I was in a writing group with Greg Chomichuk - the artist/writer behind Alchemical Press - the summer before I got knocked up, and I'm really impressed with what he's come up with since then, what he's trying to do, what he IS doing.At the launch, he did a exercize with audience members called the Exquisite Corpse.
He had different people draw the head, torso and legs of a monster on pieces of paper, which he then collected for use in the next issue of the Imagination Manifesto.
Which is both clever AND interactive, to my mind.
Except I was too tired to play along and so just sat there with my launch wine, watching Greg badger people into drawing just one more set of legs or another head...and even making sure that the penis-head someone drew wasn't given to his high school students for completion.
And then he picked one corpse at random and drew it on the canvas that was sitting on an easel next to the podium.
He drew this monster in five minutes. (The skyline was already present...) Which is hateful, I know. Especially when you consider that the stories underlying the images are just as strong.
When I went up to get my book 'signed' - which means both a signature and a sketch in graphic novel-land - Greg squinted at me.
"Do you want a hero or a monster?" he asked.
Given that my book title was on the cover as a part of the blurb I'd given them via my participation on the jury for Best First Book at last year's Manitoba Book Awards - and that my book is mostly about tits - there was only one possible answer to that question.
"I want a tit monster!" I said.
And that is what I got.
I also got really drunk very quickly on launch wine, given that I had run straight from work and not had dinner. (They had eight bottles of wine for the event! Eight! So the four glasses I drank was not so entirely gluttonous...)
Yay! Fun!
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