HEY APATHY! Alternative Comics

MONSTER COMICS! title panel from the new online narrative. The story follows a freelance illustrator ( played by me) as he follows his mysterious vagabond patron on a mission to complete a series of commissioned portraits of some unusual subjects. I finished posting the first page a couple of days ago and had a bit of time to think about it and view it on screen. For the most part I am happy with the opening, however I felt the animated sequencing of the panels needed a little work.

It's really wild and very unique working online instead of in published form. Many new possibilities and opportunities arise. For example, I decided that the first panel of the story required a small addition and spent the day drawing it. Once I publish a printed magazine I'm stuck with it. Not so when publishing on-line, I'll add the revisions tomorrowand no one will be the wiser. The layout is also entirely different on the computer. I'm using a scroll page and it works amazingly well with sequential art. When scrolling down, the images mock animate themselves. This had resulted in my desire to extend the credit sequence. In a publication I would certainly limit such a sequence (see www.heyapathy-comics-art.com/Monster-Comics.html ) to 3 panels. On the website I am going to extend the sequence to include 4 or more panels in order to maximize the scroll page effects.

So basically the day was spent revisiting, editing ,and adding some new panels to MONSTER COMICS. I'll post them all tomorrow so you can see the page improvements and so no one else can see what it looked like before.

ALTERNATIVE MONSTER COMICS

MONSTER COMICS! Here's a couple of panels from my new online story about creepy creatures and of things best left unsaid. These sequential images are kind of fun and how the whole online comic started. I had set aside a little time each day to make a collection of drawings based on strange and monstrous characters, really I was just catering to a selfish desire to make creepy pictures,, and then my brain took over. It came up with names and background, locations, and motivations for these simple characters. Then I started mixing in a whole bunch of alternative thoughts and pushed my self to discover justification of the deviations, why are these drawings important? I mean a monster is a monster right? Wrong

I skimmed a bunch of my favourite books and movies and quickly realized that a great monster is a metaphorical one and started to make some connections. I devised an over all script, and resolution regarding the production of the strange portraits and before I knew it, a few little sketchy details had become an entire adventure...MONSTER COMICS! The first page is up at www.heyapathy-comics-art.com/Monster-Comics.html with lots more to come. This online comic book should get interesting as I plan to incorporate some animations, traditional comics, single-panels with text and multi-directional pages in order to tell you a story about how we a are kind of like monsters in our own petty ways.

MONSTER COMICS!

Finally finished the first webpage installment of MONSTER COMICS! The auto-biographical adventure shares my experiences last year working for a strange and particular patron. This ogre-like client called himself BLACKBEARD and hired me because of how fast I am able to draw. I was commisioned to do a number of portraits of people and travelled all over the place to do so. The project was a big one and the struggles aplenty, and eventually I figured out why it was so important to be quick with the pen, but in the end, well you'll have to wait and see.

These two drwings are from the first web-page installment of my new online comic. Although in a regular published book, these image would easily take up two pages, I've set up the online fable as a series of "scenes". and each page will read like a chapter of vignette. I am starting to get into this type of process. In most of my previous works I have spent hours on drawing pages and hour finishing them. Using the computer and small scribbles I can get pretty much the same effect when presenting these on the screen. At I don't have to spend any time nitpicking, and digital inking is way fast. The only real difference is that none of these artworks actually exist out side of the internet! check out the first webpage at http://www.heyapathy-comics-art.com/Monster-Comics.html

Alternative Comics And Music

STREET PAINTING TO MUSIC

scene from HEY APATHY! Book Two

still from HEY APATHY! time lapse video 3.5 HOURS with Mike Parsons

Yesterday I posted a few portraits of my musical heroes and mentioned some strange stories about playing their music in the middle of the busy streets. I have also incorporated this passion of mine into the HEY APATHY! comics. In the books I use a little seance machine (a portable radio) to summon the spirits of dead musicians. This little narrative device allows me to give clues as to what kinds of music I enjoy and permits me to intermingle or discuss stories about the the musician's themselves as I often do while performing. I consider the "ghosts" to be a representation of the internal imaginary dialogue I have with these artist's when ever I listen.

The first picture depicts the morning's routine out on the street, setting up , watching people, and pressing play... note the upper left hand corner of the panels and you'll see me summon one of my dead musician friends. The second photo is a picture of me painting out on Queen West. in downtown Toronto, the little black blur in the lower left hand corner is my ghetto blaster. Photo by Craig Boyko. I plan to post a web-page on my site dedicated to my artworks about music, but it's not a big priority right now. I did however complete sizing and pasting all the text for the first installment of monster comics and page 10 or something of the online comic book so a whole bunch of new comics are almost ready for you to read...

Alternative Comics INSPIRATIONAL MUSIC

Music has always been a big part of both my life (which I sort of had before )and artistic process. As the majority of my work is created as an improvised stream of conscience, drawn with black India, start to finish, without any corrections ever, I often enjoy working to my own private score. Over the years my quest for interesting rhythms has sent me far far away from what the mainstream has deemed music, as a boring repetitive song often inspires artwork of similar merit. These pen and ink portraits were inspired by and made while listening to some of my favourite jazz giants. I like working to this kind of music because it always sends me off in different directions. The practice of playing tunes in my studio also became an integral part of both my street and public performances where I could use the sounds to accelerate and energise the live mural painting and audience members alike. (It was particularly fun blasting HOT RATS at city hall and PLASTIC PEOPLE out in the shopping district on Queen West.)

Trane's "my favourite things" featuring Pharaoh Saunders, from the village vanguard was always a favourite thing to play early in the morning on Queen West. People would be just waking up, headed to work, or partaking in early morning tourism, when these wonderfully horrific and (to the unsuspecting ear) apparently indecipherable squelches would encompass the side walks. The best part is as the music becomes almost intolerable and someone is always about to approach and reproach me the whole mess culminates in the most exquisite and recognizable refrain of the once upon a time pretty melody known as my favourite things. It melts even the most skeptical of nay-sayer's! I guess I really enjoy messing with people, they have got to learn somehow! For those unaware the portraits above are of Louis Armstrong, the MAGUS Miles Davis, and John Coltrane.

ALTERNATIVE COMICS

A FASHION SHOOT TURNS MONSTER! HEY APATHY COMICS

A behind the scenes look at the essence of fashion from HEY APATHY! monster comics. In these panels we see the models, already decorated for the event, undergoing the final transformation before show time. A group of occultist cannibal aardvark humanoids slurp the insides out of the runway hopefuls, thus creating the intellectual necessary to look good under the lights. It's almost time for the shoot! Scenes from my ongoing mythological comics adventure which will be posted at http://www.heyapthy-comics-art.com/ as I complete it. I spent the whole weekend lettering pages but failed to get them posted yesterday as I had hoped. I'm still having difficulties rendering and resizing the text so that it remains legible on the screen. On the brighter side of life, I just found out that there are still booths available at the Toronto Comic Con at the Metro Toronto Convention Center this June and put together my application this afternoon. For some reason I though the big con took place in the fall and am very lucky to be able to apply at such a late date ( I missed booking two of these shows this year already!)

MAKING MONSTER COMICS

MAKING MONSTER COMICS raw scan panel 1

MAKING MONSTER COMICS finshed panel 1

I spent the weekend doing the lettering for the opening sequences from "MONSTER COMICS". I've been approaching these online strips with a particular gorilla warfare style process. Like my ink drawings, and performances , I pretty much just make everything up as I go along and hope for the best. The drawing and inking techniques that I use for the on-line stories however, differs drastically from those used in my fine art creations. When creating large scale canvas or performance artworks, extensive attention is given to the technical rendering. This is often achieved through the meticulous layering of inks and obsessively detailed line-work accomplished with fine point calligraphy pens. In contrast the online panels are drawn exclusively with technical pens and worked up on the computer. In fact these new online drawings don't even exist.

The samples above show you how I just take a quick sketch will some rough black fills and do all the inking, borders and text inside the computer. Now I don't get the same results as I do when I complete the entire drawing on the board (which is how I do the "HEY APATHY!" published comic book.) but the time it saves on production is more than worth the sacrifice. I am still having troubles with pixels and keeping the text legible during resizing, however I am certain that these issues are entirely due to my inexperience with image processing technology. I have only been working inside the machine for a year and am most certainly a novice. (I just started sizing images in pixels, I used to have pencil lines drawn all over my computer screen and did all my editing in percentages with guess work!)

When comparing the two panels, it is also of interest to note the messy and unedited text you see scattered all over the raw scan. I always do this for the first panel of any comic I am lettering. Then I realize that I am making a huge mess and wasting a lot of time. Once I get over the initial excitement of telling the story, I then turn to the word processor and actually write all the dialogue out . It is much easier to edit inside the flicker-box than it is to keep re-writing the text all over the page. Following the completion of the script I set some nice lined writing paper on the light table and get down to some serious calligraphy. I had one of those pen sets when I was young and got addicted to lettering for quite some time. Now I can use all those hours practicing classical lettering to tell strange and inconceivable stories about children eating witches, the Stone Troll Statue and a condo in Williamsburg.

MAKING MONSTER COMICS

ESTABLISHING SHOT from MONSTER COMICS

As I have mentioned before, February is one of the most tedious months in my life as an artist. This is a very busy time of year for filling out forms, mailing applications, and booking my public performances and comic convention appearances for the upcoming season. This leaves little time for production and my days generally get divided as follows; morning research, afternoon essays, and night time scribbles. As a result I tend to produce a lot of single panel artworks and take a brief hiatus from my full time comics schedule. Such is the curse of the Ronin illustrator, you've got to push all the papers yourself (if anyone is serious, willing and capable of representation contact me).

Today, however, is a slightly exceptional day as far as February's go. The sun is shining the wind is asleep and I have completed all my urgent application's early, so the whole day has been set aside to draw. Well, that's not entirely true, actually what I really have to do is the lettering for my online MONSTER COMICS. I only had one panel (the opening shot of Williamsburg above) to complete in the first set of drawings. I'll finish all the lettering throughout the day and hopefully post the introduction at http://www.heyapathy-comics-art.com/ by Monday. I've drawn most of the story and creature features for the on-line comic but as one often does, I left the chore of lettering a little to long. I usually like to knock off the text one page at a time,as I go so as to the avoid horrendous hours of perpetual calligraphy. Don't misinterpret this as entirely pessimistic though, I actually derive a great pleasure from the task except that I find better results when I work on the word bubbles in smaller sessions. I have also found it a real pain to transfer the letters clearly to a format suitable for online presentation. When resizing the scans the letters seem to require singular attention in order to retain visibility. No worries though, I'll figure it all out and the MONSTER COMICS will creep and seep through your screens soon...

SLASH PAGE from MONSTER COMIC

just got to fix the lettering...coming soon

LIFE OF AN ARTIST Comic Portraits Neil Gaimen

Neil Gaimen giving "instructions" of the utmost urgency.

Each and every morning I set aside a short sequence of moments in which I find both pleasure and business in the act of reading. In pleasure the time spent allows me to escape and enjoy life in an unusual manner and in the business of thought I always learn something, a new word , a new connection or how to avoid police suspicion after committing a diabolical act.

I generally tend to choose the readings based on the amount of time I can allocate and find my self frequently returning to short stories, articles, and comic books due to the limitations one decree's as a freelance illustrator. Today however I figured it was best to take a comic to the cafe not because my time is limited (obviously) but rather because the peculiar prerogative of the February wind chills. It is damn cold outside but nothing like the previous winter and I had calculated that I could last outdoors with my coffee and the fresh air for approximately 20 minutes.

Therefor I reached blindly into my library grasping a copy of Neil Gaimen's "Dream Country" and decided to kidnap Calliope while i caffeinated myself. I must have read this a million and six times by now and it never gets stale. The spine tingling sensation and un-namable understanding that comes with good horror I got from these books as an adolescent hasn't faded a bit. These were among the first truly incredible comics I ever read, and , having been bored and disgusted by the exchange of script for slash which dominates the genre, restored my faith in the macabre. Thanks for all the wonderfully pretty stories Mr. G.

As is also part of my daily journal's and artistic warm up, I followed the inspiration with a little sketch of the monstrous muse. I looked at some press shots of Neil and thought they were as silly as a sandstorm in the sea so I did the drawings while watching him read one of his poems entitled "Instructions" instead. The portraits took about 5 minutes to draw, which is how long it will take you to listen to the story on youtube.Highly Recommended.

LIFE of An ARTIST STREET MURALS

Kensington Market Street Art

HEY APATHY! I spent almost the entire day working on-line. The fiasco which has become my life (as an artist) was enveloped by resizing and uploading images since 8 am this morn. I have been trying to apply online for the 2010 Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition for a couple of days now. Unfortunetly I had to wait until yesterday to get in contact with a staff member because we just had a long weekend here in Canada. Nevertheless the crew over at 401 Richmond running the T.O.A.E. is incredible and all my queries were answered first thing following the holiday lay off. So I proceeded to prepare my slide list and support materials only to discover late last night that I did it all wrong and my images turned out to be way to small.(Oh there is never a dull moment in the life of an artist.)Following my uploaded defeat, I gave up on the application and worked on some sketches for the remainder of day.

Today, however, was a new day! I completed the resizing and uploading in record time without a single glitch and I suppose I got into it and carried away. I just kept uploading and resizing and uploading and resizing and only a few moments ago ( it is now 14 hours since I started) came to a standstill having completed about 5 new pages for my website. I am building the damn thing myself so don't expect too much on the technical side but I think the curation of my madness could not have been handled by any one else. Check out my updated MURALS page at www.heyapathy-comics-art.com/MURALS.html . I uploaded all the image and text links today so there a new galleries within the gallery. I'll try to get the essays explaining the significance of each mural on there tomorrow but for now I am very,very tired.

Toronto Garage Mural Acrylic on Brick 2007

Live Painting at Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition

This photographic sequence represents a day in the life of the Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition. An gigantic annual art show held at Toronto's Nathan Philips Square. The deadline for applying to this years event is coming up pretty soon and I came across these photos from last year. The show is an extensive venture, from set up at sunrise to three days of painting and story telling. As equally exciting as it is exhausting, the T.O.A.E. always feels like a roller coaster ride full of twists and turns. I never know who or how many people I'll meet nor am I able to predict the amount of hard work that the show always requires. I did my first public exhibition at the T.O.A.E. way back in 2002, and although I get better at performing each year, it never gets any easier! Check out more performance painting at www.heyapathy-comics-art.com/PERFORMANCE-ART-PUBLIC.html

PICTURES 1) setting up the 10x 20 portable gallery walls 2) early afternoon crowds start pouring through city hall 3) start the live painting 4) about an hour later finished the live painting 5) telling stories and narrating the comic pages!!!

LIFE of an ARTIST ink portraits Francis Bebey

Francis Bebey & quote playing a flute of one note.

Another February day passes quickly away as I fill out forms, attach attachments, and rewrite proposals accordingly. I actually got quite ahead of myself in the submission processes today, completing not only those which are due immediately but venturing forth into the March deadlines as well. Unfortunately I hit a few minor set backs on the latter submissions which will require human assistance but today is a holiday. My inquires will have to wait until tomorrow. It's a good thing I got on this early, it would have been quite problematic to encounter these minor technical difficulties the evening the applications were due!

Anyways the day was productive enough that I was able to check out a website sent to me by my good friend Hunter Vaughan. Hunter is a long time friend and former fellow street artist whom I met out on the Queen West pavement. Hunter works in clay sculpture & pottery as well as saxophone, flute and percussion. (We practice music socially on a weekly basis with a number of other creative people) He is also an endless resource of information when it comes to world music and all oddities involving sound and performance. I got a wicked link from him this morning and was shortly thereafter introduced to Francis Bebey.

Francis is listed as a musician and writer and proves himself quickly in the little video I saw. I was so taken with this strange new (to me anyways) character that I could not but help capture his words and likeness in ink and post them here for all to see.I'm not going to describe the man nor the documented events , just check him out at www.keyofgrey.com/2010/02/francis-bebey-plays-a-one-note-bamboo-flute/ . If you're already familiar with Francis check out my website instead it is all about "savages in the city" http://www.heyapathy-comics-art.com/ (how's that for a shameless self promotional segue!)

Life of a Canadian Artist

I saw IGOR's FireBIRD Suite on Friday Feb12 2010 !

Okay I'm about a day late on this post in the Life of a Canadian Artist, but this time of year I generally find my self writing endless proposals and booking all my shows for the upcoming season (two of these submission packages are due tomorrow!). As a result I usually have to sacrifice my drawing schedule for a couple of weeks in Feb. in order to handle all the bureaucratic paper pushing. Anyways I said to hades with it all this morning and put together this little sketch.


This drawing was inspired by a sequence of unusual and amazing circumstances which befell me over the past few days. I recently met my new house mates of whom I was previously informed were musicians. Naturally I rolled my eyes at the thought expecting a couple of pot-head techno DJ's or some wannabe fashion model mick jagoff impersonators, (I live in Kensington Market and this is pretty much all we ever get around here). So I finally bump into these fellas outside our home and they were actually nice and well spoken individuals. I told them of the rumours I'd heard regarding their profession asked them what kind of music they played. "WE ARE CONTEMPORARY CLASSICAL PERCUSSIONISTS" and I replied "Edgar Varese!" and Ed , my new house mate responded "Ionization!". If you don't know what I'm talking about look it up. One thing led to another and a few short days later I received a pair of tickets to see Ed & Dan play the "Firebird suite" at Toronto's new and magnificent KOERNER HALL.

Ed and Dan are part of The Royal Conservatory Orchestra of the Glenn Gould School and it rocked. The show consisted of 4 musical pieces including Sergei Prokofiev's Symphony No1. in D major, Op 25 "Classique", a little watery throwback to nineteen century, Francis Poulenc's Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra in D minor, which I was unfamiliar with but am no longer (this stuff makes Sun Ra look like a Republican!) and a beautifully sung french piece entitled Sheherazade by composer Maurice Ravel. The show closed with the feature Igor Stravinsky's Firebird suite. The Firebird was (and always is) ridiculous. I haven't enjoyed myself so much in a long time ( rarely escaping my studio workload )and highly recommend any who have the opportunity to get out to the new Conservatory and experience some of this crazy music! THANKS Ed & Dan and orchestra and IGOR!!!

This is a picture of the hall from the program, really wish there was an orchestra playing though I think it would have looked way more interesting.



I've got a couple of other sketches & stories regarding this music/experience however I''ll have to save them for another day ... my application deadlines approach showing no signs of mercy

INDEPENDENT & ALTERNATIVE COMICS!

HEY APATHY HEADS! I'm going to be performing live paintings and showing some new works & comics at the Wizard World Comic Convention http://www.wizardworld.com/home-toronto.html at the end of March! I haven't done any of these comic shows for awhile and am really excited to go back. Ever since I was a pint sized fan-boy buying evil dead and eraser head t-shirts I have always looked forward to hitting the comic cons. I exhibited at a couple of events in 2002-03 but sort of got sidetracked by the street performances after that. The outdoor interventions were amazing for many reasons, although producing comics was not one of them.As it stands things have come full circle and here I am headed back to the Comic circuit, my first and true love. It almost seems absurd to me now that I ended up as a performing artist exhibiting in galleries and producing work for places such as the A.G.O. and the HUDSON's Bay Company when all I ever really wanted to do was draw strange tales and Samurai comics. Well that's what I'm doing these days and I am pretty hyped up about getting the books out to all my freakishly bizarre friends and extraterrestrial fans at the comic con. See you all in March!

Life of a Canadian Artist

SUBMISSIONS!SUBMISSIONS!SUBMISSION. Today was a day of buearocratic paperwork. Alas the life of an artist is not all killing monsters and blowing up buildings. Sometimes us creative folk actually have to do work. Especially those of us without representation, so it goes. Fortunetly for me my organizational skills are starting to come together and I've much experience in the feild. The result being that these proposals get easier each time ( and subsequently increasingly profitable). This is a particularily busy time for the paper work as a number of the events I take part in annually have deadlines falling between Feb 15 - March 1. I sent a few things out over the web today including my Nuit Blanche application. Last year I did a live street painting & musical performance on Queen West. This year I'm going to try and get you guys to do all the work as I hope to install and conduct a sort of open canvas workshop in the same location. Truth be told I sick of drawing pictures and if I can get someone else to do it all the better! Just kidding. Actually the most exciting part of all my public performances and interventions has always been the interaction between my self, my art, and the audience. I thought it might be interesting to try and break the boundaries between artist & viewer through a more interactive performance this year. It will defenitely be interesting and very likey quite messy. Here are some samples of the kind of work I have to put into these proposals.

Floor plan foor a 10 x 20 ft. Multi-media Public installation:



The proposals also require visual support material of past projects. This one's from the Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition:

CANADIAN ART, THEATRE & LIVE PERFORMANCE!

HEY APATHY! Here are the first pics in my "life of an artist" blog. I've got two little amateur press publications going on in here. The first, which I haven't updated in a while, is my "ONLINECOMICBOOK" journal. That title is dedicated to a behind the scenes or directors commentary if you please, of all my comic book experimentation's. That blog is only going to list the HEY APATHY! comic book pages, revealing the motivations, inspirations, and secret codes behind the sequential artworks regarding the city of gears. I'm posting all my comics chronologically starting with some strange stories from 1999 on twitter and am using the blog to attempt to justify myself (my imaginary psychiatrist's orders...) The online comic also includes new autobiographical pages in order to contextualize and tie all the short adventures together. The last posting was in June 2009, but I am going to start up again full-force next week. The last eight months or so were spent trapped inside a computer in a near futile attempt to create a build-you-own style website. Now that the site is reasonably complete I can actually get back to work on the mythos. check out the first volume on my website.

This new diary is going to document all the other aspects of my artistic endeavors. Not only do I create comic books, but I am actually an active investigator, performer, fine artist ( whatever that is) and amateur musician. In this blog I am going to try and document the 3 dimensional aspects of my life as a Canadian Artist. Not to say that anything I do is actually interesting or even of the slightest importance, I just enjoy writing and figure the more I practice the better I'll get. This author/auteur aspiration actually started out on the streets where I discovered that the explanation of my work seemed to effect the audience equal to and often more than the visuals or drawings themselves. I am now attempting to translate the spoken word aspect of my performances into paragraph form on the new website/graphic novel and have come to realize that it is no easy task. Anyways bare with me as I attempt to replace my ers, ands, ands ums, with subsequently, incongruously, and quite possibly a number of of other sagacious verbal abnormalities.

LIVE PAINTING & THEATRE at the PASSE MURAILLE

Here's some pics of me painting at the PASSE MURAILLE live theatre for the performing arts this past Tuesday Feb. 9/2010. The theatre had a cocktail party, silent auction and live dance/play performance fundraiser in which I was asked to perform and donate my artwork in support of the amazing venue. I was set up in the main lobby and got to work on this little cartoon landscape around 6:30. The entire painting was finished in just under an hour and auctioned off to a patron named Jane after a modest but fruitful bidding war. I had actually met Jane a few years back while painting out in the wild (Queen Street West) and instantly recognized her. Jane was very excited to have found me and said she had been looking for me on the streets but feared she would never see me again. I'm glad the painting got a loving home.

Almost Finished! The auction, and painting was from 6:30-7:30

The amazing thing about doing these performance artworks is the fact that I actually get to interact with people, sharing opinions and ideas in a manner unobtainable in the studio or gallery setting. I always find that although many people could take it or leave it, those who actually approach me end up getting (and giving) a somewhat mystical experience and exchange. One of the onlookers, whom I had never met before, was absolutely amazed at my creative process and told me that "it is the theatre, music, and arts that make the rest of the world bearable" I don't think I've ever received such a high compliment in all of my days.




Another fellow called me a "fake" and attempted to accuse me of being a Kieth herring impersonator. I told him that Herring's artwork and approach were extremely influential to my minimalist performance pieces and that I truly respected and honoured the lineage but hoped to always add my own brand of Gothic metropolitan pessimism to the paintings. His shoulders relaxed and he replied " Yeah it's fun, but effective". I call this "talking zen" and truly thrive on changing skeptical opinions about not only what I do but about life in general. I promise you HEY APATHY! is much more than a parody, it is a means of communication, education, interaction and of hope.




As well as the praise and degradation, I also find the providence of experience in live painting unlike anything I have ever known or studied. The ability of the paintings to connect with peoples of all ages and of all walks of life is incredible. I have sold t-shirts to homeless derelicts and been a guest at some of the worlds most revered dinner tables as a result of my mentally unbalanced campaign. The Passe Muraille event was a rather ritzy one and everyone wall dressed to kill and the scent of perfume drowned out that of the champagne. I always end up meeting and associating with the servers, the performers, and the honoured guests and never feel out of place or class regardless of the spotlight or otherwise. The laughing lady in the red (first photo) is Olivia Chow, former Toronto city councilor and member of parliament. She came up to me after the auction to congratulate me on the piece and was rather amazed at how quickly I was able to produce the work. The man in the snazzy coat is Chris Bell (second picture), a member of the board of directors at the theatre and a true patron of the arts in his own right. Chris has been an integral contributor to the HEY APATHY! project for many years as he financed my first website as well as the amazing Wollesely street mural ). Chris also saved my a- before the show. I was running late and made a few mistakes in preparing my supplies for the event but fortunately Chris was more than willing to provide the necessary transportation to get me & my paints to the show on time. We had to put some paints, a stretcher, easel and paper into his classy convertible but Chris was more than willing to take the risk. Luckily nothing was spilt or damaged inside his beautiful automobile. THANKS CHRIS, Jane, Aviva, and all the other folks who made the Gala a roaring success!