Last year's opening-weekend "Burst" party at Artisphere

Happy birthday, Artisphere. You've made it—maybe.

A year ago, City Paper staffer Erin Petty wrote about who and what, exactly, the brand-new Artisphere would cater to, given its existence in a business district. Four months ago, I wrote about the various troubles plaguing its young life: Key staff hadn’t signed on until after the space’s opening; Busboys & Poets—whose cachet many Arlington County officials had been counting on to make Artisphere feel like a real “third place”—chose not to open an outpost in the first-floor café area; and attendance numbers were way lower than projected.

Then, Artisphere and the county were working on a new business plan that spokeswoman Annalisa Meyer told me would be a “course correct.” Things weren’t necessarily bleak, but by most measures, Artisphere didn’t quite hit the ground running.

Tomorrow night, Artisphere will host “The 1 Party,” its first birthday bash. As I wrote in a City Lights pick for this week’s dead-tree edition, the party’s entertainment—most notably, a site-specific video work by local artist Brian Stansfield—continues Artisphere’s theme of palatably weird content. Sponsored by Brightest Young Things, it should be a good time.

Artisphere, I think, deserves to succeed. Its programming nicely walks the line between avant-garde and accessible, and varies from film to installation art to performances. It’s a punch in the gut to Wilson Boulevard’s otherwise un-fun corporate landscape. It’s got free wi-fi, a place to eat (the HERE Café), many corners in which to hang out, and meeting space suitable for public forums. Best of all, most of what it offers is free to the public.

But Artisphere can’t turn Rosslyn into 14th Street NW, or H Street NE, alone. It’ll need people living, hanging out, and spending money in the area during non-9-to-5 hours to really be what its creators—the Arlington Arts Commission, in partnership with the Rosslyn Business Improvement District—envisioned. Though Monday Properties and JBG Properties each have condominium projects coming online in the next few years, that won’t happen overnight. It’s a bit ridiculous to expect a start-up, which Artisphere essentially is, to have its cake and eat it, too, even a year in.

But two or three years from now? It’s very likely that someone will be able to credit Artisphere for the third-place-ification of Wilson Boulevard. Artisphere might not be Rosslyn’s panacea, but it very well might be its catalyst.

"The 1 Party" takes place Saturday at 8 p.m. at Artisphere, 1101 Wilson Boulevard, Arlington. $15-$30.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

Marty Baumann

Washington City Paper: What type of comic work or cartooning do you do?

Marty Baumann: My influences originate in the 1950s and '60s. It was such a fertile period, whimsical, colorful, positive art—anti-Goth! I try to apply those influences to the comics and children's books I've done. But I am primarily a commercial artist. In addition to the children's books I've produced recently, I've done lots of product design and illustration, such as illustrating a version of Monopoly for kids, and contributing concept drawings for a new take on Chester the Cheetohs Cheetah.

WCP: How do you do it? Traditional pen and ink, computer or a combination?

MB: I do a lot of traditional pencil sketching, but I began my professional career in journalism when the Mac was born, and I've been producing finished work that way ever since.

WCP: When (within a decade is fine) and where were you born?

MB: Beautiful, downtown Cheverly, Maryland, 1957.

WCP: Why are you in Washington now?  What neighborhood or area do you live in?

MB: Born and raised here. My job took us to San Francisco two-and-half years ago. We returned to Northern Virginia earlier this year.

WCP: What is your training and/or education in cartooning?

MB: Most of my artistic training took place at the comic book rack in the back of the Drug Fair store in Lanham, Md. The first books I remember buying were Joe Kubert's Sgt. Rock and the Kirby/Ditko monster comics (Kraa, Fin Fang Foom, Goom, etc.).

WCP: Who are your influences?

MB: Kirby, Kubert, Toth, Wally Wood, Disney greats like Ward Kimball, Little Golden Book artists such as Aurelius Battaglia (a HUGE influence), Antonio Prohias of Spy Vs. Spy fame (another HUGE influence on my commercial art) and probably most influential of all, Jim Steranko, who I've known since I was 14 years old and who answered every one of my geeky fan letters. And although I can't draw anything like him (NOBODY can), Jack Davis is a friend and one of the most decent men on the planet.

WCP: If you could, what in your career would you do over or change?

MB: Wally Wood once said that if he could change anything he'd draw like Charles Schulz. Me too! I'd work hard at developing a simple, elegant,  evocative style that would be universally recognized!

WCP: What work are you best-known for?

MB: I suppose for working at Pixar. I've contributed to such films as Toy Story 3, Cars 2 and myriad short films and it's always really flattering to get a note from someone who saw my name on the big screen. I'll never get used to that.

WCP: What work are you most proud of?

MB: Probably the Pixar work. Make no mistake, those people are brilliant, among THE very best artists working anywhere today. And there are people from all over the world standing in line, desperate for a chance to work there. And somehow I made the cut. And when you're surrounded by talent like that you have to bring your best game. I'm proud to be considered in that group and indescribably humbled at the same time.

I'm also proud of a comic strip I created called The Crater Kid, which comics fans ignored, but moms and kids loved.

WCP: What would you like to do or work on in the future?

MB: I hope to keep working for Pixar for as long as they'll have me! And I'm hoping I can continue to produce books of my own that are positive, funny and engaging.

WCP: What do you do when you're in a rut or have writer's block?

MB: I play my guitar. I've been playing and singing blues professionally since I was 16, and there's nothing like
it for loosening your juices.

WCP: What do you think will be the future of your field?

MB: I'd hate to think that it's all going digital. Won't there always be people who want to pull a favorite book off the shelf and flop on the couch? As far as the medium itself? When I walk into a comic shop I'm confronted by a wall of black, gray and red covers. So many books about death, blood and dystopia!

WCP: Do you have a website or blog?

MB: www.martybaumann.com

WCP: Will you be at Small Press Expo next month? Have you ever been there? If so, can you share your impressions of it?

MB: I've done it in the past, and I'm sure this year's will be a great show with many talented people, but I don't think I fit in there. The work on display there skews toward edgy and anti-commercial. I'm proud to be a commercial artist, and my edges are very frayed!

From mycentraljersey.com:

"Norma Kaplan, the director of Arlington Cultural Affairs in Arlington, Va., has been named to the newly created combined position of executive director of the New Brunswick Cultural Center and managing director of the George Street Playhouse in New Brunswick.

Kaplan has been in her present position for 25 years and oversaw the building of the new Artisphere cultural center in Arlington. Artisphere houses four performance venues, three visual art galleries, a 4,000-square-foot ballroom and a free Wi-Fi town square, according to the center’s website."

Artisphere—which will celebrate its first birthday on October 10—is reexamining its approach in programming and operations, following a failure to meet early revenue projections. Artisphere staffers and Arlington Cultural Affairs officials have been drafting a new business plan for the space, to be released at the end of the summer.

Tempting Fête: Many cool kids were at an opening party, but Artisphere has struggled with attendance.

When Artisphere opened in October, it was supposed to be a Kennedy Center for young people. And the night before it officially opened, at a boozy art party staged by Brightest Young Things and the Pink Line Project, you almost could’ve sworn that’s what it was: More than 1,000 people filled the new Rosslyn arts center, which brimmed with skateboarder films, balloon art, hip DJs, and, of course, free PBR. This was exactly how the project’s architects wanted to get it off the ground: Artisphere wasn’t just for consuming art. It was for hanging out.

But eight months later, as Artisphere approaches the end of its fiscal year, the resident arts center doesn’t look quite as magnetic as its administrators first expected.

It’s only attracted 48,169* visitors since October, well short of the 250,000 initially projected by Arlington Cultural Affairs, the agency that oversees Artisphere. And by the end of June it looks like it will only have brought in $174,202 in revenue from ticket sales and rental fees—less than a quarter of the initially expected $789,912.Compare those numbers to what Arlington is spending on the place. Artisphere—which occupies the space that once housed the Newseum—cost $6.7 million to renovate, and it has an annual operating budget of $3 million. Even with grants from the Rosslyn Business Improvement District and a cushy rent-free arrangement with the property owner, taxpayers are picking up a large chunk of Artisphere’s tab.

And so the county is taking a hard look at its investment. As first reported by ARLNow.com, by the end of this summer Artisphere’s staff and county officials will have crafted a revamped business plan they say they’ll implement immediately. Marketing and Communications Director Annalisa Meyer calls it a “course correct.” “You open the doors, and you love for everything to be sold out,” says Meyer. But “it takes time to develop audience. There’s been a longer-than-anticipated period to get to that point.”

Certainly, Artisphere’s programming has been diverse. It has also been fairly interesting. Its galleries have featured art inspired by skateboarding, comic books, and the darker, gorier recesses of photographer Victoria Gaitán’s imagination. The center has become a home for the area’s salsa and zydeco scenes. New Media Curator Ryan Holladay has brought in a slew of left-field music events, like this month’s experimental Queering Sound Festival. Its theaters have hosted repertory film series. And Artisphere has several resident companies: the avant-garde-minded Washington Shakespeare Company; UrbanArias, which stages new opera works; and the classical National Chamber Ensemble. In short, there’s been no lack of stuff to do at Artisphere, but much of that programming has had a niche appeal at best.

So is Artisphere too indie? Surprisingly, its organizers say no.

—

The idea for Artisphere has been in Arlington County’s pipeline for nearly a decade. The county’s cultural affairs department has a history of nurturing arts groups through what it calls the “arts incubator” model: helping organizations build audiences by offering them affordable, sometimes free, spaces for finite periods. A good example is Signature Theatre, which was founded in 1990 and for a time operated from a renovated auto garage. Now it has a handsome Shirlington location and is considered by Arlington Cultural Affairs to be one of the neighborhood’s economic drivers.

“Well-played arts activities can help make a place really vibrant,” says Arlington County Councilmember Mary Hynes. “That’s why we took the leap with Artisphere. It looked like a combination of fees and other kinds of rental income, plus the money the county was already spending on the arts, could come together and create this place.”

It’s now apparent that the county miscalculated. “What we’ve learned since [Artisphere] opened in October is that those were very optimistic projections of what fees, rentals, and revenues would do,” Hynes says.

The project was born of a partnership between Arlington County and the Rosslyn BID with an assist from landlord Monday Properties. This theoretically lent it a degree of stability—enough of one, anyway, that the initial business plan called for Artisphere to become a non-profit after three years.But a number of factors kept Artisphere from becoming the catalyst for culture its makers envisioned.

The heaviest hit was the lack of the Andy Shallal touch. The restaurateur was originally on board to open a Busboys & Poets location within Artisphere—a sure crowd-draw, maybe, because of the small chain’s wide-appealing creative-class vibe.But the deal fell through—Shallal wanted a street entrance to the restaurant that would’ve been impossible because of Artisphere’s layout—and the arts center was restaurantless on opening day. Until April, when HERE, a café operated by local restaurant group Barroso, opened, Artisphere wasn’t collecting rent on its restaurant space.

Jon Palmer Claridge, who co-created Arlington County’s “arts incubator” model and drafted Artisphere’s business plan, says that loss was critical. “I can believe that the original business plan was sound, but it was based on the idea of Artisphere becoming the third place”—an urban-planning concept describing spaces where people spend time other than home and the workplace—“and that was contingent upon Busboys & Poets being an anchor....Artisphere as it was conceived, at least in my mind, has never existed.”

Claridge was slated to become the center’s executive director, but for reasons he says had nothing to do with Artisphere, he took an early-retirement offer from the county in March 2010.

Artisphere faced other setbacks, too. The county rushed to open the center on the presumably cool date of Oct. 10—10/10/10!—likely because it didn’t want to waste a single minute of its sweet lease (Artisphere doesn’t have to pay rent for 15 years). But as a result, key personnel weren’t working until after Artisphere’s opening date—Meyer started in November and Executive Director José Ortiz came on board in January. The center didn’t have a dedicated website or a consistent online ticketing system until January. Looking at the evidence, the high expectations seem foolish. Though the county cites a history of redevelopment and revitalization centered around off-beat arts centers—Signature in Shirlington and the Arlington Arts Center near the Virginia Square Metrorail stop—it seems far-fetched that the avant-garde-ish Artisphere could have breathed life into Rosslyn, an area that is largely commercial.

Putting aside Artisphere’s operational missteps, the county seems to have realized its revenue and attendance projections were overambitious. “What we see with Artisphere is more indicative of the fact that any kind of arts or cultural center is going to have a different kind of patronage than Pottery Barn or Barnes and Noble,” says Karen Vasquez, a representative of the county’s economic development department who serves on the task force rewriting Artisphere’s business plan. “Those are the generally accessible, easy kind of places, but a cultural center occupies a different niche, and maybe a smaller niche in terms of patronage.”

—

In many ways, Artisphere is an experiment in urbanism. Arlington Cultural Affairs envisioned it as a venue where patrons could bounce from restaurant to art gallery to movie theater. It was supposed to be Rosslyn’s third place.

“Third places” are the bars, cafés, restaurants, parks, bookstores, and venues that make neighborhoods more desirable. They’re places to hang out; you can socialize in a third place, or you can be alone. They contain an element of surprise: No matter how well you might know your preferred haunt, you can’t always control what will come of your time there. In urban-planning speak, they’re also appealing because they’re not rigidly defined. They satisfy a desire to occupy a space that doesn’t come with obligations. They don’t demand your presence; you choose to be there. In Arlington’s view, Rosslyn could use a third place—a spot for creative types to park themselves in their free time.

Artisphere’s caretakers say they hope not to make programming changes when they overhaul the venue’s plan this summer. They say ticket sales have increased month over month by an average of 27 percent, and that attendance is on a steady rise. And more people may be making Rosslyn their home soon. In the next few years, Monday Properties and JBG Properties are slated to build several apartment residences with ground-floor retail.

Arlington won’t share details of the in-progress business plan, but Vasquez says the task force is committed to preserving Artisphere’s original mission of injecting Rosslyn with more culture. On the table: improving signage and way-finding, and increasing corporate rentals. They’ll scale back their expectations. And they’ll wait for more people to move to the area. In the meantime, what that means for Artisphere’s hefty operating budget is unclear.

Still, Artisphere is only eight months old. Like any start-up, it needs time to grow. Christopher Henley, artistic director of the Washington Shakespeare Company, says the company is happy with its residence at Artisphere. He’s been happy with attendance at his company’s productions, but even he urges patience. “There’s so much potential in this space that I can’t but believe it can be made to work if people are smart about it and stick to its mission and give it a little time to work and not expect miracles overnight,” he says. “The upside is incalculable.”

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

*Updated information from Artisphere, current as of June 17, 2011, counts the total number of visitors to the center since October 2010 as 73,300.

Washington City Paper: What type of comic work or cartooning do you do?

Bebe Williams: I create cartoon artworks for gallery shows—oil painting comics, installations, a whole wall could be larger daily comics formats, photo-comics, performance art funnies (starring in my stuff doing the graphic equivalent of performance art),  daily comics, and comic book stories centered around thematic interests. I currently freelance and take on projects.

WCP: How do you do it? Are you working with pen and ink, or electronically, or a mixture?

BW: I work with pencils on paper, ink with pens but mostly with my squirrel brush, electronically (either fully or partially), oil paint, colored pencils, printouts, metal, mixed media, and photography. It depends on the type of comic that I'm working on.

WCP: When (within a decade is fine) and where were you born?

BW: I'm from Petersburg, Va., born in 1952—July 18th.

WCP: Why aren't you in Washington now?  What neighborhood or area do you live in when you were here?

BW: I lived at the edge of Clarendon, southside Arlington, Va , to be exact, the Lyon Park area [WCP: When I met him around 1993, Williams was in Alcova Heights]. I moved to a small town to find a new niche, to lighten up the air.

WCP: What is your training and/or education in cartooning?

BW: I'm self-taught with lots of intake of reading, admiring art, and other forms of pop culture....although I did take four years of art in high school and attended art classes at VCU. Later on I became a teacher for some time. I taught photographic cartooning all over the state of Virginia in museums, galleries, and schools. I did this for the Virginia Museum in Richmond VA. Other jobs teaching were as an artist in schools in Arlington, Arlington's Career Center, and the University of Maryland.

When I say self-taught, way back in 1993, I decided that I wanted to try my hand as a daily cartoonist. It wasn't exactly natural for me to get into it, so I said to myself, "I'm going to make a daily comic no matter what it takes." The first day I spent hours trying to figure it out, how to make my mind change into having a natural way of writing and drawing the thing. The first one took maybe five hours. The next day just as long. Finally after a month of doing this, I reached the point of ease. It only took a few minutes to write and draw the daily. Nowadays, the complete process of creating a daily takes me about an hour.

I did the daily Art Comics Daily from 1995-2007. I also did a few other dailies (Groups, Bobby Ruckers, Just Ask Mr-Know-It-All, Showcase) in that period and had a syndicate, as well as worked for a syndicate in San Francisco.

WCP: Who are your influences?

BW: I'm constantly influenced by others, mostly in a mini-fashion. I  try to improve my writing, to go further than what I see to be slightly futuristic. When something funny comes out of me, I attempt to add two more levels to that humor so I can say that I saw that idea when someone else outputs it to that lower stage.  Influences are Herbie comics, DC comics that contained three stories each issue, Doctor Who, 13th Floor Elevators, WFMU, random conversations, The Residents,  Malcolm Morley, Bill Griffith's Zippy, difficult listening, John Keel,  Night of the Living Dead, multimedia FLASH,  and others showing me their works.

WCP: What work are you best-known for?

BW: Bobby Ruckers (a photo comic book) or Art Comics Daily (web and newspaper comics). I wrote the book Instructions for Meeting Time Travellers which has been reprinted in a few places, Ruckers has been in Strange Magazine, Whacked, and in art shows such as CEPA's montage show in Rochester, NY buses and at Brody's Gallery (next to the RAW magazine art show held the next month).

The Xeric Foundation funded some of my comic books.

WCP: You were self-publishing your comic book early in the 1980s, right? And you were at the first Small Press Expos? Anything you'd like to share about the second great wave of indy comics publishing?

BW: I self-published a few books in the 1980s, and I've been doing Bobby Ruckers since 1982. I haven't made a comic book in the last decade, I  just do minis and guest shots.

I was at the first three Small Press Expos, but never really fitted into the scene along with the other cartoonists, nor was I ever asked to participate in the compilation books, etc. I just went away since it became more of a venue for the well-known crowd. I found it costly to do comic books.  All of the indy stuff is split up this way and that way now.  It's not hard to be that way, since deluxe variety is there. TV is the same way, movies, books – you think "wow, so many books in the bookstores" and the best ones aren't even in your regular bookstore. The web has made it possible to be very detailed in ones' interests.

WCP: What work are you most proud of?

BW: I just came out of a two year period of serving as Town Councillor of the Town of Scottsville. Political work came fairly easy for me when doing community service.  I wasn't elected the second time around, lost by 7 votes maybe because I became vocal about legalizing marijuana in Virginia.

Now I'm proud of my weekly 2-page newspaper that I create each week in collaboration with Lisa DeBrito entitled The Scottsville Weekly. I've published 35 issues as of today and you can read them all online – I consider this to be similar to making art or comics and this paper does have four daily comics in it every week.

I made too many large works of art. I got to the point that many artists find depressing — creating large paintings and running out of places to store them all, so now I just do small works on mixed media for easy storage as well as computer art. Even in computer art, you can run out of storage.

I also have been in music for years, creating works with people that make their own instruments. Some of it can be heard on community radio stations in different cities......my band's name is "Bebe and the Double 13(e)s."

I liked the wall tiles artworks that I did in the old Insect Club and Crowbar. Are any of them still there? I still make wall tile artworks, you can check them out at my website.

This piece is called "Alkahestic Artisans." It was interesting the way that I created this one. First, I made hundreds of single wall tiles artworks, just lots of random imagery. Most of them were photographic transfers, car model paints, and markers. I places all of the hundreds of works on the floor, looking down at them. Then, slowly, I pieced together images that I thought worked good side by side, piecing them together to make them into one artwork, to where they fitted and talked to one another.  From there, I firmed up the work in a collective way with more paint.

WCP: What would you like to do or work on in the future?

BW: I would love to write and draw some Herbie stories. Comicwise (or art in general), I would enjoy taking on a thematic idea and going with it.

I am on a future project now, in collaboration with others we are making a documentary version of my newspaper The Scottsville Weekly. You can read a bit about the idea.

WCP: What do you do when you're in a rut or have writer's block?

BW: I never have writer's block.  I just sit down and start writing, it's just like a spigot, turn it on and start working.

WCP: What do you think will be the future of your field?

BW: Creativity abounds. There are so many cartoonists and comic books, and competition is fierce in some ways. Gone are the days when one could go to the newstand and buy every single comic book that came out that week. Can you imagine going to a comic book store and buying every comic? Expensive!  When I went into the daily comics business, I thought being different, alternative, would work out big,and  it did work good in some regards. The problem with daily comics in the newspaper is that they really have not advanced or improved that much as a group. It looks like dailies are controlled by law firms or third generation families riding the shirt tails of parents or rights owners. I think these cartoonists are called "sequels"......the same as actors that get into acting as it's handed down to them by family members that started the lineages.

The overflux of cartoonists is good for trading my own books for their own books at shows.

WCP: What's your favorite thing about DC?

BW: There's so much to do in the area. Food-wise it's got it all and so much of it is great. You have access to alternative everything.  I like coming to town and ditching my car, by calling for a taxi.  It's one of the easiest areas of the world to find computer work.  The town is the most conservative looking, but liberal town in the whole country. The best of any category can be found once a person takes the time to learn about them all. There's so much to discover all of the time.

WCP: What monument or museum do you want to revisit, or did you take most out-of-town guests to?

BW: Well, the Washington Monument is so tall, that I can take my visitors anyplace in town and point out to them, then we are done for the generic sightseeing; after all, I'm always anxious to eat at one of my favorite restaurants as soon as I hit town.    By the way, I'm surprised that when the Million Man March was in DC, the marchers didn't surround that Washington Monument, pick it up and carry down the street as the masthead of their march. Just saying......strength in numbers.

The second half of the two-part "Party Crashers" exhibit in Arlington opens tomorrow. The first part opened Nov. 19 at the Arlington Arts Center. The exhibit at the Terrace Gallery at the Artisphere, curated by Cynthia Connolly, features artists influenced by alternative comics and 'zines. The idea behind this part of the dual exhibit, according to Connolly in her press release, is that

The comic aesthetic has lodged itself in the contemporary art world, and continues to challenge the hierarchical categorizations of traditional painting and drawing. Past generations viewed the comic as ‘throw away’ art printed on newsprint, not fine art to be collected, but we have grown to accept and enjoy the comic as a familiar genre. For the first time in contemporary history, we regard the comic as a powerful influence within contemporary art circles. Party Crashers provides an opportunity for audiences to see the application and influence of the comic form in contemporary art, examining the genre’s cultural impact and increasing legitimacy as a fine art medium.

I think Roy Lichtenstein and others from the Pop art movement in the '50s and '60s might disagree with that, but it'll be interesting to see what this locally-grown exhibit produces.

The artists included in the Artisphere exhibit are D.Billy (DC/NYC), iona rozeal brown (DC/NYC), Eric Cheevers (DC), Anna U. Davis (DC), Nekisha Durrett (DC), Jim Houser (PA), Tim Kerr (TX), Matt Leines (PA), Thom Lessner (PA), Ryan Nelson (DC/MI), Oura Sananikone (VA), and Zach Storm (DC/MD). I'm told that most of them will be attending the opening of the show, and there will be a gallery talk starting at 8 pm.

Also launching Saturday is the ART on the ART bus, a mobile gallery on one of Arlington County’s ART public transit buses, which will shuttle "Party Crashers" visitors between Artisphere and the sister exhibit at the AAC. The bus will feature paintings by artist and musician Tim Kerr, who is also displaying in the Artisphere portion of the "Party Crashers" exhibit.

Finally, a concert is also scheduled for that evening. Thom Lessner, who is also showing at the Artispshere exhibit, and his band, Sweetheart, will play in the Dome at Artisphere following the opening reception, at 11:01 pm. Tickets are $12; if you're feeling artistic and want to draw a one-frame comic, you can pay a reduced fee. Tickets sold onsite only.

Artisphere is at 1101 Wilson Blvd., Arlington. (703) 875-1100. "Party Crashers" runs Mon.-Sat., 11 a.m.–9 p.m. and Sun. 11 a.m.–6 p.m. to Feb. 13, 2011.

Richard Thompson

Seriously, Richard is a cartoonist's cartoonist. Pat Oliphant and Bill Watterson have written introductions to his books. Art Spiegelman speaks well of his work. The New Yorker runs his caricatures, as did US News & World Report before them. And for years, Richard was our local "go-to guy" when the Post needed a cartoonist. He illustrated Joel Achenbach and Gene Weingarten's columns in the Post Magazine, did his panel comic Richard's Poor Almanack for the Style section, illustrated a column in the Health section, and then started a little Sunday-only strip called Cul de Sac for the magazine. We can pick up his interview there...

Washington City Paper: What type of comic work or cartooning do you do?

Richard Thompson: I draw a daily comic strip called Cul de Sac that started in the Washington Post Sunday Magazine in 2004 and is now syndicated country- and even world-wide by Universal Press. And I still do some freelancing when I can.

WCP: When (within a decade is fine) and where were you born?

RT: I was born in 1957 in Baltimore, Md.

WCP: Why are you in Washington now?  What neighborhood or area do you live in?

RT: We moved down here when I was four or five. I've since lived in various parts of D.C., Annandale, Gaithersburg and now Arlington. I lived in Gaithersburg for so long that Arlington still seems strange. Even after 18 years here I still think of D.C. as being to my south.

WCP: What is your training and/or education in cartooning?

RT: I always drew, especially when I should've been doing other things. But "formally," there's high school art classes and some very fun classes at Montgomery College in Rockville, from which I failed to graduate.

WCP: Who are your influences?

RT: Sometimes I think it's everyone I everyone whose work I ever saw, every author whose book I read, or every TV show or movie I saw or anything I personally experienced; other times I think it's just Ronald Searle. So let's say: Walt Kelly.

WCP: If you could, what in your career would you do-over or change?

RT: I'd do it all again, but 20 years earlier.

WCP: What work are you best-known for?

RT: Probably Cul de Sac, as it's gotten the widest exposure.

WCP: What work are you most proud of?

RT: I can point to some individual works with pride: a caricature of Beethoven, another of Berlioz, a few of the old Richard's Poor Almanac cartoons I did for the Post and a couple illustrations for the New Yorker. But overall, I'm happiest with Cul de Sac.

WCP: What would you like to do  or work on in the future?

RT: One thing that's been in the back of my head for years is doing some kind of illustrated version of Candide. That would be fun, and different.

WCP: What do you do when you're in a rut or have writer's block?

RT: Wash dishes, putter around, reread old strips I've done to find the rhythm. Grind my teeth and go back to work.

WCP: What do you think will be the future of your field?

RT: I think we'll be operating in some kind of street-corner/door-to-door business model, maybe in those two empty parking spaces by the dumpster, or more ideally, in a van off Route 50 next to the guys who sell fresh flowers and hubcaps.

WCP: What's your favorite thing about D.C.?

RT: It's where all my stuff is!

WCP: Least favorite?

RT: My stuff is so poorly organized.

WCP: What monument or museum do you take most out-of-town guests to?

RT: All the usual corny great museums and galleries; I love all of the Smithsonian to bits. My favorite these days is the National Portrait Gallery.

WCP: Do you have a website or blog?

RT: Yup: richardspooralmanac.blogspot.com and culdesacart.com

Richard Thompson will be signing his new book Shapes & Colors on Tuesday, Dec. 14  from 7 to 9 p.m. at Big Planet Comics, 4908 Fairmont Ave, Bethesda, and at One More Page bookstore 2200 N. Westmoreland Street, No. 101, Arlington, on Monday, Dec. 20 from 7 to 9 p.m.

It's all going down at Artisphere as part of D.C. Design Week, and allegedly the event is somehow design-themed as well (CSS Man vs. WordPressinator?). The showdown features artists Jami “Angry Zen Master” Noguchi, Chris “Impact” Impink, and Brandon J. Carr, among others. The fight kicks off at 7 p.m., so get your comic-loving self down to Arlington early.

Here's an older promo vid to give you a taste of the geeky action to come:

"The Orange Line Revolution," Aaron Leitko's December 2009 story about punk houses in Arlington, has been selected for inclusion in Best Music Writing 2010. The piece takes a look at Kansas House, as well as some group homes associated with local indie labels and movements, such as Dischord, Simple Machines, and Positive Force. As Leitko writes in the introduction, the story is a "look back at when Arlington was punk." I edited the story, and I'm an extremely minor character in it. But that's not why I'm proud of it–I'm happy that such a good writer is getting recognized for such a good piece. Congrats, Aaron.

DIY record labels like Teenbeat, Dischord, and Simple Machines, as well as activist groups like Positive Force, cleverly repurposed Arlington’s middle-class workforce housing, then available as cheap, safe rentals, into small businesses, design studios, and rehearsal rooms.

Now that Kansas House is kaput, that time is effectively over. Those houses have been repurposed again, this time by developers who have built condominiums, restaurants, and shopping centers.

Leitko visits each of those houses, and talks to some of the key figures who lived in them. Read the full feature here.