The best comix festival in the northwest (if not the entire so-called United States) is this Saturday, November 2nd, in Seattle, WA! I’ll have a box of advanced copies of ALIVE OUTSIDE, and I’m very excited for this publication to debut at one of my favorite events of the year!

Two of the contributing artists will be in attendance, Angela Fanche (NYC) and Theo Ellsworth (Missoula, MT), so it’s a perfect time to start collecting signatures!

After that, I’m doing a couple regional popups. In Portland, OR there will be a popup exhibition of drawings by Dylan Jones, and I’m overjoyed to attend the first ever book fair in my hometown of Chimacum, WA right before I catch a one-way flight to Italy!

Extended Pre-Orders

There have been a few last-minute additions to the extraneous “Items Outside ALIVE OUTSIDE”, so I’m extending the deadline until November 6th for pre-orders to include some of these additional materials.

The amazing animator (and sometimes cartoonist), Lilli Carré, has designed a jacket that folds around ALIVE OUTSIDE to hold these extraneous items. She’s also been hard at work producing the Eyeworks Experimental Animation Festival, which will have screenings in Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York in November and December. More info at: www.eyeworksfestival.com

Among the extraneous bits, all copies of ALIVE OUTSIDE will include a large-format poster featuring Trenton Doyle Hancock’s painting, “Step and Screw Part Too Soon, Underneath a Bloody Red Moon”. Trenton has an exhibition of new paintings up in New York right now via James Cohan Gallery, and will have a concurrent museum exhibition opening soon at The Jewish Museum in New York, “Draw Them In, Paint Them Out: Trenton Doyle Hancock Confronts Philip Guston”, which will feature works from both painters.

Bound Together / Joe Grillo

ALIVE OUTSIDE features numerous distinct sections, including a bound in black and white comic book, styled after the underground comix anthologies of the 90s, as well four distinct bound-in mini-booklets from Joe Grillo, Kari Cholnoky, Julien Ceccaldi, and Poncili Creacion. Each of these artists create such distinct worlds within their work, and this became an unexpected recurring feature of this publication. These sections are additionally set apart by changes in paper stock or print process, and allowed to be of their own world, but specifically placed within the context of their surroundings.

Joe Grillo’s work, for instance, had a huge impact on me when I first saw it in the pages of the Providence, RI underground newspaper Paper Rodeo. This was a space that was known for being visually noisy and wild, connected with the performance and experimental noise scene of the time, and amidst it Joe’s work stood out to me as being especially loud and iconic! His work is not comics, but he works with pop imagery and uses the language of comics to break the page into sections, and use repetition in a way that eludes to narrative. Skirting the edge of narrative and including pop culture or historical art references throughout, Joe’s work asks the viewer to destroy their notions of stratification within art. Mystic meaning is imbued into b-list cereal mascots alongside celebrated figures in literary history and the artist’s peers.

In 2023, I worked with editor, Ben Furgal, to produce a book featuring a distinct body of work from Grillo, and released it on the 20th anniversary of the works’ creation.

Joe Grillo: "Miles of Slime and Smiles"
Edited by Ben Furgal, with a foreword by Jim Drain

124 pages, full color j-press printed, perfect bound with foil stamped cover, 8.25" x 10.5", edition of 500 copies

Joe Grillo is a force of nature unleashed on the page! This collection captures an iconic body of Grillo’s work, assembling drawings used to make his contributions to the legendary Paper Rodeo newspaper. Presented here as a facsimile of the original sketchbook, alongside all of the full-page collages that appeared in Paper Rodeo. “Miles of Slime and Smiles” is the largest body of the artist’s work to be published; a snapshot of Grillo catching a wave, released on the 20th anniversary of its creation.

During the process of creating Miles of Slime and Smiles, there was other work that Ben had documented, which didn’t fall within the scope of that publication. Among that was a sketchbook that Joe had kept in 2009. At this time Joe’s art collective, Dearraindrop, had a large warehouse studio near a train yard in Virginia Beach. Joe was in top form and taking a lot of inspiration from the graffiti writers that were tagging train cars parked there between destinations. One of the drawings from this sketchbook series includes the text “LHOOQ”, a secondhand reference to Marcel Duchamp, which Joe had seen painted onto a train car and drawn from his studio window.

This 2009 sketchbook work was the focus of one of the mini-books in ALIVE OUTSIDE, but the design for this section references the popular manga that Joe encountered a few years earlier in Japan. In 2004 Dearraindrop had been invited to exhibit in a popup shop organized by Hanna Fushihara. During this trip Joe was inspired by the look of cheap manga, which was produced as a disposable mass media, gendered by their design with colors to signify the intended readership: with red ink on pink paper for girls or ultramarine ink on light blue paper for boys. In this case, I chose a spot Purple Pantone, in order to not reference any particular manga convention, and just lean into the symbolic associations with purple that felt more relevant to Joe’s work: Power, Creation, Mystery…

Matt Lock Interview

Matt Lock contributed four pieces to ALIVE OUTSIDE, with a focus on works that include collage elements. I have been following his art online for almost as long as I’ve had access to the internet, and have seen his zines published internationally by many different small presses, most of which have since folded. Matt’s work is always lively and unexpected, and having immensely enjoyed the process of working with him on two previous projects, he came immediately to mind when considering who would form the foundation for this publication.

ALIVE OUTSIDE: This is your third publication with Neoglyphic Media, and you've been actively publishing your work online for many years and been exhibited all over the world with different galleries and other publishers. Despite this, you've remained
rather reclusive. Have you traveled much in your life, or is this something that's important to you for the future?

Matt Lock: Without the Internet I probably would have never actually been to some of the places I've physically gone. Though I do like to remain reclusive in that I am easily exhausted/irritated when in big crowds for too long. So I don't go out often, for fun or to network, whatever. That being said, I've traveled to Sweden, Germany, Japan and to various parts of the U.S. About half the time those travels were related to art. Usually I'll go to a solo exhibit if it is possible financially and the location is somewhere I've either never been, or have been to and liked. For my most recent solo show, in Taiwan, it was not planned far in advance so it was not feasible to go. I'd love to travel more in the future, if even just to see things like the Hoh Rain Forest or mighty redwoods of Northern California before they all burn down. This coming spring I might go to Japan, just to see it again.

AO: Your work often suggests an inevitably ugly dystopia, but especially considering the titles, it also veers towards absurd fantasy or humor just as easily. Do you approach drawing as a practice of coping with the horrors of the world or use it to find amusement in uncomfortable situations?

ML: I find amusement in the absurdities that present themselves in daily life, as well as in the wider world. The appreciation of the absurdity/dark irony of the human condition and human predicament definitely influences my work. However, it is very hard to say with confidence that I ever consciously set out to make a funny drawing. Typically the humorous elements work their way into pieces after whatever visual concept, or impulsive doodling starts taking shape. Sometimes this might happen rather quickly and at other times closer to completion, like after thinking of a title.

In the most general sense I am a strong believer in humor (morbid humor included) as a powerful coping mechanism for dealing with the terrible aspects of life, as well as annoying first world problems shit. So I draw to escape, and to cope yes..but I never make anything with intention to laugh or cheer myself up. Fantasy elements are just like second nature to me..perhaps cause of learning to draw by copying fantasy/sci-fi book covers/toy packaging.

AO: What were some of your favorite toys to look at when you were learning to draw in this way?

Mostly GI Joe toys, as that's one of the few things my parents were ok with me buying. Granted, I talked them into letting me get some Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle toys, either 1990 or 1991. The backs of the figure packages, where all the various other figures you could buy, were sometimes more exciting to look at than the physical toys.

I remember liking the GI Joes Eco-Warriors line(1991)...particularly the Cobras, but I only had maybe 2 of the figures and one battle tank thing. The colors were neon orange, slime green and purple on most of these figures, with emphasis on eco warfare type of weaponry. Later on I got really into the Aliens toys, but my parents didn't like how they looked, nevermind the fact that they wouldn't let me watch whatever Aliens movies were around then. So I would borrow my friend's Kenner toy booklets (full of various toy line from that company) and copy the super small Alien figures from out of there.

AO: Do you still keep things like this around as a drawing reference?

ML: I was still somewhat into toy collecting after high school (2003-2005) but mostly designer toys like Bearbricks. At some point, between moving around so damn much, I got sick of hauling so much stuff around that I never really looked at and narrowed down my toy collection to a tiny box's worth. I haven't looked at my toys, or toys in general, for inspiration in a long time Granted, once in awhile I will go look at bootleg figures like old Star Wars bootleg toys or Masters of the Universe bootlegs (the worse the better). I consider these to be inspiring too… in terms of figures with melted looking faces and bizarre color combinations.

I don't think I would ever buy toys again, as I have no real interest in collecting them to resell, nor to display them.

AO: On one hand, foreign bootleg toys are an interesting example of the globalization of American popular culture and industrial production. On the other hand there's a very interesting market for homemade custom figures that are a strange fusion with folk art. Your work seems to follow a similar line of logic, reacting to our current global industrialized society, and rendering it with the unique character of your highly developed self-taught style. Though the subject matter of your work could not be further from most people's associations with folk art, it shares some of the same sensibilities. Have you thought of your work as being a part of the American folk art tradition? Could it be indicative of its future?

ML: Many such products of global civilization are fascinating to me in a huge way. Say for example, folk saints, traditional music integrating "modern sounds", certain fusions of different cuisines, and those are just a few from off the top of my head. But this global industrial civilization with exported American pop culture is certainly not worth the death of the biosphere. And sometimes I wish things were slower to reach people, like the old days. Not cause I want to gatekeep, or deprive someone of some luxury we have in the US. But the traditional cultures being consumed by the Capitalist machine, over time erasing something more authentic and replacing it with a representation of authenticity(for a price). If that makes sense.

My work, in the most reductionist terms, is my personal reaction to life as it unfolds, as filtered through a myriad of influences. I'm influenced by all kinds of visual stimuli..could be some trash sitting in front of a boarded up store, some ogre-like person mowing their lawn,..real mundane things. Not those things only, but all the other stuff in my mind (the action figures, death metal album covers, ugly wallpaper patterns, etc).

I think what might set my work a part a bit, as you noted, is that I'm self-taught. Aside from high school art class and one general class I had to take in college, I have no skill set learned in university. I'm fairly confident in one medium only, and I have zero lived experience as an art student, or as a peer of art students. So I'm drawing in my reality bubble without comparing/contrasting my work to people I know and see often. There's rarely any real time feedback occurring with my work. My wife sees drawings in progress sometimes. I'll ask her opinion on colors, or ask if a piece looks finished. Overall creating art is a pretty obsessive/personal activity, uncensored and only approved for other's eyes by myself.

In these aspects, as well as with the American pop cultural foundation, my art is quite like folk art. Though I would say that a majority of folk art, at least American folk art that I've seen, is focused on religion and/or mundane small town living. If American folk art is becoming more secular, with a basis in consumer products, advertising, popular fiction, and the like, it is a slow process. And as living standards deteriorate, a lot of Americans will unfortunately cling more tightly to religion. But that doesn't mean there can't be enjoyable work made, including work made in a cultural stew. I mean, there is probably already someone in a garage or bedroom making apocalyptic Christian Sonic the Hedgehog paintings. That fusion is more interesting to me than a self-taught person churning out tons of beautifully crude paintings of Pokemon cards.

Pre-Order ALIVE OUTSIDE

I’m excited to bring this work to the world, and I hope that you’ll enjoy finding patterns in the web that I’m weaving ~

Thanks for reading!

Cullen