Comics Workbook

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Posted in NewsTagged caleb orecchio, gabriella tito, Spider-Man, Steve Ditko

Caleb Orecchio

Posted on May 21, 2018

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07/06/2018

Sally IngrahamJuly 5, 2018NewsSally Ingraham here with news and comics from Ulli Lust, Hannah Berry, Joana Mosi, and more! ————————————————————————————————— Ulli Lust has an exhibition at Cartoonmuseum Basel, June 30-Oct. 28th 2018. She composed a photo report about the show HERE, for those of us likely to miss it. There is also an article about the retrospective on Aargauer Zeitung, which is a passionate testimony to the effect Ulli Lust and her work has on people. It begins (excuse the rocky translation out of German by Google translate…!): “None draws as furiously as the Viennese Ulli Lust – and no one shows them as affectionately as the Cartoonmuseum Basel. The greeting in the Cartoonmuseum is clear: The painted face of Ulli Lust on the glass pane at the entrance to the exhibition, hair wild, look adventurous. Behind this glass front, so much is now clear, hides an artist who prefers to fall mercilessly, than cautiously gropes. Rather than miss a pretty label. Behind this glass front is Ulli Lust and she does not mean for no reason.“ Decipher the rest HERE – or if you speak German, I hope you enjoy this article. ———————————————————————————————— There is an interesting and quite funny interview with Hannah Berry on Comics Grid about how her comics relate to her interest in law, and vice versa. She is a British cartoonist and the creator of Detectives Britten and Brülightly, among other works. Berry’s work is dark, and serious, and very British (they talk about this in the interview) but as you might expect, she mixes in the right balance of humor. “Thomas Giddens: Just thinking a bit more about the kind of ways you engage with particular issues. Is humour important? It seems like there’s some moments of your work that are quite amusing. In Britten and Brülightly for instance, it’s very dour, it’s very sombre, it’s very serious, and then there’s a talking teabag. Hannah Berry: Yes, yes, I do try to sneak the odd little joke in here and there, because I think you can reach people; there’s something about humour that really connects people. I think it’s a way of really getting onto a person’s wavelength. I mean, maybe some of my humour falls flat—as much as I’d love to be, I’m not looking over everyone’s shoulder as they read my books. Someday, hopefully, with the internet, but who knows. But I do think there’s something with humour that really helps you connect with the reader. It’s a similar thing to horror, I suppose. There’s sort of a build-up and you’re trying to get a very distinct reaction from a person, and I think I can do that. I do a weekly cartoon strip for the New Statesman which is again not really political. I tweet them every week or thereabouts, and the ones I think are the absolute successes, the ones that will probably win me some kind of future prize, they’re the ones that do alright, you know? They’re okay. But the ones that I sort of do in a hurry and I think are less good, they’re the ones that do really well. So maybe my sense of humour is not what everybody else’s is, or maybe I just can’t understand Twitter, I don’t know; maybe I’m doing something a little bit awry, perhaps. But I do think it’s an important factor, yes, and also because, you know, it’s nice to read a funny book every now and then.“ Read the whole interview HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Check out work by Joana Mosi, a Portugese cartoonist and teacher based in Lisbon. Above is part of a short comic that I enjoyed – see the rest HERE. Her most recent book is Spineless Cactus (Nem Todos os Cactos têm Picos) which you can see more of HERE – and read a review about HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Weekend Snacks Nicole Hollander is the guest on Episode 279 of RiYL – check it out HERE. Publishers Weekly talks to Lisa Hanawalt about her upcoming comic Coyote Doggirl (Drawn & Quarterly, Aug. 2018) and all her “weird little horses” – HERE. The Comics Alternative podcast digs into the entire spring catalog from Koyama Press – including new comics by Jessica Campbell and Fiona Smyth. Listen to Episode 285 HERE. The Portland Mercury has a review of Geneviève Castrée‘s last book – A Bubble – published two years after her death, and made for Castrée’s daughter. Frank Young reviews Cathy Malkasian‘s Eartha for The Comics Journal – HERE. Paste Magazine sits down with Alisa Kwitney, the writer behind Mystik U. Read the interview HERE. Mariko Tamaki is the latest guest on Inkstuds – listen HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 7-6-2018 – by Gabriella Tito Share this page: [...]

07/11/2017

Aaron CockleJuly 10, 2017NewsAaron Cockle today with Leslie Stein; Joan Cornellà; Exploratory Works; Jason Lutes; TSA Book Update; Guy Delisle ————————————————————————————————— ‘Death, depression, alcohol abuse, god, and suicide, as well as tales of exes, a trip to a barbershop quartet convention, a job as a telemarketer, and childhood holidays’ Ken Parille with ‘A Brief Appreciation’ of Leslie Stein: Stein also takes a minimalist approach to backgrounds, perhaps as a way to reinforce the subjective, personal focus of the memories she recounts. Some artists concentrate too much on figures and foreground, making environments seem less important and weakening the story dynamic of character-place interaction. But it’s always clear where her characters are — bedroom, streets, bar, satanic ritual, etc. And though “Holy Jolly Sabbath”’s minimalism contributes to its sense of openness, its layout also gestures to the “grid conventions” of symmetry, balance, and order. Page one starts with an upper-left corner image bleed and ends with a lower-right corner bleed. Page two uses a familiar arrangement in which the page’s final “row” is anchored by one large panel that sits beneath several smaller-sized panels (which again, in Stein, are not really panels) ————————————————————————————————— Joan Cornellà: A New York Solo Exhibition co-hosted by Factotum Productions & Huli Erizo July 14 – July 30, 2017 11am – 7pm Josée Bienvenu Gallery, 2nd floor 529 W 20th Street (between 10th & 11th Ave), NYC ————————————————————————————————— Closing this Sunday at The Drawing Center: Exploratory Works: Drawings from the Department of Tropical Research Field Expeditions This exhibition brings to light for the first time an archive of images that illustrate the formation of our modern definition of nature. William Beebe (1877–1962) was one of America’s greatest popularizers of ecological thinking and biological science. Beebe literally took the lab into the jungle, rather than the jungle to the lab. The Department of Tropical Research was pioneering in that, under Beebe’s direction, women were hired as lead scientists and field artists. Artist Isabel Cooper, joining in 1919, publicly relished her opportunity to travel through the jungles of Guyana juggling a “vivid serpent or tapestried lizard in one hand, and the best grade of Japanese paintbrush in the other.” The structure of The Drawing Center’s exhibition mirrors the two salient stages of the Department of Tropical Research’s investigations: jungle field station work and floating laboratories for marine biology —revealing that artists and scientists worked closely and productively in the near past and that scientists once understood art as a valuable tool for promoting ecological thinking to a broad public. For the exhibition at The Drawing Center, Mark Dion constructed two installations which take as their inspiration images of the interiors of the DTR field stations. While one of the installations will develop the space of the jungle laboratories, the other will look to the oceanographic workshops. Numerous images in the WCS archive depict the work situations and interior conditions in both the tropical forest field stations and the floating labs of the research vessels. Curated by Mark Dion, Katherine McLeod, and Madeleine Thompson. ————————————————————————————————— “I had never imagined that the city that I’d studied for so long would actually strike me as beautiful.” Daniel A. Gross spoke with Jason Lutes about Lutes’s long book, Berlin, and the contemporary and historical context it now/still holds: At the same time, Lutes felt that after spending 23 years on the project, he couldn’t give in to the temptation to turn his comic into an allegory for the Trump era. “I still plan to stay true to the characters and their context, without letting current events color things in any overt way,” he says of the final chapters. For all the similarities between Berlin and the United States today, the present can seem in some ways unprecedented. “We’re in a place where reality feels like speculative fiction, which makes historical fiction like my book seem quaint.” ————————————————————————————————— UPDATE: TSA Ends Test of Separate Scanning for Books I had posted about this last week, Maren Williams at the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund discussing the Transportation Security Administration’s enhanced screening of books at some airports in the U.S.: In a press statement, the TSA said that it “understands privacy concerns and only inspects items to clear them of dangerous/prohibited items.” Separately in a public-facing blog post, the agency said that pilot tests had been conducted and subsequently ended at only two airports. It then made some curious attempts at humor in dismissing privacy concerns: ur adversaries seem to know every trick in the book when it comes to concealing dangerous items, and books have been used in the past to conceal prohibited items. We weren’t judging your books by their covers, just making sure nothing dangerous was inside. ————————————————————————————————— ‘I want the reader to have the physical sensation of time passing. That’s why the book is four hundred pages.’ Simon Ostrovsky talks with Guy Delisle in support of Delisle’s new book, Hostage: I wouldn’t put fiction in—that would compromise the rest of the book. It’s all taken from my notes, which I still have, and I go through them to find things that are funny, strange, weird. A comic book is a mix of drawing and text, and it’s very powerful, it’s a concentrate. It’s like you have five seconds for one page, and you can switch from drawing to text, text to drawing, and you can find a solution where you can make it come together. I like that, because I’m always afraid of boring people. ————————————————————————————————— A Cosmic Journey – 7-11-2017 – by Cameron Arthur ———————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 7-11-2017 – by Gabriella Tito ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 7-11-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

05/11/2016

Juan FernándezMay 11, 2016NewsTatá Timbó; Carolina Rey on Joung Yumi; Cuadernos del Cómic; Angeli spotlight; Aidan Koch interview; Hernandez Brothers appreciation; new books at Spit and a Half distro; Abhay Khosla on Copra; Cole Closser and the Leroy Lettering System; New Statesman open call. ————————————————————————————————— Shop Spotlight: Tatá Timbó Located in the heart of the San Telmo neighborhood of Buenos Aires, Tatá Timbó is a studio space and book store that specializes in the visual arts. It’s a literary arts space that focuses on youth development through the visual arts founded by Mercedes Fox, Verónica Kaplansky, and Guido Amante. By combining the idea of a studio and a book store they seamlessly blend arts with reading and writing for all ages. Visual literacy and verbal literacy. Children get the opportunity to work freely and wildly while also benefitting from arts mentorships that help them hone their craft. This all allows youth to find artistic mediums and processes they enjoy. El Sol de San Telmo offers a good look at Tatá Timbó’s mission and genesis. This past weekend they put together a small zine fair to bring together the publishing energies of their community. It’s cool stuff. Really exciting to see this kind of thing in Buenos Aires. Among the participants for this zine fair: Nicolás Mealla, Jorge Quien, Musaraña Editora, Marcela Oliva, Juan Vegetal, Pedro Mancini, Delius, Pablo Picyk, PowerPaola, Pablo Besse, Fuga Serigrafía, Luz Marchio, Diego Perrotta, Are you a cop or what?, Alfonso Piantini, Daniela Ruggeri, Miscelánea Total, Fuga Serigrafía, Lino Divas, and Hotel de las Ideas. ————————————————————————————————— Joung Yumi Carolina Rey, creative director of Rey+Naranjo Editores appreciates the work of Korean artist, Joung Yumi during Korea day at la Feria Internacional de Libros in Buenos Aires 2016. ————————————————————————————————— CuCo – Cuadernos del cómic Cuadernos del Cómic is a free digital magazine dedicated to the study and critique of comics edited by Octavio Beares and Gerardo Vilches. It is published twice a year in Madrid, Spain. It’s in the vein of old-school academic journals, but in Spanish, with spanish comics coverage. You’ll want to sink your teeth into this one. ————————————————————————————————— Angeli Retrospective – 40 Years at Folha Folha de Sao Paolo has a feature on the cartooning career of Angeli, one of the forefathers of modern graphic humor in Sao Paolo. Whether you need to brush up on your portugese or you just have to smash that translate button, there’s lots of comics for you to feast your eyes on in this feature. ————————————————————————————————— Aidan Koch interview over at BOMB Magazine. CM You set up an exercise for yourself, in which you deconstructed classical paintings. Some of these are in The Elements of Painting. And there’s a recurring interest in deconstructing classical images or classical symbols in your work. AK For sure, and also life and space and other types of images, too. Seeing what’s important, or what you can make important by pulling things in or out. Like using myself for reference—by not drawing in the background, I’m only focusing on character, but if I started drawing other details, then suddenly there’s all this concrete information that’s competing. So being able to choose where the emphasis lies, all the time, panel by panel, seems really essential in learning about pacing and building. And when looking at paintings, it’s often hard to focus. Especially ultra-dynamic ones or ones that have many characters or little actions happening. Medieval paintings are insane because there’s so much going on all the time. I’ll draw in museums a lot because it makes me look at a painting much more than giving it ten seconds and moving on. Because then you miss all these teeny tiny nuanced emotions or gestures. In case you missed the news on Monday, we are currently featuring Aidan Koch’s The Elements of Painting here on the site. These strips were originally created for and featured on Comics Workbook in 2013. The full collection is now a 14pg, b/w offset on newsprint in an edition of 500. You can buy it directly from Aidan Koch on her site. ————————————————————————————————— Abhay Thinks He Can Write About COPRA Better Than You — Nowhere to Hide – Nowhere to Cry – I Sunk Your Battleship Edition: 666 Abhay Khosla with the comics criticism gold over on Savage Critics. Khosla writes like nothing else. Read it and weep. For the last few years, one of my favorite comics to read has been Michel Fiffe’s COPRA. It’s a comic that I really pretty unabashadely love– one of the few being put out right now where I would talk about it in those terms. But for the last few years, one of my least favorite comics to read people talk about has been Michel Fiffe’s COPRA. ————————————————————————————————— BOLD NEW COMICS at SPIT AND A HALF John Porcellino has got the good stuff over on the Spit And A Half distro site. Hanselmann, Ord, Doucet, KUŠ, Irene, Clotfelter, Van Sciver, de Dionyso, Booth, Picukane, Moisseinen, Franz. Won’t last for long. Get it while you can. ————————————————————————————————— Cole Closser and the Leroy Lettering System I’m an advocate for hand-lettering. I think some comics suffer when the text doesn’t come from the same hand as the line art. That inconsistency can be jarring—and usually ruins my immersion in a story. I letter everything in my books, from the dialogue to the page numbers and front matter. I generally use my own handwriting or imitate old alphabets (like in that first picture), but when I was workin’ on Bow White for my last book, Black Rat, I wanted the lettering to look like the story had been translated from another language. I wanted it more mechanical. I wanted Leroy lettering ————————————————————————————————— Love and Rockets appreciated on The Guardian People are waking up to the master work that is Love and Rockets. Nice.It’s a good time to be alive in comics. ————————————————————————————————— New Statesman has an open call for back page cartoonists. Make something witty & make some $$$. Shoot for the stars, hungry cartoonists and send some samples. ————————————————————————————————— See you next time, hasta la proxima 😉 -Juan Share this page: [...]

02/13/2017

Juan FernándezFebruary 13, 2017NewsJuan and Sally tag teaming it today: Drew Alderfer’s THE ROOK; Pixels, tones and the aesthetics of granularity; Berliac on Vice; Fantom Comics Signing and Roundtable; Juan Fernandez at the ToonSeum; Frank Santoro’s Comics Corner #2; and much more! Take note! We are featuring the work of Drew Alderfer – or Meaty Comics – on the site this week. His comic The Rook was made for the Santoro Correspondence Course for Comic Book Makers in 2014. Check it out HERE! ————————————————————————————————— Pixels, Tones and the Aesthetics of Granularity Juan here! I wanted to share with you a digital painting method I’ve come across, created by Dan Fessler, where he’s developed for his environment work on Chasm a way of turning Photoshop into the most powerful pixel art tool. What he calls “HD index painting”. What’s interesting about this? It works on the granular level of the pixel and plays with abstraction for story telling and evocation in the way that comics and cartooning does. It also does it in an incredibly robust and non-destructive way. It got me thinking about a lot of things. But first, have a look at what makes this technique tick. Why “HD?”: The backbone of this method that makes all the magic happen is the concept of manipulating higher resolution data than the end result. Instead of painting directly with an indexed color palette, you’re always painting in HD which then procedurally gets mapped to the indexed palette. For every color ramp you define your source data is 8bit allowing for a possible 256 colors, with no limit on the number of ramps you define. Typically when dealing with pixel art you’d map that to 32 colors or less. What’s most important though is the indexing is non-destructive. All of the high resolution detail is retained allowing you to do things that no other index painting tool allows, essentially making this the most powerful “pure” pixel art tool in existence. I’m not, necessarily a pixel artist, but I’ve been working extensively in exploring color and compression across digital file formats. Especially through collaging animations. I don’t know why, but I’m really interested in it. It’s the same way that I’m interested in how Jordan Crane and other master screen printers separate their colors in their prints. All of this has me think about halftone and more generally the voice of a story in a visual tradition. For some examples, I’d like you to think about how certain contemporary comics makers, like Laura Knetzeger, Kevin Huizenga, Dan Zettwoch, Sophie Yanow, Ron Wimberly, Mickey Z, or Berliac all use halftones. While many artists use halftone traditions in ways that are used to evoke an aesthetic of nostalgia (most effectively used by Ed Piskor in The Hip Hop Family Tree) these previous artists use them in ways that break from the print based traditions and the limitations of halftones. Instead, they use the half-tone as a framework that provides an aesthetic tool to help create their sequences. They all do this in different ways that create hums, and musical tones in the work. Different line qualities with different size tone dots that result in different feelings. Different voices for the soundless music of their comics. In a way that harkens back to previous technologies and grounds the work within a larger tradition, but that also side steps certain associations and assumptions related to genre. It’s great to think of these tools in a way that allows for more technologically mediated impressionist painting than commercial illustration. If you’d like a bit of a look into different coloring ideologies at the nuts and bolts level, take a look at this post by Dan Fessler on Pixel Purism. And of course, in the weekly “Please think about contemporary AI” department I have an article for you to read – HERE. ————————————————————————————————— There is a new weekly comic by “the mysterious Berliac” on Vice – titled Asian Store Junkies it is about “MSG-addicted youngsters who crave ramen“. Read it HERE. Follow Berliac on Instagram – @yung_qin_berliac. ————————————————————————————————— Reminder to go check out this signing and roundtable if you are in the Washington, D.C., area this week – catch up with Ronald Wimberly, Chris Visions, Shannon Wright, and Chris Kindred at Fantom Comics on Wednesday, Feb. 15th, 7-9 PM! ————————————————————————————————— PCS’s Artist Lecture Series 007: Juan Fernandez Join Juan and the rest of the @pittsburghcomicssalon this Thursday! Come on down to The ToonSeum to catch Juan talk about strip cartooning, expanding & teaching visual literacy, and comics making systems. He’ll cover principles in youth and adult comics education. He’ll show a little of what he’s making & how he does what he does. We’ll play some keygen tunes, dive into Photoshop, and talk about oblique strategies in comics making. The presentation will be followed by Q+A. You can join the Comics Salon at The ToonSeum (945 Liberty Ave., Pittsburgh, PA 15222) – art, conversation, and an atmosphere of solidarity. ————————————————————————————————— Frank’s Comics Corner #2 is here! Gather round one and all. ————————————————————————————————— The Ebb and Flow Enter the lottery for a table at the Small Press Expo this year – the registration form and more details are HERE. You have until February 24th 2017! Get to it. There will be a second issue of RESIST!, due to be released around July 4th. It’s message will be “Picturing the America We Want to Live In.” Submit work. Julia Wertz spoke to Sarah Glidden about her book Rolling Blackouts – via The Comics Journal. Pepe the Frog is making a new appearance in MAD Magazine – the story is HERE on Vulture. And in greater, more personal detail, HERE on the Huffington Post. Françoise Mouly and Genevieve Bormes offer a preview of Emil Ferris’ My Favorite Thing is Monsters for The New Yorker – check it out. There is a review of Charles Burns’ Vortex on Just Indie Comics – for those of you who read Italian! ————————————————————————————————— Announcing the Spring Semester of thee Santoro Correspondence Course for Comic Book Makers! The course starts March 7th 2017. Apply by February 26th to get 100 bux off! The course is 8 weeks long – payment plans are available. Application guidelines: – 3 figure drawings done on blank 3 x 5 index cards – 3 landscape drawings done on blank 3 x 5 index cards – 3 still life drawings done on blank 3 x 5 cards – draw in a contour line style –think Matisse – no under-drawing – draw directly in ink – just send me small jpgs of images – dont post to your blog pls – send specific url links to any comics work you have done. If you haven’t done comics before that is not a problem. Email santoroschoolATgmail to apply! More details HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Blinkers – 2-13-2017 – by Jack Brougham ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 2-13-2017 – by Gabriella Tito ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 2-13-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio ————————————————————————————————— Cozytown – 2-13-2017 – by Juan Fernandez Share this page: [...]

01/26/2016

Juan FernándezJanuary 26, 2016NewsNews 2/26/2015 Julia Wertz gives a little tour around through her Studio apartment where she lives and works in Greenpoint, NY. Full of the oddest of ends, it’s a bonafide curiocabinet. It’s always nice to have a little more insight in the life of Wertz. Conor Stechschulte gives a solid walk through of the process of producing his most recent comic, Generous Bosom 2 on Breakdown Press’ blog. From planning to color separating, Conor goes through it all. An important read for those who wan’t to understand composing comics for print. Most of what you’ll see here I developed in the making of the first volume of GB. The idea from the beginning has been to make the book in a manner that builds in layers of editing and to allow for further editing by using (mostly) the same grid. This way, I can move panels around or chop two pages in half and graft them together, things like that. Nick Drnaso‘s Beverly is officially now out and available for you to bring to the warmth of your home. Nice preview of the work over at the AV Club. VICE has got the comics you’re clamoring for. Julian Glander, Steven Weissman and Leslie Stein. Jump on in! Share this page: [...]

05/21/2018

Posted on May 21, 2018 by Caleb Orecchio

Caleb Orecchio here with some tired thoughts and other news.

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after (from left to right) Bill Sienkiewicz and Steve Ditko

The above is my the only drawing I could muster last night. I was hoping to bust out two pages of a comic I’m working on (I’m trying to catch up to my self-imposed schedule), but despite my ambitions, I couldn’t even finish copying two warm-up drawings. I kind of burnt myself out after two weeks of non-stop nightly comic book making and was practically bed-ridden all of yesterday. It was difficult to even talk to myself my brain was so fried. “I’m looking for a place that will collect my commission, sell my dog, burn my bird, and sell me to the cigarette” was all I could say all day. Even as I write this, I realize I’ve been sitting at my computer for hours just looking at the screen contemplating coherent sentences. Did you all see the PTA movie, Phantom Thread. I won’t spoil it for you, but any cranky, overworked workaholic would find some catharsis in watching it. I nearly wept at the end.

Anyway, look at these Ditko panels above. Every time I look at Ditko’s Spider-Man, I am reminded of just how inventive he is. I remember some Frank Miller interview where he says that Ditko is a great anatomy study. He’s right. Even at my tired and burnt out state of mind, I can appreciate the majesty of Steve Ditko’s web-slinger. No wonder Spidey was such a hit. No one had ever seen anything like Spider-Man in comics before. Have you thought about that? Just how unique Ditko and Kirby’s visions were, and still are, compared to the competition! It’s fascinating.

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if you don’t know, now you know

Hey hey hey, Robin McConnell talks to Eddie Cambell over on Inkstuds.
Rob Clough reviews Jessica Campbell’s book, XTC69.
Last but not least, Alex Dueben talks to Tim Truman over at TCJ.com.

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Suzy and Cecil – 5-21-2018 – by Gabriella Tito

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Comics Workbook

An online magazine for comics makers

Posted in NewsTagged caleb orecchio, gabriella tito, Spider-Man, Steve Ditko

Caleb Orecchio

Posted on May 21, 2018

Explore

05/31/2016

Aaron CockleMay 30, 2016NewsKurt Ankeny Comics; Blank City; Saltz-on-Guston; Louise Bourgeois; Rokudenashiko; Kartalopoulos-on-Manouch; Robyn Chapman/Paper Rocket; Pigeon Anarchy; Spectacle of the Situation ————————————————————————————————— CW continues its look this week at Kurt Ankeny’s In Pieces: Someplace Which I Call Home. ————————————————————————————————— Wei Shao’s Blank City via Socks Studio Being built is no limit to the multi-dimensional world, everything is a standardized city. Space is normalized into a single cube, the cube is given the function, the function must comply with the specification. Life has been standardized in size cubes, they are given the same rhythm of life, follow the simple life, with all copied. Supreme goal, everyone in the “right space” to do “the right thing.” –(Hazardous translation by g.translate from Japanese original) ————————————————————————————————— Philip Guston Hauser & Worth Review Guston must have known the return to figuration couldn’t be denied any more. And still he refused. He was in a battle of wills with his art. It must have been nightmarish. So much so that he stopped painting altogether for three years after the last canvas in this show. He didn’t show his work again until 1970. Critics had slammed that work as “displeasingly raw”; the canvases were said to have “unpleasant texture.” His colleagues were shocked, suspicious, and thought he was trying to hop on the Pop bandwagon; one painter friend asked why he had “to go and ruin everything.” Lee Krasner was said to find the work “embarrassing.” New York Times critic Hilton Kramer lambasted Guston as “a mandarin pretending to be a stumblebum,” dismissing the work as “cartoon anecdotage … funky, clumsy and demotic,” and concluding “We are asked to take seriously his new persona as an urban primitive … and this is asking too much.” But the die was cast. While Pollock was the first to truly break through to pure non-objective painting, it was Guston who was the first to break out. And yet nobody seemed to understand. He’d risked everything and lost. – Via Dan Nadel at TCJ ————————————————————————————————— Louise Bourgeois at Hiram Butler Gallery ————————————————————————————————— Rokudenashiko And, lucky for her, the police and media continue to give Rokudenashiko a platform on which to promote her art. “I mean it when I say I am grateful to the police,” she said. Without them, she knows not nearly as many people would have seen her work. “Kind of ironically, they had to take all of these pictures of my art for their case. The prosecution had like a $90,000 camera to take these really specific pictures of my work from every imaginable angle, 16 slides per piece. I wouldn’t have ever been able to pay for any of that on my own, so now I have these amazing gelatin prints of my work. They’ve performed an act of art themselves.” – Dayna Evans at NY Mag ————————————————————————————————— Ilan Manouch: Defamiliarizing Comics with Bill Kartalopoulos But “l’affaire Katz” was not quite over. In 2011 Spiegelman had published MetaMaus, a book about the making of Maus. Manouach and his publisher burned the shredded remnants of Katz and had the ashes mixed into printer’s ink that was then used to publish MetaKatz, a 2013 book about the brief life and destruction of Katz and the issues raised by the experience, including contributions from a variety of artists and critics. MetaKatz “had a lot to say about different things such as resampling in comics, or the history of rip-offs in comics, or the problem of using animal metaphors,” said Manouach. “I think this for me is the prototype of a book form. It’s a book that creates discussion, that creates polemics, and another book that responds to these polemics. I think it’s a perfect example of how I imagine dialectics to be.” -via Bill Kartalopoulos at World Literature Today ————————————————————————————————— Robyn Chapman & Paper Rocket Comics ————————————————————————————————— Katie Fricas Comics ————————————————————————————————— Tino Sehgal at Martin-Gropius-Bau Berlin His eponymous show at Martin-Gropius-Bau is beyond a doubt entertaining and spectacular, but it is neither radical nor subversive. These situations that entertain the crowds and are sold for substantial profit would make Guy Debord turn in his grave. On the surface, the lack of objects in combination with politically infused content make his work look novel and insurgent. But Sehgal is only formally employing devices of the radical practice of the avant-garde, and he is using them with very different intentions. His brand of “immaterial art” is not about the dematerialization sought by those who coined the idea and wanted to oppose the creation of commodities in a capitalist system. With his version of immaterialism, he has managed to create a new type of commodity that is highly sought after in the art market and, by doing so, has apparently filled a void. ————————————————————————————————— Share this page: [...]

02/20/2018

Aaron CockleFebruary 20, 2018NewsAaron here today with Barbara T. Smith + Experiments in Electrostatics; A.T. Pratt; Uno Moralez; Old-Timey Cellphones ————————————————————————————————— Barbara T. Smith: Outside Chance Through Feb 28 at Andrew Kreps Gallery, 537/535 West 22nd St, NYC, USA Smith’s pioneering Xerox work is the earliest series in the exhibition dating from 1965 to 1967, and reflects a pivotal moment in the trajectory of her life and practice. Initially intending to make lithographic prints, Smith discovered the then-new technology of the Xerox copy machine, a mass-printing device that she perceived to be the future of printmaking. Smith leased a 914 Xerox Machine, at the time only in use by large corporations, and feverishly experimented with, among other things, images of her children taken by the artist-photographer Jerry McMillan. Simultaneously, Smith discovered her body as a performative tool by placing it upon the machine. Obsessively repeated and layered, the resulting works form a preemptive, and melancholic reflection on the loss of her family in her subsequent 1968 divorce. Following this, Smith fully devoted her life to art-making, with works that reflected a similar engagement with a burgeoning community of artists in Los Angeles, as well as an exploration of the new relationship between performance artworks and their audience. Experiments in Electrostatics At the Whitney Museum of American Art, through March 25, 2018 Experiments in Electrostatics: Photocopy Art from the Whitney’s Collection, 1966–1986 explores the use of the photocopier as a creative tool, from its public emergence in the 1960s to the dawn of the digital era in the 1980s. Despite the machine’s intended function to reproduce office documents, artists inventively utilized it as a camera and printing press to create original fine art prints. They placed objects on the flatbed, distorted imagery in the process of scanning, and manipulated the exposure, density, and saturation settings to achieve imaginative, often unexpected results. Far from “copies,” these still lifes, portraits, abstractions, and collages reflected the ingenuity of their makers. Focusing on three artists and one collective—Edward Meneeley, Lesley Schiff, Barbara T. Smith, and the International Society of Copier Artists—this exhibition investigates how artists found self-expression through a machine designed for replication. Experiments in Electrostatics is organized by Michelle Donnelly, curatorial fellow. ————————————————————————————————— “the great American Graphic Novel Masterpiece of our time” At Broken Frontier, Robin Enrico looks at A.T. Pratt’s Ink Toby In another way the true target of Pratt’s scorn may be Pratt himself. Ink Toby was drawn under the very constraints that Pratt is mocking. The constant grinding away at making comics in an attempt to move the needle on an artist’s social profile. Reducing art to grist for the content mill. Even if as Pratt admits, the work was not finished during Inktober, it still adheres to that push to rapidly produce pages. This doesn’t always play to Pratt’s advantage, as his pages can be overly dense with at times cramped panel layouts. There are also a few instances where dialogue does, as Toby’s father cautions against, dominate the page. In Ink Tommy’s own words, “You think everyone wants to read all that shit?” Making a joke of the works shortcomings does not completely alleviate them. ————————————————————————————————— ‘This is an internet comic, not a printed volume, after all…’ Matt Seneca on Blue Teeth by Uno Moralez But what Blue Teeth attests to even more than Moralez’s image making expertise is his power as a comics maker. In a way, this is work as formally simple as it gets: a screen that shows one single image at a time, each isolated and complete in itself, yet linked by subject to the others. What’s so impressive is how immersive Moralez makes his work without any page-layout tricks or advanced sequencing or even words, for crying out loud! He gives his trust to the effectiveness of comics at its most basic level, comics as a simple accretion of image after image. It’s like hearing music played along with the strict, ticking beat of a metronome, where none of the power is in the timing and all of it is in the harmonies, the way every new note bounces off the vibration of all the ones that came before to expand the size of the world being created. Anybody can format a comic the way Moralez does here; that’s not the point. It takes someone who really understands the form, who gets that it’s about the thoughts that flicker in the reader’s head between the images as much what’s as inside of them, to make it work this well. The routes Moralez takes through his story’s information are unusual and exciting – in my favorite transition, a sexy stolen glance between Marina and her man’s road dog is followed immediately by a shot of two butterflies hovering above a flaming rose. Moralez’s sensibility is more poetic than literal, always willing to forgo the direct approach to accommodate a moment of beauty or bizarrerie. ————————————————————————————————— Via Myko Clelland / BoingBoing ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 2-20-2018 – by Caleb Orecchio ————————————————————————————————— VISION BOX — 02/20/2018 — by Cameron Arthur ————————————————————————————————— Share this page: [...]

09/19/2018

Juan FernándezSeptember 19, 2018NewsJuan here checking in with a mini SPX Report. First off, a huge thank you goes out to team at SPX, especially Warren Bernard, Lynda Bernard, Rob Clough, Danethin Mejia and Eden Miller for helping us with making these workshops happen! WE had a great time! Also thank you to all of our workshop instructors – you made it happen <3 SPX was solid this year for me. I had some great experiences teaching, caught up with fellow CCS graduates, connected with Santoro School alums, and reconnected with tumblr and instagram comics makers new and old. Nothing ground breaking, just a good continuation of the story from previous years. As is our Comics Workbook tradition, we held down the fort in the Glen Echo Room offering back-to-back workshops with world class cartoonists and comics makers. Attendee’s ages ranged wildly, which was exciting. For the most part, all attendees were aspiring makers or folks who wanted to dip their toes into comics making. It’s nice to be able to offer a space for these people. Sally Ingraham masterfully coordinated all of our workshops and the Workbook crew assisted in shifts. It all went gloriously smoothly. This year, I wrangled up the core group of the Pittsburgh Comics Salon to form the heart of this year’s crew. Above all, my priority this year was being of service to the Pittsburgh Comics Salon’s crew that was in attendance. Lane Graff, Graciela Sarabia, Audra Stang, Syd Blackwell, Sam Ombiri, Ann Lewis, Caleb Orecchio and Sally Ingraham. SPX, if you’re coming from outside of the D.C./Maryland area can be overwhelming, and at times especially strange. There’s no explicit program for after hours mingling other than the Ignatz Awards and the newly developed “Prom”, for better or for worse. If you stay in the hotel, you can sometimes feel trapped. While, yes it’s, folks can just figure out how to take care of themselves – look up food on their phones, find hotels, etc. it is difficult to properly optimize your experience of this weekend without having been there. I wanted to bridge that gap for my fellow comics makers in Pittsburgh. Going to SPX is like entering a bubble. It’s an interesting, satisfying comics bubble, but it is one that takes getting used to. If you don’t go into that bubble prepared to take breaks, with a plan for food, with snacks and water on hand, or with a comics budget, SPX can really wreck you! It’s a monster of a show that way. In light of this I wanted to make sure that everyone had access to what they needed. I attended SPX for the first time in 2010 on Bill Boichel’s urging. I’m thankful he was there that year so that I could check in with him every now and again as he sailed across the room meeting makers and buying work to sell at Copacetic Comics. Without that anchor during my first year, would have been quite different and far more overwhelming. To be able to attend with this group in tow was a really satisfying experience. I’m thankful I could coordinate this trip from Pittsburgh and be their support in Bethesda. As I’ve said before my priority has been to cultivate this local community of makers. I love comics making, but people come before them, always. Workshop Report Sally Ingraham, will have a full report on Friday. Our workshops were more full than ever. Lots of networking between students and instructors happened after each workshop. Comics Reviews You can expect some reflections on books that we received or purchased at SPX to trickle out as the month progresses. It takes time to read comics, to experience them and enjoy them so you won’t see any rushed reviews or reflections from us here at Comics Workbook. Stay tuned for more insights. Thank you! juan 09-29-2018 – by Niall Breen Share this page: [...]

03/06/2018

Aaron CockleMarch 5, 2018NewsAaron here today with Eleanor Davis; Ley Lines 2018; Czap/Sorese; Gary Panter ————————————————————————————————— New York Comics & Picture-Story Symposium: Featuring Eleanor Davis Eleanor Davis – Why Art? It’s widely accepted that art serves an important function in society. But the concept falls under such an absurdly large umbrella and can manifest in so many different ways. Art can be self indulgent, goofy, serious, altruistic, evil, or expressive, or any number of other things. But how can it truly make lasting, positive change? In Why Art?, acclaimed graphic novelist Eleanor Davis (How To Be Happy) unpacks some of these concepts in ways both critical and positive, in an attempt to illuminate the highest possible potential an artwork might hope to achieve. A work of art unto itself, Davis leavens her exploration with a sense of humor and a thirst for challenging preconceptions of art worthy of Magritte, drawing the reader in as a willing accomplice in her quest. Tuesday, March 6, 2018 at 7:00 pm Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Auditorium (Room N101) Sheila C. Johnson Design Center 66 Fifth Avenue New York, NY 10003 Davis will also be presenting and signing her new book at Desert Island Comics at 7:15pm on Wednesday, March 7. ————————————————————————————————— New Ley Lines Subscription for 2018 Recently announced. Work by/about: Jia Sung on Belkis Ayón/“Madame White Snake” (February 2018) Oliver East on Boredom (“Langweile”) (May 2018) L Nichols on Ludwig van Beethoven (August 2018) Whit Taylor on Mona Lisa (November 2018) ————————————————————————————————— Jeremy Sorese Interviews Kevin Czap Your work, not only in Futchi Perf but in several other works (such as your Ley Lines book ‘The Letting Go’ and your story ‘The Last Time You Saw Cleveland’) often decentralizes the narrative away from a singular main character in lieu of something more universal, while still feeling intimate and personal. How did this second person narration come about? I started doing that years ago by trying to avoid using “I” as much as possible in my own diary, in an effort to minimize myself somehow. Not the healthiest time in my life, but there was something I liked about using it in comics to address the reader and pull them in. Encouraging them to empathize with what’s going on in the comic by having them assume the point of view character. It also acknowledges that there’s someone reading the comic, so there’s an “outside” of the book, aka the real world we all live in. I also think some of that original minimization is going on, because I really am writing “you” in place of “I.” ————————————————————————————————— Gary Panter He Demon March 1 – April 14, 2018 Fredericks & Freiser is pleased to announce “He Demon,” an exhibition of new paintings by Gary Panter. Widely recognized as one of the most influential figures of the Los Angeles punk aesthetic, Panter’s “punk, nuclear, hillbilly” sensibility has been a presence in the art world since the late 1970’s. In “He Demon” Panter replaces his typically manic compositions of archetypal figures and vibrant abstractions with scenes of psychological menace. “I locate the narrative singularity of Gary Panter’s work largely within the relationship between discrete narrative layers of abstract composition and figurative scenarios … The story is even further complicated by the fact that Panter’s polyglot visual vocabulary also encompasses the semiotic resonance of his pictographic content (and of his high art references, many of which are quotations of established stylistic motifs).”—Doug Harvey ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 3-6-18 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

10/17/2016

Juan FernándezOctober 17, 2016NewsJuan here with updates from this weekend. Just got back to Pittsburgh and wanted to write up some thoughts off the cuff before I headed off to work. I’m exhausted but energized <3 We had a doozy of a Comics Workbook operation running full force at LICAF in Kendal and at the 2nd Annual CXC in Columbus! I joined Sacha Mardou, Alyssa Berg, Whit Taylor, Kurt Ankeny, Sally Ingraham, Caleb Orecchio and Emil Friis Ernst in Columbus. I have lots of thoughts on the bang up show that the fine folks at CXC put on. For now, I’ll share what I can! Whit Taylor will be putting together a comprehensive Festival recap for Cartoon Crossroads Columbus later this week, so stay tuned for that! AND Frank Santoro will be reflecting on his time at the Lakes International Comic Art Festival in just a bit . Things got deep for him and the rest of the crew over in the UK and you won’t want to miss those updates, loyal reader. ————————————————————————————————— First off, a HUGE thank you to everyone on the Cartoon Crossroads Staff including Jeff Smith, Vijaya Iyer, Kathleen Glosan, Lucy Caswell, Tom Spurgeon and Caitlin McGurk for all of the tireless work that they did to make this festival a unique experience for a multitude of comics reading perspectives: academics professionals, aficionados, and new readers – the team’s work has created a unique experience that offers both depth and breadth. Incredible. Mad props to Sergio Aragonés, Carol Tyler who received the 2016 CXC Master Cartoonist awards for their lifetime work in comics – and Kevin Czapieski for their CXC Emerging Talent award. What a time to be alive in comics. Highlights for me: ⚡Locations – The Billy Ireland is heaven on earth. The Metropolitan Library is glorious. Spacious, open spaces that look out to the treetops. I was able to breath and stay calm even at the most stressful moments of my experience. ⚡Scheduling – Smooth as silk. Attendees had oodles to choose from. Little to no double booking that prevented people from seeing all that they wanted to see. ⚡Exhibitor selection – The selection ran wide and deep, in one room. Great curatorial choices on CXC’s part. ⚡Volunteer Assistance – Always on hand to assist with tech for presentations, to get materials, to cover for people’s tables, to direct around facilities… invaluable. I’d like to share some moments from our time in Columbus: View this post on Instagram Sacha Mardou presenting on composing long-form fiction at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum for CXC @cartoonlibrary @msmardou #cxc2016 A post shared by Comics Workbook ⚡️ (@comicsworkbook) on Oct 14, 2016 at 8:21am PDT View this post on Instagram Alyssa Berg led a great workshop for Comics Workbook at Cartoon Crossroads Columbus today! @aaalllyyysssssa #comicsworkbook #cxc2016 A post shared by Comics Workbook ⚡️ (@comicsworkbook) on Oct 15, 2016 at 4:07pm PDT View this post on Instagram Digging right in on day 4 of Cartoon Crossroads Columbus with Kurt Ankeny's Comics Workbook session @kurtankeny #cxc2016 #comicsworkbook A post shared by Comics Workbook ⚡️ (@comicsworkbook) on Oct 16, 2016 at 9:41am PDT View this post on Instagram LIVE at CXC!!! #comicsworkbook A post shared by Comics Workbook ⚡️ (@comicsworkbook) on Oct 15, 2016 at 10:14am PDT View this post on Instagram Charles Burns stopped by the table at CXC to dig through the long boxes #cxc2016 #charlesburns #comicsworkbook A post shared by Comics Workbook ⚡️ (@comicsworkbook) on Oct 15, 2016 at 11:25am PDT View this post on Instagram Thee great Chris Diaz doing what he does best. Follow @cad_pictures for inspiring photographs of America's finest cartoonists and comics makers. #comicsworkbook A post shared by Comics Workbook ⚡️ (@comicsworkbook) on Oct 16, 2016 at 11:26am PDT View this post on Instagram Spotlight on Sacha Mardou at CXC @msmardou #cxc2016 A post shared by Comics Workbook ⚡️ (@comicsworkbook) on Oct 15, 2016 at 10:53am PDT View this post on Instagram A few more moments from Cartoon Crossroads Columbus – all-star photographer Chris Anthony Diaz, kids drawing at the CW table, Juan Fernandez digging in with a workshop attendee, and Caitlin McGurk getting Sacha Mardou's comic for the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum @cad_pictures @juan.jose.fernandez @msmardou @cartoonlibrary #cxc2016 #comicsworkbook A post shared by Comics Workbook ⚡️ (@comicsworkbook) on Oct 16, 2016 at 10:14pm PDT ————————————————————————————————— On the home front here in Pittsburgh, we had the 6th Annual Pittsburgh Zine Fair which saw record attendance. I’m one of the organizers of the fair, so I was overjoyed to see photos of everyone’s days over on FB and Instagram. And when I heard that we had record breaking attendance of over 700 attendees? Well, my heart just skipped a beat. Print is alive and well here in Pittsburgh. I can’t wait to join up with the rest of the organizing committee: Christina Lee, Maggie Negrete and Raiona Gaydos to debrief and start plotting and scheming for the zine fair’s next adventure. I leave you with the view that I got, homeward bound from Columbus. Suffice to say I left with energized, ready to lean in and make some new work and teach my heart out. until next time, JF Share this page: [...]

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