Adam Griffith's StoryBox Comics Fair: An 'ongoing response to the comics, 'zine, and printmaking culture in DC'

Photos coming soon...

What's StoryBox and why did you start it?
StoryBox Comics Fair is an annual two-day celebration of the medium of comics and gathering of self-published comics artists.

Day 1 takes place at DwightMess compound (805 Silver Spring Ave) from 11-6pm and is Free and open to the public.

Our program’s theme this year is 'Make Art, Make Comics!" So all of our workshops, artist lectures, and panels are centered around making. Our Special Guest, Richmond-based Rae Whitlock, will be in conversation with comics journalist Francesca Lyn about her new graphic novel, “Medium.” We’ll listen to an adventure about researching and writing comics with illustrator and graphic-recorder Mark Korsak. Babs New, everyone’s favorite art model will pose for a figure drawing session, and we’ll have a live recording by Paper Cuts with past and current editors of Magic Bullet, DC’s only comics newspaper.  We'll also present three new exhibits opening in the galleries; comics-inspired abstract graphics by John Grunwell, Remix: Selections from the DwightMess permanent Art & Tchotchkes Collection, and “Andrew Wodzianski is a Party Pooper,” an equally cheerful and dark exhibition of decorated vintage cakepans featuring various pop culture references. We’ll also be offering a free Intro Session with our new Riso machine if you’d like to begin printing regularly at the compound, and naturally, there will be exhibitor tables in the Common Room on the first floor, so, much to explore. 

Day 2 takes place at Third Hill Brewing Co. and is a traditional comics expo experience at a smaller, more intimate scale, with a few workshops included. This year we’ll be screening rare cartoons from the DwightMess video vault!

StoryBox is an ongoing response to the comics, 'zine, and printmaking culture in DC, on the ground, as it happens. As we’ve been running DwightMess for almost four years, I’d say that I started StoryBox because I do enjoy going to comics expos and conventions, but there is nothing that tells me more about what it's like to be a comics reader and artist in the area where I reside than organizing this low-key mini-expo - it gives me a unique hold on what my peers are concerned with creatively, and keeps me burning with the integrity to remain original.  There's a difference between that and succumbing to every trend, which I think people who attend and who also follow what we've been doing at DwightMess compound understand intrinsically. 


Why is part of it in your house? How does your husband feel about that? IRRC, he's not a comics aficionado.
We were looking for a new place to live at the end of the pandemic. When we saw this house in downtown Silver Spring, which was way bigger than our previous house, I sort of noticed how it was laid out and began to hatch a plan to convert part of it into a gallery. Once we moved in, and I was setting up my art studio, that was when I realized that my own reading and art practice had gotten so big, so wider-spanning, that perhaps it would be right to not only run an underground gallery, but also continue to nourish the comics reader/maker community around me, and cultivate an ongoing and welcoming environment for ‘curious readers’ of comics.  

My Husband has me well-convinced that he likes all of the activity of the compound -the opening receptions, rotating art, me disappearing into my studio, and public programming. He’s not an aficionado but he does fall into the category of ‘curious reader;’ I can determine what types of comics he would be interested in, and make recommendations. In terms of the space and our home together, he is a lawyer, history buff and voracious (prose) reader so he really only needs his office and his library in the Common Room to perch in as he reads, and then most of the rest of the house and the workshop out back are devoted to showing art, teaching art, and making art. He quite likes the opening receptions because he’s a very good host and it always interests him talking to artists. 

Why call it Dwightmess?
My middle name is ‘Dwight.’ My family has an odd practice of addressing each other by either their first or middle names - and you don’t get to decide. Sometimes, one person, or several people will simultaneously all just switch and start calling you your other name, which is extremely disorienting, and so it’s a bit of a silly dig into that behavior and also the folly of being too self-regarding. The second part, primordially explains itself.

Why is part of it in a brewery?
We do the expo portion of the fair at the brewery in order to further communicate that we’d like to invite the public in to consume self-published and experimental comics, and adults especially so. Here in the states, comics are always thought of as a genre for kids, to get them reading, no matter how sophisticated the themes and humor have evolved. Comics can be the sort of cultural object that people can pick up as naturally as a film or a drink, or a new pair of shoes. That being said, the comics library at DwightMess is full of some truly subterranean material, but we would never withhold our type of reading from the hands of anyone we’d suspect would enjoy it!

How well has the brewery partnership worked out? 
We’ve been with Third Hill Brewing Co. since the beginning of StoryBox – the attendees and artist presenters love the space – we’re tucked back in the brewery amongst the beer tanks and so it’s silver and futuristic-looking and cozy, so it also forces us to maintain a certain scale. The most exhibitors we’ve ever had was 22.

Who gets asked to participate?
We do a free Call for Entries for StoryBox and then we also invite people from beyond the DC area as special guests or programmers. So anyone can apply, but also generally people who have been involved with the gallery before - exhibiting in the art space,  running a program, or someone we’ve networked with in some other context, can end up getting invited. For instance, Olivier Ballou, who makes graphic novels based on his Canadian home town, also runs our bi-monthly comic book club. So we try to sustain artists’ practices by having them collaborate with us in ways that will enrich their own art-making.

Are you attracting a different audience from a zine or SPX's show?
We definitely get the zine and SPX audience and many of the true devotees to small publishing who show up year-round for that, but we also get people who are truly fresh to comics-reading and making comics. Applying for SPX can be very intimidating to someone who’s just started making comics, who are so new, that they may have their concepts in order but are still developing their own sense of creative success and polish, and they need somewhere to explore and test that out first, without having to cut corners on their vision in order to achieve a level of professional sheen that they don’t need yet. I worked as an arts administrator in the DC contemporary art world for nearly 15 years, so we also get college professors, educators, and contemporary ‘fine’ artists who are trying to understand comics in a welcoming environment. We also get a lot more DMV-region locals who tend to be more intrepid about cross-pollinating with interesting people.
 
How many exhibits have you done in your home now? Was anything particularly notable or memorable about any one in particular? HOw do you select or ask people?
We’ve hosted over 30 shows since opening; in the main gallery, the Common Room, the Green Room on the 2nd floor, and also the secret/tiny gallery. From painting, to original comic art, to sculpture, animation, illustration, vintage objects - so many that I’d be doing any of those artists from our little family an injustice by leaving anyone out.

I’m looking forward to our next show: it’s the culmination of this year’s Dwightmess Artist Residency program combining forces with arts nonprofit transformer’s Exercises for Emerging Artists program to present a comics-themed show at their space in downtown DC at 14th & P Streets NW in late July. As Lead Artist, I selected four comics artists, Yuki Clarke, Art Hondros, Linda Kuo and Tia WIlson, who developed projects for the show over the course of several months. They met regularly at the compound to critique each other’s work, hear Guest Lecturers such as Corinne Halbert and Dana Jeri Maier and learn new skills such as risograph printing - sort of like a Masters of the Arts program in fast-forward. I’m so upset that I can’t even tell you the title yet! 

Your IRL job is a little surprising - can you describe it?
Yes, for a long time I was driven on becoming a full-time artist, but ultimately, like most creative people in the DMV, the high cost of living demands a patchwork of occupations.

Full-time, I’m the Security department’s manager at the National Museum for Women in the Arts - it started out as a guard job that I wouldn't have to think too much about; standing around in the galleries drawing, but upper management got wind of my capabilities so I've failed upwards splendidly for the past 2 years. 

We last did an interview 11 years ago - https://comicsdc.blogspot.com/2015/09/meet-local-cartoonist-chat-with-adam.html - is there anything you want to update or correct in there?

I’d say paste this to the end of the interview with no comment: “See Griffiths’ previous interview”...