This is me at about 4:30am, headed to Portland airport and SPX. This last weekend I took a trip out to Maryland for the Small Press Expo. It was such a great time, and I got to meet so many new friends, many of whom I had only known through their comics or the internet. I put up a handful of pictures in this Flickr set. I traded for or bought a huge stack of comics and came back to Portland happy and re-inspired to work on my own stuff.

Here’s a sweet robot with a moustache drawing I got from Nedroid. I AM rad.

This coming weekend, my roommate Meghan and I will be taking part in the first Portland Art Open. We will be opening our apartment to the public on Friday night and all day Saturday and Sunday, and turning our apartment into our own personal gallery space. We’re in the process of cleaning and taking down our various knick-knacks and other works that usually adorn our walls and will soon be hanging our work.

If you’re in the Portland area, you should totally stop by and hang out for a bit, we’ll be holed up all day and could use the company if no one else shows up. We’re trying to sell some things too, but honestly we’d just like to have a good time and have people show up. If you check out the link above you can get more information as well as check out the other artists taking part.

Our address is 2315 SE Stark St. We’ll be open these hours:
Friday: 5pm-9pm
Saturday: 11am-6pm
Sunday: 11am-6pm

Are you an artist in the Portland, OR metro area? Are you also perhaps in need of a shared studio space? Les McClaine, Jon Siruno, and I are losing our current studiomate at the end of the month and we are on the search for a replacement. The space is a bit messy in the photo, yes, but we’ll tidy things up if it’ll make you feel more welcome.

Our studio is in a building near 19th and E. Burnside (mere blocks from Columbia Art Supplies for all your art needs). With four in the studio, rent is $93 and change per month, plus a small amount more for insurance. I don’t have the square-footage calculations right now, but depending on some re-arranging possibilities and the space needs of any new studiomate, there may be a chance of fitting two new people in the space.

A mini-fridge AND a microwave? What luxury is this?! You could soon be heating up your Hot Pocket right next to those Jonny Crossbones original pages! Think about that!

This is the desk of our exiting studiomate. It will be leaving soon, but most of the space seen in this photo (but not my bike) would be yours, if you’ll only join us…

If you have any questions, or are interested in coming to see the space in person, let me know.

I spent hours and hours at the Portland Central Library on Tuesday, poring over 108-year-old newspapers on microfilm, researching for The Life & Times of Baby Otto Zeplin: Volume 3. I will be finalizing the writing of it this week; there was such a good response to Otto at the recent Portland Zine Symposium that it is hard not to be inspired to work on the third volume quickly. Anyways, while scrolling and scrolling through countless pages, I came upon this impressive caricature of William Jennings Bryan, 1900 Democratic Presidential nominee, who also appears in the pages of Baby Otto 2. I was instantly struck by the style of this illustrators work, it is really quite different from the other illustrators published in the pages of the Oregonian newspaper at the time.

And as I searched more and more days, I found more and more comics and illustration from this mysterious C.E. Toles.

Miss Nora Marks (in the grandstand) — Ball players are such rowdies!
Otto Teller — Why do you think so?
Miss Nora Marks — The gentleman behind us just said that they had hit the pitcher nine times.

This is probably my favorite illustration of his that I’ve found so far. I cannot wait to go back the library to research Baby Otto 4 to perhaps also discover more work by Toles. I found a bunch of other neat stuff while researching, which I’ll probably post in the coming days; comics and cool old ads and an article about the rise in bearded women!

A few people at the Zine Symposium asked me when I was going to announce the winner of the Baby Otto Theme Contest I’ve gone through all the entries (nearly 100) and have pretty much decided on a winner. A few of the leading entries were date-sensitive, so I had to see what dates fell during what volumes and figure out where the other themes I’ve already decided on would fit before I could pick a winner. I will announce it in a special post next week, OK?

Hey, wait, that’s not me! See more of my photos from PZS 2008 on Flickr

This last weekend was the eighth annual Portland Zine Symposium and it was as fun as it always is; two days of self-publishing love. The RCC had a table, of course, but I also got my own half table this year, which is what you see in the picture above, with table-neighbor, John, filling in as BT for the photo. I also took part in two extra events at this year’s PZS: On Saturday afternoon, a few of the RCCers and I held a panel discussion about being involved in a self-publishing collective. I was astonished at the high quality of questions we received throughout the talk, it really made the hour fly right by. And then on Sunday, I personally ran a workshop on jam comics. It took a while for people to filter into the workshop room, but we ended up with seven, four-panel comics when all was said and done.

Of course I got quite the haul of traded and purchased zines and comics over the course of the two days, but I haven’t really had the time to go through them all yet. I want to personally thank everyone involved in keeping the PZS going year after year, and making the PZS one of the most enjoyable shows to table at.

In other RCC news, we’ve updated our website a bit. Matthew Seely worked up this kick-ass new header graphic for us (which is being slightly redesigned for t-shirts and other merch), and we’ve also added a blog. We’ll use it to post group news, new comics we’ve released, sketches of what we’re currently working on, etc. With a nine member group, there should be fairly frequent updates, so please check out the site and then keep coming back to see more from the RCC!

Wait, is that a shark? Probably. Stay tuned to see the rest of the image this comes from next week!

I finally got my new studio space in order, but I think I need some more people’s art represented on my walls, so here’s the news and my request:

I want to trade art with you!

I’m about to leave on a two-week trip to England for a wedding. I won’t be posting anything during that time, but while I’m gone, I’m going to make some little postcard art pieces while on trains and the like; mostly ink drawings, maybe some collage too. I think it would be awesome to come back from England to a bunch of cool art. So, send me some sort of small, cool, original piece of art during the next two weeks, and when I get back I’ll mail you one of the pieces I made while on my trip. Sounds good, right?! (Don’t forget to include your return address somewhere)

BT Livermore
2315 SE Stark St.
Portland, OR 97214
USA

My 2006 New Year’s resolution was to make 2007 a breakout year for me, to get my name and work known to some extent in the local art scene here in Portland and possibly beyond. It was a year of work for me, and very little else, often times at the expense of things like my social life (and possibly my health (see 2008 section)), however, looking back I’m very happy how 2007 ended up in the record books for me.

2007 Accomplishments:

• I started 2007 with a comic strip appearing in the Portland Mercury. I finished the year doing semi-regular illustration work for the paper, something I am happier and feel more suited doing.
• Had my first solo art show, “Spoke Up,” in January.
• Finished my second and third (of six) semesters at Pacific NW College of Art, on my way to a BFA in Illustration.
• Started booking monthly art shows at the Acorn Cafe, giving me the ability to feature the art of up and coming local artists.
• Used freelance work, painting and comic sales to pay a huge chunk of my monthly bills for a good portion of the year.
• Formed the Robopocalypse Comics Collective, a group of friends and local comic artists. We have since released two group anthologies, ten solo books, and attended four shows under the RCC banner.
• Finally started work on The Life and Times of Baby Otto Zeplin, a project that had been in my mind since late 2005.
• Baby Otto: Volume 1 being nominated for “Outstanding Publication Design” at the Stumptown Comics Fest.
• Helped organize and run Oregon’s only public 24 Hour Comics Day event, while still managing to finish a comic I’m happy with.
• Started work to organize PNCA’s third annual comics anthology.
• Learned new skills such as etching and bookbinding and a new love of painting in gouache, and I built my own ukulele.

A lot of the projects I was involved in throughout 2007 were, to my mind, to the advantage of many other artists and people besides myself, and while I’m all for good deeds, I feel as though in a few situations, the work that I put in far outweighed my payback, whether that be financially or just in sheer enjoyment. I took on nearly every opportunity offered to me, and even created some large ones of my own when the times got slow, and by the end of the year was left an overworked husk, burnt out on the whole “creative” thing. So I’ve decided that 2008 will go down as the year of Selfish BT. Now, I don’t mean I’m going to go around being a dick to everyone, that’s not my style, just that it’s time to cash in on some of the connections I’ve made in 2007, time to work on more personal projects, and to leave some of the organizational duties to others with the ability and see where things go when I’m not behind the wheel, as it were.

2008 Goals/Resolutions:

• Six words: Baby Otto, Baby Otto, Baby Otto. This is the one project above all in my life right now, even though it may not publicly appear that way due to my lack of work on it since Volume 1’s release. I have been in talks with some teachers about making the entire Baby Otto project my thesis for graduation. This means a deadline of May 2009 for the entire series, but I want to get as much done as I can this year.
• Other comic-related projects: Even with Otto taking up a big chunk of my time, I have a lot of other ideas that I want to get started on, some quickies, some that could become a continuing thing. Also, continued and greater recognition for the RCC, more shows, more anthologies, really pushing each other to create some of the best work we can.
• Extend my freelance work beyond the Portland area. I did some of this last year, but it’s time to really push my work out there. I’ve been coming at illustration from new angles lately and I’m proud of what I’m creating.
• Second solo art show for the Imaginary Friends paintings I was showing the last few weeks.
• A LOT more life drawing.
• Get healthy/stay healthy: I haven’t posted about it here, but it sort of explains why I haven’t been quite as productive lately. Since November, I have: sprained a ligament in my lower back while getting off my bike, fell down some stairs and sprained my ankle, caught a cold that made me cough so much I re-aggravated my back, contracted Iliotibial Band Syndrome (probably from the weak back and the fall) causing crippling pain in my left thigh, re-aggravated my back a second time putting leftover ham back in the fridge the day after Christmas, and the resulting days of sciatica pain each time my back got injured. I finished 2007 mostly lying on my back, in pain, and it really wore on me mentally, and creatively. Things are finally getting better, only a slightly aching back and some sciatica left, but I realized that a lot of my problems probably stemmed from the fact that 95% of my waking hours are spent hunched over a laptop or drawing table, leaving my back a weakened mess.
• Re-up my fashion abilities. I barely bought any new clothes last year. I need a little bit of an update, and if I can’t find what I want, maybe I’ll just have to make it.
• Focus more on what makes me happy and realize how important those things are to my well-being.
• Lastly, FUN GOAL: I need to work with my sewing machine more, so ONE PLUSH A MONTH!

Thank you for reading, I hope your 2008 goes as well as I hope mine goes.

At about 1:30 last Thursday afternoon, a 19 year old PNCA design student, Tracey Sparling, was killed when her bike was hit by a cement truck as both vehicles accelerated at a green stoplight. Bike lanes are on the far-right side of the road; in some intersections that means it is on the inside of a motorized vehicle that might be turning right at the same intersection. It seems that as the light turned green, Tracey drove straight as the cement truck driver turned right, directly into her.

Even though I did not personally know her, as a PNCA student and Portland biker myself, I felt it necessary to attend a memorial bike ride for her on Friday evening. It was a somber but awe-inspiring experience, as nearly 400 bikers showed up to slowly pedal the 15 blocks to the Ghost Bike that marks the site of the collision. I grabbed the above photo from BikePortland’s Flickr which, I would estimate, was taken about 15-20 minutes before the final crowd arrived, and it still only shows a portion of the riders there at the time. I can be seen about 1/3 of the way in from the right, in the green helmet, black jacket, and ripped, paint-stained pants, sitting on my bike.

Stumptown is over and I finally found the time to update the RCC site. I added: two new members, nine comics, two sketchbooks, five buttons, and RCC logo t-shirts! “Business Casual” will ONLY be released in a limited edition (100) version with a two-color, screen-printed, “tri-fold” cover. Almost half are gone already, so if you want one, now’s the time to snap one up for only $3 (or $5 for non-US).

If you happen to live in the Portland, OR metro area, “Business Casual” is already available for sale at Tender Loving Empire and Reading Frenzy, and will be for sale at Powell’s, Floating World, and Cosmic Monkey very soon.

For those of you living in the Los Angeles area, a few copies of Baby Otto and Business Casual can now be found at Meltdown Comics.

We also debuted our second group anthology Creature Feature at Stumptown. It contains 11 two-page works from various RCC members, each revolving around a monster or creature of some variety; perfect for Halloween! As per usual, the first printing has a limited edition (40), three-color screen-printed cover on super-shiny black paper.

BUY BUSINESS CASUAL
BUY AN OTTO ZEPLIN 1″ BUTTON

CLICK TO GO TO THE RCC STOREFRONT