The Seattle Times June 12,1995 Night Final City Edition  COPYRIGHT 1995 SEATTLE TIMES COMPANY  WASHINGTON'S LARGEST NEWSPAPER  35 CENTS IN SEATTLE METRO AREA SKETCHBOOK 'Zine' artists drawing more attention By ROBIN UPDIKE Seattle Times art critic Seattle has more underground cartoonists and "zine" (a term for non ~ mainstream magazines) artists per capita than any where in the nation, so it's no wonder that some are starting to get recognition from mainstream arts organizations. Publications such as The Rocket and The Stranger have published them for years, but now it also looks like work from one of Seattle's zine illustrators will end up the walls of a municipal building. Go in person to pay your light bill sometime in 1996 and you may find yourself face to face with a cartoon by Blair Wilson, a reserved, 28-year old Seattle zine artist and part-time dishwasher who has won a $7,500 commission from the Seattle Arts Commission. (Nine other Seattle artists also won commissions from the organization this year. All but Wilson and jewelry artist Nancy Worden are painters, sculptors or photographers. Works commissioned will become part of City Light's Portable Works Collection, which is displayed in public buildings.) Alternative cartoons, or "comix," and zine illustrations are famously nasty. Zines are usually comi-bookstyle publications often sold through the mail. In general, zines are self published, sometimes on copy machines. They can be about music, poetry or anything at all. Like most alternative cartoonists, zine illustrators present a grimier, earthier, sometimes sinister slice of life than you'd find in the Sunday funnies. Much of what they draw wouldn't pass the taste test at a family newspaper, though there is increasing fascination with their point of view. A disturbing documentary on legendary underground cartoonist Robert Crumb has grabbed national attention, and will soon start a regular run here. Wilson says he plans not to present the commission with anything too outlandish. He's a little surprised that the commission is even interested in his illustrations. In his proposal, he said he wanted to make abstract acrylic paintings. When the selection committee visited his studio, however, they saw his zine drawings and liked them. Wilson's final contract with the commission includes creating two abstract paintings and 12 cartoons. Armed with a college art degree and six years of zine illustrating experience - Wilson guesses he's been published in some 200 zines nationwide - he now wants to split his time between zine illustrations and fine art. Though his drawings have a bawdy bent, his paintings suggest nothing so much as the happy, anarchic canvases of surrealist Joan Miro. One completed painting is a painstakingly detailed pink and orange composition of tiny squiggles and biomorphic shapes. The scene could be a couple of schools of bubble gum colored snail darters engaged in some Busby Berkeley choreography. The painting will brighten the day of any city employee who works near it. Wilson says his drawing and fine art are influenced by surrealism, Dada, Hieronymus Bosch, Salvador Dali, comic books and the early work of Chicago painter Jim Nutt, a spiritual godfather to today's alternative cartoonists. "I also really like absurdist elements, a kind of whimsy, the work of R.C. Crumb and the tradition of cartooning coming together with fine art," said Wilson. Barbara Goldstein, the commission's public-art program director, notes that two other cartoonists, Ashley Rafflower and Shelley Moore, have won commissions from her organization in the past. Cartooning, Goldstein said, "is a very rich field. I feel very good about this commission." She is confident that commission will find appropriate places to display Wilson's work. Seattle's talented community of jewelry artists gets less attention than the underground cartoonists, but Nancy Worden's Seattle Arts Commission award may signal a change. She is the first jewelry artist to create something for the city's portable artworks collection. Worden is known for her ironic, often humorous necklaces and brooches, which she shows locally at William Traver Gallery. But for the commission she is thinking big: She says she will use her jewelry-making skills to make a couple of big, elaborate crowns that can be displayed in boxes on the wall.