Beginning with an opening reception from 5 to 6:30pm on First Friday, Jan. 5, Bonfire Coffee will host a Sopris Sun-themed exhibition of artwork by Brain Colley and Larry Day featuring drawings that have appeared within the pages of this weekly newspaper.
The dynamic duo are friends who make one another laugh, with Colley’s quirky humor leaving you wondering if the earth’s axis is tilted a bit more than usual, and with Day’s dry wit so deadpan that he rarely cracks a smile when making a joke.
Here is an example of how silly they can be: Colley described their friendship as “Brian Colley and Larry Day — power couple!” I then asked, “Not the odd couple, but ‘the power couple?’” He responded, “The powerfully odd couple, oddly powerful.”
Brian Colley
In March 2020, Colley got a call from The Sopris Sun’s then-editor, Will Grandbois, who asked if he’d like to contribute a weekly cartoon to the newspaper. With everyone required to remain at home, it was a creative response to the pandemic stifling the paper’s traditional approach to news coverage.
As Colley recalls, “I thought it would be a fun challenge. First of all, I had to think of a new comic strip. I’ve done some illustration with comics, but not like an ongoing, weekly comic you’re committed to. Will called me on a Thursday, so I had a few days to get it together, and by that weekend, I had the title and format for ‘The Unparalleled Universe.’ A day later, I had a cartoon to Will, and then Raleigh kept it going.”
While the format of the cartoon panel has changed, Colley said, “It’s been both great and challenging. It’s also a unique space, like a blank canvas every week that I sit down to and am like, ‘Whoa!’”
Cartoons can be a space for social or political commentary and, “Now and then, I do some politically or current event-ish features, and some of them are just kind of wacky ‘What’s going on in Brian’s head this week?’ cartoons,” Colley observed.
After three years, 156 of Colley’s weekly cartoons have produced a book with the assistance of Alyssa Ohnmacht of Light of the Moon, Inc. — a Carbondale-based publishing company.
“I have this beautiful book with a foreword by Will Grandbois and Raleigh Burleigh, which is really sweet,” Colley said.
The book is available at Bonfire, White River Books and The Launchpad at Carbondale Arts and is priced at $25, to which Colley said, “What a deal! Is that a deal? One hundred fifty-six cartoons for $25!” Without missing a beat, Day said, “I think everyone should buy several copies each.” And with that, I’d been tagged-teamed once again.
Larry Day
Day was asked by Amy Beidleman, a curator at the Aspen Chapel Gallery, if he wanted to exhibit either his cartoons or his watercolors there. Having never exhibited his cartoons before, he took the opportunity.
Then, with a collection of cartoons, he approached Burleigh “and asked, ‘Hey, would you guys like to publish these?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, sure.’ He didn’t question it, and I thought, ‘Well, that never happens.’”
From early 2021, Day was contributing illustrations to The Sopris Sun on a regular basis, “And then one day, Raleigh asked me to do some courtroom sketches at the [Michael] Francisco trial,” he said. Day is now the regular contributor of illustrations for Garfield County Board of Commissioners meetings and for other stories that can use the sensitive, yet still humorous touch of a Day illustration.
In 2019, when Day and his wife, Miriam, moved to Carbondale, he was already accomplished as the creator of artwork for pinball machines, an illustrator for a global advertising agency and an illustrator for children’s books authored by his wife.
“In the ‘80s, I worked in Chicago drawing art for pinball machine backglasses, playfields and side cabinets. I also illustrated a lot of marquees, control panels and play areas for the early video games that were in arcades,” Day explained.
He was then hired by advertising giant Leo Burnett, headquartered in Chicago, as a storyboard artist for commercials, where he worked for almost 30 years and for whom he continues to do freelance work.
While at Burnett, Day worked on commercials for such clients as Heinz Ketchup, Hallmark Cards and Allstate Insurance.
“That work trained me to hone my visual storytelling to 30 seconds, and that helped me think how you do that in a cartoon that people look at for five seconds, 10 seconds at the most. The cartoon has to have a visual strength to it. And it’s even better if you can do it without words,” he explained.
Staying inspired
During our interview, Day wanted to put in a plug for a local Colley/Day favorite activity. “By the way, if anyone out there wants to attend, I would highly recommend joining the Roaring Fork Drawing Club on Tuesday nights.”
Local artist Lindsay Jones and Colley formed the group in 2017 after the two visited various locations to draw, and decided that the outings would be a fun activity with more people. Since then, the Roaring Fork Drawing Club has convened somewhere in the Roaring Fork Valley every Tuesday night. “It’s like a workout buddy, who you tell you’re gonna meet them at the gym at 6am, but with this, you meet at Peppino’s Pizza or wherever at 6:30 on a Tuesday night,” Colley said with a laugh.
For weekly locations, visit their Instagram account: @rfdrawingclub
At the Bonfire show, Colley will have postcards and books for sale, and Day will have original Sopris Sun artwork on display, with prints for sale. A portion of the sales will be donated to The Sopris Sun, your local nonprofit newspaper.
Day thought the exhibit would be a way to support The Sun, and Colley added, “Thanks to Raleigh and the whole staff over there. It’s such a unique paper, and we’re lucky to have it in our community.”