Being world famous is a tough gig. Ask Irene Gallo.

She's known, not only for being the art director for Tor Books, one of the leading publishers of science and fantasy fiction. Not only for her great blog, The Art Department, an incredible resource for all things art. Not only for her work on staff with the Illustration Master Class, the week-long workshop that pairs diamond-in-the-rough artists with seasoned working pros. And not only for her own immaculate taste in art. Put all that aside, if you can.

She's world famous for the wonderful glimpses into her life that she shares on-line—her pics!

We assume she's a closet shutterbug because she takes these amazing photos of her travels and escapades. City to city, country to country, err...lighthouse to lighthouse. A life in the day indeed.

We were fans of Ms. Gallo eons before she ever became aware of us. Spectrum, the annaual tome that collects the best of the best in fantastic art, has a jury every year to help pick the art that goes into the book. Dwight has been buying Spectrum for...well...a while now, and he knew her name from one of the juries. He mentioned it to me a couple years ago and I've been trolling her blog ever since.

A few months back we heard that she was gonna be in our fair city for the 2010 Dragon*Con and thought, "Hmmm, now's our chance. Let's try and get her on the podcast!"—provided we could find her. Dragon*Con is only about 40,000 people, mind you.

But God love the Interwebs. We shot a few notes, tweets and Facebook posts out there and lo and behold, on Saturday, up to our humble little table walks Irene. Cool as a cucumber and sweet as pie. Dwight was on hand as our ambassador to say hello and gush appropriately (WHERE THE HELL WERE ADRIAN AND I....ARRRRGGGH?!).

Turned out, she was completely amenable to the idea of an interview and so, here we are.

Whatever you wanna know about Irene Gallo and the terrific work she does, we hope she answered it for you in our talk. We were just happy to be able to hang with such a champion of art and illustration. Truly, the love resides within her.

Maybe one day in the future we can all break bread together, sip some wine and join her in one of those world famous montages she posts on The Art Department. Chronicling the weekend's merriment. Who knows..?

- SWAiN

We wrote about this event back in the fall of 2008 and word has it, it was a big success. In light of that news, we thought it would be cool to have one of the founders on, Pat Wilshire, to discuss the show's inaugural year and future plans. Pat and his wife Jeannie seem to have started something really special in their hometown of Altoona, PA, and we're super excited that he took some time out to talk with us.

As we mentioned in that other blog post, IlluXCon was designed to be more of an illustration "symposium", not a convention. The goal, as Pat describes it, was to create an intimate mingling bewteen artists, students, collectors and anyone else with a desire to learn about and celebrate, art. Membership (yes, that's right) would be limited to maximize the one on one time for not only the attendees, but also for the guests. This is the kinda show where an artist who wants to hear a lecture from a peer, can get up from their table—and go hear it! Kinda neat!

Last year's guest list, well—it was a doozie! Boris Valejo, Julie Bell, Stephen Hickman, John Jude Palencar, Ian Miller, Dave Dorman, Justin Sweet, Michael Whelan and Greg Hildebrandt were some of the stellar names that were on-site that November weekend. And from what we hear, most of 'em will be returning in 2009.

In the interview with Pat, he gives us the lowdown on his background as an original art collector with The llustration Exchange, why he and Jeannie started IlluXCon, some of the challenges they had making it happen, and how bright the days ahead look like for this awesome event.

**For the first episode of the New Year, we played a snippet U2's kick ass song!

IlluXCon Site