The launch of my artist book/comic Blotting Paper: The Recollected Graphical Impressions Of Doctor Comics, Issue #1 The Ingurgitator in a signed and numbered limited edition of 50 is on 11 February 2012 at Hondarake Full of Books in Sydney (details in the poster below). The book will be launched by my friend and colleague Gene Kannenberg, Jr. via a Skype link from the U.S. Kannenberg, a noted comics historian, is the director of ComicsResearch.org. Formerly the Chair of both the International Comic Arts Festival and the Comic Art & Comics Area of the Popular Culture Association, he has written widely on comic art including “500 Essential Graphic Novels”.

Poster designed by Louise Graber from original print by Michael Hill.

The launch will be accompanied by an exhibition of 33 of my handmade art postcards produced in sosaku hanga style, the ‘creative print’ movement that emerged just over a century ago in Tokyo. Creative prints became the voice of a group of artists who went under the name Pan and met for sake parties by the Sumida River, the centre of the Floating World of old Edo and site of the classic Ukiyo-e print movement. James Michener described this new approach: …in contrast to the classical system in which the artist merely designed the print, leaving the carving of the blocks to one technician and the printing to another, the newer print artists preached that the artist himself must do the designing, carving and printing. A new term was devised to describe such a print-sosaku hanga, meaning “creative print.” (Michener, 1968: The Modern Japanese Print p.11)

One of the cards in the associated exhibition–© 2010 Michael Hill

Another of the cards–© 2010 Michael Hill

For a visual diary record and time-line overview of this project, see all of the BLOTTING PAPER production reports relating to Issue #1:  No.1   No.2   No.3   No.4   No.5   No.6   No.7   No.8   No.9   No.10   No.11   No.12   No.13