Billy Mavreas (born August 14, 1968) is a

Canadian Canadians () are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of their being ''C ...

cartoonist A cartoonist is a visual artist who specializes in both drawing and writing cartoons (individual images) or comics (sequential images). Cartoonists differ from comics writers or comics illustrators/artists in that they produce both the litera ...

and artist living in

Montreal Montreal is the List of towns in Quebec, largest city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Quebec, the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-largest in Canada, and the List of North American cit ...

Quebec Quebec is Canada's List of Canadian provinces and territories by area, largest province by area. Located in Central Canada, the province shares borders with the provinces of Ontario to the west, Newfoundland and Labrador to the northeast, ...

, Canada whose mostly silent or wordless comics revolve around the themes of language, sexuality and spirituality. He is of

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

descent from the region of

Mani Mani may refer to: People * Mani (name), (), a given name and surname (including a list of people with the name) ** Mani (prophet) (c. 216–274), a 3rd century Iranian prophet who founded Manichaeism ** Mani (musician) (born 1962), an English ...

. His posters, featuring otherworldly creatures, especially bunnies, influenced by the

psychedelic art Psychedelic art (also known as psychedelia) is art, graphics or visual displays related to or inspired by psychedelic experiences and hallucinations known to follow the ingestion of psychedelic drugs such as lysergic acid diethylamide, LSD, psil ...

stylings of

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

artists such as

Rick Griffin Richard Alden "Rick" Griffin (June 18, 1944 – August 18, 1991) was an American artist and one of the leading designers of psychedelic posters in the 1960s. He was a key figure in the underground comix movement as a fouding member of the ' ...

and

Victor Moscoso Victor Moscoso (born July 28, 1936) is a Spanish–American artist best known for producing psychedelic rock posters, advertisements, and underground comix in San Francisco during the 1960s and 1970s. He was the first of the rock poster artists of ...

, figured strongly in the Montreal literary and spoken word scene of the 1990s. Since 2004, Mavreas has been a regular cartoonist for ''

ascent magazine ''ascent'' was an independent, not-for-profit magazine published quarterly that explores the intersection of spiritual values with social and political issues, art, culture and contemporary thought. ''ascent'' also published a website, a blog, bo ...

'', a Canadian yoga magazine, and ''

Matrix Matrix (: matrices or matrixes) or MATRIX may refer to: Science and mathematics * Matrix (mathematics), a rectangular array of numbers, symbols or expressions * Matrix (logic), part of a formula in prenex normal form * Matrix (biology), the m ...

'' magazine, a literary review based in Montreal. Mavreas is also the editor of the comics anthology ''Monster Island'', acting as publisher of the first two issues, while the third issue was published by Conundrum Press. ''Monster Island III'' is notable for including some of the last work by

Hall of Fame A hall, wall, or walk of fame is a list of individuals, achievements, or other entities, usually chosen by a group of electors, to mark their excellence or Wiktionary:fame, fame in their field. In some cases, these halls of fame consist of actu ...

cartoonist Alootook Ipellie.

Books

* ''Mutations: The Posters Of Billy Mavreas'', Conundrum Press, Montreal, 1997 * ''The Overlords Of Glee'', conundrum press & Crunchy Comics, Montreal, 2001 * ''Inside Outside Overlap'', Timeless Books, Kootenay, 2008

Non-cartooning work

* Co-founder of

Expozine Expozine is an annual small press, zine and comics fair in Montreal, Quebec. It is reported to be Canada's largest zine fair and one of the largest small press fairs in North America attracting some 270 exhibitors and 15,000 visitors each autumn. ...

, Montreal's small press and zine fair * Keeper of Monastiraki,

avant-garde In the arts and literature, the term ''avant-garde'' ( meaning or ) identifies an experimental genre or work of art, and the artist who created it, which usually is aesthetically innovative, whilst initially being ideologically unacceptable ...

flea market *

Mail art Mail art, also known as postal art and correspondence art, is an artistic movement centered on sending small-scale works through the mail, postal service. It developed out of what eventually became Ray Johnson's New York Correspondence School and ...

and

concrete poetry Concrete poetry is an arrangement of linguistic elements in which the typographical effect is more important in conveying meaning than verbal significance. It is sometimes referred to as visual poetry, a term that has now developed a distinct mea ...

References

External links

yesway blog

drawrings blog

Expozine
Canadian comic strip cartoonists Canadian comics artists Canadian comics writers Canadian illustrators Canadian people of Greek descent Artists from Montreal Writers from Montreal 1968 births Living people Place of birth missing (living people) Anglophone Quebec people {{Canadian-comics-creator-stub