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Chris Yambar Pop artist marks 25 years with retrospective show
By GUY D’ASTOLFO
YOUNGSTOWN
Chris Yambar has created more than 2,500 works of art in the past quarter-century.
That’s a pace of about a hundred a year.
To mark the milestone, the prolific and imaginative Youngstown-based pop artist is having a retrospective show at the Lemon Grove Cafe, downtown.
Titled “Pay Your Dues — A Retro Remix,” the show will open Friday with a reception that also will include live entertainment. It will run for three weeks. On display will be works that run the gamut of Yambar’s career, including oversized slideshow images, re-envisioned cartoon characters, American Indian portraits and repurposed sign art.
Yambar, who has a studio in the Ohio One Building, downtown, has devoted his life to art. His works hang in galleries and in private collections across the globe. He also has carved out a niche as a comic-book writer-artist who worked on “The Simpsons” books as well as several of his own titles.
Making a living as a professional artist isn’t an easy path. Yambar’s success was fueled not only by talent, but perseverance and sacrifice.
“I’ve paid some expensive dues to do what I do,” he said. “I’ve had to work lots of day jobs, moonlight behind the scenes, and pass on a lot of parties to invest time and energy into my art.”
Yambar started as a commercial artist, but after a decade working for other people, he turned his attention to producing his own art.
The year was 1987.
His career got a big boost in 1989, when he opened an exhibition at the Butler Institute of American Art that was a retrospective study of the Batman character.
The show drew thousands of viewers from throughout the region and was held over.
It also provided a springboard to expand upon his signature style. Yambar expanded his subject themes to actors and rock stars.
In the early- to mid-’90s, Yambar operated Banana Rodeo, Youngstown’s first progressive artist-owned gallery. During this time he also was curator of Cinema Gallery One, an ever-changing motion-picture exhibition of his work in Austintown.
In 1994 he created his first indie-comic character, Mr. Beat. He went on a promotional tour of North America in 1996, selling thousands of his comic books and related merchandise.
Yambar’s work on Mr. Beat eventually drew the attention of “Simpsons” creator Matt Groening, who hired him in 2000 to write for Bongo Comics titles, including “Bart Simpson Comics,” “Radioactive Man” and “Tree House of Horror.”
In 2003, Yambar was named Best Science Fiction Comic Writer by Cinescape magazine for his work on the sci-fi title “Suicide Blonde.”
Yambar still paints roughly 100 works a year while continuing in the comics field. He recently collaborated on a comic-book adaptation of Thomas Edison’s 1910 film “Frankenstein.”
Friday’s opening reception, which begins at 8 p.m., will include complimentary designer finger foods, belly dancing by Jennifer Neal and the Tribe of EOS, live music by recording artists The McCabes and Matt Palka, and stand-up comedy by Yambar. The first 50 people through the door will receive a special limited-edition keepsake signed by Yambar.