I created a zine for a show I did for a show in Manila curated by my friend Mariano Ching called Saturday Fun Machine. Here’s a couple of recent reviews of the show.

From Poopsheet:

Justin Giampaoli
THUNDER ISLAND by Tim Brown

This ‘zine style book quickly grabs your attention with an attractive wrap around cover design and overall sense of packaging that I just loved. Having consumed as much pop culture as I have in the form of comics, books, magazines, movies, music, and fine art over the years, it’s rare for me to find something I’ve never seen before. Brown’s introductory text summarizing his early years is an example of an original and clever trick that I appreciated. Thunder Island is a little slow to get going, but enjoyable once it does. Brown begins discussing the background of the namesake of his school, notes about his first grade teacher and a slightly humorous anecdote, a fight with his mortal enemy Ernie (which is a good lesson in never appeasing an aggressor – that’s “standing up to a bully” in kid speak), and has very funny and on point observations about the difference between boys and girls bathrooms as an explanation for social behavior. The boy’s bathroom, with its “institutional style,” means it would be a “foaming pants situation before I ever took a dump in there.” He proceeds with my favorite part of the book, in discussing the “ladies of the second grade,” including Carmen Dresch, who grows up to be a promiscuous sorority type, aka: “sor-whore.” There’s mention of other memorable teachers like “fuck Jeanie fucking Harrison,” which made me chuckle at the pure genuine emotion on display. He ends with the exotic flair of Joy Jordan and a very interesting observation that informed early on the archetype of what he looks for in women today. Brown is able to perfectly capture the electricity of that youthful “crazy tingling sensation” that seems to course through your entire body when you kiss, as well as the fleeting allure of chasing that feeling throughout life. Brown’s figures are serviceable enough, but the real conversation starter here is the style of the text, since it comprises at least 80% of the book by my estimation. The handwritten text is sometimes difficult to read, on rare occasions it degenerates into chicken scratch and the characters are near impossible to parse. It’s not riddled by any means, but there are occasional misspellings and sentence fragments to be found as well. By the end though, I was having such a good time with this writer’s authorial voice that I was willing to overlook the small errors and focus on the larger accomplishment. Tim Brown is certainly a creator to watch. Grade B+.

and from Optical Sloth:
The problem with all the whiny autobio comics about love and missed opportunities in the lives of artists is that it usually focuses on the same period, roughly from high school to some point in their 20’s. Tim decided to get an early start on all that with this comic and detail the early loves of his life from the first through third grade. Actually, it’s a little iffy to even call this a comic, as the sampled image below is as much of an illustration as you’re going to get on any given page. Many of them have no illustrations at all. So does that make this a zine, technically? Ah, definitions like that give me a headache. He sent this to me for potential review, I run a site about small press comic books, so this is a comic. It’s easy when I can change the rules when it suits me. One other technical note: as this is primarily text, it would have been nice if he had proofread a bit more, as words are inserted or crossed off fairly regularly. At least he kept the spelling errors to a minimum. There’s also some confusion right off the bat when he says on the third page that he had no interest in girls, then spends the rest of the comic talking about how he had crushes from an early age and how most of his memories from that period involve girls and not his guy friends. Anyway, there are some funny moments of discovery about himself, some surprisingly detailed memories of various people and events of that time, and a hilarious way to deal with bullies that want to confront you in the bathroom. The only trouble with this is that, as it was written by an adult, there are times when it feels like child Tim has the confidence of adult Tim. It’s a minor thing though, as his detailed memories of most of the things about this time of his life (there are some gaps, as is natural) makes this a fairly compelling read. No price listed, but going with the “fancy cover” rule I’ll say it’s $4.

–Kate Watson, …mightbegood

So the story goes like this. When my father, Jim Brown, who was the first in our family to go to college, took off for school in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, and during his time in college, gave away all of his childhood toys in an attempt to be an adult. He married my mom, Sara, in 1963, and they gave birth to me in Tulsa in September of 1968.

In 1972, at the age of 32, Dad went to a used book store sale at a local private school. It was there he found a book he had loved as a kid, called “Gene Autry and the Thief River Outlaws,” and he bought it for a dime. He was happy to reconnect with his past, and the idea of getting something so dear to him for so cheap a price was really appealing to him.

It was around this time that the Tulsa County Flea Market started about a mile from our home.

From that point on, my Dad was hooked, and Mom was an active accomplice. They filled our house with furniture, wall hangings, and porcelain product signs, the latter of which my dad was particuarly interested. In what was probably a monumental find for the both of them, they contacted and were given access to their childhood soda fountain, called the Crystal Palace in Muskogee, Oklahoma. I grew up around a lot of memorabilia from the Crystal Palace.

We would normally go back to my father’s hometown of Harrison, Arkansas every summer for at least a little while to visit my Great Grandmother Clara Belle Duckworth, who was still living there. Junk malls would be everywhere along the way, and the normally three and half hour trip would sometimes take eight. Initially, I was miserable waiting in the car while Mom, Dad and sister worked bargains. But then I got it: start collecting, and get out of the car and start looking around for bargains instead of staying in the car and sulking. Baseball Cards were my first love, and then antique dogs, and then stamps, and then Batman memoribilia, then vinyl LPs, then musical instruments, then antique postcards, and all through this time, action figures and figurines.

“Generations” is an antique mall in Tulsa where my father has a booth currently. Yep, I stole the name of the mall for my show, but the owners of the mall didn’t even name it themselves- it’s from the previous business, which was an antique furniture store. They merely covered parts of the outside sign with a banner that has new contact information, and kept the previous name in tact. Like the title, everything in this show is borrowed; the only thing I’ve done is rearrange it.

The Sports Center- My first big dream was to be a pitcher in the big leagues. This was obviously not to be. After a little league game that had me walking in seven runs as the pitcher, I learned that you can’t be anything you want to be in this world. I still had a glorious vicarious season in 1979 as a fan of the Pittsburgh Pirates, who ended up being World Champs that year. Being in Tulsa, I didn’t really feel geographic affinity for any major league club, so I just went with who my older cousin liked.

Dog Sculpture- Like my Dad, I’m a big fan of dogs, especially when I was a kid. In one of those short-lived obsessions, between the ages of ten and twelve I collected completely worthless Dog figurines that I would arrange in type trays in my bedroom. Until recently, I kept them wrapped in yellowed newspapers dating back to the Iran Hostage Crisis. I always wondered why I never got rid of them. I guess it was because I was going to build this.

Action Figure Pyramid-With action figures, as well as a lot of the toys I had, the more beloved they were, the more obliterated they ended up being. Some of my favorite toys were played right out of existence. Here are all that remain.

American Flag- Sewed by a Great Aunt, but I don’t know who. Forty eight stars, so it must be before 1959.

Mad Magazine Paperbacks- These paperbacks were presented en masse by my father to my sister and I before we took a long road trip to Ghost Ranch in New Mexico sometime in the late seventies. I remember my father saying that it was an 800 mile trip, and for my sister and I, this was plenty of time to thoroughly loathe and despise each other. But on this trip, Dad gave us the paperbacks, and instead of the requisite yelling and screaming, we shared laughs. Stroke of genius.

Lunch Boxes- All used in elementary school. On the bottom of each one there are two parallel marks that are rubbed down to the metal. This is from the practice we as kids had of sliding our lunches down the long hall to the cafeteria to see who could get closest to the hand washing we would do before standing in line for lunch.

Cancelled Stamps- My Aunt Mary, who was my Grandmother Cranks’s sister, was a little kookie and even though she was a very dynamic personality in her youth, I only remember her as a perpetually miserable person with clinical hypochondria. I didn’t like to visit her unbelievably messy house in Muskogee, but when I did, she would give me a letter envelope filled with cancelled stamps she collected for me. I never had the heart to tell her that cancelled stamps weren’t worth anything. Here they are collected in a tribute mandala to Mary.

On the Table:

Navaho Blanket- bought by my parents while they were teaching on the Navaho Reservation North of Gallup, New Mexico, sometime between 1963-1967. I’d like to believe I was conceived on the reservation, but my Dad doesn’t agree with that assertion- more than likely, it happened in their small apartment in Gallup. The moved back to Oklahoma soon after my mom learned of her pregnancy.

Dictionary- owned by my Grandmother, Ruth Crank, a public school teacher who kept it in every classroom she taught, Muskogee, Oklahoma.

Candy Dish with Assorted Buttons, Safety Pins, and Sewing Needles- owned by my mother, Sara Brown when she died in 1999, Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Electric Lantern- Used by my grandfather, James Alexander Brown, when he was a Conductor for the Midland Valley Railroad, 1970s, Muskogee, OK.

So far, there’s been a few local articles written about it:

Austin American-Statesman

and

…might be good

and, finally my friends Zach McDonald and Matthew Rodriguez did this awesomely hilarious coverage on their art blog Circus Gold.

The show will be running for a couple of more weeks, so please come see it before it comes down. I’m happy to open up the gallery if you cannot make it there during regular hours, so please contact me at unotito (at) gmail.com

April 18th, 2009- May 23rd, 2009
Opening reception Saturday, April 18th, 7-10pm
Regular Gallery Hours: Wednesday 7-9pm, Saturday 12-5pm

Okay Mountain
1312 E. Cesar Chavez Ste B (entrance on Navasota Street)
Austin Tx 78702

Artists featured:

Poklong Anading
Bea Camacho
Mariano Ching
Lena Cobangbang
Louie Cordero
Romeo Lee
Kaloy Olavides
Gary-Ross Pastrana
MM Yu

Bayanihan, the fourth installment of our international “No American Talent” series, is a new show of artists from the Philippines curated by Mountaineer Tim Brown. The title refers to a term with many meanings- Bayanihan can be a place, like a town, state or nation, but it can also be a spirit of community shared between people that literally means “being a hero to one another.” In this show, we present a varied group of 9 emerging artists who address this complex word and the relationship they share with their families, their city, their country, and each other.

The show involved a three-cubicle installation, one large painting of 200 portraits, a grid of sixteen log book sketches I had drawn as I spoke to Houstonians on the phone, and recordings of some of the phone calls I had taken over the two month period.

Here’s the show statement:

As with everything, this show started small. There I sat , in Austin, summer of 2003, hunched over a cubicle at a dead-end call center job, drawing pictures of tombstones on Post-it Notes while I talked with people about cancer. I was miserable.

Then I took a call from a woman in Dallas. A Talker. A gum-smacking Talker who would not shut up. I’m a extremely patient listener, but this woman was driving me up the wall. I picked up a pen and drew a woman with a big mouth, then I drew another woman with a bigger mouth, then a bigger mouth. The more she talked, the more I drew, and the bigger her damn mouth became. It made me happy, like I was controlling the exchange somehow. We ended the call, and I had a drawing.

My next day off, I bought a sketchbook and a couple of black felt tip pens. I drew a grid of eight rectangles on the page, and whenever I had a chance during one of the 35 or more calls I took a day, I drew what I thought the caller looked like on the other side of the line and noted the city from which they called. When I finally quit my job six months later, I had two hundred and fifty portraits. The large painting here is the culmination of that sketchbook series.

At some point, I realized that talking to strangers wasn’t the reason I was miserable at my call center job. I was miserable because my job dictated what I had to talk about, and that meant not being myself. What if I removed all of the “jobbiness” of taking calls from the public and just interacted with strangers with my own rules? Nothing to sell, nothing to say, no agenda, no answers, no questions, no needs, and no rules. What would that feel like?

The Listening Post was born. For the last two months, I’ve advertised a toll free number with a variety of messages in the Houston Press and on Craigslist. I’ve gotten quite a few calls, and have drawn portraits of the callers and taken notes during our interactions. For about a month now, I have recorded our conversations (with their consent) and I’ve realized that The Listening Post isn’t just an intake process- it’s also a performance.

People like to think that they need an expert to figure things out for them. I do- that’s why I listen to Fresh Air and watch Judge Judy and pay for someone to do my taxes. But after having talked through a lot of problems with people these last two months, I think all we really need is to have someone listening.

If you need to talk, I want to listen. 1-877-EARS KNOW.

First of all, local poet and writer Dan Boehl did a great job giving a sense of scale, context, and the experience of the mural in this article published in …might be good. Check it out for additional background.

And local photographer Andy Mattern was kind enough to do a series of final portraits of the finished tableux.

Nathan Green, co-mountaineer, posted a bunch of the in-process photos on the Arthouse blog as well.

More soon on the Okay Mountain group show “It’s Gonna Be Reverything” at the Project Space of Paragraph Gallery in Kansas City, Mo.

After the idea was hatched by Dave, Sterling Allen, Ryan Hennessee, and Justin Goldwater, Justin went about giving all of us drawing assignments, and incorporated our different drawing styles into elements unified by a central theme given to each tableau. Here are some inital photos of the work phase of the project, with more to come.

897

“slightly weirded out emotional feelings”– I have no comment on this one.

“hotdogs are good with ketchup slang phrase” — I have written about food, and a little about foreign languages, but I’m hard pressed to figure out where this comes from.

“how do i say thali?” – this one warms my heart ‘cuz I know I’ve helped another confused soul– I used to be this person. It’s the name of a typical Indian dish.

“backpacker salvation army mumbai surf — pure poetry, if you ask me. more stuff from my India entries

“booby pillows” I used this name for the clouds in my Manila installation, I think.

My entry on dirty words in Tagalog has brought quite a few fantastic search terms that aren’t exactly for the faint of heart:

“dirty words in tagalog”- cut to the chase, already
“tagalog tingle”- sounds like a jingle
“filipino words are flexible”
“boy brotsa”– wha?
and the unimaginable search term: “vagina smegma” Um, hi dad.

Unpredictably, I also get a lot of search term mileage from a passage I wrote about a gay man coming on to me in an Indian train station and another advance at a park in Ahmedabad, Gujarat– I mean, how was I to know that I was using popular nomenclature from the Indian Gay Underground? Go ahead and Google “Ahmedabad homosex” and remember this is a city of 4.2 million people-

“ahmedabad sex guide / ahmedabad night life” sorry, you’ve come to the wrong place folks!
“ahmedabad homo sex”, or if you please “homo sex in ahmedabad”
“gals homosex”
“ahmedabad park gay”– hey, I know where that is!
“gay ahmedabad”– fyi, homosexuality is illegal in the Subcontinent.

Having a name like mine makes a high placement on a search page a tough row to hoe– I have, however, moved up mightily since the article in the Statesman was published– next to some CS professor in Colorado with the sci-fi inspired “Timothy X. Brown,” the only Tim Brown on the internet who can hold a candle to yours truly is a Former Heisman Trophy Winner and Football Hall of Fame Alum. I like the clarity of the search terms that found my site. It’s something I’m not bold enough to carve out for myself most of the time:

“tim brown cartoonist”
“tim brown – art”
“timothy brown social worker texas”
“tim brown sculptor”
“tim brown portraits austin”
“artwork by tim brown”
“strong senders and tim brown”
and the weirdly awesome “tiny tim brown”

Alas, all good things must end:

“you re long time dead”