I’m speaking at Art Center this month for the school’s “Illustration Mandatory Meeting”. You are MANDATED to watch me flap my gums, dear illustration students! Unfortunately, I don’t think this is open to the public, but perhaps there are some non-illustration students who would be interested in coming too.

Hey all,
The studio will be CLOSED May 5-13. Why? Toronto and TCAF! I made this year’s poster! I will be on a panel with Adrian Tomine and Lorenzo Mattotti (!?)! TCAF is always great! Come visit! (Details below.)

Here is my TCAF schedule:

SATURDAY, May 7

Signing, Beguiling/D+Q Table: 1:30-3:30

A6: Balancing a Canadian Identity w/ Working in the Mainstream
Panelists: Darwyn Cooke, Ray Fawkes, Kathryn and Stuart Immonen, and Jillian Tamaki
Moderated by Robin McConnell
Location: The Pilot
Time: 3:30 – 4:30

What part does being a Canadian play in a comic creator’s storytelling? With many of the largest comics companies being based in the United States, and publishers and an audience that have a US sensibility, how do Canadian creators retain their sense of self while working on licensed properties, or even graphic novels edited and published by people not from the same country that they are? This panel examines the Canadian identity in terms of the mainstream comics market.

7: Doug Wright Award Ceremony… my book Indoor Voice is nominated!

_____

Saturday, May 8

U2: Illustration
Panelists: Lorenzo Mattotti, Jillian Tamaki, Adrian Tomine
Moderated by Caitlin McGurk
Location: The Pilot
Time: 12:30 – 1:30

Many cartoonists also have a career in illustration. Come listen to four prestigious comics artists and illustrators discuss the difference between creating in a narrative form (comics) and a static one (illustration).

Signing, Beguiling/D+Q Table: 1:30-3:30

So please come visit me if you’re in Toronto. Indoor Voice and Skim will be available. All info here.

I will be speaking with Sam Weber at the California College of Arts next Tuesday, March 8, 2011, 7–9 pm. The event is open to the public, I’ve been told. All info here.

I am back from EuroTour 2010. A few notes.

PARIS. What a town! It’s completely cliché to sing praise about Paris, but hey. Gorgeous and interesting and tasty falafels. What else do you need? Junior high school French immersion kicked in and I felt like a jerk American tourist only some of the time, as opposed to all of the time, as I had feared.

I spent most of the day walking around and being a flâneur (as one does). I forgot my camera battery again, as I did in California and Comic-con, so I suppose 2010 will go down in history as the year I didn’t go anywhere. If you didn’t take a picture of it, did it really happen?

So I mostly just wandered but did decide to brave the crowds on my last day and visit the Louvre. Idea: just cut to the chase and put the Mona Lisa in a special room just off the entrance near the gift shop. In-and-out, one stop shopping! I suppose I’m an elitist for thinking one should go to a museum because you find the objects interesting, not to tick off a Paris Top Ten list. (But I digress… this happens to be one of my biggest pet peeves.) I did a new thing: I happened to have a pen and my daytimer and did some quick drawings of some of the objects. A great way to spend the morning and facilitate awkward, stunted conversations with little French children. The results are in this post.

Dutch cartooning is alive and kicking! The guys at Lambiek bookstore in Amsterdam were proud to show us their favourite comic artists such as Gummbah, Brecht Evens, Herr Steele/Kamagurka (Cowboy Henk), and a comic that I can’t remember the title of but had a picture of a guy with a giant penis on it. The Dutch! Anyway, did you know that Holland is the only country with an official government appointed ambassador of comics? His name is Gertjan Pos we drank jenever with him.

In the Netherlands and Belgium, we met a lot of people and signed a lot of books. “We” meaning me, my cousin Mariko, and Nate Powell, whose book Swallow Me Whole was also published in Dutch. Nate is a fabulous person and I was so glad to have met him. We were all over the place, including the famous Lambiek bookstore in Amsterdam (awesome), the Willem de Kooning Academie (where I met a fellow Albertan! Hi Erica!), and the Kunststripbeurs comic fair in Utrecht, where I met Joost Swarte, which was thrilling. I was pleased to meet Ward Zwart who came from Antwerp. I’m a fan.

So thank-you to everyone who came and visited us! And thanks to our publisher, Sherpa, for the translation.

The Studio is closed! I return Nov 9.

Details of Dutch Book Tour here.

Some other parting news notes:

-SKIM is on the long list for Canada Reads Novel of the Decade! Wow. Voting is open to ANYONE. Vote here!

-I’m in good company for Robin McConnell’s INKSTUDS book, which is comprised of interview transcripts from his excellent podcasts. I am always cutting Robin off in our interviews. Because I am rude. AND I LOVE COMICS!

-This is a freaking amazing magazine cover.

(Cats above are for MORE Magazine. AD Claudia Ameida.)

Skim will soon be available in another language. So far we’re up to French, Japanese, Spanish, Dutch… Italian and Portuguese are to come! The publisher is of the Dutch editionSherpa and they’ll be be shuttling us around Holland and Belgium in a little under two weeks!

Here is a list of events:

Tues, Nov 2
5: Presentation and Press Release, Lambiek (Amsterdam, Holland)

Wed, Nov 3
Lecture/Workshop, Willem de Kooning Academy, Rotterdam. (closed to public.)
4-6: Signing, Stripwinkel SJORS bookshop (Dordrecht, Holland)

Thurs, Nov 4
3-5.30: Signing, De Stripkever (Mechelen, Belgium)

Fri, Nov 5
12-2: Signing, Het B-Gevaar (Brussels, Belgium)
4-6: Signing, Het Besloten Land (Leuven, Belgium)

Sat, Nov 6
11-4: Launch and Signings, Stripkunstbeurs/Comic Art Show (Utrecht, Brussels)

(If you’re an illustrator and have no interest in comics at all, please also come say hi! I will not pressure sell to you!)

Things are busy around here. But I have some NEWS.

#1: HOLLAND! BELGIUM! Mariko and I will be launching the Dutch translation in Europe in November! I will give more details as all is finalized. Lots of thanks to the Canada Council for the Arts for providing us with funding. It’s amazing that such an institution exists to help the Arts thrive in Canada… we Canadians are very lucky.

#2: I’m in Giant Robot this month. I haven’t even seen it yet! Normally I would jaunt over to GRNY in the East Village, but alas, the place was recently closed down. Fun fact: I was in GRNY’s 2nd show in 2005, mere months after I moved to NY.

#3: I’m going to be at the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival on December 4. It promises to be bigger, better, and there MAY BE T-SHIRTS done by yours truly? Stay tuned.

I was highly impressed by the quality of food all over California, actually. Highlights? Anchor Oyster Bar in SF, Oomasa in LA, Taqueria De Amigos (located in a GAS STATION) in Pescadero, and Pancho Villa in SF.

Hate mail? Love mail? Email! jill (AT) jilliantamaki (DOT) com

So I’m just getting back into the swing of things after our epic California trip. Here is a con report!

(You can also read it LARGER.)

There are a few other things to mention:

1. I rebuilt my portfolio site. www.jilliantamaki.com was hacked very badly and removing the hack proved more irritating than scrapping the thing and starting anew. I pared it down and added annotations to some of the pieces. I’ll be polishing it up over the next few weeks, but I really, really needed The Internet to stop thinking I was running some kind of sex-aid pharmacy. Although I AM Canadian…

2. I am part of a new anthology: Marvel Strange Tales II. Yes, I am now a Marvel Artist. How effing cool is THAT?! I made a short comic about Dazzler. So much fun. Can’t wait to share more of this project.

3. Indoor Voice. Did I mention that I already? Well, I added some pictures!

Links to some of the pertinent people in the above comic:
Peter Birkemoe (The Beguiling)
Chris Butcher
James Sturm
Gabrielle Bell
Vanessa Davis, whose book “Make Me A Woman” is terrific
Trevor Alixopulos
Mimi Pond
Angie Wang
Hellen Jo
Sam Weber, of course
Heidi MacDonald
Hope Larson
Bryan Lee O’Malley
Eric Nakamura, of Giant Robot

I will be out of the studio July 14-25. In California!

July 14-18: ICON6. I will be the one riding the taco trucks Teen-Wolf style around Los Angeles.

July 22-24: COMIC-CON. This is my first SDCC and I am a featured guest AND my little petit-livre Indoor Voice will debut there! Holy Crow. Here is my schedule, as it stands now… all signings will be conducted out of the D&Q booth, #1529. Please come to see me!

Thursday
3-4: Signing, D&Q booth, #1529 [I am praying to the comic gods I will be there on time.... flying in from SF but a few hours before]

Friday
2–3: Graphic Novels: The Personal Touch—You know when you read it: that certain something that sticks out in a graphic novel. It’s the personal touch, a work that draws on the life of the creator or the people around him or her. Call the work autobiographical, call it reality—many times it results in truly personal and inspiring comics. Comics creator and journalist Shaenon Garrity (Narbonic, Skin Horse) talks to Comic-Con special guests Gabrielle Bell (Cecil & Jordan in New York), Howard Cruse (Stuck Rubber Baby), Vanessa Davis (Make Me a Woman), Larry Marder (Beanworld), Jillian Tamaki (Skim), and Carol Tyler (You’ll Never Know Book 1: A Good and Decent Man) about their very personal work. Room 4

3-5: Signing, D&Q booth, #1529

12-3: Signing, D&Q booth, #1529