After 5: Good Girl Art puts twist on target demographic

Good Girl Art this month has something for the boys.

The art gallery in new space on East Walnut Street features two Springfield artists each with distinctive designs most appealing to males.

Christopher Mostyn's drawings full of monsters, aliens and robots connect with comic-book fans, while Jerry Younkins' collage art crisscrosses pop culture and science fiction like never before.

Mr. Monsterama

About 30 prints in the Mr. Mostyn's Monsterama show hang in Good Girl's orange room at the rear of the gallery. Mostyn's art doesn't let the show's title down, either.

"I make art that makes the middle-school kids flip out," Mostyn says on the handout describing his work.

It's true.

The work shouts youthful invigoration - and at high decibels. Seems fitting for a guy who teaches art at Hickory Hills Middle School.

Mostyn's characters with distorted faces, snake bodies and hybrid animals are in continual motion. He uses very little color, a trait that further connects to his comic strip influences in the 1970s and '80s.

Most interesting are three spiral bound 3.5-by-2.5-inch notebooks full of his sketches and personal notes. As each one dangles on the bright gallery wall, viewers can flip through and feel the hours of labor poured into his craft.

"He's always been drawing, since he was a little boy," gallery owner Lil Olive says of Mostyn. "A lot of those were drawn during school."

Outside of a Big Smith concert promotion priced at $100, Mostyn's prints run between $10 and $40.

Chick Magnet

Leaning on his experiences of the 1960s music scenes in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Detroit, Younkins creates a collision of worlds pieced together by careful cutouts from magazines, posters and photographs.

But each piece of collage art in his Girl Time show features a pinup model in some fashion - riding a sea turtle, standing on a Rubik's cube or posturing in a floating chair.

Most scenes are set in outer space, and Younkins drops in dinosaurs, robots, lightning and moon rock structures for good measure. "Chick Magnet" is sure to draw a laugh.

A love for flea markets and vintage advertisements shines through.

"They have a real retro feel to them," Olive notes. "The interesting thing is that a lot of the young people really relate to them. They like them."

Viewers also can thumb through a hefty collection of 16-by-20-inch matted prints, listed at $45 apiece. Here, the artist infuses Eastern themes, such as dragons, pandas and Buddha, and many employ psychedelic images to create illusions in Younkins' galaxies.