by BK Munn
Part of the Kazoo! music festival, the Kazoo! Print Expo is a glorified zine fest taking place this Saturday in Guelph, ON. I’ve cobbled together a list of the more comics-friendly exhibitors below, for your perusing pleasure.
Main Show: Saturday April 11th – 11am to 4pm @ St. George’s Church – Mitchell Hall (99 Woolwich St.)
There is also a launch for the Shary Boyle installation, as well as the Amy Lockhart event:
Opening Reception
Shary Boyle: Silent Dedication
Amy Lockhart: Safe Space Soft Sculpture Bowling
2:00 – 5:00 pm
@ Boarding House Arts / Capacity 3 Gallery (6 Dublin Street South)
Physically Accessible
All Ages / LIC • FREE
Plier Pants, Canadian comics duo has curated a Canadian indie comics anthology called Chilly Tales. The book includes some Kazoo! Expo tablers (Marta Chudolinska, Jason Bradshaw). Matthew Daley will be at the Expo representing Plier Pants, and his bright and blocky illustrative contributions to Plier Pants.
Marta Chudolinska: printmaker and woodcut comic artist
Carousel: home of the 4-panel comics feature
Sophie Labelle will be attending the Print Expo this year, representing her webcomic, “Assigned Male: The Incredible Adventures of Stephie”. Sophie is comic artist and children’s book illustrator from Montreal.
Claro Cosco, zinemaker from Toronto.
Hugh Mater
I make conceptual fashion wear and print work as one third of guelph silkscreen collective Raft and Map.
Megan Arnold
Megan Arnold is a cartoonist based out of London, ON, where she recently graduated from Western University. Her comics work is largely autobiographical, but she also illustrates the webcomic Nihilist Dog, written by Maverick Summers.
Jason Bradshaw
Jason Bradshaw is a Toronto based illustrator and cartoonist that has been serializing his primarily autobiographic comic-zine Bore (formerly Boredom Pays) since 2009, for which he was nominated for the Gene Day award in 2011. His work has been labelled ‘Emblematic of the contemporary existential anxieties of the underachiever’ by Broken Pencil magazine which is probably spot on.
Emily May Rose
Emily May Rose is an illustrator from Toronto attending OCAD University and is a resident artist at 36 Chambers Studios in Parkdale. Her illustrations often include hand-lettering and a recurring cast of characters,and appears in many formats such as comics, hand-painted signs, apparel designs, and gallery settings.
Becky Comber
Becky Comber is a photo-based artist who enjoys rephotographing her photographs, exacto-knifing imagery, simplistically painting, drawing lines for hours, and showing strangers and friends her unfinished work. She first developed the zine and blog ‘coat of loose leaves’ as a place to give her the freedom to mash together various visual techniques in carefree way. She lives and works in both Guelph and Grey County, Ontario and will have zines and some prints at the expo. www.beckycomber.com
Stubbs Letterpress /Dept. Of Awesome
Letterpress printing, chapbooks, cards and posters and new this year…screen printing!!!
100% of Stubbs Letterpress proceeds go to local charity.
Lauren Melissa & Aus Bahadur / The Wheelhouse
Lauren Melissa writes zines about being a queer, fat, intersectional fem(me)inist. Aus Bahadur is a queer, brown, intersectional feminist who tries to make art about survival, mental health, and the encroaching doom that awaits us all. Together they run The Wheelhouse – a Toronto-based supporting resource with an intersectional approach to social justice.
Publication Studio Guelph
Publication Studio prints and binds books by hand, creating original work with artists and writers we admire. We use any means possible to help writers and artists reach a public: physical books; a digital commons (where anyone can read and annotate our books for free); eBooks; and wild social events, breathing life into written word.
Sara Froese / All Sorts Press
Sara owns and operates All Sorts Press out of Hamilton, ON, and specializes in producing hand-crafted printed matter as well as custom letterpress printing using antique printing presses, block printing, and wood and metal type.
Justin Gordon is a visual artist & printmaker from and within Guelph, ON. Their work draws from alternative illustration, trashy euro-graffiti and still life painting, and takes the form of zines and posters and sometimes large paintings on walls. They paint with En Masse (MTL) and have been organizing the Raft & Map Print Collective in Guelph for a few years.