The Weird Cartoons, Kitsch & Culture of Low Brow Art features works from forty local artists and a handful of others from as far as New York and Mexico City, who work in styles related to cartoons and other sequential art like comic books, comic strips, graphic novels, and Manga, as well as graffiti, tattoos, Naïve / Outsider Art and other related styles.

The artist Robert Williams helped pioneer the underground comix movement in the 1960s by co-founding the ground-breaking Zap Comix and later founded the art magazine Juxtapoz. Williams coined the phrase Low Brow Art – an umbrella term that describes many styles and practices that have been historically rejected by formal art academia – comic books, movie posters, trading cards, surfer and tiki art, hot rod culture, and many others. combining these concepts with the surrealist painters of the early 20th century and the psychedelic art that he and his cohorts were creating in the 1960’s, he formed a new art style he calls Pop Surrealism, which has been embraced by a new generation of artists.

From the Dadaists to Mad Magazine to Post-Pop to Street Art to the wonderfully weird creations on display here, let’s celebrate the rich history of irreverent, boundary-breaking, limit-pushing doodlers who make us laugh and think and want to draw some more.

—James Walton, Curator