Barbara created the poster for this year’s Afrofest, the annual celebration of African music and culture in downtown Toronto. It’s on this weekend at Queen’s Park. Check out the info, videos and schedule of music at

Every two weeks Clayton does a regular feature for a web site devoted to interesting things about Toronto called torontoist.com. Hog-O-Vision is a look at Clayton’s take on Toronto’s future.

Have a look at Clayton’s past visions.

CHEEZ was originally a monthly comic drawing published in Canada’s Exclaim Magazine over a ten year period from 1992 to 2002. There were no editorial restrictions on the work apart from the monthly deadline and the colour restrictions of the paper (the art work had to be black and white). Each drawing was created shortly before the deadline and numbered in chronological order. This CHEEZ, featured on INDEXG’s Monday Artpost will be drawn weekly and will continue with the same numbering sequence and restrictive palette. A collection of the first one hundred strips was published as CHEEZ 100 by Pedlar Press in 2001.

In Germany during the early 1920s rampant inflation wreaked havoc on the economy (an American dollar—worth 330 marks in 1921—skyrocketed in 1923 to 4,200,000,000,000 marks… at its zenith, an American dollar was worth 99,000,000,000,000). In an attempt to replace or supplement the increasingly valueless German currency, cities took to printing their own money—notgeld, or emergency money (literally “necessity money”). Notgeld was usually printed as paper banknotes and was usable only in the municipality where it was issued. Read R.O. Blechman’s article, Order, Disorder and Notgeld on the AIGA blog and have have a look at some of his collection.

A scatological illustration on notgeld from the town of Itzehoe in Holstein.

Last month, Reactor’s Bill Grigsby, Louis Fishauf and Tomio Nitto visited illustrator/artists Henrik Drescher and Wu Wing Yee in Dali, Yunnan, China. Aarmed with digital cameras, the intrepid travellers took a lot of pictures. When they got back, Louis exercised his considerable design talents to edit and create a slide show of their trip.

Bill Russell frequently draws and interviews people he finds interesting. Bill’s reportage begins with a pen, a sketchbook and plenty of conversation.

Recently Bill was embedded as a Civil War reporter artist at the Las Mariposas Civil War Days in Mariposa, California. Check out his activities with the California Civil War reenactors.

Since November of last year, Barbara Klunder has been focusing her sharp eye and witty words on the general stupidity she sees around her.

Check out her new blog, LITTLE RUDE RIDING HOOD.

Maurice Vellekoop hits newsstands with 6 different covers for the L.A. Times, Calendar Section, Sunday March 7th. The series centers around an actress on the day of the 82nd Academy Awards.

Bill Russell has always had a thing for cabbies. He used to interview and draw a different cab driver every month for several years for TODO magazine in San Francisco. He’s still riding around. Check out his blog here.

Five new pieces by Maurice on the decade’s hot topic.