Six Seasons and an Art Show!

This past weekend I had the good fortune to attend the Six Seasons and a Movie Art Show hosted by the PixelDrip Gallery in Koreatown. The trailer above explains it better than I can, but basically the event was a collection of fan art celebrating the cult NBC sitcom Community. To say I am a fan of Community is similar to saying that Captain America did not take a shine to Hitler. Anyone who has heard me fail to shut up about this consistently heartfelt and innovative series knows that it is a big part of why I love television, and yesterday afternoon I got to hang out in a gallery filled with fans and artists who felt the same way, and most of whom were as talented as all hell.

Come with me on a magical camera phone tour! Be warned. We're about to look at a bunch of fan art that references a sitcom that references its own references to TV and film tropes. If you're not a fan of the show, it'll get confusing in there. Keep tight hold of my hand.

You enter through a Dreamatorium, so right away you know these guys aren't playing:

The art show, while in many ways a celebration of Community's narrowly escaping cancellation this past season, was also something of a wake for series creator Dan Harmon, who was recently fired by NBC after three seasons as showrunner. Here's a piece called Harmonless, by Harmon's Channel 101 co-founder Rob Schrab:

Note the reference to the Dan Harmon/Chevy Chase phone feud in the background.

Luckily there will be some continuity in the writers' room when Community resumes in the fall. Megan Ganz, who wrote some of the series's best episodes, including "Cooperative Calligraphy" and "Intermediate Documentary Filmmaking", will still write for the show. She also contributed a ton of origami sculptures that she made during meetings, fittingly entitled Meeting Notes.

If Ganz were any more my hero, she'd be Batman.

I only caught the tail end of the weekend-long event, but activities included a live band, electronic remixes of music from the sitcom, viral video screenings (this Dark Knight Rises trailer mashup was my favorite), trivia, a Winger Speech contest, and my favorite, textbooks that attendees could deface with their own doodles, just like unenthused students at Greendale Community College!

A Darkest Timeline lemur. The evil goatee is from the Community episode "Remedial Chaos Theory",
which itself references the old Star Trek episode "Mirror, Mirror". See what I mean?

Inspector Spacetime inspects the cover of this Spanish textbook.

There were plenty of other shout-outs to the show, like Boob-a-tron here:

And this playable demo for Journey to the Center of Hawkthorne:

The references continued into the men's room:

Extras aside, there was some bloody marvelous art on display. The show officially became nerdy enough for me when I saw John Trumbull's picture combining Troy and Abed with Jack Kirby villains MODOK and Arnim Zola:

My new favorite artist from the show is Jennifer Jeong. The works she had on display were crisp and cartoony in a way that nailed the spirit of the series for me. Check out her Evil Abed:

Here's a more elaborate picture by the same artist: Remedial Chaos Theory, an ensemble portrait commemorating season three's best episode.

Check out how simple and different all the individual expressions are: Shirley's indignation, Pierce's sinister good humor, Abed's contemplative puzzlement, Jeff's "Couldn't give a shit" look, Annie's wariness, Troy's defiant candy-cigarette-chewing, and Britta's happy, awkward abandonment. It's an intricate picture with a ton of heart, and for me it shares those qualities with Community itself.

But really, there was never any question about which of Ms. Jeong's prints was going to end up on my wall:

Inspector Spacetime is Community's thinly-veiled version of the long-running British sci-fi series Doctor Who, so this action shot of Abed, Troy and Annie reenacting an Inspector Spacetime adventure is basically a portrait of the baby my two favorite shows had.

Needless to say I'm glad I went. The talent on display was an inspiration, and basking in a room full of love of a television show that is itself based on a love of television...well, it felt communal.