Art Sun Nov 08 2009

Torn Pages Needs Whole Bills

By Rose Lannin

The Torn Pages Show is a Chicago collaboration of artists and writers teaming up to write and draw "pages torn from our most favorite imaginary books": eleven children's stories of their own invention. Artist-writer pairs include Joe Meno & Cody Hudson, Amy Guth & Pea-Be, Zach Dodson & Allison Dunn Burque, and more.

The show is set to open at OhNo!Doom Collective in early 2010, but curator Josh Lucas hopes to immortalize the original tales in a small, full-color book. Like many other creative types, he's using Kickstarter. Help the Torn Pages show reach their $2,100 goal by December 5th -- they're currently a little under halfway there.

Donate here. Preview images and excerpts from the show after the jump.

From "Michel" by Nancy Khurana:

Soon enough, this practice of created speech filtered into every corner of the city Titter-Tatter, now Spitter-Spatter, Fatter-Dadder, Alma-Matter to some and others. Everyone spoke their own language. They thought in their own words, dreamt in them, wrote in them, argued in them. My, what a relief! They felt. To say what you mean. They carried on so long in this fashion that that the students could no longer learn as they couldn't understand their teachers; doctors couldn't help their patients because they didn't know what ailed them; and taxi drivers couldn't take passengers, not having the slightest idea where they needed to go. The city of Titter-Tatter went silent. Coffee conversations between old friends turned into hours of stares and blinks, a silent parting, as each walked away carrying a newspaper neither could make sense of.

From "Pronounced Squichon" by Tim Hall:

The boys crouched outside the white picket fence and peered through the gate. Truck pointed.

'There he is! That's the Squicky dude!'

The man they called Squicky was in the garden. He was standing very still, looking up at the sky.

Jagger had never seen anybody like Squicky. He was very strange looking. He was short, not much bigger than the boys in fact, and had large, sad eyes.

From "Bloom" by Lindsey Markel:

The poppy that Gloria picked for her class did not live long, although she placed it in a filled water glass and taped a sign next to it that said DO NOT TOUCH UNTIL AUGUST! By the next morning, the flower had already lost most of its shape. The next next morning, the petals had fallen, and a thin layer of dusty pollen covered the table. Gloria gently laid the stem outside, so it could be with its old friends.

By Dominique Arrianne Holmes, for "Flight" by Ben Tanzer:

By Andrew (Flip) Johnson, for "Henry Valentine & the Angry Arms" by Jill Summers: