Thursday November 19th 7:30PM

Wooden Shoe Books
704 South Street
Philadelphia, PA 19147
sabot@woodenshoebooks.com
http://www.woodenshoebooks.com

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After touring the South with her band The Homewreckers, renowned underground artist/writer Cristy C. Road will be returning to the city she once called home. She will be reading new work and from her book Bad Habits, accompanied by a slideshow presentation of illustrations. Cristy will be joined at the Wooden Shoe by local artist Ketch Wehr.

Cristy C. Road is a 27-year-old Cuban-American illustrator and writer. Blending social principles, sexual deviance, mental inadequacies, and social justice- she thrives to testify the beauty of the imperfect. Her obsession with making art accessible began when publishing GREEN'ZINE in 1996- a fanzine entirely devoted to Green Day. The exclusivity of high art disgusted her, as she fell in love with a xerox machine. Eventually, she made friends, found solace outside of a single band, and began including blurbs on other punk rock bands, gender identity, masturbation, sexuality, aimless travel, and anarchist organizing. Her preferred medium is Micron Ink pens, Sharpies, and Chartpak markers. Today, Road has moved onto illustrated novels, taking both writing and visual elements a step more seriously, her visual diagram of lifestyles and beliefs stay in tune to the zine’s portrayal of living. Her repertoire consists of ten years of independent publishing, two graphic novels, and countless illustrations for a broad slew of magazines, record album art, concert posters, and political organizations.

In early 2006, Road released an anomalous illustrated storybook, entitled INDESTRUCTIBLE (Microcosm Publishing). It’s a 96-page narrative about her experience as a teenager, where Road tackles the themes of being Latina, class, rebellion, gender, queerness, mental health, and death; all beneath the topical umbrella of being a teenage Floridian punk rocker in the early 90‘s. Road has recently completed a Collection of postcards featuring art from 2001-2007, entitled DISTANCE MAKES THE HEART GROW SICK (Microcosm Publishing). Road just released BAD HABITS (Soft Skull Press), an Illustrated love story about a faltering human heart's telepathic connections to the destruction of New York City. Road currently is working on paintings, short stories, and her punk band THE HOMEWRECKERS . She hibernates in Brooklyn, NY with a short attention span and a killer gas problem.

“Cristy Road’s burgeoning multi-media empire really speaks to me….I think the universality of Road’s stories is a testament to her writing ability and the proof that the more we think our situation is unique, the more we should realize we have a network of support available.” — Punknews.org

“Cristy Road’s work makes me so happy. Where else can you see drawings of a black genderqueer boy flashing his top surgery scars and grinning, or two girls hitchiking in the desert holding a sign that reads `Indigenous Soverignty or Bust,’ all drawn with love, color, and punk rock grit?” — Bitch Magazine

“Indestructible explores the toxic impact gender bias and proscribed norms have on questioning youth, while encouraging inquiry and protest against social constraints. So powerful is Road’s candid portrayal of growing pains, it provides the perfect comfort for angsty, self-loathing youth and sends older readers back down memory lane.” — CURVE Magazine

Ketch Wehr is a feral fairy transfeminist artist with a focus on the human consumption of animals and animal imagery as metaphor and meat.

Raised amongst rescue animals and born with a wolfpack in his heart, Ketch is a 24-year old illustrator and artist.  Since moving to Philadelphia, he has ripped through the maladies of the service industry with his webzine, Bitter Bleachbeast, become a member of the infamous artists’ collective Space 1026, and been a major designer and organizer for the Queer fundraising superparty, The Next Big Thing.

His four solo shows this year all considered various issues of human perception of non-human animals, the consumption of images of animals as a form of self-serving metaphor, and the commodification of living things based on overpopulation or scarcity. Ketch is currently working on his next show due on December 4th at Eden in Scranton, PA, and feverishly struggling to save for a dogpack of his own.