If there's one thing fans of Community do well, it's make art as creative as the show with which they are obsessed. It's about time they graduated and got an official gallery show.
Upcoming exhibit Six Seasons and a Movie, which runs June 23 and 24 at Los Angeles' Monk Space, is a collection of wonderfully geeky pieces, many of which are built on the TV comedy's many in-jokes and meta-pop-cultural references (paintball, anyone?).
Even the exhibit's title is an in-joke about the online community (pardon the pun) that sprang up through Facebook groups and Twitter hashtags after fans got worried that the show might get canceled.
"Immediately after NBC announced Community's hiatus, the fans started organizing petitions, boycotts and protests," Mark Batalla, manager of artist collective PixelDrip, which organized the show, said in an email to Wired. "You'd see things like flash mobs in front of NBC or people donning fake goatees to express that we were living in the darkest timeline. But another thing that we noticed was an increased spike in the amount of fan art being made during that time."
More than 130 artists contributed to Six Seasons and a Movie, creating not only your typical painted canvases but also dioramas, plush dolls, video installations and vinyl toys, all inspired by the geeky comedy series about a group of misfits at the mythical Greendale Community College. Even the art gallery itself will be transformed to look Greendale-esque for the exhibit, with textbooks being made available for attendees to vandalize.
Having a chance to gather around some Community art – an activity typically reserved for Tumblr and blogs – could provide a good chance for fans to contemplate the fate of their beloved program. After an iffy year of will-it-get-canceled-or-won't-it?, the sitcom got picked up for a fourth season last month, even though showrunner Dan Harmon will not be returning, a fact that leaves many fans wondering what next season will look like.
The new exhibit should reflect those concerns.
"If you're familiar with the story cycles that Dan Harmon is obsessed with, you'll know that the show is full of situations where the characters get knocked down a couple pegs," Batalla said. "So by showcasing all this fan art, attendees can take the time to look back at the characters and storylines that inspired them."
Check out a few selected pieces from the exhibit, which will be open and free to the public on Saturday and Sunday at Monk Space, in the gallery above.
