The Hollywood Theatre presents graphic novels spilling out of the third eye of GRIDLORDS. GRIDLORDS is a Portland based underground and art comics community, with a strong love of interdisciplinary performance and storytelling, and an unbridled desire to marry sound and vision in new ways.

In an era where the church of the mind and the soul of the state are dependent on individuals too wrapped up in their phones to be wrapped up in each other GRIDLORDS wants you, the audience, to feel a part of something. On April 27th at 9:30pm a massive exhibition of shadow puppets, warped sounds, strange lights, free hand animations and comedy will descend upon the theater with one goal – to inspire creativity and stimulate independent thought.

The smorgasbord includes:

Eamon Espey & Lisa Krause: performing Ishi’s Brain
Ishi’s Brain is a show by Lisa Krause and Eamon Espey that incorporates shadow puppets, a marionette, masks and a liberal use of painted cardboard. It’s based on a chapter in Espey’s new graphic novel, Songs of the Abyss. The true story is about a man who has often been referred to as “the last wild Indian.” In Krause and Espey’s version, it becomes a science fiction ritual where a lone spirit spends his final days and an alien shaman guides him into the next world.

MSHR
MSHR is a collaborative audio-visual project by Birch Cooper and Brenna Murphy. The duo works across digital, analog and organic media to build synthesizers, installations, recordings and rituals. “A hand tracing a spiral in the wet sand, meshing with the sky to form a nano chip.”

Chelsea Kamm w/ the Many Fur Puppet troupe
IN THE DARK TIMES. A short and sweet shadow puppet show about the end times by the Many Fur Puppet Troupe, set to a live soundtrack by a wild band of Portland locals.

Erin Tanner performing Dream Governor
Dream Governor: a multi media collage story of a full time dreamer who lives in the dome of a capitol building, inspired by recent travel time and conversations in Olympia Wa and Providence RI. Erin Tanner is a pacific northwest based artist in realms of comics, puppetry, performance, animation, piano, comedy, storytelling, and most recently mural paintings and video.

MARSUPLALA
MARSUPLALA is a collaborative performance project between artists Wally C. and Alex Chiu. The project can be described as a collage of creative vomit; some of the best there is to offer in the world of Weirdo Art Theater. Expect to see full body monster costumes, animated violence, and drippy cuteness.

Plus Lori D. presents a Gridlords Animation reel:

EDIBLE ROCKS by STEFAN GRUBER
Stefan Gruber is a Seattle animator and performance artist. He creates a short hand drawn, digitally finished film every year. Edible Rocks is his new film about the time he convinced his little brother that there were rocks you can eat.

WATER by AMY LOCKHART
Amy Lockhart is a filmmaker, animator and artist. Her animations have screened at festivals nationally and internationally, including the Ann Arbor Film Festival and International Animation Festival in Hiroshima, Japan.

LIKE A LANTERN by LILLI CARRE
Lilli Carré is an artist and illustrator living in Chicago. She primarily works in the forms of animation and comics, and is the co-founder of the Eyeworks Festival of Experimental Animation. She has created several books of comics, most recently the short story collection Heads or Tails, published by Fantagraphics Books.

WEE WEE ATTRACTORS by LEIF GOLDBERG and URSA GOLDENROSE
Leif Goldberg’s mystifying films present the viewer with an ecstatic obstacle course of mutating images and delightfully warped sounds. In addition to filmmaking, Goldberg is an independent artist whose work ranges from drawings and objects to screen prints.
(from Anthology Film Archives program notes, Feb. 2013)

LORD I: THE RECORDS KEEPER by LORI DAMIANO
Lori D. is a Portland based independent Illustrator & animator. LORD I: THE RECORDS KEEPER is a hand-drawn animated film that she has been working on for over 10 orbits of the earth. LORD I is a story of a documentarian learning to shake off the mental barnacles of the past and the holographic barnacle projections of the future in order to encounter the indefinable present moment.