announce that from today FFF and The Serif will be merging. Serif founder Jim, and the rest of The Serif team will be coming across to FFF, meaning there will now be twice as many of us searching out the best inspirational design from around the world.

It isn’t just the team that is developing, over the coming months there will be some big changes to FFF, with a ground-up redesign of the site. We’re really excited about the future, so if you have suggestions of improvements you’d like to see in the redesign, let us know.

FormFiftyFive - Design inspiration from around the world

Interesting mix of painting, illustration, music, film & more on Vahram Muradyan’s website.

vahrammuradyan.com (Thanks, Vahram!)

Fat Freddy’s Drop– the acclaimed New Zealand outfit who make a sweet blend of jazz, funk, dub, reggae and soul– have announced a new single, Pull The Catch, which is out on 1 December 2008 through Kartel. The track was allegedly inspired by an early morning fishing trip (?!) and will be proceeded by an album, Big BW, in Spring 2009. European tour dates have also been announced. Links below for more details.

“A sunny, reggae-infused taster of things to come “Pull The Catch” is idiosyncratic FFD, which draws on the band¹s unique lifestyle and laidback outlook on life. Much like “Cay’s Crays”, from their award winning debut album “B.O.A.T.S.”, “Pull The Catch” was born out of a fishing trip in their idyllic setting of New Zealand’s South Island. A spot of pre-dawn fishing, with vocalist Dallas, and his uncle led to the group returning from their trip singing an almost fully formed song, which was recorded immediately in their conveniently placed beachside studio.”

↓ MP3: Fat Freddy’s Drop: “Flashback” (128kbps)

Tour dates + music @ myspace.com/fatfreddysdropnz

Fat Freddy’s Drop @ AmazonMP3 / iTunes

Hustle Simmons are a Philly based duo who recently dropped their self-titled LP; a must-check release for any true-school heads. The promo video for single The Run Down is dope; it has an early Dilated Peoples type vibe complete with pummeling beat and solid rhyme delivery. 4.5/5

myspace.com/hustlesimmonsmusic

The searing gospel, gushing organs and straight-up Americana of Alberta Cross cries out ‘Nashville’ or ‘Neil Young protégés’, and the last thing you’d expect to find behind the bluesy swagger of tracks like The Thief & The Heartbreaker is a band of straight-talking Europeans.

But that’s how it is. Swede Petter Ericson Stakee and Londoner Terry Wolfers met through a chance busking encounter (”one day I turn up and there is this tall bloke with a hat and long dark coat busking in my spot”) and went on to form Alberta Cross, with Sam Kearney, Austin Beede and Alec Higgins filling out the band’s line-up.

With a couple of acclaimed releases at their back (the 2007 EP Leave Us Or Forgive Us and 2008’s mini-album The Heartbreaker & The Thief) the band have relocated to the US and are now sitting pretty as part of the Ark Recordings roster, with a slew of US and UK (supporting indie megaliths Oasis) tour dates ensuring plenty of converts to their New World sound.

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earz-mag.com: I understand Petter (Ericson Stakee) and Terry (Wolfers) were the driving force behind Alberta Cross forming. How you two meet and what made you want to make music?

Petter Ericson Stakee: “We met in London’s beautiful east end.”

Terry Wolfers: ”I would go out busking almost every day to get a bit of cash and had managed to find a couple of great spots where people would be quite generous. One day I turn up and there is this tall bloke with a hat and long dark coat busking in my spot. At first I thought this guys gonna get a smack. As he started singing I thought, wow this bloke can really sing! So I decided to wait and hear a bit more before I confronted him.”

“After he had done a couple of songs I approached Petter and really wasn’t concerned about the spot anymore but was he writing any of his own material. And so it began. We didn’t really start the band with the idea of getting a record deal, (we) just wanted to write great music as most of the bands playing around at that time were more about riffs and dance beats, we felt we were more about soulful songs with beautiful melodies.”

earz-mag.com: The more obvious influences in Alberta Cross’ music are Americana, country and folk. Are there any bands that people would be surprised to see on your list of influences?

TW: “I don’t think you can be surprised by what artists get influenced by, you can take influence from every area of life! Growing up you hear so much music, from the stuff your parents, grandparents listen to; your brothers and sisters, music at school, radio and tv. It covers so many genres of music over a great amount of time. For example the classical violinist Nigel Kennedy is influenced by rock, especially Jimi Hendrix. Great artists and musicians will take influence from everywhere.”

earz-mag.com: What is the song “The Thief & The Heartbreaker” about?

PES: “It’s about a lot of things really, but the main bit of the song is about being in a place you dont really feel happy being in. A place on the map or maybe a place in your mind/life.”

earz-mag.com: You’re currently on tour in the UK and quite recently were touring in the US. Do you have any good “road stories” to share? What was touring the US like?

PES: “Touring the US has been grand! It was all new to us so that was inspiring. We’ve seen (played with) alot of good bands this year. So that’s cool. Hmm road stories… Well I could tell you a lot of things about our tours in the UK last year but in the US… Our last west coast tour was cool. I remember one day we stopped at at service station in a valley in California and Austin (Beede) our drummer kept goin’ on about the valley fever. And that his dad caught it a few years ago. And he was in bed for month. People get it in the valley over there cause if its a windy day the wind blows around loads of dust with crap. Anyways to cut it short we all walked around with our mouth closed every time we were in a bleeding valley. And everyone drank loads all the time to keep it away. It was fucking brilliant!”

earz-mag.com: What’s next for you guys- will we be seeing a new Alberta Cross album in 2009?

TW: “Yeah, the album will be our April-may time. Once we return to new york after the Oasis shows we will start pre-production for the new album. It seems to have been a long wait for us but it has been well worth it as moving to the US and getting the new musicians in the band has really played a big part on how this album will sound. The material and band are the strongest its ever been and I feel this will be one of the finest albums to come out for a while! We have some more shows coming up in the US before the end of the year but will mostly be getting the album finished so next year we can concentrate on touring our arse off!”

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Alberta Cross @ Myspace
Ark Recordings Homepage

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↓ MP3: Alberta Cross - The Thief & The Heartbreaker

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Purchase The Heartbreaker & The Thief @ iTunes
Purchase The Heartbreaker & The Thief @ AmazonMP3

Simon Wild is an illustrator from Suffolk UK with tonnes of lovely work at his portfolio.

SimonWild.com (Thanks, Simon!)

Jeremiah Ketner seems to get better and better! If you live around Chicago in the US I wholly reccommend his upcoming solo show “Morning Showers” at the Melanee Cooper Gallery. Opening reception is on November 7, 5-8pm, and the exhibition runs until December.

Previously:

Jeremiah Ketner presents: Source Material

One Day at a Time: new music from ex-Sneaker Pimp Kelli Ali. Photo: Laura Jade

This has been a good couple of weeks for new music! Kicking off the podcast we have the awesome Max Richter-produced One Day at a Time by ex-Sneaker Pimp Kelli Ali, followed up with new music by Lone, School of Seven Bells, Dutch hip-hop-gamer Hayzee and loads more.

Tracklisting

1 - Kelli Ali - One Day at a Time - Rocking Horse [One Little Indian LP]
2 - Lone - A Ridge Between Mountains - Cluster Dreams [Dealmaker EP]
3 - School of Seven Bells - Half Asleep - Alpinisms [Ghostly International LP]
4 - Hayzee - Press Start - The Next Level EP [Self Released EP]
5 - Ghislain Poirier - No More Blood feat. Face-T (Hudson Mohawke remix) [Ninja Tune EP]
6 - Hauschka - Barfuss Durch Gras - Ferndorf - [FatCat LP]
7 - Speaker Bite Me - Starcake (Loppen) - Live Recordings 2001-2002 [Self Released LP]
8 - Nobody Presents Blank Blue - Sonic What! (Acoustic) - Dive [Ubiquity EP]

↓ Download MP3 [27.3mb]

Information

The earz-mag.com podcast runs every second wednesday delivering a dose of interesting new music from around the world’s mainstream and underground music scenes. Mp3 files are encoded at 112kbps.

You can subscribe to the podcast in your preferred newsreader using this rss feed, or subscribe in iTunes by going to “Advanced > Subscribe to Podcast” in your iTunes menu and pasting in the feed URL ( http://earz-mag.com/feed/podcast ). Support the artists involved by purchasing music at iTunes or AmazonMP3.

Weegie(ish) indie baladeers Frightened Rabbit are about to release a live album– the oddly-titled ‘Liver! Lung! FR!’– which was recorded at the Captain’s Rest in Glasgow this July. The whole thing is pretty much all listenable over at the FatCat Records site, so enjoy feasting your ears on some rather genius arthouse indie.

Bad news for anyone not in the Americas though– although the album is released there in a mere two weeks, the official date for a UK & Rest of World release is March 2009 (?!!). To keep you moist until then here’s some grimey PUNKCAST footage from FR’s first ever US show in 2007. We also interviewed Scott Hutchison back in September August.

BREAKFAST CLUB: commissioned by Entertainment Weekly. I caught up with Los Angeles based illustrator, zine-maker and author of several graphic books, Mark Todd. Between illustrating for clients including New York Times, Rolling Stone and Spin Magazine, Mark has pursued his unique visual style through zines, comiccs and graphic books. He frequently collaborates with his wife and fellow illustrator Esther Pearl Watson. For more info check marktoddillustration.com and funchicken.com.

MS: How did you get into drawing / illustration? Were you creative as a child?

MT: “Like a lot of kids growing up in the late 70’s and early 80’s in the U.S., things like comics, the Star Wars craze and heavy metal hair bands had a huge influence on me and my friends. One of the earliest memories of drawing was when my dad showed me how he draw war scenes as a kid. Army men, airplanes bombing, etc. I was probably about 7. Then I drew a lot because of Star Wars, the death star, space fights, etc. When I was 15 or so, I got into collecting comics and that whole dungeons and dragons role playing thing. I wasn’t into that so much but I really liked creating my own comic characters, and giving them stats like the D and A games. Agility, strength, powers, weapons, etc. So I was pretty creative a kid. I think I knew that I wanted to draw for a living for a long time. I remember telling kids in my 6th grade class that I was going to be an artist and that I was going to art school after high school.”

MS: What was the transition to adult illustrator like-– did those influences from childhood– the comics, the superheros, etc– stay with you?

MT: “They did. At first I tried to be what I thought a real artist was. I majored in fine art and created really bad, dramatic works full of emotion and angst. It wasn’t until a bit later that I started to look back, referencing childhood imagery, etc. When the chairman of art center college at the time, Phil Hayes, discovered that I was from Las Vegas, he really encouraged me to go with that. To pull my work from what I grew up with: the wedding chapels, neon lights, all the gaudy and tacky stuff. It became a great jumping off point. I would go back home to visit, take pictures, talk to friends and create art from it all. [>>]”

BAD ASSES: illustrations from Mark's series, now a book out on BlueQ.

“[>>] I rediscovered my old comic collection in my bedroom closet, old sketchbooks of the superhero stuff. The superhero stuff I have been doing lately, the altered comic covers, etc. are really pretty recent. The last few years or so. My wife, Esther Watson, also an artist, and I both seem to be extremely influenced by our surroundings. When we moved a few hours north of New York city for a bit, into a big old house on a few acres of farmland, our styles changed again. I started paintings flowers and Esther began her landscape series. Before that we had lived in Brooklyn and were painting grittier, rougher things. Now that we are in Los Angeles, it has evolved again. I think the whole film industry out here has something to do with it. I feel that the work i am creating now is my best yet. And thats a good feeling. I am glad that I am still really excited about what I create. It’s hard to always keep that going.”

MS: So how did you become a “professional” illustrator, what was your first break?

MT: “Immediately after graduation from Art Center (College of Design in Pasadena, California) in 1993, I moved to New York. My first job was for The New Yorker magazine. It was amazing to drop your portfolio off on a Wednesday, get a job from them on a Thursday, and see it in print on Monday. It was a nice starting point and gave me the confidence to start showing my book all over the city, Rolling Stone, Time Magazine, etc.”

ENTER DOCTOR DOOM: a personal project

MS: That must have been pretty sweet. So you’ve not been out of a career in illustration since you finished college? 

MT: “Yeah, that was really important to me. I wanted to hit the ground running. Almost immediately after graduation in ‘93 I packed up my stuff and moved to New York with some friends. It was tough at first, I had just met Esther (Pearl Watson, a fellow illustrator and Mark’s wife) a few months prior. But we felt it best to keep the plans of me moving to NY in place just so there weren’t any regrets or whatever if things didn’t work out. Although I was pretty confident that we were going to be together forever, it just felt that way. So, I am proud to say that after college, I haven’t had a “real” job. What I do feels like play most of the time. I always try to keep that in check and remember how lucky I am to do what I do. I mean, not all of it is wonderful, you get the jobs that really suck or stress you out, but for the most part, they are rewarding in some sense.”

MS: What’s a typical routine like when you get a gig from one of the big newspapers / magazines?

MT: “My typical routine when I get a job has evolved a lot over the years. When I first started in 93′ you would build the portfolio, create some promo cards, mail them out to people who I found by going to Barnes and Noble and handwriting every art directors name and contact info. down from the magazine’s masthead. I would do this for every card I would mail out because names would change, and people moved around a lot. It was a lot of work but also really helped me find out who would and would not use my kind of work. Now its much easier to just buy a list from a place like ADBASE and do a shotgun mailing of a 1000 cards, blindly sending to everyone. I mean, that can work too at times, sometimes you get a call from some art director at a magazine you never thought would call. But overall, I have found that my best clients, the ones I have worked with for years, were from my targeted lists, the magazines that I went directly to, in person, met with them, shook their hands. Those type of relationships are the best kind to have.”

PAVEMENT: commissioned by Spin Magazine

MS: How did you at Esther meet–- do you collaborate together on work?

MT: “Esther and I met at Art Center College. I was just finishing up while she had another year and a half left. I was drawn to her work from seeing it at the school art show. We have collaborated on a few pieces but found that difficult. We work best together on things like book ideas, curating art shows, teaching, things like that. Nearly all of our books have been some sort of collaborative effort. For the zine book (Whatcha Mean, What’s a Zine?) we both drew, hired other artists to contribute and brainstormed together. I usually design all the books, including Esther’s Romeo and Juliet and her newest book Unlovable, which will be out in October. I am more of the computer guy. Esther’s more of the “we can do this!!!” type. She really gets us motivated and excited about projects and sees them through to finish. A good team.”

MS: You mentioned the zine book (Whatcha Mean, What’s a Zine). Can you tell us about your background with zines and the creation of the book?

MT: “I got into zines after moving to Los Angeles from New York. A lot of people we met were making them and they just seemed like a lot of fun. It was all new and exciting to us. I had made some zines years before in NY but didn’t really know what they were or how big this underground movement was. The book idea came from a workshop we put together for a library talk and lecture for teens. We had all this material we were using to show teens all about this stuff and so we just decided to make a book from it. We were also teaching a class at the time about book making at art center. The students were expected to create a book by the end of the semester and so we just went through the steps with them, and by the end of the class, we had the zine book ready to pitch to our editor at Houghton Mifflin.”

Links

Mark Todd Illustration
Fun Chicken
Esther Pearl Watson

Books by / featuring Mark Todd

BAS ASSES
Whatcha Mean, What’s a Zine? The Art of Making Zines and Mini Comics

Image credits: Mark Todd

↓ MP3: Sian Alice Group - Larsen B

Purchase Sian Alice Group - 59:59 at iTunes

I’m liking the work of Brooklyn-based illustrator Grady McFerrin. Plenty more at his portfolio.

Grady McFerrin [via FFF]