Here’s a welcome poster from Jonny Hannah, a timely reminder that the end is nigh, not long to wait now until the publication of his eagerly awaited book, Greetings from Darktown. It promises to be a rich treasury of many and various eye-catching mementos and proclamations.
ALL ROADS LEAD TO DARKTOWN
Herein lies mostly junk. A miscellany of debris, mostly from the collection of Mr Emmett Miller, proprietor of downtown Darktown’s Unquiet Grave emporium. He himself came by it from a variety of sources: leftovers from the Collyer brothers’ apartment and charity shops on Shirley high street; flotsam and jetsam from the shores of Fife and Coney Island, carried on the Sea of Possibilities, exhumed from the long-lost towns of yesteryear. What makes it all come together is the fact that I made it all – printed, drawn, hurriedly painted, cut out with a jigsaw, hammered together with cheap nails.
Dunfermline legend has it that I first drew Korky the Cat. Everybody was impressed, so I moved on to Desperate Dan. That pleased more, and I’ve kept copying ever since; appropriating, stealing, borrowing, but only sometimes giving back. The need to draw and make a mess took me over the Forth Bridge, first to Auld Reekie, then Liverpool Art School, then the Royal College of Art. I’m now a resident of sunny Southampton, where I teach and paint and draw. My studio is partly in a damp Victorian arch, under a bridge, where I work like a mole in the ground, and partly at home, at the Cakes & Ale Press HQ – a shed in our Shirley garden. Actually, the press itself is a movable feast, and often functions from the printroom in the downtown School of Art and Design, where I try my best to do a ‘proper’ job.
Order your copy here today! – Greetings from Darktown: An Illustrator’s Miscellany.
And don’t miss Jonny’s page at The Rowley Gallery.
