This month, Vashon Center for the Arts (VCA) will house the strange, subtle, and indelible work of Jim Woodring, the internationally celebrated cartoon artist, who has quietly lived and created his work on Vashon for the past seven years.

For Woodring, VCA’s large-scale exhibition seems a rare opportunity — an entire month to introduce his art to Vashon. Throughout October, the artist’s works, spanning four decades of creation in multiple media, will fill the art center’s atrium, gallery and gift shop.

“More than any show I’ve ever had, I feel like I am, in a sense, presenting myself through my art to the community,” said Woodring.

With an official exhibit kick-off on Friday, Oct, 7, the “scoop of stuff,” as Woodring refers to it, will include larger-format highlights from Woodring’s graphic story collections featuring Frank, a cat/dog-reminiscent Everyman who faces head-long the absurdity of the world he inhabits, which Woodring calls the “Unifactor.”

The show will also include surrealist paintings and prints, mechanical toys, and even a working six-foot tall fountain pen that Woodring has constructed.

Woodring’s work has been described by novelist Jonathan Lethem as “uniquely mind-expanding narratives [that] draw equally on Buster Keaton, Max Ernst, and a cross-section of our planet’s DNA code apparently extracted in a secret hi-tech laboratory by the mad scientists who control our fates.”

He’s also been more traditionally, but no less enthusiastically, praised by The New York Times.

“Mr. Woodring [has] extraordinary gifts as a draftsman, storyteller, and creator of hilarious characters and hallucinatory situations,” said Times art critic Ken Johnson.

VCA Gallery Director, Lynann Politte, is thrilled to host the exhibit, calling it another chance for VCA to build bridges between the community and the renowned artists who call Vashon home.

“He’s a hidden Vashon gem,” she said. “He is an icon in his profession.”

And while VCA’s exhibition will show islanders a considerable breadth of Woodring’s work, there’s more.

At 2 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 16, Woodring will present an artist’s talk at VCA about his newly published and critically acclaimed graphic novel, “One Beautiful Spring Day” — a 400-page, vellum-wrapped comics odyssey that he proudly refers to as his magnum opus.

The book, according to a recent article in The New Yorker, contains “some of the most beautiful pages Woodring has ever drawn.”

Woodring’s psychic connection to his creativity is evident.

Speaking to The Beachcomber, he reflected on his artistic process in creating the world contained in “One Beautiful Spring Day.”

“I was given this contextualizing situation … and it created this multidimensional, ultra-complex, super metaphysical thing that I wasn’t even aware of while I was doing it,” he said. “I know that sounds corny and disingenuous and like total BS, but honest to God, that’s the truth.”

With Woodring, it’s hard to believe the work isn’t baked into his soul.

As a child, he experienced vivid, surreal hallucinations that he subsequently rendered to the page. From those seminal works, he continued to evolve and ultimately discovered his passion and profession.

“After I saw the illustrations of Boris Artzybasheffand the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Bruegel — all these strange, charged, symbolic images that seemed to point at something that was too real to see directly — I thought, that’s what I want to do,” he said. “It’s what I like and want to give to other people.”

Initially drawn to the Pacific Northwest by the writings of Betty McDonald and her evocative descriptions of the region, Woodring ultimately found his way to Vashon Island.

“You feel there’s something in the air here,” he said. “There’s this surety I have that the woods are full of hidden wonders and people who I will never know about, but who are fantastic.”

Woodring spoke to qualities of solitude and the space for self-reflection that Vashon allows — all complemented by the swift ability to access the inspiration of the natural world.

“I look out over the Colvos passage and know that I could hop on my bike and ride the Westside Highway any time I want,” he said. I feel like I’m the luckiest man on earth to have such beautiful, simple pleasures at my beck and call. I feel completely at home. This place is not only beautiful, it’s peaceful. It’s therapeutic to be here.”

Those who attend Woodring’s exhibition and talk at VCA will have a chance to deeply engage in a wondrous collection created by their quiet neighbor — who speaks volumes through his work.

“I don’t trust my mind for everyday thinking,” Woodring wrote in the introduction to “One Beautiful Spring Day,” “but I am convinced that it has one very great function, which is to eventually make me aware of astounding things.”

For Woodring fans and new admirers alike, astonishment is on deck throughout Vashon Center for the Arts this October.

For more details about Woodring’s exhibition, which has an opening reception at 5 p.m. Friday, Oct. 7, at VCA, visit vashoncenterforthearts.org. Tickets to Woodring’s talk, on Oct. 16 at VCA, can also be purchased on the website.