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A local “store of the strange” invades the Walker for an evening dive into the mutating edge of illustration, comics, and gumballs.
Founded in 2023 by Brad McGinty, Odd Mart is the “store of the strange” located in the Uptown district of Minneapolis. Emerging out of GLORP Gum, a small business featuring “the only gum that comes with free t-shirt”, Odd Mart has mutated into a hub for many of the Twin Cities’ new and emergent approaches to underground comix, illustration, Zines, and more.
Bios
Sam Richard is the author of the books The Still Beating Heart of a Dead God (2024) and the award-winning To Wallow in Ash & Other Sorrows (2019), among others. He has edited 10 anthologies, including underground hits like Profane Altars: Weird Sword & Sorcery (2024) and The New Flesh: A Literary Tribute to David Cronenberg (2019). His short fiction has appeared in more than 40 publications. Widowed in 2017, he slowly rots in Minneapolis where he runs Weirdpunk Books. You can find him @SammyTotep across socials or at weirdpunkbooks.com.
Leda Zawacki is a queer cartoonist and the co-owner of Tooth Saint, a handcrafted leather and accessory brand. With more than 20 years of comics-making experience, Zawacki merges digital and analog drawing techniques, with a strong focus on queer narratives. Her work includes the graphic novel Little Gods (2017), a contribution to the Votes for Women anthology (2020), and the Ignatz-nominated mini-comic The Drain Pipe (2021). She is a two-time recipient of the MICE Mini Grant for her projects The Swinging Bridge (2018) and The Stain (2021). Zawacki holds a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MFA from the Center for Cartoon Studies. When she’s not creating comics, she enjoys intaglio printing, hosting drink-and-draw events, screen printing new designs in her garage, and DJing at the local goth club.
Accessibility
This event will have ASL interpretation. For information about accessibility, or to request additional accommodations for this program, call 612-375-7564, or email [email protected].
Pricing
$24 ticket ($19 AIGA and Walker members; $10 students)
About the Insights Lecture Series
For over three decades, the Walker Art Center and AIGA Minnesota have co-presented the Insights Design Lecture Series embracing the unexpected to present diverse, exploratory, and contemporary lecturers.
Featuring perspectives from around the world, Insights gives voice to adventurous design thinkers and makers. These designers often pose challenges and push the edges of their profession, in turn inspiring us to identify new perspectives in our own work. Redefine your understanding of graphic design, dive into the thinking behind the work, then hang out after the lectures to meet the lecturers, grab a drink, and chat with your fellow design lovers.
This year’s in-person lineup features collaborative Actual Source, Yowie founder Shannon Maldonado; Zeynep Orbay, Amsterdam-based creative director for Wieden+Kennedy; as well as Odd Mart, a local “store of the strange” and epicenter for new approaches to comics and illustration.
Expanded programming includes workshops exploring the possibilities of creating tangible, physical forms using digital learning, breaking past the unadventurous inherent in AI writing, and collaborating with printers to discover new processes. In addition, a guest-edited series on the Walker Reader by Unknown Unknowns explores the perpetually mutating relationship between physical and digital publishing.
Copresented by the Walker Art Center and AIGA Minnesota.