Dave Cooper's big piece

When I was preparing to move back to Ottawa a little over a year ago I harboured deep, sincere fears that I was leaving behind not only family and close friends, but any and all inklings of original artistic thought. Then I went back for a visit in September and bore horrible witness to the second annual Nuit Blanche festival, after which I realised my fears were completely unfounded. (Oy! And I thought Toronto was hurting for cash?)

Anyways, this thought struck me again after paying a visit to the latest work by long-time Ottawa artist Dave Cooper, who in a former life was a well-known alternative cartoonist. The work in question (which was being previewed at a local gallery before it headed to a show of its own in L.A. early next year) is called The Underbrush Octych and features Dave's luscious-slash-lascivious ladies in, "full bloom" shall we say.

Anyways, the truly interesting thing here was the construction of the work, which is 18 feet long and made up of eight individual paintings. They're hung on a custom-made track which allows the painting to be rearranged left to right and right to left, ad infinitum in a kind of loop, without the overall image losing it's flow. Here's my attempt at a shot of the entire piece:


According to the owner of the gallery (he might have just been an employee) Cooper had started the painting in an effort to produce a series of smaller more affordable pieces. Then, the idea just kind of got away from him, and the series became part of a larger whole, which will now sell as such come February 2008. (Gee, i really hope he was the owner and knew what he was talking about.)

So as I was trying to convince the gallery guy to let me take some photos of this grand thing, the artiste himself showed up and I struck up a conversation. We had met years ago, via a mutual friend so we quickly caught up and I asked his approval to snap some photos and, uh, here we are. Me writing a blog post and you reading it. Isn't life strange?

So, make with the enjoyment the photos already!







There are some more shots over at Flickr for your viewing pleasure.

*BONUS FACT* I looked up the term "octych" and I don't think it actually exists outside of some role-playing game from the 80s. Which of course makes me appreciate the artistic process behind it even more. Not to mention the artist himself:


*EXTRA BONUS FACT* They apparently pulled out all the stops for the opening, trotting out a couple of fulsome gals with latex gloves to rearrange the art every 15 minutes as per a customized clock made by Cooper. You can see videos of this oddly R. Crumb like happening here, here and here.

You can also see the various stages of this work, from sketch to canvas, right here, courtesy of Cooper.

- B.

Delusional movie review

I caught the Coen brothers new movie, No Country For Old Men, on the weekend and rather enjoyed it. You - yeah you - should go see it. (But be prepared for a little head scratching at the end though.)

As engaging as the film was I kept making connections to the comic books in my head. I'm probably just delusional, but the main character, a contract killer called Anton Chigurh (played icily by Javier Bardem) looked as if he had stepped out of a comic by Gilbert Hernandez. Not the earlier Love and Rockets stuff, but the more recent works. I mean, you be the judge:


The other thing that hit me was Chigurh's habit of flipping a coin and asking his victims to choose a side in exchange for their lives. Again, sound familiar?:

Just saying is all.

Seals of approval

When a bunch of miscreants and ne'er-do-wells (including myself) started up The Doug Wright Awards early in 2005 one of the first things we did was devise a wish list of all the things we imagined for the awards, ranging from bookmarks to tie pins to t-shirts.

Not surprisingly, one of those miscreants, Seth, has been instrumental in seeing the best of those ideas to fruition, designing our trophy, our Hall of Fame logo and for 2007, our Hall of Fame medals. Now, I'm happy to report that one of the suggestions I made during that first meeting back in January 2005 has finally been realised; stickers for the winning Doug Wright Award books:



Designed by Seth and generously sponsored by Drawn and Quarterly Books, these puppies should be showing up in your favourite book store just in time for the holiday shopping season. I think they are an honourable chapter in a long and distinguished history of award stickers, stretching back to the estimable Caldecott Medal sticker which graces the best in children's books.

Here's Joe Ollmann's 2007 Best Book winner, This Will All End in Tears, wearing one of our new stickers:



Anyways - i think they look great, and I can't wait to stumble upon one for the first time in an honest-to-goodness bookstore. More pictures of the sticker are over at my Flickr page.

Six Degrees of Barney Google

So, you may have heard the news that Vincent DeDomenico Sr., the American pasta industry icon who was instrumental in creating Rice-A-Roni, died a couple of weeks back (well, a week Thursday if Wikipedia is to be believed). His death sparked plenty of media coverage, much of which included trivia about the man's most famous creation - aka "The San Francisco Treat."


Like many Canadians, I've never eaten the stuff but was surprised to find out that a) it's made of rice and tiny bits of pasta (whelp!) and, b) that the most popular recipe using Rice-A-Roni is something called Beef Porcupine Balls, a 1960s favourite that is allegedly "a clever twist on traditional meatballs" (blurgh!) Luckily my memories of the stuff have nothing to do with its actual taste.

I distinctly remember it being promoted at the tail end of The Price Is Right, and being a rabid fan of Wacky Packages as a kid, I fondly recall this 'biting' satire of it:

(Ha ha. "Chokin Flavor." That should be "Chicken Flavor.")

Anyway, I have a point here. The thing everyone else remembers about Rice-A-Roni is its infectious goddamn jingle: "Rice, A-Roni, The San Francisco Treat." You know what I'm talking about.

Created in 1961, the success of this jingle is indisputable. I mean, I'm familiar with it and the product it represents even though for decades I was never able to actually buy it off the shelf. Which leads me to my All-Time favourite bit of Rice-A-Roni trivia: that catchy ditty owes much - if not all - of it's infectiousness to a 1923 song about none other that Barney Google, the classic comic strip character. Created by the great Billy DeBeck, Google was a knee-high, banjo-eyed, potato-nosed sportsman (description courtesy of Time magazine) who spent much of his time trying to convince his recalcitrant horse, Spark Plug, to win a race.

Barney Google made De Beck famous and staggeringly rich, thanks in part to some wildly popular merchandise. The song, written by Billy Rose and Con Conrad, sold more than a million copies thanks to its hummable tune and a peppy chorus, "Barney Google, and his goo-goo-googly eyes". It's so catchy that you can picture yourself bouncing down the street to it (just like an early black-and-white cartoon character.)

So catchy, that when Vincent DeDomenico hired some some writers to pen a jingle for his creation they simply borrowed the tune from "Barney Google". Lazy, but brilliant.

Being that i grew up to be a crazy comic fan, the connection threw me for a loop. It's even stranger when you consider i attended the opening of Drawn and Quarterly's bookstore last week in which someone had put on display a bunch of Barney Google paraphernalia.

I was thinking of including an MP3 of the song right about here, but then I found this YouTube clip of a guy playing an original 78 of the song on his Victrola (surprisingly, there are a bunch of clips like this.) Being that I recently splurged on one of these myself, I figured I’d show him some support – I mean, the clip has only been viewed 122 times! Show him some love people, and play it loud!! And think of poor Barney while you're at it!

- B.