The second issue of Electric Ant — a compendium of cool given birth by my pal Ryan Sands — will debut tomorrow at APE (Alt Press Expo). It’s definitely something you’ll want to check out if not POSSESS for your own library. And look at that juicy Hellen Jo cover!

CLICK HERE TO BUY A COPY OF THE ZINE!

Some of my closest talented friends have contributed to it, and I guess I did too. I had the great honor of drawing a page for the comic jam. It’s a zany adventure of a scruffy guy, his cyberpunk-looking ex GF, a put upon pinniped, and a lovable tooth. Sci-fi overtones, lots of humor. Even better is that I came after the distinctive Ryan Germick and before Lisa Hanawalt — she’s one of my faves.

Check it out. Comics, stories, photography, interviews, illustrations…all kinds of goodies.

CLICK TO BUY ELECTRIC ANT #2!

CLICK TO BUY ELECTRIC ANT #2!

ps – I somehow ended up on a panel on comics, zines, community, and the Yay Area at APE tomorrow. Phoebe Gloeckner is on it too. GULP. Wish me luck! Please send me all your best eloquence / public speaking positive vibes!

One of my job’s perks is not only working with interesting people, but meeting “famous” ones too. For the samurai exhibition media preview, I obnoxiously sidled up to the former Prime Minister of Japan Morihiro Hosokawa for a photo (his family collection comprises the exhibition). I wasn’t planning on it but the opportunity was too ripe.

I can’t comment on his political career, though I know it was a gutsy, distinctive, and short-lived one. It’s impressive that he was the first Japanese leader to publicly acknowledge that World War II was a “war of aggression, a mistaken war.” After his PM stint, he escaped the madness for a quiet, rural, peaceful life with nature and art (pottery), and is now a celebrated ceramicist. Some of his pieces are in the samurai exhibition.

From what I know about Hosokawa, I really dig him. You know how sometimes, people just strike you as chill, peaceful, and loving life for all its beauty? They’re not encumbered with drama or baggage? He seems to be one of them. Since he hails from a line of incredible renaissance men (artistic, poetic, overachieving samurai), maybe it’s just in his blood. He emulates vibes of goodness. This morning, our director said that when he “retired,” he tossed out all his ties, which is why during all the samurai exhibition opening events, he wasn’t seen wearing a single one.

This is a quick piece that sums him up real well, written around his last visit to the museum. In it:

“There’s a phrase in classical Chinese and old Japanese, seikou udoku, which means when the sun is shining, till the fields, and when it is raining, engage in reading,” Hosokawa said through an interpreter. “I was attracted to this type of life from my youth.”

Also — he reminds me of my grandpa. Kinda looks like him and everything.

via flickr.com

For our Bhutan exhibition — which, btw, is chockful of stunning eyecandy — we have two visiting monks from Bhutan (super sweet fellows) who protect the sacred art by praying for it, twice daily. There’s also a colorful altar to which they contribute offerings (photo shown). All the art in the show is religious and still in active use in temples and monasteries. It took years working with the Bhutanese government to allow these precious artworks to go abroad. They’ve never left the country, let alone their homes. So yeah, it’s a big deal.

Here’s a snapshot of one of the offerings made by the monks. Traditionally made from flour and (yak) butter, these are created from sculpey.

I really really love the one on the right because it’s so Woodring! Am I right? It feels so familiar.

A word on Himalayan Buddhist art in general — not only is it beautiful, meticulous, and painstakingly detailed, it appeals to my morbid sensibilities because of the sometimes gory motifs: severed heads, human skins, flames of wrath, evisceration, etc — all for enlightenment purposes.

Try to see this show if you can. And if you do, take the time to check out the facial expressions on the sculptures. I love them.

To all the artists in the hizzouse, I'm asking you not only as a friend, cohort, and supporter of the arts, but also as a desperate museum professional, to please help spread the word about a design contest we're hosting. Deadline is March 13, 2009!

The Asian Art Museum is counting on talented designers to come up with a provocative, compelling creative treatment for MATCHA — our popular evening mixer program that unites art and culture with cocktails and mingling. Geared toward the younger crowd, this is a thriving Thursday evening event offered at a discount price.

The winning design will be used prominently in the MATCHA marketing campaign, which entails but is not limited to print ads, posters, online banners, postcards, club cards, t-shirts, website, e-blasts, etc. Prizes include $500, membership to the museum, guest passes for friends and family, MATCHA swag, a conceptual and visual challenge, and good exposure. More importantly, the winner would be part of a vibrant, fun, educational program from the largest museum in the western world devoted exclusively to Asian art!

For details, guidelines, and more, please visit (yup, it's Posterous!):
http://asianartmuseum.posterous.com/

Questions? Shoot them over to: jyin[at]asianart[dot]org

I'm hoping that I can count on you to share this with all of your friends and family. I know y'all are in the know and have a ton of creative pals. THANK YOU!

Posted via email from ELECTRIC ANT ZINE BLOG

hey folks, ryan put up a community blog for his electric ant zine on posterous. it’s a slick gathering place for the zine contributors and extended family. check it out! there’s already a bunch of cool vids, neat art, eye candy, and random smatterings of cultural craziness. i’ve been making vapid contributions there, and from now on those entries will also automatically show up here as well.

this is one of them.

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every so often i go through these fits of anxiety and wanderlust brought on by the relentless travel bug. i fantasize about winning the lottery so i can buy little homes throughout the world, starting with a crash pad in shanghai. everyone knows contemporary chinese art is so "hot" right now (a la mugatu) and has been for awhile. there's a great little arts district / zone in shanghai, abutting the river, called moganshan 50. it's basically a complex of galleries and studios. i was gleeful and blissed out just wandering around there. it’s one place to go check out a facet of the crazy arts scene, but those in the know will probably tell you there are far better places to get your fix. one of my big dreams is to work in the contemporary arts in china or taiwan. that would be the coolest thing.

See the full gallery on posterous

Posted via email from ELECTRIC ANT BLOG

on my jack lemmon kick, i recently watched the 1962 blake edwards’ film days of wine and roses (based in SF!)

it was bleak. jack lemmon, a well-meaning but damaged PR guy in the two-martini lunch era, has a crippling dependency issue. he meets lee remick, a pure, sweet thing who doesn’t even like the taste of alcohol (but loves chocolate). they “fall in love,” marry, procreate, etc, but everything quickly disintegrates because of booze. she too has become an alcoholic to pass the days of being a bored and pensive housewife.

in the end, he miraculously manages to give up the bottle, but she’s a wreck wandering the streets in an ethanol-induced stupor. mind you, they have a daughter! as immensely as he wants her back, he needs to know she can stop, or at least try to stop, but she refuses to promise even an effort, acknowledging, “But I can’t face the idea of never having another drink.”

and that got me thinking: wow, that’s heavy. is there something that i crave and am so severely addicted too that i couldn’t even imagine ever giving up? for life? (other than love, affection, friendship?) forgive me for my offensively rude and crude analogy, but the answer is food. yeah, i guess could just subsist on chicken breast and fish and veggies for the rest of my life (if i was a vegetable), but it’s the starches, the sugars, the deep fried goodies, all that stuff, that i need.

understand that i am not likening my relationship with food to an alcoholic’s relationship with alcohol. hardly the case. it’s just that thinking about substance abuse in this way gave me an extremely deep appreciation, or vague idea, of the impossible epic battle that addicts must face if they want to win. it’s downright depressing, and requires the sort of willpower that i can’t even fathom. i think about a relative whose life was lost to this battle, and it saddens me to no end.

i’ll be the first to admit that i have an eating disorder. sure it’s not bulimia or anorexia, but there’s definitely a pathological, psychological connection i have with food. it’s intense. the passion for good eating is fine and dandy, but i’m talking about the sick primal binging (no really, it’s disgusting), the absolute lack of control, the full-throttle consumption, and how all of it feeds into my body image, the incessant utterly violent self loathing. it’s probably my one true consistent sourse of unhappiness. i don’t think it’s just emotional eating either, a la jack donaghy (but i assure you if i could find a huge tub of cheese balls i’d be all over it)

well this has probably been my most navel gazing post ever. if you didn’t know it before, it’s been confirmed for you here: yes, i really am that superficial and shallow.

in days of wine and roses, jack lemmon would ritually say with pleasure, right before taking a swig, “magic time.” and that’s how i feel every time i eat something delicious.

while shoveling mushroom bread pudding and beef down my gullet at the work holiday party last night, my colleague yukino tapped me on the shoulder and i turned around — stuffed mouth trying to contain spewing crumbs — to face her and this young asian fellow.

he looked really, really familiar, and if she didn’t introduce james jean so quickly, i still would’ve recognized him as one of my favorite artists of all time.

the next few minutes entailed a frenetic one-man freak show (starring me) that cycled over and over again in a shrill excited voice: “you are one of my favorite artists ever,” “my friends and i all think you are the absolute best; some of them are cartoonists and illustrators!,” “i’ve been following you forever!,” and “i bought two recess series prints from you at APE a few years ago! i dream of owning the entire series one day!!!” he was graciously demure and patient with my wild ranting!

suspend your belief, but i don’t like idolizing people (and there are maybe five people in this world i’d wait in line to meet). even the coolest folks are human beings like you and me, just way luckier. however, james jean is a true hero to me in so many ways. if you’ve ever seen his sketchbook you would gasp endlessly and die from sheer astoundment and admiration, and then you would want to gouge your own eyes out and crawl under a rock to die, frustrated that you were never born with even a nano-fraction of his talent.

also, he’s a very kind, gentle man, a taiwanese-american, and sickeningly young and accomplished.

so the big Q: why the heck was he there? well, yukino is way involved in the totoro forest project; she was one of the principle organizers of this incredible endeavor to save the forest in japan that’s succumbing to urban development. the forest inspired my neighbor totoro. a bunch of artists, some from pixar / academy of art, some of whom are illustrators, cartoonists, etc, banded together to make sweet totoro-related art and auction it off to raise $$$.

james jean of course chipped in with his piece, which our japanese curator bought for the museum!

the museum rules, but now it’s even way cooler in my books because our japanese curator, who’s a total charming cutie, has manifested her good taste in another unexpected way.

so go see everyone’s totoro artwork while it’s still up at the cartoon art museum.

ps – if you check out his recess series, i own “pickup” and “flush”

been neglecting this stupid thing so it’s time to get back on it with some big ol’ updates. i’d like to take a moment to remind (beg) visitors (hi mom, hi sis) to please please PLEASE leave comments! they bring me more pleasure than any lethal narcotic ever could. it’s all i want for xmases and my bdays for the rest of my life.

and away we go with the backtracking.

*
november kicked off awesomely with APE, that beloved annual tradition of nerding out and seeing old friends. this year i ingratiated myself to the coolest kids in the hall, the bang gang (see happy shiny people below). you’ve all heard me wax poetic on what a nostalgic thing APE is for me. it’s nice seeing the same passionate, geeky folks year after year after year, but again, it reinforces my reputation as a lame groupie. oh well. at least this year i was a barnacle at the bang gang table.

(that’s johnny ryan with our ryan)

it was a synergistic year for the bang gang, with hotly anticipated debuts, such as hellen’s jin & jam. it’s awesome, sexy, and sweet. if you like beautiful girls and/or remember what it was like to meet someone who mystified you and with whom you developed an electrifying chemistry, it’ll resonate even more. i remember when hellen started working on it last year during her residency at the museum (for the tezuka exhibition), and the pages were gorgeous. now the finished product is even more gorgeous. it sold like hot cakes. dan clowes told hellen she’s going places. well duh.

anthony peddled gorgeous prints and magnets alongside evan’s trademark photo-illo prints in candy color frames. anthony and derek also reminded ppl of their purdy pieces in the newest popgun. derek debuted deth’s head (the red mini on the table, you can spot it in other pictures), a punchy and hilarious mini about digging for maggot-infested burgers; features a splash page that still cracks me up to this day.

calvin sold out of his prints and ramble on, a lovely mini that i suspect music fiends may especially appreciate. like everyone else in the bang gang, calvin is an incredible soul and talented artist.

another ssssssizzling debut at the bang gang table was ryan’s electric ant zine! it’s a real beaut, aesthetically and content-wise, a reminder of why i got turned onto zines in the first place — passionate people with something interesting to say channeling their earnest energy into a compendium of cool. this one’s got an interview with our hero fred schodt, a gallery of bad guys from our cartoon-infected youthl, NIN mad libs, comics about first kisses, etc.

ALSO, i had the major honor of contributing to the dark lords gallery in EA. being a part of this special project made me feel very, very good. i’m no artist, but to have something i created keep company with artists whom i admire is a throbbing emotional boner for life. drawing it was healthy practice; challenging but fun. i’m surprised i was able to do it. it’s no big deal, just a drawing, but i actually got off my lazy bum and made something. if i’m lucky, i’ll have the pleasure and honor of doing it again.

if you’re curious about my contribution, see if you can find it on EA’s website (tip: preview gallery).

i’m also deliriously giddy, not only cuz Ain’t it Cool News (and others) gave EA a glowing review, but cuz there was direct reference to my piece: “you’ll never look at Shredder the same way again”

and then stuff like this, as silly and non-eventful as it is, makes me high:

so the moral of the story is, surround yourself with the funniest, smartest, most talented friends you can find (artists, writers, strippers, car mechanics, etc) because it’s good for your health, and you can live variously through them! also, it can kick you out of your crippling self-pitying stupor and make you do something that makes you happy.

ALSO, you can support the arts and buy copies of what i’ve mentioned above by clicking on the links.

ps – this is definitely not an exhaustive report of APE.

pps – publisher last gasp held their usual pre-APE shindig (on halloween) where they open up their vaults to the public. i had such a great time. you can see pix here. the warehouse is a wonderland; i could’ve spent hours and hours there!

me & larks!

calvin & hellen as pigsy and monkey king

it’s our last night in HK. too tired to delve into things, and i’m fed up with my tedious, lengthy writing. i have a tendency to get carried away; i’m working on it.

i do want to quickly allude to the sotheby’s autumn sale. they’ve been auctioning throughout the duration of the fair, and i finally checked it out today. INSANE. classy all the way, and completely foreign to me. they even had a little circular bar set up, doling out free coffee and snacks. the showmanship and production is slick and impressive. unfortunately, i didn’t have my camera around for it.

here are random pics. tomorrow morning i’m off to taipei to meet up with ma, stepdad, and sister for a nine day tour of the island. bonus: peg will be there too for a day or two. that’s total kismet.

no words can adequately describe what a rich, incredible learning experience this has been. i am eternally grateful for the circumstances — and one man in particular — that made this possible. team AAM HK is so so so lucky.

school groups came to the fair on monday. here is a cute group of teens in their simple frock like dresses (with pockets!). they approached the booth in such an endearing manner, a bit shy but curious

i’m all about animal welfare, but i found the randomness to be amusing

look who paid us a visit? this is olan mills style

should’ve included this earlier. we landed in HK on national day, and immediately rushed downstairs from the hotel to the pier to watch the big fireworks. an auspicious way to kick things off, i thought

causeway bay was packed yesterday because of the holiday. frenzied but positive youthful energy on the streets

famous dessert chain, hui lau shan. i believe it started in HK and sprouted up all over asia. i wonder if we can attribute the crazy mango / coconut / sago / harsmar sweets phenomenon to this entity. there’s even one on geary now

this cab driver had FIVE cell phones on his dash

i still want to dedicate separate entries to two once-in-a-lifetime, probably-will-never-happen-again magical moments: the china club and stanley. for now, here’s the breathtaking view from victoria peak. it’s no wonder parts of the dark knight were shot here

this morning, on the way to the convention centre hall, i saw a woman taking photos of this huge sotheby’s wall advertisement that features a line up of artwork that would be selling at their auction. she was posing something held in her hand so that it would be included in her snapshots. it was a turtle. initially i thought it was a toy, then it occurred to me as i walked past her that it was probably real.

it’s slow right now, and i’m nursing a milk tea. a thumping house remix of a talking heads song (untz untz untz) is carrying itself through this corner of the fair. at least they switched CDs. the first two days was just one looping disc of french torch songs / bossa nova / mancini tunes. very enjoyable the first five spins.

tomorrow is a public holiday, “chun yeung festival” – for honoring and remembering the deceased, which might explain some of the quietness today. someone speculated though that tomorrow will be busy. we, along with the friends of hong kong museum of art, are the only museums representing. the rest are mostly galleries hailing from all over the world, from korea and taiwan to london and NYC. this is peak auction season too.

apparently the sotheby’s auction of asian art hasn’t been faring well at all — atypical especially for contemporary chinese art sales (the hottest thing). from what i know, some big name artists’ work are on sale too. word on the street is that the indonesian stuff has been selling, probably because of their “lower” price points. at any rate, it’s an ominous telltale sign of the global financial state.

i love the people watching. all ages, all kinds, all styles. glamorous older women with their bold jewelry, men in polished fitted suits, “edgy” hipsters of all ages, lots of spiky short hair (ladies) and ponytails (men), slender calves held up in beautiful heels, handsome man purses, plenty of expats, chunky watches, an array of fun eyeglass frames, fanny packs, distinctly beijing belts and loafers, tees and sandals, adorable children/families. everyone seems to have a genuine interest in art, and some are astute connoisseurs. it’s absolutely fantastic. many people have approached us with a curious disbelief. “you’re from san francisco?…what are you doing here?” many have also come seeking our ming catalogue, which is impressive. i’ve chatted with interesting people (including a tibetan who said matter-of-factly that going to america would never happen for him).

this asian art world is entirely fascinating and foreign to me, and i’m thoroughly enjoying every eye-opening second. it’s such a microcosm.

of the countless endearing things i’ve noticed, one is the sweet affection in couples. even better is that there seems to be a positive correlation between age and tenderness. it’s the 40-50s bracket that exhibits the most hand holding and arm linking.

here’s shanghaiese sf-based artist li huayi and me. charming and lovable. look at that handsome face! his paintings are like ethereal chinese landscapes, but haunting, dark, and fragile

a member of team AAM had his first celebrity sighting, and it’s a BIGGIE!

these cool women came up to the booth wanting to buy the ming catalogue. they were docents with teh HK museum of art. sally quickly took over and engaged them for a solid 15 minutes. she’s so excellent at holding court, it’s almost scary

is there nothing more pure and wonderful than people excited about art and culture?

another fave beverage — this is yuanyang, a strong mixture of HK milk tea and coffee. i needed it, since severe sleepiness set in again yesterday afternoon

after yesterday’s shift and the ensuing cocktail reception, was able to get out for a little and play. ended up in mongkok at the ladies’ market, and walked all the way down to temple market. it was raining, which robbed these markets of some of their usual energy and rowdiness. also went into a couple malls with tiny little stores, tightly focused and tightly packed. definitely destinations to check out if you want to get a feel for youth culture.

and some shots from the evening:

this ludicrous bling reminds me of curse of the golden flower, a la resting on gong li’s ample bosom

one fresh kiwi juice, please

there were open eateries all over temple street, and they were a tad offputting

some older man just tried asking me a question, and i didn’t understand. he simply walked away kind of laughing at me with his friend. oh well.