February Cartoonist-in-Residence: Jamaica Dyer
Saturday, February 20th, 2010 12pm to 2pm
Free and Open to the public
The Cartoon Art Museum hosts cartoonist Jamaica Dyer on Saturday, February 20th, 2010 from 12pm to 2pm as part of its ongoing Cartoonist-in-Residence program. Museum visitors will be offered the chance to talk to her about cartooning and view Jamaica’s work.
Jamaica Dyer is a Bay Area native, growing up in Santa Cruz and now living in San Francisco. Her drawings and stories as a kid led to an interest in femme fatales and comic books, and by the time she was 16 she was photocopying comics she’d drawn and distributing them at stores and convention floors. Her comics have appeared in anthologies like Spark Generators 2, Juicy Mother 2 and Dark Horse Myspace Presents 3. SLG recently released Jamaica’s first graphic novel, Weird Fishes, that collects her webcomic of the same name “with all of the oddness and beauty that you would expect from her work.” Her work has a surreal side to it, dealing with adolescence and fantasies, and her artwork usually involves delicate lines and watercolors.
Weird Fishes is the story of two outsider kids who come to terms with their identities. Dee is a girl who sees giant talking ducks, and The Bunny Boy’s worn the same Halloween costume for years. The kids stop playing together and start growing into teenagers, and the ducks become monsters and the bunnysuits become mod suits, and just as things start to settle, the world changes forever.
Dyer opened a gallery show in December at Mission: Comics and Art featuring paintings and sketches from Weird Fishes. Many of the original painted pages from her comic have been on display at the SLG Boutiki Gallery in San Jose. When not painting and developing her new book, Jamaica works in animation creating Flash cartoons.
This event is free and open to the public.