At the door of the Do Art Cave, Jerry stares back at you as he gestures courageously in front of an American flag. He’s wearing a white and blue tie-dye shirt, and his signature straw hat painted with green and red and blue flecks in an effect that resembles flower petals floating in the water. Further downstairs he’s shaking hands with a girl who won our 2023 Art Contest, next to a further iteration of Jerry drawing at a desk, while a kid at one of our comic book workshops looks at the whiteboard in front of him, contemplating a masterpiece he will unveil with dry erase marker
.One of the challenges that promoting a comic book workshop presents is making it clear to people just what it is, why it’s fun, and why it’s important. To achieve all these things, we lean toward showing rather than telling.
But not satisfied with just taking pictures at workshops and maybe posting them online, we wanted to make artwork out of the material itself, and present it at a scale that was both dramatic and versatile. Jerry settled on nylon banners, emblazoned from corner to corner with pictures Photoshopped into artwork as WACKY as the pictures we get from workshop and comic con attendees at our drawing booths.
Our latest banners are actual masterpieces, 12 feet wide by 12 feet high, combining photos with drawings from comic cons and workshops. A banner including pictures and drawings of me–as an Among Us spaceman, as Helga from Hey Arnold, as an teenager drawn in anime style with a strong but delicate chin and sensitive eyes–framed in blue and purple.
Old banners cover the walls of the Do Art Cave, where we plot our latest innovations in workshops and cutting-edge art. The banner of Jerry shaking hands with the contest winner stares from the corner. Jerry is in black and white, but the banner is covered with polka dots, waves of purple and yellow around his silhouette. The effect is not so much self-aggrandizing as a commemoration of a respected ancestor. You made this possible, this moment with all of its thrills and challenges. And if Jerry’s expression seems earnest and dramatic, the polka dots and artsy lines, as though a digital graffiti artist had decided to good-naturedly deface it, remind me that this is still fun.
