Hardy-har-harmony

>> West Coast cartoonists tune in for the
Music of Hickee Mountaingroup art show

PEAK PERFORMANCES: Paintings by Graham Annable (above)
and Scott Campbell (below)

A gaggle of illustrators, animators and game-graphic designers from San Francisco, Portland and Toronto are rolling into town for a group show of paintings with a musical theme. As unique as each artist’s style may be, the seven of them—Graham Annable, Scott Campbell, Razmig Mavlian, Nathan Stapley, Joe White, Vamberto Maduro and Paul Brown—are united by a knack for graphic efficiency, their involvement in the Hickee anthology and, as Hickee editor Annable explains, some weird ideas about what’s funny.

Mirror: Are the Hickee anthologies an outlet for ideas and fun that your regular work doesn’t permit?

Graham Annable: Doing the Hickee comic for the last five years fluctuates between being an outlet from our day jobs and just operating as a funnel for screwy ideas. More than anything, it’s an attempt to get us all laughing at each other’s comics until there are tears and nasty stomach-aches.

M: Above and beyond your professional circumstances, what do you think unifies the Hickee folks? Technique? Sensibility?

GA: Sensibility. Far and away. Hickee formed from numerous doodle sessions spent at cafés around the Bay area. We’d do little jam comics and really get on some hilarious rolls with them. Our sense of humour as a group just clicked. It’s been an absolute blast to carry it to another level, doing a published comic and watching everyone’s skills and humour evolve.

M: Conversely, what makes each of the participating artists distinctive?

GA: As much as we’re all on a similar wavelength for humour, I think visually we’ve all got quite distinctive styles. And certain themes and settings seem to belong to different folks. Scott Campbell does the best knights eating pizza slices that I know of. Hands down. He’s got that market cornered for sure.

M: What will your show up here involve?

GA: Paintings done by the seven different artists. The contributors were free to interpret the theme any which way they liked. And as much variety as I know you’ll see, you can be certain that there’ll be an overwhelming flavour of bizarre humour that runs through it all.

Music of Hickee Mountain opens
at Red Bird Studios (135 van Horne)
on Thursday, April 26, 8 p.m., free