Check It Out

Friday night, Missy and I headed out to the OCONEE COUNTY LIBRARY to attend the TEEN ZINE SECTION LAUNCH PARTY. Missy was a SPECIAL GUEST SPEAKER at the event and WEREWOLVES (sans me) played an acoustic set of songs. Before heading out to the library, Missy put together a bunch of GOODY BAGS that were going to be raffled off at the party. Each goody bag had a copy of her book, PERSONAL CHARM, several copies of her zines, a bookmark, and a collection of one inch buttons that she designed...



By the time we got there, the PIZZA AND ZINE-MAKING PARTY was in full swing. We had just enough time to say "hi" to our friends before Missy had to take the stage. Our friend Lonna, who coordinated the event and is also a librarian at the library, interviewed Missy along with our friend Katy, who also makes zines. During the interview, Missy and Katy talked about how they got into making zines, why they love zines so much, and why it's important for teens to have access to zines. They also talked about how teens could go about making zines of their own...









After the interview, Lonna gave us a quick after-hours tour of the library while the band set up and sound checked:















After the tour, we checked out the temporary ZINE READING LOUNGE while everyone else was waiting for Werewolves to perform. It doesn't look like much, but there are actually over 100 TEEN-FRIENDLY ZINES stuffed into that little magazine rack...









Before heading back into the auditorium to see Werewolves play, we checked out drawings that were left on the zine-making table in the lounge...































Lonna and Katy:



Missy and Jay:



Missy and Jean:



Missy and Kamron...Kamron was one of our favorite kids that we saw that night. We really dug his hat! Anyways, we were happy that he won one of Missy's goody bags in the raffle at the end of the night...

Teen Zine Scene

Hey Y'all! Missy will be speaking at the dedication of the brand new TEEN ZINE SECTION at the Oconee County Library in Watkinsville this Friday! She will be talking about her experience as a teen who was heavy into making ZINES in the '90s, and how she has steadfastly continued to create zines ever since, for well over 20 years. There will be free pizza, free zines, and a free performance by WEREWOLVES! This all-ages party starts at 7pm...come one, come all!

Happy Halloween!

Tofu Baby is here to wish you a very Happy Hawoween! I hope you had a happy holiday!

Happy Birthday Tofu Baby

Today is Tofu Baby's birthday! Tofu Baby is my comic character that appears in the local paper, Flagpole. Flagpole is the paper to read when you want to know all the good events and things happening around town. I have been drawing a comic strip for them each week since 2004, but Tofu Baby has been going since 2006.


We made these miniature Tofu Baby cakes, too. I just love mini cakes!








Yay for Tofu Baby!

Tofu Baby 2012

Are you really ready for 2012? I mean, are you really ready for 2012?? Now you can be truly ready with your very own Tofu Baby Cawendar for 2012! Each month features a scene I drew to match the month. I think they look really cute!






In the center of the cawendar is a Chutes and Wadders that you can play, too. You can get your own copy at Shoppe Sugar Cookie!

Mystery Selections

MISSY, along with five other artists (Rebecca Brantley, Will Eskridge, Jorie Berman, Cindy Jerell, and Darcy Reenis), was selected from the 124 artists who participated in ATHICA's MYSTERY TRIENNIAL to showcase more of their art in a new show called MYSTERY SELECTIONS. What an honor! Though the show is tomorrow (Friday) night, Missy was asked to make a SITE-SPECIFIC piece, exclusively for ATHICA, and she only had last night to execute it...yikes! So, we packed some art supplies and headed over to the gallery yesterday evening after work...the first order of business was photographing the pieces of Missy's work that the interns had already mounted to the wall, along with the few pieces waiting to be incorporated into the tableau. They needed to list titles for each piece, but weren't sure how to title and name each one in an easy and convenient way, since there were so many of them. We decided to take photos of everything and then use the magic of PHOTOSHOP to add titles over the images which the interns could print out and then use to help them come up with an item/price list...







Missy is showing some of the laser-cut wood pieces she designed, along with a collection of collages, prints and drawings. The interns, using white ACID-FREE gloves, held up some missing pieces for the camera...





After checking out some of the other artists' pieces that were up (like Cindy's awesome inter-active PUPPET THEATER) it was time for work. It was decided that Missy would draw one of her infamous TOFU BABY comics directly onto the wall...only it would be twenty times larger than the normal size of her strip. A spontaneous drawing JAM SESSION happened as Missy sketched up some quick ideas in her notebook while young Havi did some drawings of her own...





Missy used a large PAPER TEMPLATE to help pencil in guidelines for each comic panel. Then she used a little square piece of paper to put in guidelines for Tofu Baby, so that she would appear roughly the same size in each panel. Once Missy penciled out the guidelines for the comic, she went to work on the wall with a couple of PAINT MARKERS...as she marked on the wall she joked, "I'm having a BEAUTIFUL LOSERS moment right now!" in reference to the street art documentary Beautiful Losers...

































After the comic was done, we removed the tarps so that Missy could do some minor repairs on some of the collage pieces...



















Before we left for the night, Missy decided to add a little something for her pint-sized Tofu Baby fans...