kuš! visits TCAF

kuš! finally made it's first trip overseas and visited the Toronto Comics Arts Festival (short TCAF). We're still a little bit overwhelmed and can't really believe it, but looks like we have some photos to prove it. So we'll just show them off to you and will write a comment or two about them.

So here you can see how we unpacked the brand new issue š! #17 'Sweet Romance' which had it's TCAF debut.  We're definitely not used to flying so far.

Unpacking part II. Here is the complete 'The Last Match' exhibition we brought.

383 tiny artworks to mount on the wall! iT took some wild calculations to figure out how to do that. While still thinking, Patrick Kyle already started making the mural for the exhibition.

After two days of drawing and hanging matches everthing was ready....

 ... and Ed Kanerva and Anne Koyama from the kuš! Canada office, who helped inviting local artist for the show, came by and had a little preview.

As we were so quick, before the exhibition opening we got to visit the world famous comics store The Beguiling...  

... the Niagara falls...

... our new favorite food store (Latvians will know why) ...

... the best gelato place in town..

... the Museum of Inuit Art...

 

... the Toronto School of Burlesque... 

... and the Koyama Press headquarters, where Sanita immediately started to work again and proofread the Koyama fall program.

Back from the nice tourist excursions we opened the show at Videofag, where we were happy to meet so many lovely visitors....

We got some 100 more pictures which we'll post on our kuš! facebook page, don't want you to get sore fingers from scrolling.

This is how the exhibition looked without visitors...


... and this is the new Contribution by Chris Kuzma, to which he was pointing two pictures above. The other 382 drawings you can see once the exhibition comes to your town.

So after the successful opening it was time for the festival's main event that took place in the beautiful Toronto Reference Library.

David didn't completely understand the concept at first, so he just captured a whole table for himself at least he wore the right t-shirt, so nobody noticed it right away.

Sanita was smarter and started representing kuš! and the first visitors arrived...

... at the table of Kaisa Leka, who was representing herself and Finnish Comics!

Luckily we met David Collier at the Conundrum Press table a bit earlier, so he kept bringing friends to us...

 ... and Michael Jordan who signed his mini kuš!

 

In our breaks we also managed to bump into a lot of people, like our good old e-mail pal Ryan Sands (Youth in Decline) who guest edited the š! #9 'Female Secrets' issue wearing the shirt of the show by our table neighbors Massive.

The show was huge, around 200 (?) tables of comic goodness spread on two floors and a big crowd of people emptying their wallets.

Instead of showing more pictures from this terrific event, we finish up with this squirrel, who was just one of many who greeted us every morning outside of our Toronto apartment.

TCAF was absolutely great and we certainly hope to go again sometime and so should you! It was very nice to meet so many great people!

Huge thanks to Chris Butcher, Peter Birkemoe and Andrew Townsend and all the organizers of TCAF for inviting us and organizing this impressive show, to the lovely Tom Spurgeon for directing people to us, to Kawai Shen for hanging out, to Annie Koyama for convincing more artists to take part in The Last Match and for being insanely awesome, and to Patrick Kyle & friends for letting us follow them for the whole week to the best places in Toronto and not getting paranoid! Watch out - we want to come again!