The Box Show is Back !

 Gallery Route One’s annual Box Show is on in Pt. Reyes Station.

The Box Show is a major fundraiser for Gallery Route One in Pt. Reyes Station in west Marin County. 

The basic process is this: Each participating artist is given an unadorned pine box. You can pretty much do anything to it as long as elements of the original box remains in the piece (this could potentially mean that the box is dismantled, ground to dust or even burned).

Molly and I have worked as a team on boxes for the show for (an astonishing) 28 years according to my current reckoning!

Artistically, Molly and I comes from two different aesthetic worlds. 

She’s an SF Art Institute trained painter (primarily portraits) and I’m a black ‘n’ white graphics guy, tending usually toward comic art.  

So, our team-ups are always odd mash-ups, sometimes tending to lean towards her sensibilities, sometimes mine. This year’s entry was pretty elementary.  I imagined an ISS style space station and Molly shrugged and said sure.

I started with a scribble of an idea.

I penciled and inked my two astronauts.

Ditto for the space station (my cartoon space station is seriously inaccurate to the real International Space Station--- but it fit on the box !)

I spent a great deal of time doodling all sorts of ISS style equipment in the interiors.

I dropped the “walls" in to be adhered.

While I was doing all that Molly was going into full Hubble Telescope mode creating an entire universe on the exteriors of the box.

Molly decided the station needed thrusters and glued on the caps from our art fixative spray cans on the underside.

I inserted our astronauts with supports from behind so that they would float appropriately.

The show runs from August 29 to Sept. 26th

Closing reception Friday September 25, 5-7pm

Gallery Route One can be found at 11101 Highway One, Ste. 101

Point Reyes Station, California

galleryrouteone.org/boxshow

Larry's Cartoon Vault: Patrick Oliphant

 Here's a few more clips from the archives of the great Pat Oliphant

"Keep your head down--these swamps are full of communists!

(No, these are not current event cartoons. These were down decades ago).

When I was a teenager and Oliphant first came upon the American scene,

I wrote him a fan letter. I got a very nice response back along with an autographed print of one of his cartoons (he wasn't giving away any original artwork!). Unfortunately, neither the letter nor the print made it this far on my particular voyage but I did manage over the years to eventually purchase a couple of sketches by the great cartoonist.

Here's a rough for a Reagan cartoon:

RIP Patrick Oliphant. July 24, 1935--July 13, 2026

1968

1973

1973

1976

1977

1976

1986

Bronze sculpture of LBJ

Bronze Sculpture of Nixon

Oliphant was arguably the greatest editorial cartoonist of the 20th century.  Some compared him to Thomas Nast.  With a single cartoon Oliphant could manage to anger and offend people of opposing political positions. The above selection is some of his gentler works.

Cartoonist Par Holman RIP

I didn’t know cartoonist Par Holman very well. Back in my cartooning days, we met at various comic con get-togethers like the San Diego Con or the Bay Con. We corresponded a bit and traded sketches (we probably appeared in print together a few times). 

But I knew of him most of my life—at least since I was a middle schooler.

We came from the same planet of impassioned, nerdy, comic fans.

As with so many figures in the early days of geeky comics fandom, long before comic book shops, comic book conventions, cosplay, podcasts and Instagram, like minded folks got together by way of purple-inked mimeographed publications know as fanzines.

I first became aware of Par (then Parley) Holman by way of Fighting Hero Comics #12 (1964).

As suggested by the cover, Dimension Man --amazingly originated in 1961 -- was from Holman’s earlier fanzine Spotlight (I never saw that one).

An ad from Rocket’s Blast Comicollector #35 (1965) for “Never to Be Forgotten” #1 (RBCC was a ‘major’ fanzine of the day boasting a press run of 650 copies !)

By way of these fanzines, I became familiar with people who seemed to remain present for the rest of my life, many became artists, writers, editors….

I met Par probably in the late 1970’s, certainly by the beginning of the 1980’s.

This I know because I have surviving correspondence and sketches from him.

He was a nice guy, very accessible--- and a very good cartoonist.

Par Holman at his "Basil Wolverton" finest at the SD Con 1983

Around the time we met, he became an active, major (if you will) presence in the mini-comics movement.

He produced handfuls of titles and contributed to many mini-anthologies including Noo Toons, Lil New Wavers, Par Holman's Secret Files, Vault of Humor, Copy This!, Santa Punk, History and Techniques of Surrealism, and on and on.

Beyond the mini world he had worked in commercial art and contributed writing and art to various comic books and magazines including Ardvark, Dr. Wirtham's Comix & Stories, Our Story Thus Far, Graphic Fantasy, Promethean Enterprises and Treasury of Mini Comics.

For more information on Par holman check out:

The Minicomix Revolution 1969-1989 by Bruce Chrislip

and the Poopsheet Foundation:

Poopsheet Foundation

https://www.poopsheetfoundation.com/index.php/list-alpha/m