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Date: 7/19/2022
AMHERST – Artist Gary Hallgren was at one of his favorite spots, The Moan and Dove in Amherst, when he realized the art on the walls of the beer bar had been up for a long time. He asked the owner about it and Hallgren had the opportunity to stage his own exhibit.
The result is an informal art show that largely features Nancy, the star of the venerable comic strip of the same name, as Hallgren’s muse.
The Granby resident is well-known as a sought-after illustrator whose work has appeared in comic books, books and magazines. He is the artist for the comic strip “Hagar the Horrible,” as well. He is also a major figure in the underground comic book movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s as a member of the Air Pirates, a group of artists whose parody of Disney characters eventually resulted in a Supreme Court decision concerning free speech.
The spirit of those underground comic books is still very much part of Hallgren’s professional life as witnessed in his book “Amuzing Stories,” which plays with the conventions of popular characters from pop culture in an outrageous and frequently adult manner. Hallgren’s reinterpretation of Nancy and Sluggo are part of that.
In the collection of work at the Moan and Dove, Nancy, her pal Sluggo and her Aunt Fritzie are seen as they have never been seen before including a classic Cubist rendition of the three characters.
Hallgren is not the only person who has seen the simplistically drawn gag-oriented comic strip. There is an acclaimed book about how to interpret Nancy, “How to Read Nancy,” by Mark Newgarden and Paul Karasik that was described by the New York Times as a “comprehensive, scholarly and intensely goofy dissertation on a single daily Nancy strip from 1959.”
When asked by Reminder Publishing about his interest in “Nancy,” Hallgren said he never appreciated the strip until its syndicator, United Features, conducted a search for a replacement for the strip’s creator Ernie Bushmiller after his death.
The syndicate asked a number of cartoonists to submit six weeks of sample “Nancy” strips and Hallgren was among them. “I didn’t get it until I did those six weeks,” Hallgren said.
“I never got ‘Nancy’ until I got in ‘Nancy,” he added. “‘Nancy’ is part of our American pop heritage and more,” he added.
As for his reasoning to choose the Moan and Dove as the location for the exhibition, Hallgren said with a smile, “I’m a regular, I drink here.”
The paintings will be on the wall of the establishment for “a few months,” he added.
For more information about Hallgren, go to https://www.garyhallgren.com.