Short Run Comix and Arts Festival was a whirlwind of awesome interactions, in the literal sense of the word “awesome.” We were grateful and humbled to be sharing space with so many brilliant artists and comic legends.
In case you were unable to attend, here is a peek at our exhibit’s first installation!
To the far left, guests were greeted by the first two of Joshua Powell’s five hand-drawn maps of Seattle, marked with the lost places people pinned to our digital map. Short Run attendees were also invited to physically pin places they remember on the maps-in-progress, live.
.
On our table, one could find the art object version of our anthology-in-progress (collected and edited by Jaimee Garbacik, layout and design by Jon Horn, prototype development by Rainey Warren). Its cover is silkscreened on birch bark, and the anthology itself pulls out like an accordion across the span of a table. This way, several people can spread it out and leaf through it at once.
The anthology cover features a topographical map of Seattle superimposed with the image of a tree whose rings bind with the land features. It also has a doorknob compass, because aren’t books a navigational guide, aren’t they doors? Truly, we are finding that as this collection expands, it becomes more and more the rings of a tree: a slice or cross-section of our communities’ experiences, a linguistic map of the culture of the city, a portrait of what makes Seattle the place we call home.
Our wall of windows featured two of Victoria Holt’s photos of lost DIY Punk Venue spaces, Janet Nechama Miller’s encaustic depiction of Melrose and Pine before Bauhaus was displaced, Jon Horn’s silkscreen poster of our anthology’s cover design, and several posters explaining the project as a whole. We also displayed a chair from the Velvet Elvis, a brick from RKCNDY, and one of Jaimee Garbacik’s spray paint pieces depicting a couple standing in front of the Seattle skyline on an intentionally splintered glass window.
It was thrilling to share Eroyn Franklin’s panoramic comic of an entire city block in Capitol Hill with guests at the table, to discuss our interviews with Dave Holden and Ken Workman (the great-great-great-great-grandson of Si’ahl, Chief Seattle), and especially to hear attendees’ memories. But perhaps the most gratifying part was watching myriad faces light up as visitors examined our literary treasure chest of comic panels, art, photography, and essays about Seattle’s lost places.
Some highlights of the anthology-in-progress are listed in a prior blog post here, and now that Short Run has concluded, we will be opening up a second submissions period. There are so many more stories to tell about our beloved city’s past haunts.
We want to thank Short Run for hosting our first public apparition, as well as our contributors and everyone who stopped by to celebrate the Seattle spots we love and miss. It’s been an honor.
So, in what venue will we set up shop next?
Stay tuned, because we will be throwing an Irish Wake for Seattle’s lost places sometime this winter…