Maryhill Museum Comix Exhibit

Well, I can retire from comix now. My work has been displayed at Maryhill.

This morning I visited the Maryhill Museum near Goldendale, Washington to see the "Comics at the Crossroads" exhibit, featuring cartoonists from Washington and Oregon. Awhile back they asked me to submit some original drawings but since I didn't have any art to loan, I just gave them a bunch of my old comix. My Tragedy of Morty series, which was my interpretation of Hamlet, was displayed as if it was something museum worthy. Everything has come full circle.

Back in the mid-1980s, when I drew that particular 5-part 200 page run, I was also attempting to establish an academic collection of Newave, small press, and self-published comix at Washington State University in Pullman, where I was a librarian and member of the faculty. In those days our brand of comix did not hold the exalted place in the art establishment they do today. An English Dept. faculty named Paul Brians had earlier donated a box of rare underground comix to WSU that had sat languishing in the rare books area, and I offered to enhance this collection through my Newave contacts. Hundreds, perhaps 2 or 3 thousand comix poured in from my comrades. John Guido, the Rare Books librarian at the time, raised his eyebrows, but he stuck by me in the face of criticism from the hoity toits and nervous Nellies. Paul started the collection, I gave it a jump-start, but it is to John Guido's memory, may he rest in peace, comix researchers owe their thanks.

When collector Lynn Hansen died in 1995, his librarian father, Ralph, made sure the collection went to WSU, increasing the holdings by a significant amount and making the school a major stopping place for anyone interested in our brand of comix.

But if you would've told me in 1985 that my little photocopy comix would be on display in Maryhill a quarter century later, I wouldn't have believed it.

To be fair, my stuff was the oldest comic art at the show, and I think I was the only one who wasn't displayed as a framed artist with original art. So I was presented more as a relic. A prehistoric comix artist, a native Washingtonian who was active here self-publishing before all the hip invaders discovered this corner of the world. A dinosaur. The Neanderthal who scrawled on the walls of caves. And that's fine with me. Although my work has been in art exhibits before, I must admit I have a few problems with comix as gallery art. That will become evident as I post more work on this blog.

The list of artists in the show is a virtual who's who in Washington-Oregon cartooning. But I was surprised to see Valentino in there. I didn't know he had moved to Portland. He was in the Newave in the very early stages, and was just starting to become a commercial name about the time I discovered the network in 1981. So we overlapped and corresponded a little bit back then. I couldn't make it to the exhibit opening where the artists showed up and was sorry to miss this fellow old guy who attended the same invisible college.

A Rodin exhibit was in another part of the Museum. It included a number of his late drawings, which, fittingly, I would consider cartoons in the original sense of the word.

Thanks to Steve Grafe of Maryhill for coordinating the show.