The Shed
The Shed, by Liam Sharp, Madefire
ONCE UPON a time there was The Studio, a group of artists nominally said to be working in comics, but more so brushing up against the medium; fitting in where they could or where their own temperaments and personal integrities allowed them to. In many ways they were traditionalists at heart, but they looked to the broader art world for influence and also questioned where their own work might take them. They were Bernie Wrightson, Barry Windsor-Smith, Mike Kaluta and Jeff Jones.
The fact is by the time most of us had heard about The Studio, the place had closed its doors; its individual practitioners having moved on, for business and personal reasons, and maybe because the rent on the place proved too much. How we found out about it was in a book of the same name, featuring texts and some of the art produced by the foursome during their time there; work that would find homes in comics and magazines, on the covers of paperback books and as fine art prints in and of themselves, and some that would not be shown elsewhere too, as this fickle memory recalls.
For many an artist it became a holy book, something to be sought out in those days of long ago. It’s a book that’s passed into legend, as have the stories of what transpired within the actual Studio’s four walls as if it were a time when gods walked the earth.
Jeffrey Catherine Jones now paints in Elyssian fields, having passed on in 2011. Liam Sharp had in recent times connected with the artist via the modern social network that is Facebook, and the two events no doubt inspired the Derby-born creator to present to the world his own version of The Studio publication, The Shed; its name suitably taken as both a homage and actual reality of where he himself penned works for Marvel, DC, Image and Heavy Metal magazine.
A lengthy article weaves throughout The Shed; a love letter to those who were his early inspirations, fondly, and at times profoundly, reinstating the fact that while he devoured the images Jones, Kaluta, Windsor-Smith and Wrightson produced in their creative endeavours it was their actual thinking behind such works that he took to heart.
To that end, The Shed offers a diversity of images that Liam has produced in his time: art well known to a paying public, and other pieces unseen before or rarely glimpsed. The physical form is often the first image one fixates on in his work, but it’s a quiet reflective sense of power that’s present rather than some angst-ridden amateur drama venting its spleen, and as the eyes span out to take in the rest of the scene there is often a question or two on our minds as to where this may all lead; what mystery will unfold or secrets be kept from us, we are intrigued as well as gratified. From black and white inked drawings to oils and photographic manipulation too, each one a message the viewer must unravel and take on board instinctively and perhaps intellectually too.
It is fitting that Mike Kaluta writes the afterward for this book, and also that upon completing it, Liam Sharp began his move from shed to new home in America, where as part of his new company, Madefire, he worked in a studio of his own, still producing art ostensibly for the comics medium, but taking on board new technologies, adapting to the times not purely in business terms but as a philosophical approach and retaining the skills and influences that have brought him this far in his career.
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