Books with Pictures Comic Con

Kestrel’s Art

Dear Liza,

You know that your cousin Kestrel has always been interested in arts and crafts.

Since she was young, she has been designing costumes and clothes for dolls (and herself).

She’s always had a creative bent and a fine eye for drawing. And since she enrolled in da Vinci Arts Middle School, her talents have grown! This year, she made her jellyfish hat for SOAK.

She has had a table at Auntie Katie’s Books with Pictures ComicCon, where she gave people temporary tattoos.

And to share her love of arts and crafts, she had a booth at this years’ SOAK festival called Craft Soup, where she dished out all sorts of crafty supplies and helped people be creative!

This year she had been learning ceramics and yesterday, at her 13th birthday party, she gave ME her latest ceramic creation. It is a dish with a map of my favorite place in Portland, Laurelhurst Park!! It even has a duck swimming in Firwood Lake.

Can you believe it? It’s about 9 inches wide and 5 inches high, and will easily hold cookies, grapes, and other yummy things. It also looks good just sitting on the table.
I am astonished at her skill and humbled by her generosity.

As I tell you all the time, I am one lucky Grandma.

Love,

Grandma Judy

Books with Pictures Comic Con Part 2

Dear Liza,

Besides family, friends, and artist tables at the Books with Pictures Comic Con, there were all sorts of activities. The Garden Stage (in the beautiful garden Katie has been nurturing for a few years) was home to a cosplay contest for kids and adults.

Elias, a very young Jedi, won the kid’s division. He had forgotten his light saber at home, so Katie gave him one of hers, made for Free Comic Book Day from a pool noodle. He was delighted!

There was a cartooning duel, with pairs of artists trying to out-think and out-draw each other. The first contest had a random doodle as the prompt, which led to these awesome drawings….

A windsurfing puffin and a coffee drinking moose.

Douglas Wolk hosted a Trivia contest with really hard questions! Besides being an author of books about comics (“All the Marvels” is his latest), he also teaches classes about them. These were really interesting questions, like “Which American comic strip has run since 1914 and only had three artists?” I’ll let you look up the answer, if you like.

There were also discussions and interviews, featuring Kelly Sue Deconnick, Leela Cormac, and Carl Sciacchitano.

The last act of the day was Lizzy Kirby, who plays guitar and sings lovely songs about love and cats. She sang my favorite, with the catchy chorus of “Meow meow meow meow, meow meow meow.”

To make sure we had ann exciting day, between all the art, contests, and interviews, we had a few spats of strong winds that blew in rain and hail and tried to carry away the inventory!

Tents rattled, comics went flying, and folks scrambled to hang onto their banners. Each storm lasted about ten minutes, then we would have sparkling sun for an hour or so.

It was very …. Let’s say entertaining. More tomorrow!

Love,

Grandma Judy

Books with Pictures Comic Con Part 1

Dear Liza,

This past weekend was the third BWiPCon, an outdoor comic convention held down at Auntie Katie’s book shop. It was amazing!

The event was bigger this year, with the street closed for a whole long block and the garden being used for performances, interviews, and contests. Fifty vendors sold books, art, jewelry, and all sorts of beautiful, cute, and delightfully odd stuff.

Auntie Bridgett had her Auntie Beeswax booth, of course, and met lots of folks who read her comic in The Willamette Week newspaper.

We helped with set up and got to meet a ‘new’ cousin! Grandpa Nelson’s Aunt Bonnie had seven kids, and her eldest was George. George’s son, who goes by D, came up to help with the con. He worked like crazy!

D set up a dozen tents, carried anything that needed carrying, cleared gutters, and set up the stage. I was so happy to meet him and grateful for his hard work on the busy day.

Auntie Katie worked hard, too, before, during and after the event. Her volunteers were so well organized that the vendors felt well-cared for and appreciated.

Andrea Gilroy, Katie’s business partner at Books with Pictures in Eugene, came up to help, and it was good to see her and Katie having a nice visit. Good friends can sure help lighten the load.

I will tell you more about BWiPcon tomorrow!

Love,

Grandma Judy

Books with Pictures ComicCon, 2023 Part 2

Dear Liza,

During the Books with Pictures Comic Con, the garden saw a lot of action!

Two lovely people with the unlikely names of Bugchampciri and 2broke4cosplay (these are their Instagram handles) organized and judged the costume contest. Kids from about eight years old to adults in their thirties came to strut their cosplay stuff.

Everyone looked incredible and got lots of compliments on their outfits. What was even more amazing was the dozen or so folks in costumes who weren’t in the contest, but just walking around shopping and chatting.

Later in the day, the garden hosted an Art Battle, with cartoonists in competition to draw the best improvised ‘toon. I watched Ron Chan and Kate Faris drawing “Creepy Farting Tacos” and it was delightful.

After lunch, Douglas Wolk ran a trivia contest. I didn’t get to see it, but was told by several contestants that they had “arrived with confidence” and had been “quickly humbled” by the difficulty of the questions. Douglas is an Eisner Award-winning comics expert. He doesn’t mess around.

The last panel of the day was Nola Pfau, Laura Hudson and Douglas Wolk discussing comics criticism… that is, how to think about, talk about, or write about comics as a genre of literature and art.

For the closing act in the garden, Lizzy Kirby sang delightful, original songs, my favorite having “Meow, meow, meow meow, meow meow” as its chorus. We all joined in, of course.

For part of the day, Kestrel had her art table set up near the garden, as well, doing small sketches for folks for tips. She did very well and retired early.

Here are just a few of the folks on clean up duty…me, Katie, Kenny and his daughter Vanessa, and Mads. Kenny’s wife Jessica took the picture, and was working, too. Katie’s staff member Elizabeth was down the street folding and lifting tents into the garage. The whole day was an amazing tour de force of teamwork.

Something as complicated as a ComicCon takes dozens of people who are good at their jobs working really hard. I am very proud of Auntie Katie and her companions for the work they did.

Love,

Grandma Judy

Books with Pictures ComicCon, 2023 Part 1

Dear Liza,

This past Saturday was the second annual Books with Pictures Comic con, held at Auntie Katie’s bookshop. Of course, Auntie Bridgett set up her Auntie Beeswax booth.

The whole day was busy, fun and exhausting! Happily, it went very smoothly, mostly because of Katie’s wonderful staff and dozens of volunteers. Here is Alex, who was on the morning shift, getting everyone’s tents set up.

Once everyone was set up, I took a few minutes and gave the garden a good watering. Our weather has been very hot, and the garden was going to see a lot of action during the comic con.

The food carts that are behind Books with Pictures were doing a fine business, with everyone enjoying sandwiches from Underbite and waffles from Honeycuspe.

Auntie Katie was busy all day, making sure vendors had everything they needed and that visitors felt welcome.

There were fifty different vendors showing buttons, books, stickers, cards, patches, earrings, clothes, magnets, zines, games, and all sorts of handmade goodies.

Staff member Nico even designed a pamphlet that had a map and list of vendors and a schedule of activities that were going to happen in the garden.

We got to meet a lot of interesting and friendly people and see wonderful art, and by the end of the day we were pretty much wiped out. Until next year, BwPcon!

Love,

Grandma Judy

Finding the Silly at BwiP Con

Dear Liza,

When I was growing up, a “Convention” didn’t sound like very much fun. A big room full of businessmen talking about business. Ugh.

Comic Conventions helped change that. The Stumptown Comics Festival, in 2004, included a Comic Art Battle which was described as a “combination of Pictionary and wrestling”.

BwiPCon at Books with Pictures had lots of silly, as well.

Since it was an outside event, there were bubbles. Really big bubbles. Seeing a hundred people through the lens of a giant bubble is something I never even knew I was missing!

There were dogs.

Since it was comics, there were costumes.

There were trees, and a garden.

And sometimes there were bubbles and dogs and trees all at once!

I look forward to BwiP 2!

Love,

Grandma Judy