Artist Gary Hallgren

Gary Hallgren is a very respected illustrator, painters and cartoonist and is my guest thos week. In the days of the undergound comix in the ealry 1970s, Hallgren was part of the Air Pirates, a group of artists who decided to parody the characters owned by Walt Disney.  They were sued by the Disney company and a judge found their work to fall outside of the protections of freedom of speech and was deemed as copyright infringement. The judgement did not prevent these artists from going on with their careers, I'm happy to report. In years following, he had a limited series of comic books from Marvel and did work for MAD and other humor magazines. He is the artist for the nationally syndicated comics strip "Hagar the Horrible." Gary's artwork is being featured in an exhibit at the Art for the Soul Gallery at Tower Square in downtown Springfield. MA. "A Retrospective: 1971 – Presents: Gary Hallgren" features a wide range of his paintings and sculptures. The exhibit is on display through Jan. 19. Gary excels in taking elements of popular culture and looking at them through his own lens. For instance, there are refences to Blondie and Dagwood, Buck Rogers, Nancy and Sluggo, among others. There are metal sculptures made by found objects.  He mixes and matches different mediums in a work of art. There will be a pop-up shop of crafters at the gallery on Dec. 15 and Gary will be in attendance.