Galway based award-winning animator John Jennings has an exhibition in the Westside Library in the city for the month of August.
It is the complete volume one of ‘Lost Lidy – A Lovely Girl In A Hard World’.

Lidy is an old fashioned administrator, settled in her ways. But suddenly she becomes unemployed. Lidy has to enter the world of signing on, searching for jobs and employment agencies. However, she does not change her attitude and is as assertive as ever, which is not good if you are trying to give her some helpful advice.

Lidy also has an overactive imagination and sometimes is prone to flights of fancy or horror. The fancy being her opinion of herself and the horror being her impression of her future.

Also on her adventure, Lidy encounters different people in different organizations, and she is not afraid to tell them what she thinks.
What will happen to Lost Lidy ?

John Jennings is from Galway and has always had a keen interest in animation. When he was in primary school he used to get jokes published on the letter pages of his favourite comics such as ‘Topper’ and ‘Eagle’.

To the dismay of his art teachers, John’s love for animation dominated his artwork throughout his education. In school they taught painting, but John was more fond of line art and pens and markers, most of the time he just painted surreal landscapes and creatures in class which did not please the teachers too much.
 

However, outside of school time, John persisted with his pens and markers. As a child and teen he entered and won art competitions locally and nationally. He won a national contest run by the RTE Guide and his drawing of a haunted castle was made into a jigsaw. Locally he was a prizewinner in a Fortycoats and Fathers Day colouring competitions in the City / Connacht Tribune.

During his schooldays one of John’s favourite haunts was The Four Corners / Powells in the city.

“For some reason in the ’80s they used to have really cheap American comic books on a low shelf just inside the door, and sometimes in a box in the same area. They were cheap and colourful and had lots of cool superheroes and stories in them, of course it was impossible to follow a specific comic as the issues and comics supplied were very random, but, luckily there were lots of full feature ones, with complete stories, I really enjoyed the stories and art work.
 

“So, what I would do is, once a week, after school on my trek from the Bish to the bus in Eyre Square, armed with my pocket money, I would pop into the shop, quickly snap up and pay for the comics I fancied and then continue quickly to the bus stop in the hope that my comic book detour hadn’t made me late ... buying comic books became a mini-adventure in itself!”

For more, read this week's Galway City Tribune.