HELLLLLEN

I really neglected this hovel of a blog in 2012 (and a bit more in 2011), and I want to keep better track of my shit on here in 2013, but I gotta sweep away all the hairballs first and post all the odds and ends I never published properly. Let’s take a look back, in reverse order, shall we?

(WARNING: I know we live in an age of tumblr- and twitter-style brevity but this is a really long, livejournal-style post, so if yer just in it for the pretty pictures, just keep scrollin’ scrollin’ scrollin’. Also, there’s some NSFW shit near the bottom, so clutch your stupid pearls hard, you prudes)

DECEMBER 2012

“Sailor Scouts”, 2012
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I drew this Sailor Moon spread for forthcoming fanzine, MOON POWER. The Sailor Scouts battle Teen P.E. Queen Beryl after school, while their pigtailed ringleader gets a ride on Tuxedo Mask’s bosozoku bike.

NOVEMBER 2012

Calvin and I went to New York for the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Fest, and it ruled. I experienced frigid snow conditions, learned about the incredible style of pizza known as the SALAD SLICE, and fit in a quick modeling sesh, (HAHA HA HAAAA):

…

Now let’s never speak of it again.

OCTOBER 2012

We skipped APE this year and instead joined our friends on a working retreat in a geodesic dome,

in the desert, where we

communed with indigenous fauna, and

worked on our various comics and shit, and

formed a cult/Barbizon-style modeling agency.

All photos by the saucy Jenn! AND DOME FEST FOREVER AND EVER

SEPTEMBER 2012

Calvin and I flew to Bethesda, MD, for SPX, where Calvin’s great comic RAMBLE ON #2 was nominated for an Ignatz Award! I made a new tiny mini comic zine, LAST LETTER, which you gotta rip open in order to read the secret comic inside:

Buy it now. Or never!

A nice dude named Michael CK also interviewed me while I was tabling, and you can view my rambling oral spew here:

Hellen Jo at SPX’12 from Michael C K.

Before SPX, we returned to beautiful San Francisco for the San Francisco Zine Fest. The show was low-key but very enjoyable. Calvin and I also saw the AMAZING David Shrigley show, BRAIN ACTIVITY, at the YBCA. If you did not see this show, YOU ARE A FUCKING LOSER

JULY 2012

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My lucky ass got to go back to Germany for my first ever solo show, DEEP CUT, hosted by the incomparable Michael Meier, Lisa Röper, and Rita Fürstenau of ROTOPOL in Kassel. Here I am, posting a cut-out betch I constructed for the Rotopol store window (fotos by Michael!)

I also completed two new paintings for the show, which I never got a chance to post online before:

“So Now What” 2012
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“Wir Reisen Zusammen” 2012
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The show opening was totally rad; I drank hella beers (sorry, viel Bier) and ate so many hot dogs with American sauce (???) and laughed and laughed and laughed. I even sold some shit! Michael kindly took a lot of photographs of the show, of me painting, and of all of us preparing, all of which you can peruse here.

That same weekend I also toured the amazing and rare arts festival documenta with cool dude cartoonist, Thomas Wellman. It was a fucking bonanza of awe-inspiring site-specific installations.

I went to Berlin for a few days afterwards, had a grand fucking time, and returned to the US shortly thereafter, my Deutsch language skills not at all improved.

JUNE 2012

C-dub and I went to Chicago for CAKE, which RULED. While there, we ate shitloads of Chicago dogs, excellent Vietnamese food with my sister’s long lost middle school friend, and saw a crazy kunstkammer-style exhibit of death-themed art objects at the Chicago Cultural Center.

MAY 2012

Calvin and I tabled at our first festival of the year at TCAF in Toronto. I put out the naked lady zine, DEEP CUT and bought a shitload of comics. Afterwards, I oozed my way through a haze of flu hallucinations during a solo week of vacation in Montreal, which, in spite of the ooze, was really lovely.

JANUARY 2012

I illustrated my first book cover, for Mimi Thi Nguyen’s The Gift of Freedom: War, Debt, and Other Refugee Passages. I continue to be SO HONORED!!!! See the original painting and post here

NOVEMBER 2011

I did this painting for the Rotopol group show, Villain, and I neglected to post it!

Totem, 2011
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Totem, detail

SEPTEMBER 2011

If you read VICE, you might have seen these already, either in print or on the internet, but I never bothered to post them properly to this site. As you’ll see, this shit is *NSFW* and *NOT APPROPRIATE FOR KIDS*. So get the fuck outta here, kids.

The rest of you, leer on; I did four spot illustrations for a brief guide to female masturbation (click each to enlarge, you dirty old man):

The header!

An illustration of how one might achieve the O, hands-free and on the subway:

Passing out when it takes too long:

No comment:

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So there you are; a little more than a year of back-logged shit, finally spilled out on to the concrete for all to see. I’ve got some old-ass short comics to post too, but that’ll have to wait. Thanks for sticking it out, and see you again soon!