Brad Benedict's latest Sideshow gallery extravaganza "NowBrow" moves into town this weekend with an opening artists' reception this Saturday night, September 20, 7-11 pm at Wal-Art Gallery in LA. The show features three of my new paintings shown here, along side the art of 35 other artists, including Dave Calver, Everett Peck, Brian Zick, and long-time friend and former illustrator Miriam Wosk. The show is a joint venture with world-reknown print maker Richard Duardo, and film producer Jamie Beardsley, whose credits include Reservoir Dogs and the upcoming Not Forgotten.

The above painting -- "You Always Were a Lousy Shot, Harry" -- is my first attempt at bringing a dangerous weapon into the process as another art tool. Unfortunately, this one ended up being a sort of failed attempt. To get the entrance holes the right size, various tries at "shooting" my art with large-caliber handguns resulted in basically blowing a lot of expensive maple to unusable smithereens. Which was, in a way, strangely fun. But as time ran out, I ended up using a simple Skilsaw one-inch hole cutter on this one, which I like, because it goes with the precision of the way I work. But ultimately, I also like the idea of a splintered violent intrusion upon the precision of a careful and precious painting.

The remaining two paintings are traditional acrylic on stretched canvas. Wal-Art is located at 1639 South La Cienega Blvd. (between Pico and Venice) in LA. Tel: 310-274-9055.

"Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are." -- Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

I didn't ever get to "study" art. I grew up reading the funny papers, so I still have it somewhere in my head that every artist can draw and write -- even though I know now that some of them can't do either one.

In first grade, we had Mrs. Fleece ("Old Lady Fleece/fell in the grease/help, call the police!"), who tortured us with "Dick is in the garden. Jane is in the garden. Dick and Jane are both in the garden. They are both in the garden together." Further along, Jane says: "Yes. I see Dick in the garden," or something like that. Needed a little Jacqueline Susanne.

She didn't like me because once I crapped in my pants right there at my little weathered oak desk. It was after this large third grader named Mickey Puzzulo had made it clear that the next time he found me alone there in the boys' room, I wasn't going to have to take a shit because he was going to beat it out of me, and he punched me a few times. So, she sent me home for the day, which the rest of the class was grateful for. But I think what really pissed her off was that I already knew how to read by the time I was four, thanks to newspaper comics, so she couldn't really be of much use.

Fritzi Ritz, Nancy's bombshell of an aunt. None of my aunts looked like this.

Every day, prostrate as a bhikkhu monk, two whole newspaper pages opened like a prayer scroll before me upon our parlor carpet. Down there within the warm and lovely sunny dust were the fragrance of feet --  of life coming and going. And me tearing off a little perfect triangle of newsprint from the left page corner, like a farmer dipping into his day’s first plug of Red Man. In my mouth the little piece of soft newsprint would get all juicy and pulpy and gray.

And there it would remain while I worked my way down the page, my nose only this far away from those mysterious Ben Day dots. How did they do that? The carefully inked line of Fritzi Ritz. The seemingly reckless brush strokes of Dale Messick. Every artist’s signature it’s own masterpiece. No reason to really rush when you’re four. Have another chaw! And how far from my neighborhood was Dogpatch anyway? I wanted to go there. Could my parents possibly know the Winkles? The Palookas??

Martin Branner's "Winnie Winkle" began as a family strip, but after her husband ended up permanantly MIA during the War, Winnie's character went on for decades as president of Bonnaz Fashions. I guess she was the forerunner to Martha Stewart. But each and every December, the strip meant Christmas to me. It would feature a month-long dream sequence where Winnie's kids inevitably wound up at the North Pole.

I didn’t ever actually swallow the paper wads — okay, okay, maybe just a few. With enough oatmeal, I probably could have wallpapered over half my digestive tract. Old Lady Fleece had somehow gotten the word and took me aside one recess. “You know, there was this boy who ate paper, and died!” She shook me by the shirt on the beat of her words, and with each beat, my face took a blast of what I was to learn years later was Lavoris. “And when they opened him up, you know what they found in his ap-pen-dix? She held her hands around an invisible basketball. A solid rock of newspaper this big!” She really didn’t like me.

The Phantom was a cool guy! He wandered dangerous streets and bars at night with his dog, which was actually a wild wolf. He always ordered sasparilla, and always went by the name of "Mr. Walker," code name for "The Ghost Who Walks."

It didn’t matter though, because I couldn’t help myself. A child takes in the beauty around him somehow. Eating the funnies was my first addiction, I guess, not counting being breast-fed. My father must have never understood why the page corners were always missing. And tree pulp in those days was probably no harder on you than Grape Nuts. So, on to the right hand page, and The Phantom and The Witchmen of the Oogooru and just one more little triangle before dinner…

“…atop Doom Peak, weird bluish fire glows when the Witchmen gather! ‘Magic Dust – a poison the Witchmen throw – to breathe it means death,’” ponders The Phantom. So sayeth The Ghost Who Walks!

copyright 2008 Lou Brooks