The Cartoon Art Museum hosts cartoonist Bruce McKay on Saturday, June 12th, 2010 from 1pm to 3pm as part of its ongoing Cartoonist-in-Residence program.  Museum visitors will be offered the chance to talk about cartooning and view McKay’s work.  This event is free and open to the public.

Bruce McKay is a fifth-generation San Franciscan who lives in the Inner Sunset district. He graduated from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2003 with a BFA in Sculpture and a minor in Digital Media. His new work, The Tengu 2010, will see its first printing this summer.

About TheTengu 2010:
In his first graphic novel, McKay imagines a San Francisco in the dimension next door, separated from us by a sometimes porous membrane. No birds here, and no humans: just Bird People and everything we’ve created, provided it sits still long enough.

At prominent locations across the peninsula, there are close to a dozen bird deities from our mythical traditions, getting ready to hatch again after a century of slumber. Because of this, San Francisco is a Holy Land to its inhabitants. Its local caretaker god, the Tengu, is a Raven hermit possessed with great magical powers and an equally notorious temper. He’s been on the job for a century and may be going senile.

Around six hundred Bird People live in the parks and natural spaces of the city. As is the case all over their world, they belong to clans based on their counterpart species here. Just as in our San Francisco, they find common cause as well as conflicts of interest with one another.

About the Cartoonist in Residence Program:
The Cartoon Art Museum regularly hosts professional cartoonist in its galleries as part of its Cartoonist-in-Residence program. Museum patrons see cartoonists at work on their latest projects and learn everything you ever wanted to know about cartoonists–but were afraid to ask.  Past featured Cartoonists-in-Residence include Paul Madonna (All Over Coffee), Keith Knight (K Chronicles, (th)ink), Paige Braddock (Jane’s World), Michael Jantze (The Norm) and Jimmy Gownley (Amelia Rules) among many others.