Visit Trees & Hills at the 6th annual Stars & Skulls Crafty Craft Fair! Organized by Pioneer Valley Roller Derby co-founders Pink Panzer & Bazooka Joe, Stars & Skulls is the Valley’s original DIY alternative craft fair.

The fair will features dozens of tables of locally made jewelry, clothing, knick-knacks, housewares, tasty treats, comics and much more! PVRD will also have a merch/info table.

The fair is Sunday 12/11 from 10 am to 4 pm at the American Legion Hall at 162 Russell St. (AKA Route 9) in Hadley, MA.

As always, admission and parking are free.

Come visit the Trees & Hills table at Ye Olde Lowbrow Art Faire in Thorne’s Marketplace, 150 Main St. Northampton MA, on December 4 & December 18. It’s co-organized by longtime T&H member Anne Thalheimer, so it must be good!

“For two days this holiday season, come down to the basement of Thorne’s Marketplace, for a unique DIY shopping experience featuring 20+ local artists & crafters selling quirky handmade goods, most for under $20. Support your community and buy local handmade gifts this year!

Sunday, December 4th: 10-4
Sunday, December 18th: 10-4

Here is a list of just some of the one-of-a-kind items you will find:

• Monster hats
• Mustaches
• Comix
• Cheap art
• Stuffed creatures
• Onesies
• Jewelry
• Photographs
• Tote bags and purses
• …and so much more!

This is a kid-friendly event. We will have an art area set up to keep the kids entertained while you shop.

There will also be a raffle, which you will be entered in if you bring one canned good or non-perishable food item to donate to the local food bank. The prizes will be an assortment of goodies from our vendors.

We look forward to seeing you there!”

Visit Trees & Hills at the *broke arts fair- holiday edition, which will take place at the Fellowship Hall in the Union Congregational Church Peterborough, NH from 10am til 4pm.

The broke concept was born out of the belief that art is for everybody. All *broke arts fairs are free and all ages events. *broke artists present at least 75% of their wares for under $50 on the day of the *broke show. We want to celebrate the innovative and original art that is currently being created by un/under-represented artists everywhere.

Come visit Trees & Hills at the annual craft fair at the Keene Rec Center on Saturday, November 19 from 9am to 3pm. Over 30 vendors, a raffle, and food available on site. Admission is free; location is 312 Washington St. Keene, NH. For More Information, contact Missy Lutz 603-762-2977 cccbi@hotmail.com.

24-Hour Comics was a huge success again this year in Montpelier, Vt, as about 20 cartoonists, artists and illustrators camped out in Montpelier City Hall from Oct. 1-2. Not everyone made it to page 24, although we had several people drawing comics up until the last minute.

Selections from the comics will be on display at Bagitos Bagel and Burrito Cafe in Montpelier starting this Friday as part of the city’s Art Walk event. But there was such demand to read the whole comics, so we decided to share them all with you here in PDF format. Enjoy!

Ari Elbaum

Brian Ziegler

Daniel Robert Walbridge

Denis St. John

Ed Epstein (part 1)

Ed Epstein (part 2)

Emery Brush (part 1)

Emery Brush (part 2)

Genoa H. Scherbatskoy

Ira Black Shadis

Jeff Potter

Kirsten Edey

Liz Walsh

Neil Flanders (part 1)

Neil Flanders (part 2)

Pam Watts

Phayvanh Luekhamhan

Radical Warren (part 1)

Radical Warren (part 2)

Colin Tedford

MICE, The Massachusetts Independent Comics Expo

September 24, 2011 10am – 6pm
1815 Mass Ave., Cambridge MA (Porter Square)
Illustration by Jerel Dye

Come visit the Trees & Hills table (and all the other excellent cartoonists!) at MICE in Boston this Saturday – it’s a great show, well-run by our friends the Boston Comics Roundtable. T&H co-founder Colin Tedford will be on the “Comics & Social Justice” panel  at 1:30 pm.

Admission is free!

Vermont’s Capitol City to Host Unique Comic Book Challenge in October

Montpelier, Vt. – Can you create a 24-page comic book in 24 hours?

Thousands of others have!

Montpelier will again host a 24-Hour Comic challenge on Saturday, Oct. 1st, following up from last year’s successful event. This year, the challenge moves from the local library to Montpelier City Hall, where participants will create a 24-page comic book – story, art and lettering – in a consecutive 24 -hour period.

The event – which occurs on the international 24-Hour Comic Book Day – begins at 10am on Saturday, Oct. 1 and continues for the next 24 hours, concluding early Sunday morning, Oct. 2.

“It may sound hard, but completing a comic book in 24 hours is an amazing and rewarding experience,” said Daniel Barlow, the co-founder of Trees & Hills and one of the organizers of the event. “We’re really looking forward to seeing City Hall filled with cartoonists engaged in a creative marathon.”

The 24-Hour Comic challenge has a unique connection to Vermont: It was created two decades ago by cartoonist Scott McCloud (“Understanding Comics”) as a creative challenge for artist Stephen R. Bissette, a Vermont artist who teaches at the Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction, Vt.

“Scott invented the 24 Hour Comic as a challenge for he and I, a way of breaking logjams and freeing constrained energy by completing, sans preparation, an entire 24-page comic in a mere 24 hours, start to finish,” Bissette explained. “Whatever we did during that 24 hour stretch — including distractions like eating, using the bathroom, napping, walking, whatever – in my case, it included making my two kids lunch and picking them up from school – the clock was still ticking.”

McCloud drew the first 24-Hour comic on Aug. 31, 1990 and Bissette created his days later on Sept. 5. Since then, tens of thousands of others have taken on the challenge, culminating in an official 24-Hour Comic Book Day. The Montpelier challenge takes place on this year’s official global challenge.

Montpelier Alive, the city’s downtown organization, is also one of the organizer’s of this year’s event. The program is also supported in part by the City of Montpelier Community Arts Fund, the Vermont Arts Council and the National Endowment of the Arts.

“It’s gratifying to be part of a community that supports the arts,” Barlow said. “City officials recognize that arts events help downtowns grow and prosper.”

The event is free and open to cartoonists and artists who are at least 16 years old. Anyone interested in participating is asked to preregister by e-mailing their name, address and telephone number to  organize@treesandhills.org.

For younger cartoonists, Vermont cartoonist Denis St. John will lead a three-hour interactive teaching session on comic storytelling that same morning at the Kellogg-Hubbard Library in Montpelier.

St. John is a 2008 graduate of the Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction and the popular creator of the “Monsters and Girls” comics. Participants will concluded that session with a complete mini-comic to show off.

The next *broke-affordable arts fair will take place on November 26, 2011 at the Fellowship Hall in the Union Congregational Church in Peterborough, NH. *broke is a multidisciplinary arts event that has taken place in Peterborough, NH four times since its inception in 2008. The *broke philosophy is simple: art is for everybody. All *broke events are free to the public, and *broke vendors commit to presenting at least 75% of their wares for less than $50.

Vendor applications are available online @ www.thethinginthespring.com and will be open until September 15th, 2011.

Looking for an easy task? Celebrate and promote comics August 28th with Read Comics In Public Day!

That date is also the deadline for Woods, so if you’re too busy drawing your submission to read comics in public, we certainly understand.

Make forest comics with Trees & Hills co-founder Colin Tedford this coming Sunday 8/21 at the Conway Scenic Railroad Station in North Conway, NH. Work on your Woods anthology submission in a beautiful setting! It’s one of many great activities at the 8 Days of Weeks White Mountain Cultural Festival, celebrating 100 years of the Weeks Act (you know, the one that established the US National Forests?) every weekend in August.