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[jefflewis]

Last night at 8pm Peter Stampfel took me to an invite-only Art Spiegelman comic book gallery opening event, uptown at the Jewish Museum on 92nd St…. lots of comic book folks were there! I guess it was a special "preview" showing of this Spiegelman retrospective, I don't know what day it will be open to the public, maybe it opens this weekend.

It was great but crazy, just looking at all this great art side by side with Chris Ware (flew into NYC just for the event), Adrian Tomine, Charles Burns (whom I didn't know was there till after, cuz I dunno what he looks like), David Mazzuchelli (ditto), Art Spiegelman, etc!  I didn't say anything to any of 'em cuz I've got nothing to say really, but it was cool!  At least there were a few people that I know also, like Bill Kartalopoulous, Aaron Cometbus, Gabrielle Bell and Ariel Shrag, David Heatley and Bob Sikoryak, so I didn't feel totally like a party-crasher, there were a few people i could say hi to.  

And of course the art itself was really great, I had no idea all the original Maus pages were drawn at print-size... like 5 inches by 7 inches!  Quite small, really weird to see.  And a lot of really great Spiegelman 2-4 page comics from the 70s that I had never seen.

[hamlet]

So glad you got to go to that Jeff. Some day there will be a Jeffrey Lewis show there, and all the new comic artists will be milling about contemplating your work. Glad you enjoyed the show and ran into some people you knew.