The St. Louis Artist’s Guild has apparently hit rock bottom, as they are stooping to an exhibit of artwork from MAD Magazine and as a result will no doubt lose all credibility as a patron of the arts. Worse yet, they aren’t even making any money off of it as it is free to the public!! What are they thinking?

The show opening this Sunday with a reception from 1:00- 3:00 pm at the Guild’s gallery, and runs through Sept. 6th. I do not believe that there is any of my artwork in it, unless it’s from some private collection. All the more reason to attend.

This from the St. Louis Artist Guild Website:

Mad Magazine Exhibit

Opening: June 22, 2008 1 p.m. – 3 p.m.

Admission: Free and Open to the Public

(Free is always good!) Refreshments, door prizes and maybe a special appearance by Bigfoot! (Maybe not!)

Come Join us for an exhibition of original Mad Magazine art, printed samples and other crazy stuff that will amuse, confound and possibly outrage you!

Mad Magazine introduced some of the best contemporary illustrators and writers of the day and helped define the genre of humorous magazine satire in America. In the early days, Mad was blacklisted by parents, denounced by school principals, turned down as subversive by many a distributor and even the subject of a senate sub-committee investigating the root of juvenile delinquency!

Mad not only survived, but prospered greatly and continues to do so over 56 years later. Christie’s Auction House in New York has sold many original pieces of Mad art, some fetching staggering prices. In 1987 movie maker, Steven Spielberg paid over $15,000 for the original cover art of Mad #1! So come by and see a little bit of controversial, history-making material that in the 50′s had parents wringing their hands and kids hiding magazines under their mattresses.

You’d have to be “Mad” to like this show, and you’d be Mad to miss it!

Curator: RJ Shay, Cartoonist, St. Louis, Missouri

Well, MAD wasn’t actually the subject of the senate sub-committee hearings (that was in part E.C.’s horror title comics) but nobody likes the facts getting in the way of a good gag! I will be able to attend this show sometime this summer on a visit to my Six Flags operation in St. Louis, and will be sure to post about the show… maybe I’ll get arrested trying to tape one of my originals up over some John Caldwell piece!

A few pictures from Tuesday at the NCN MiniCon:

Teresa “Okie Artist” Farrington‘s marketing seminar

The “Party Style” competition in action

Ed Steckley‘s “Psychology of Caricature” seminar

Ed’s enraptured crowd…

Sorry about the lack of art pictures and info, but I was swamped finishing up a MAD job, prepping and then conducting my cartoon inking workshop. Tomorrow I will have a full report with plenty of pictures of artwork, and maybe even a few sketches of my own of some attendees.

Monday at the NCN St. Louis MiniCon is in the books. The seminars went well with Joe Bluhm, Marlene Goodman and Dave “Bippy” Boyer all imparting some great information.

Joe did a demonstration of a digital painting technique that was terrific. He’s a talented artist and his ability to paint is top notch. I learned a lot from his seminar.

Marlene did a talk about using markers with caricature and Dave did his legendary seminar on health and caricatures. Unfortunately I spent almost all of the day working on the last bit of my latest MAD job, so I missed those as well as the likeness competition. On the plus side, a lot of people were able to watch me work on the coloring of an upcoming MAD TV parody, and I enjoyed answering questions and demonstrating my techniques.

Today is the big inking workshop. Here are some random pics of attendees doing their thing at the MiniCon: