As I head off to Boskone, herewith the last word on Arisia, and it’s all about the cool and geeky artists whose art I enjoyed, some of whom I got to meet, too.
The hit of the art show was for me, I think, the extremely cool items from My Mad Lab, way-neat Tesla coils and brains in jars and other such necessities for the evil lair. This unnamed artist’s stuff is hands-on, too -- press a button and something lights up; press another button and the oozy liquid in the jar with the brain gurgles. I’ve got a pickled alien baby in a jar (seriously -- I’ll show you some time), but it does not light up or gurgle.
I cannot express to you how much I love illustrator Jennifer Lewis’s work: it breathes with a spunky, spooky vitality, and every strange little creature in every piece has its own distinct personality. It’s Tim Burton meets kiddie picture books, and I adore its twistedness.
Robert Scott’s illustrations thrill me, but in the opposite direction: it sings with the old mythology that underlies the modern world. Plus, he’s using computer illustration not to mimic other mediums but to create a fresh, original look -- and it’s one that isn’t sterile and cold like so much “art” that’s created on a computer. His Urban Tarot set is amazing.
The Mars Homestead Project isn’t quite an art project, unless you consider a serious attempt to plan the first settlement on the Red Planet a giant work of performance art. But the group did show some interesting conceptual designs in the Arisia art show, sorta modern versions of those Collier’s drawings from the 1950s, images of a happy, techno-cool future that you can’t wait to see come to fruition.
In the dealers room at Arisia, I met artist Dylan Edwards, who makes cute little monsters out of clay, and sometimes draws them, too (I bought this guy on a magnet, and had to get a T-shirt, too). His Feeping Creatures -- “creatures that look like they’d go “Feep!” his FAQ explains, and they damned if they don’t indeed look like that -- are pretty adorable, but with bite, too.
I had to buy a tiny lapel button from Erica Schultz, who was also in the dealers’ room -- her MuffinButtons are the art of the lapel button writ small. Mine says simply “geek” in neon letters on a black background, and I wear it on my knocking-around-the-city, hauling-all-my-crap bag, so that everyone knows exactly what they’re dealing with.
