Richard von Busack is pouring sugar on me — well technically on my book — in a terrific review for “On Tender Hooks” which you can read right here. He’s coined the tastiest turn of phrase in any review to date: “toasted marshmallow-colored nudes.” Yum!
Once upon a time two guys living in Cleveland, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, came up with one of the most iconic of all superhero comic characters, Superman. Desperate to break into comics, they sold the rights for $130. Years later they sued but failed to regain control of the last son of Krypton. When the Superman movie was coming out in the late 70s, DC finally succumbed to public pressure and gave the two a pension and credit. But what happened during those many years in between? Joe Shuster, justifiably bitter, got seriously pervy.
The crazy thing is we’d never even know about it if someone hadn’t found all this work in a junk box at a used bookseller’s stall — a rare heap of “Nights of Horror,” a comic so sleezy it was sold under the counter until banned by the U.S. Supreme Court. Experts in the field were able to tell it was Shuster’s work and the results have been bound up and published as “Secret Identity: The Fetish Art of Superman’s Co-Creator Joe Shuster.”
The popular theory is that Shuster’s characters look like Superman, Lois Lane and friends as an act of wrathful revenge. Nice little write up in the Library Journal right here.
In other news of the perverse, Ron English, R. Sikoryak and myself will be presenting a panel at San Diego Comic-Con this summer entitled “Pop Perversity: Parody in Comics & Art.” Going to be some serious fun — hope you have tickets ’cause the con is totally sold out! More details as we get closer to the date. (I’ll also be signing books — I think it’s 3pm on Friday at the Chronicle Books booth. I’ll check that as we get closer to the date.)
Posted in The Book! (On Tender Hooks), Things To Check Out, Things To Get, Things To See N' Do, Upcoming Events
Tagged Comic-Con, Joe Shuster, Nights of Horror, parody in comics and art, Pop Perversity, R. Sikoryak, Ron English, Secret Identity: The Fetish Art of Superman's Co-Creator Joe Shuster, Superman
The road to hell really is paved with good intentions. (It sounds better in Italian: “La via per l’inferno è lastricata di buone intenzioni.”) I still haven’t downloaded my shots from the opening. Don’t even ask what I’ve been doing — I have no idea! I run around all day like a chicken with its head cut off but at the end of the day I don’t feel like I have a lot to show for it. (Turns out a head might be useful.)
photo by Josh Keppel
So thank goodness for folks like Josh Keppel, who posted a veritable heap of photos from the opening on the Bay Area NBC site. You’ll practically feel like you were there while you’re looking at all the great shots he took. And if you were there, you can play Where’s Waldo looking for yourself!
Actually now I don’t feel compelled to even bother with my own pics — Josh’s are much better. And reliving the evening through these images is helping me not feel as blue about the show coming down this week. If you haven’t seen it, zoom on by, this is your laaaast chance!
Thanks to Jacquie Tellalian for pointing this out (I had no idea) — the NYTimes blogged my book! HOLY CANNOLI!
I thought the write up was fun too (“Derrida-like vigor” indeed!). Now if someone will just post another comment — the only one on there right now is the tersely ego-smushing “Gimmicky.” (I didn’t realize it was possible to reduce 20 years of work to a single word that would then irritate me so much. Kudos Daniel!)
You can read it for yourself right here.
Just got back from Bodega, still shaking the sand out of my shoes and have yet to download the camera from opening night, but fortunately while I’ve been at play others have been working — here’s a Flickr set from the Shooting Gallery!
Is there anybody who wouldn’t like to see the word “genius” in the same sentence with their name? (Except maybe for “Who’s the genius that screwed this up?”) If you didn’t see the link in the comments, I just had to wave this around a bit because it’s such a lovely, lovely review. Angela Cardone, arts and culture producer for KPBS Radio, pours some sweet sugar on me with “The Pop Culture Genius of Isabel Samaras.“
Posted in The Book! (On Tender Hooks)
Tagged Angela Cardone, Chronicle Books, genius, Isabel Samaras, KPBS, On Tender Hooks
Chronicle Books (not the entire building and staff, just a couple of really lovely CBers, Patti and Bridget) came to the studio and made this swell little video of their visit. I’m giving a petite tour/sneak preview of some of the paintings for the show and of course showing the book some love. (Clearly in this still I’m talking about large, juicy melons…)
Bridget Watson Payne has put up a great blog post on Chronicle Books’ site about the assembly of the Limited Edition with lotsa nifty pictures — you can check it out right here.
Just a quick bit today about what we all referred to during production as “the flappy thing” in the book — the dissection of one of the paintings. It was inspired by the anatomical “lift the flaps” sections in old encyclopedias and by the 1906 book “Atlas of Physiology & Anatomy of the Human Body” which has been re-printed as “The Fold-Out Book of the Human Body.”
And here’s our version:
What other brand would Goldy buy but "Just Right"?
So a couple people have pointed out to me that I’ve neglected to post any real concrete info about my upcoming show — d’oh! Blame it on the paint fumes, I’ve been so ding dang busy doing the paintings I forgot to crow about it a bit.
Before I digress (as is inevitable), mark your calendars, gentle readers! The big opening which is also the launch party for my book is Saturday, May 9th, at the Shooting Gallery in San Francisco.
When I started working on the paintings for this show I was thinking about the Princess culture being sold to little girls – how your highest aspiration is to be rescued, married off and whisked away to a far off castle. But what happened to the girl who didn’t hook up with a Prince, who stayed in the woods? I wanted to explore that story so for this show I picked Goldilocks, and as I so often do I created my own version of a happier ending — that the moment when she and Baby Bear lay eyes on each other it was love at first sight. (Goldy has definitely gone to the bears.) In my imagination the girl who stayed in the woods got to find herself after she got lost — she didn’t trade her identity in for a tiara, and she found true love (because love conquers all, even inter-species romance).
But then *I* didn’t come out of the woods either — I found myself there too. The forest that is seen in the distant background of the earlier pieces became the setting for the rest of the paintings — I wanted to know who else lived in there. And it turns out it’s very Woodland Fabulous, inhabited by blinged-out critters with gold dookie ropes, boomin’ boom boxes and shiny afro pics.
You’ll have to come to the show to see the whole gang, but here are a few detail shots as a sneak peek.
Details of a few of the new paintings...
These pieces continue in the vein of exploring fairy tales that I tapped into a few years ago when I started wondering what happened to Red Riding Hood (another girl who never left the woods.) There are foggy distant blurry trees and tiny hairs and claws and lots of lush, lush color in sexy “smells so good it must be bad for you” oil paint on wood panels.
May 9th, come and see ‘em all, pick up a copy of the brand new book and get it signed!
“Into The Woodz”
New paintings by Isabel Samaras
Opening and book launch party
Saturday, May 9th, 7-9pm
The Shooting Gallery
839 Larkin Street
San Francisco, CA
