Track 16 is pleased to present the west coast premiere of “The Lost Art of Ah POOK IS HERE,” paintings, drawings, and prints from the unfinished Word/Image novel Ah POOK IS HERE: a remarkable seven-year collaboration between author William S. Burroughs and artist Malcolm McNeill.

William Burroughs and Malcolm McNeill began working together in London in 1970 when McNeill was in his final year of art school. Their first collaboration, a comic strip entitled “The Unspeakable Mr. Hart,” appeared in the English magazine CYCLOPS. When the magazine folded, Burroughs and McNeill continued the project in book form. The proposed work, a 120-page word/Image novel was renamed Ah POOK IS HERE - after the Mayan death god.

There was no market for Graphic Novels at the time and without financial incentive the book could not be produced on a full time basis. After seven years, it was finally abandoned. It was subsequently published in 1979 in text form only. Apart from eleven pages published in Rush Magazine in 1976, none of the images from Ah POOK IS HERE have been seen publicly on the west coast. Track 16 Gallery will be showing prints, original drawings and paintings, as well as ephemera associated with Ah Pook and other projects McNeill worked on with Burroughs.

McNeill has produced illustrations for several publications including The New York Times, National Lampoon, Psychology Today and Marvel Comics. He also wrote and illustrated his own monthly science fiction series for Gallery Magazine. He was involved in television production for fifteen years, first as a designer, then as a director of music videos, commercials, and short films. He won numerous awards in this field including an Emmy for his first network project - the opening title sequence to Saturday Night Live in 1984. He has been a guest speaker on various aspects of Visual Narrative at Pratt Institute and Cooper Union in New York, The Art Director’s Club in New York and at the Broadcast Design Awards in Seattle.