San Jose furry art exhibition calls for entries by December 31
Two galleries in downtown San Jose will be hosting open-to-the-public furry art shows concurrent with Further Confusion 2012, from January 12 (Thursday) to 21 (Saturday).
The stated objective of these shows is to get high-quality furry art out in the public, and to introduce San Jose's downtown gallery scene to the wealth of furry artwork. Local news media representatives will be invited to visit.
There is an open call for artwork, including con-badges, which will be printed by the show; the submission deadline is December 31. The shows are being organized independently of Further Confusion by its Art Track events lead, B. Root, creator of webcomic The Dawn Chapel.
The KALEID gallery and comic book publishers Slave Labor Graphics are hosting the shows.
About the author
EarthFurst — read stories — contact (login required)a Labrador Retriever from Vancouver, Canada, interested in furry and activism etc.
Comments
This sounds great! As a long-term collector of s-f and Furry art, from s-f conventions from the 1960s and Furry conventions from 1989 onward, I applaud this effort to get our specialized art before a general public audience, and to give Furry artists an opportunity to become better known. I look forward to hearing about the results of this public Furry art exhibition.
One quibble. The submission rules for the Conbadge category says, "Conbadges are an artform unique to the furry community." No. The tradition of Furry conbadges was copied from the earlier 1960s & 1970s s-f conventions, by artists like George Barr, Bjo Trimble, and other s-f fan artists.
Fred Patten
This has potential; I hope the participating artists get their work noticed by more people!
I keep a small binder of furry art that I can show to folks outside the fandom, although the opportunity to do so doesn't come up very often. The real challenge - after you eliminate the adult material and the pin-ups - what you're largely left with are single-character poses. Many of them are really nice, but don't say much from an artistic point of view other than "This is my character". So I go digging for images that have a lot of detail or are set against a background environment, or suggest a mood or a larger story, or simply ooze Character.
Like this image isn't a work of detailed, artistic skill, but it's an amusing character piece that suggests more than just the cat. There's also a certain artistry to more minimalist, animation/cartoony styles that I hope doesn't get overlooked at the exhibition - or more abstract, illustrative and design styles, like this.
Other nice images I stumbled across recently: Meradragon, Seyorrol, Louvelex, and RyanWardlow. (I'd link to more, but I have to run to catch a bus.)
I think it was a guy on PoE-News who called furry art "mostly portraiture." He meant that critically, but it might of been the nicest thing said about furry on that site. I don't see the problem, really; a furry work may emphasize cuteness, but it sometimes pays to remember that "cuteness" is not a negative attribute.
This is the one area where a little prurient interest is a good thing; furries need to extend there storytelling skills beyond "blah blah blah, then they have sex!" but visually, the question of what constitutes "sexually attractive" is where furry sometimes takes off and really becomes art, to me.
Of course, it often just "becomes" straight to porn, but I could sell furry pin-ups as art if I had to. Shoot, if I were under the old interview gun, sitting down with a reporter and going through the latest vixen thread on the /f/ board of fchan and discussing which ones I liked and which ones I didn't would probably not be to bad an idea; at the very least, it would be honest.
I went to the Slave Labor Graphics show - essentially a wall in a comic book store a few blocks from the main hotel. The pieces were plainly matted, with plenty of space between them. It was not unappealing, although it was also no better than what was happening in the convention's art show; there was just a lot less in the way of art, and fixed price tags.
Unfortunately, nobody else was there. The store was deserted when I visited (1PM Saturday), and I don't think anyone at the convention knew the exhibition was happening. The art track posters advertising it only seemed to go up on Saturday, and they were so heavy they kept falling down; I don't know if the events were otherwise promoted.
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