Join comic book collector Mike Moore, and three generations of artists from one family –Margot Kahn, Trudy Wiesenberger, and Toby Case–for a reception and conversation about their Art in the Library exhibits. Michael Moore’s comic book collection will be on display in the cases, and Trudy, Margot , and Toby present their work together for the first time on the library walls. Their paintings, drawings, collages and poems draw from their three unique and intertwined perspectives as students, teachers, and family.
In Mike’s own words:
Back in the 1940’s comic books were incredibly popular with all ages and I grew up reading Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories. But my whole life changed when I found a folded up copy of Mad comic book #5 on the Jr. High playground in 1952. I started to collect science fiction and horror comic books, but when my mother read in Reader’s Digest how those books caused children to become “Juvenile Delinquents” (and there were even U.S. Senate hearings!) I was sent out into the backyard to burn all of them in our 55 gallon trash can. (Today those comic books would be worth thousands of dollars.)
I continued to read the occasional comic book as I got older, but again my life changed in 1968 when I found a copy of Robert Crumb’s Zap Comix #1 at the City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco, and I started to read “Underground Comix”. A few years later I was working at the L.A. Free Press when I became acquainted with Gilbert Shelton (the cartoonist and comix book publisher) who encouraged me and a couple of friends to start publishing Comix, and so the “Los Angeles Comic Book Company” was born.
We managed to publish five books before the underground comix business began dying as the “Hippy” lifestyle (and its “Headshops”) began to fade. I donated the twenty-one boxes of the Moore Collection of Underground Comix to the Special Collections and Archives of the Robert E. Kennedy Library, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, California in 1993.
What you see in the library is what is left.
In Margot, Trudy and Toby’s words:
The Way We See It: Three Generations
Part-time Lopez resident Margot Kahn Case grew up painting and drawing at her artist mother’s studio table. When her son, Toby Case, won the Amazing Artist Award at school this year, neither Margot nor her mother, Trudy Wiesenberger, were surprised. In this show, Margot, Trudy and Toby present their work together for the first time. Their paintings, drawings, collages and poems draw from their three unique and intertwined perspectives as students, teachers, and family.
Margot Kahn Case is the author of the biography Horses That Buck, winner of the High Plains Book Award, and co-editor of the New York Times Editors’ Choice anthology This Is the Place: Women Writing About Home. Her essays and reviews have appeared in The Rumpus, Lenny Letter, BUST Magazine, Publishers Weekly, and elsewhere. Her poems have appeared in the Portland Review, Jabberwock Review and Crab Creek Review, among other places. Her poem “Winter” was chosen by Jericho Brown as the winner of the 2019 Crab Creek Review Poetry Prize. A former program manager for Seattle Arts & Lectures and Richard Hugo House, Margot has received artist awards from the Seattle Mayor’s Office of Arts & Culture and 4Culture, the King County Arts Commission.
Trudy Wiesenberger has been involved in the visual arts community her entire life: as an artist, educator, advocate, patron and curator. She began her career as an instructor in the education department at the Cleveland Museum of Art. In 1988 she created the art collection at University Hospitals in Cleveland and served as curator until she retired in 2011. She has served on the boards of the Cleveland Institute of Art, where she founded the Craft Council; the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland (MOCA); the Print Club of Cleveland; The Phoenix Art Museum’s Contemporary Forum and the Contemporary Art Society of the Cleveland Museum of Art. In 2010 she was awarded the Cleveland Arts Prize.
Toby Case is 8 years old and will begin 3rd grade in September. He loves dragons, bridges, board games, drawing, and pruning apple trees with his dad. In 2019 he won the Amazing Artist Award for 2nd grade.