The Monsters Are Due on Broad Street: Patrick Dean

Cartoonist Patrick Dean drew a weekly strip for Athens’ alternative newsweekly, Flagpole magazine, from 1997 to 2006, as well as many covers. Influenced by Jack Davis, George Grosz, Tomi Ungerer and early Mad magazine, he populates his scenes with a wide variety of characters interacting with one another, capturing a broad range of Athens’ population. Jokes abound, and monsters are humanized as much as people are monsterfied. In 2018, Dean was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as motor neurone disease or Lou Gehrig’s disease. He continues to draw, despite his increasing difficulties doing so. This small retrospective begins with his student work at UGA, from which he graduated in 1998, and ends with his recent comics about illness and mortality.

Early Works

Dean produced all three of these works while a student at UGA’s Lamar Dodd School of Art. “Monster Opera” was his thesis project, a proposed children’s book. Even in these early images, you can see his interest in monsters, crowds, and scenes full of life. His linework in the intaglio prints is not significantly different from his drawing style on paper.

Flagpole Covers

Dating from 1999 to 2003, these drawings that appeared on the cover of Flagpole capture a lot about living in Athens during those years. They show, for example, the turn of the millennium, the release of “Star Wars: The Phantom Menace” and the 2000 presidential election. Dean regrets using a Sharpie to ink much of his work from this era, but it doesn’t cover up his fluid, intuitive line. One of these works features color tests in the margins. What do you think has changed about Athens since then? What hasn’t?

Comics

The first of these strips is also one of the first Dean published in Flagpole and, appropriately enough, includes an artistic subject. Did Dean pick expressionist painter Egon Schiele because his name sounds funny? Maybe, but Schiele’s contorted bodies and overarticulated hands echo in Dean’s work. The second strip is one of the last that ran in that publication. It starts out like an EC Comics tale of terror and finishes with a goofy joke. The last strip, written for UGA’s alumni magazine, is charming work for hire that still serves as a good checklist. Don’t ride the Iron Horse, though! Climbing on sculpture is usually a bad idea.

Recent Work

In June of 2018, Dean received a diagnosis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease or motor neurone disease. ALS attacks and kills the nerve cells that control motor function, or the ability to move one’s muscles. Even as it becomes more difficult, Dean has continued to make work, including these two images that address his disease and what it feels like. Here, he draws himself as Frankenstein’s monster to represent his walk without a cane. The image also serves as homage to the cartoonist Jack Davis, a major influence on Dean, who drew a famous 6-foot poster of the monster in 1962.

 

Click and drag in the photo below to see a 360° view of the installed exhibition.

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