Ztoical

Stumptown 2006

November 5, 2006 on 2:33 am | In Uncategorized |

Be warned long and rambling report - skip to the photos at the end if your not in the mood to read - please click on some of the links and check out the sites of some very talented artists.

First off I have to say Stumptown has to be the chattyest[sp?] con I’ve attended so far. It was great but I’d nearly lost my voice by the time we were leaving. I don’t know if thats a west coast thing or just a portland thing but its an excuse to hit another con on the west coast to double check. Stumptown [and portland in general] is con that loves its small press and I noticed people would by pass the more professionaly printed comics to check out the hand made zines and minis but I’m getting ahead of myself.

I headed off for the con on the thursday flying out of Dublin early in the morning [after having all the explosive bottles of water removed from the plane] and getting to Portland at midnight local time after a very boring 7 hour stopover in philly. My lovely friend Max picked me up at the airport, let me crash at her place and also chauffeured me around for the whole weekend. She’s also brought me to some damn good eating places, Portland is a great town for veggies i must say.

Early Friday morning, after breakfast, we hit The Independant Publishing Resource Center to staple some mini comics together. The IPRC is a fantastic resource for cartoonists and I would love to have/set up something like that in Dublin - we need more small press comics here rather then more “I got a copy of how to draw the marvel way comics”. We then tired to make our way to the convention center but, despite Max being a portland native, we managed to get lost and arrived bang on 4 when the doors were opening to the public. Still the firday was very relaxed and we had plenty of time to get set up [after stealing supplies from our neighbours]. I thought it was odd having the con run 4-8 on firday but it proved to be a great time for exhibitors to wander the space and check out the other tables.

After the con we went for food at great restaurant I wish I could remeber the name of. Chris Baldwin was with us and was proudly showing his comic in the current issue of MAD. My friend Lisa arrived down from Seattle. Another SVA’er along with myself and Max, we stayed up way to late drawing and talking rubbish and of course ended up being late saturday morning [but only by 20mins]

Saturday was a great day of talking, shopping, talking, selling, panal attending, and more talking! I discovered a number of people at the con whom I’d spoken with via the internet but hadn’t realised would be at stumptown. One of those was Alex Cahill who I had emailed after picking up a copy of his book “the last island”. I spotted the last island on the table and went up to see which of the people behind the table was Alex and got as far as “I emailed you…” when he shouted “the irish girl!” I guess my accent is alot stronger then I thought [thou Alex claims he just knew before i said anything] I picked up his new book “Something so familiar”, worth checking out and can be purchased via his site.

Dark Horse had a double table just down from us and I got to chat with some of their editors after one of the panals. I wasn’t planning on picking anything up from the table as I normally focus on small press stuff at cons and not stuff I can pick up easily in a store but Tara McPherson’s art book “Lonely Heart was staring at me all day and its so pretty I had to pick it up.

Also super pretty was The Fallen by Camilla d’Errico. Picked up two fantastic minis by Lilli Carre and the worlds cutest little silkscreen mini “The Probe” by Damien Jay. Also traded for some really great little zines and minis which I’m still making my way threw. Got Fragile Prophet from Lost in the Dark press along with a preview of the collected Video series.

Picked up a ton of really pretty prints but a couple had no contact info on them and I’ve forgotton which table I picked them up from. The only one I remeber is “Spring Cleaning in Paris” by Chris Turnham I had to force myself away from the fleet street table or i would have got copies off all of Chris’s work and also all of Kevin Dart’s as well. I promised myself I could only have one and it was such a hard choice as everything those two guys produce is gorgeous.

And now PICTURES. I went to great lenghts to get batteries for my camera and then forgot I had it with me but I did take a few pics.

Our table first thing while still setting up. The white fringe thing was not my idea and was quickly removed just after I took this photo.

Martin and Deb’s table, all pretty - damn them. I’d been super organised for MoCCA and picked up some book stands and had a banner printed for the front of the table but I’d left them all in new york for some of the other luckyducks to use at SPX. I thought I’d have time to pick some stuff up in Portland but I had so much to catch up with my friends Max and Lisa, who I hadn’t seen in over a year, that I never got round to it.

Fantastic neighbour number 1 Martin Hsu

Fantastic neighbour number 2 Deb Aoki
Martin and Deb were so good to me, they feed me and gave me pens and tape and were general just great craic to be beside.

Hilary and a rather evil shot of Matt, fellow SVA’ers. I purchased one of Hilary’s lovely silkscreens at MoCCA in June and a copy of Matt’s out of Water in Jim’s in new york. I picked up copies of each of their comics for Tom, the director of the feature film I’m a lacky on. He’s a big comic fan [and has done some lovely comics himself] and I said I’d keep an eye out for some comics for him.

Not actually pictured but Amy Kim Ganter was at the end table so I was able to pick up a copy of Sorcerers & Secretaries and get it signed. Amy also went to SVA and beside her table is Hillary and Matt, also SVA and our table is at the end the row [also SVA in case people are confused] - martin and Deb’s table messed up our little SVA block. Also at Amy’s table was Kazu Kibuishi so I got to pick up a copy of Daisy Kutter and also get it signed - that’s my fav thing about cons.

Graham Annable of Grickle fame. I’d picked up Graham’s fantastic Stickleback comic earlier in the year and fell in love with the style. I didn’t realise Graham would be at stumptown but when i spotted someone walking around with a copy of sticklback I quickly tracked him down and went all uber fangirl. Sorry Graham, I’m not a stalker…..honest!

Barry Deutsch of Hereville. Super nice despite my abuse over lack of recent Hereville updates. Not pictured but at the same table [and also super nice] Jenn Manley Lee of Dicebox fame.

o my god how cool is that!!!

Look our neighbours from MoCCA!!! Robot Publishing

Across from our table was explosive six sided ninja action from Isometric.

They even had a live puppet show.

On the sunday couple of us went to the portland zoo to draw and I was very amused by the method the zoo used to feed the tigers.Drove up to Seattle for sunday and monday to spend more time with Lisa and her four pet rats before heading back to Ireland. All in all, I loved ever minute of stumptown and it was well worth the 22+ hour trip over and 20+ trip back. I’m claiming the title as the exhibitor who travelled the furthest to attend the con and am willing to have fisticuffs for said tittle.