On February 11th, we were invited to exhibit at SHM Con. This is a one-day student run event at San Jose State University that is open to the public. SHM is an acronym for the Shrunkenheadman Club Animation/Illustration organization.
As soon as you step onto the campus you can feel the excitement from the students. These are highly skilled, smart, energetic, humble, and hungry individuals who are our future. We’ve been extremely lucky to participate in this yearly event.
If you have ever wondered if young people care about art or books, all you need to do is visit this show to get your answer. Not only was our Franklin Booth book the best seller at the show, but also one of the SHM volunteers had a Booth tattoo on her shoulder! Here’s Vicky at left, with the volunteer in the middle, followed by a student who picked up our Booth book.
We brought 30 boxes of books with us and came back home with five. To give you some perspective, we typically bring about half that amount to a 3-day comic show such as Baltimore Comic-Con. To be fair, we brought roughly 200 mixed titles with bumps and scratches that we gave away for free to students. The four tall stacks of freebies were gone in less than two hours. Also, this is the only show were we offer our books at a big discount to students. I clearly remember what it was like to be young with very little money, so in this way we can play a role in making sure everyone can get something, regardless of their available budget.
We had the chance to see our friends, Bunny Carter and Courtney Granner, and the department director, Dave Chai. These three have been very generous to us.
We were incredibly impressed with the SHM president this year, and how smooth and well organized the day was. And we met a bunch of terrific young people. We have no doubts about the future knowing that more SHM members will be heading out into the world to create more beautiful art.
See you again next year!
Enjoy,
John
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Text copyright © 2024 John Fleskes. Photos by Vicky Lien and John Fleskes and © 2024 . Videos © 2024 Flesk Publications. Artwork © 2024 its respective artists. All rights reserved.