Virtual Memories Show 600:
Joe Coleman
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Spotify | TuneIn | RSS | More
“I don’t step back that often when I’m in there, because I’m inside this tiny bit of the universe. For me, that’s what living things are: endless world within world within world within world.”
For my 600th episode, the great artist Joe Coleman joins the show to celebrate his phenomenal new career-spanning retrospective book, A DOORWAY TO JOE: The Art of Joe Coleman (Fantagraphics). We talk about art, mortality, mythography, history, the corruption of the flesh, the nature of evil, his Odditorium & the power of relics, Dr. Mombooze-o‘s send-off for his dead parents, playing Whac-A-Mole with T-cell lymphoma, getting arrested for being an Infernal Machine, taxi-driving in NYC’s Travis Bickle era, the inspiration of the Hubble telescope, the pagan Celtic roots in Irish Catholicism, what it’s like to work on one square-inch of a painting for 8 hours at a time, our respective appearances on the Uncle Floyd Show, playing in the Steel Tips with Patrick McDonnell & Karen O’Connell, and how he found his love and muse in Whitney Ward. (Also, this one’s got an interminable intro, so jump to the 15:45 mark to start the conversation.) Give it a listen! And go lose yourself in A DOORWAY TO JOE!
“Even when my paintings are based on a historical subject, I still approach it like a self-portrait.”
“An afterlife? You gotta concentrate on this life, that’s what I need to do. I’ll find out about the other stuff when I need to.”
“I work on wood, not canvas, because I want the surface as smooth as glass. Any texture would prevent the information I could uncover.”
“It’s the corruption of the flesh that makes us all one, and it is holy as well.”
Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes!
Lots of ways to follow The Virtual Memories Show! iTunes, Spotify, BlueSky, Instagram, YouTube, Tumblr, and good ol’ RSS!
About our Guest
Joe Coleman is a world-renowned painter, writer, and performer who has exhibited for five decades in major museums throughout the world including one-man exhibitions at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Kunst-Werke Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin, the Barbican Centre in London, and Tilton Gallery and Dickinson Gallery in New York. His collectors have included Iggy Pop, Jim Jarmusch, Anthony Bourdain, Leonardo DiCaprio, and H.R. Giger. He was the subject of an award-winning feature length documentary, Rest in Pieces: A Portrait of Joe Coleman (1997) and lives with his wife Whitney Ward in upstate New York.
Follow Joe on Instagram.
Credits: This episode’s music is Fella by Hal Mayforth, used with permission from the artist. The conversation was recorded at Joe & Whitney’s home on a pair of Blue enCORE 200 microphones feeding into a Zoom PodTrak P4 digital recorder & interface. I recorded the intro and outro on a Heil PR-40 Dynamic Studio Recording Microphone feeding into a Zoom PodTrak P4. All processing and editing done in Adobe Audition CC. Photos of me, Joe & Whitney by me. It’s on my instagram.
(Drawn & Quarterly)! We talk about those aforementioned pleasures, the boredom of the modern flaneur, his evolution from genre fandom to “literary comics” (my awful term, not his), the danger in comics becoming over-academic, the challenges of writing a world history, and more! 
, 
, 
, 
, and 
.
feeding into a 
digital recorder. I recorded the intro and outro on a 
feeding into a 
and then into a 
. Photo of Mr. Katchor at his drawing desk by Keetja Allard, photo from his Twitter avatar by ???.
(Regan Arts). We talk about his own career at The New Yorker, marrying a fellow cartoonist, becoming a cartoon detective, the allure of Arno and the days when cartoonists were cited in gossip mags, why it took him 15 years to write this biography, and more! 
, and 
. With Ms. Donnelly he co-authored 
, 
and 
. They also co-edited several cartoon anthologies. Maslin’s work has appeared in numerous magazines and cartoon anthologies.
digital recorder. Photos of Mr. Maslin and Mr. Langridge by me. Live-drawing of me and Mr. Maslin by 
(Fantagraphics). This new 200-page work chronicles Bill’s mother’s affair with the cartoonist Lawrence Lariar, and explores notions of family, infidelity, art, vanishing New York, the transience of reputation and memory, and of course, comics. The book is so significant that I decided to have two separate sessions with Bill, one to discuss his background and his comics history, and the other to focus on Invisible Ink. In part 1, we tackle Bill’s discovery of underground comics and the scene in ’70s San Francisco, his fine art education, the inescapable importance of Robert Crumb, his collaboration with Art Spiegelman on Arcade magazine, how he wound up with a syndicated daily Zippy comic strip, his rediscovery of diners, muffler-men, and roadside advertising icons, his surprisingly youthful audience, the responsibility of blowing up his readers’ minds, and more! 
feeding into a 
digital recorder. I recorded the intro and outro on a 
. Processing was done in Audacity and Logic Pro. Photos of Mr. Griffith by me.