A Colorful Bounty for All!

In 1997, I was asked to create an advertising mailer for Seattle’s Center On Contemporary Art’s Northwest Annual, a juried showing of regional art in a variety of disciplines, from painting to sculpture to photography to drawing. The judge that year being renowned Russian artist Alexander Melamid, one-half of Komar and Melamid, the duo known for their highly conceptual undertakings combining disparate artistic sources, often referred to as “Post-Art”. The center’s administrator, Susan Purvis, asked me to likewise think conceptually in order to create a unique form of presentation. Long having experimented with the fascinating, castaway nature of coloring books (see Busy Girls and this cover of The Stranger) I eagerly set to designing and writing an abbreviated coloring book, one that would, in the simple yet unmistakable language of the mass-market coloring book, tell the “story” of the Annual’s affair. I was extremely happy at how well-received the final piece turned out to be. To this day, it remains one of my very favorite such commissioned pieces. The following gallery takes you through the little book, page-by-page. I hope you enjoy it!