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Cowboy artist, songwriter releases second graphic story

Cowboy artist, songwriter and musician Chris Vandeleur has published the first installment of what he says will be an ongoing graphic story series. It's called The Jackalope Hunters. He had copies of it at the Dancing Spirit Community Arts Center winter fundraiser last month at the ELHI Center in Ignacio.

He also had copies of his first book, A Mighty Tree, originally published in 2010. It comes with a CD of Vandeleur's song-story that came before the book. It has the look and size of a kids' book with all the pictures, but he said it's really more for adults.

"I wrote A Mighty Tree as a song first," he told the Times. When he played it with fellow local musicians Mike Humiston and Rick Lott, he said he started visualizing it. "One of the interesting things, when we'd get near the end of the song, it would be big guys with tears in their eys because they knew it was going to come around" to where it began.

He advised, "The book is for adults really. There's a lot of sadness."

He had a publisher for it but said, "The publisher didn't know what to call it, where to put it on a shelf. It's a healing thing. People have said it made them feel better somehow." He hopes it will end up in places like hospitals and nursing homes. "Give it to the caregivers as a tool," he said.

Vandeleur lives west of Ignacio. He said he came to La Plata County in 1985 and worked as a hunting outfitter. He had to go back to Illinois to care for his father. He said he started seeing the book's effects there. "It will make a person feel better in spite of the grief in it," he said. It's in a second printing now with more vibrant pages.

A Mighty Tree is a quick read, unless you stop to examine the pictures.

The Jackalope Hunters is the first in a long series that Vandeleur said he has in mind. "This is part one of book one. There will be three books in the first series. Then another three and another three until I keel over. Book one will be about the size of A Mighty Tree. There are three basic character groups in here - the hunters, the jackalopes, and one more group, turtles, that have a score that they need to set right. The jackalopes are fearsome creatures in the hunters' world. In their own world, they're suburbanites. They barbecue and drink martinis. They're a look at contemporary times."

The story text forms a border around the drawings for the first few pages, which necessitates rotating the book with each page unless you can read sideways and upside-down. Then it becomes more of a standard comic book format. Again the time is in examining the drawings. The "people" are forest animals. Part one is a bare start in the longer saga, with no turtles yet.

Vandeleur continued, "The hunters are a look at the meat and reality of the hunt. The turtles are all about vendettas and forgiveness. Between all those, you get a glimpse into the lives of all these creatures as they come together and bump heads or not. It's a light read, a commentary on our times. Without bogging down in the low places of this world, this can be a light read. What I'm hoping to do is make a person smile without trying to insert anything. It's a way for me to state my own opinion whether it's political, religious, local style."

Both books have little things hidden in them, he said. "You have to search them out. Things that are local, particular to certain people and times." Some of his drawings in A Mighty Tree are very stylized. Others are more realistic illustrations with little local things like a bobcat for Ignacio and a wolverine for Bayfield.

He said, "I came here in 1985 and was fortunate to work for a lot of good people. I worked as an outfitter. That's where the meat and reality of the hunt comes from. It's all from here, this area, the people. " It's his memories, he said.

Vandeleur now has a web site, www.ageartproductions.com, with information on his work. Visitors can view A Mighty Tree there.