Aaron Cockle here today with Roz Chast (and Françoise Mouly); Pan Terzis; Graphic Medicine; Florine Stettheimer; Maggie Umber; Dieter Lumpen
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‘I like taking on complicated, detailed projects, especially if I’m not a hundred-per-cent sure how they’re going to turn out.’
Françoise Mouly looks at the wonderful embroidered piece Roz Chast made for the May 15, 2017 issue of the New Yorker, including an animation of the process that went into making the cover.

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‘Each issue has a secret formula that I have to discover. ‘
Frank Santoro continues his survey of recent developments in Art Comics Risography – this week he talks with Pan Terzis:
People want to show up. They want to look at your thing in person, hold it in their hands. They want to talk to others in person about it and look at it at their own pace, without the publisher or distributor knowing how long they spent lingering on a page or whether they got to the end of the book in the same time as 76.3% of other consumers. All of this activity is still happening in the context of capitalist systems of production, supply and demand and distribution, but I think that people who work with this kind of cultural ephemera must know on some level that the real art is what happens in between the object and the viewer, and the consumer of that piece of art and the person they describe it to. It’s inherently a social act, and this can manifest through all stages of the process. People-power is what drives this activity, and just like a blade of grass can slowly destroy a piece of concrete given enough time to push to the surface, I think DIY culture might be the key to breaking out of the mechanistic, algorithm driven nightmare that our tech overlords are driving us towards.
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Florine Stettheimer: Painting Poetry
The artist Florine Stettheimer (1871–1944) is an icon of Jazz Age New York. Born to a wealthy Jewish family in Rochester, she studied at the Art Students League in New York City and then in Europe, where she encountered two profound influences: the Symbolist painters and poets and, on the eve of the Great War, the Ballets Russes. Returning to Manhattan, she hosted an elite salon together with her sisters Carrie and Ettie and their mother, Rosetta, attracting many of the leading lights of the artistic vanguard. Her circle included Alfred Stieglitz, Carl Van Vechten, Georgia O’Keeffe, Elie Nadelman, Gaston Lachaise, and many others. Among her intimate friends was Marcel Duchamp.
Through over 50 paintings and drawings, a selection of costume and theater designs, photographs and ephemera, as well as critically acclaimed poems, the Jewish Museum will offer a timely reconsideration of this important American artist, revealing Stettheimer’s singular and often satiric vision and significant role in American modern art. The exhibition highlights the artist’s distinctly personal style of painting, Stettheimer’s position amidst New York’s artistic elite and avant-gardes, and her continued influence on artistic practice today.
May 5-September 24 at the Jewish Museum, 1109 5th Ave at 92nd St, NYC.

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2dcloud in Toronto
Maggie Umber has a nice photo-recap of the TCAF show:
Some of my favorite 2dcloud convention moments – talking with Carta’s wife Emily about our shared adoration of Junji Ito and Emily Carroll. @cartamonir letting me read Ghost Call on her phone since my Tumblr app never let me read the end last Halloween. Meeting @tommipg and watching them embroider a beautiful panel, meeting @goodcomicsbykim and being astonished by her energy and exhaustion, her humor and her seriousness. Blaise rearranging the 2dcloud table into a better format that sold more books. Juliacks casual yet persistent (and very successful) sales style and her gorgeous book trailer. I was also very excited to meet @artbl0g Xia Gordon when we did a panel together. 2dcloud is publishing a mini-comic with her soon!!!!!!
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‘To be sure, these are the adventures of a white European wandering through the wreckage of a post-war world.’
Pellejero uses color and a confident line to build on top of a very solid foundation. The real appeal of the series are the settings. The premise is that shortly after the war, a German named Dieter Lumpen gets a job as a chauffeur and the first page of the first story finds him being chased through an Istanbul market by a man with a gun. From there, he travels to the Agean, Haifa, India, Sri Lanka, Paris, Manaus, Tunisia and the Caribbean. The appeal of these destinations is Pellejero’s ability to render them almost like a documentary film maker, matter of fact about amazing sights, which adds verisimilitude. The amount of detail on each page means that every time you return to a page, you notice something new. And the stories are very rereadable.
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Announcing the Summer Semester of the Santoro Correspondence Course for Comic Book Makers!
8 weeks! 500 bux! Payment plans are available! Summer Course starts June 1st 2017!
Applications are due by May 25th.
Visit THIS page for more details and email santoroschool@gmail.com with applications and questions!
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A Cosmic Journey – 5-23-2017 – by Cameron Arthur
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Suzy and Cecil – 5-23-2017 – by Sally Ingraham