Friday with the cool kids – Rhoda Kellogg, Eleanor Davis, Trina Robbins, Katie Skelly, Lisa Lim, Gabrielle Bell, and more!
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Brian Belott has designed an exhibition inspired by the work of Rhoda Kellogg, “one of the foremost, undersung researchers of the doodles, wiggles, and dreams that kids draw.” Among his varied art projects, over the last 15 years Belott has been studying children’s art and he repeatedly bumped into Rhoda Kellogg’s name. Her work as a child psychologist and scholar led her to collect over a million pieces of children’s art between 1948 and 1981, but it all wound up in a storage unit in Connecticut until Brian Belott took an interest in the collection. The show he put together includes 300 pieces from Kellogg’s collection, his own work and attempts at making child-like art (or “forgeries” as he calls them, of his favorite kid-produced originals), and the classroom component (pictured above), which is staffed by his friends and peers during weekend workshops.
As a teacher of kids myself, and someone who is experiencing a growing fascination with how kids process the world through art, I recognize the “natural force” that Belott describes and am eager to see this show if it does travel (as he hopes) and will certainly be picking up some of the books that Rhoda Kellogg wrote on the subject of children’s art. Learn more about her HERE.
Find out more about the “Dr. Kid President Jr.” show via this article on Artsy.
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Hillary Brown chats with Eleanor Davis about her new comic You & a Bike & a Road (Koyama Press, May 2017) for Paste Magazine, starting off by wondering if she is perhaps “the most renowned comics artist of her generation“. Eleanor talks about the process of making the book:
“I started out drawing every day of my trip because I always wish I was the sort of person who draws every day on a trip. (I’m not). And I was nervous about essentially taking a two-month vacation—what if everyone forgot who I was, what if I lost all my clients, etc. So I wanted something to post online. I kept drawing, however, because my knees were slowing me down, and that meant I was spending less time biking and more time resting and bored. Otherwise I might have let the journal peter out, like most of my journals tend to.
When I got home, I wanted to collect the comics because I’m not productive enough to draw 100 pages of comics and then just let them blow away in the wind. At first I only wanted to put out a mini comic, but it was too many pages. I felt very upset about the idea of making it into a book because I didn’t think it had the merit to be a book. The comics are sloppy and self-indulgent, and collected together they have real life’s irritating lack of narrative structure. But once I filled it out a little it came together a little bit. And folks seemed to respond to the comics emotionally, so I thought it might work out.“
Read the rest of the interview HERE. Get a copy of the book HERE.
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I have yet to see the new Wonder Woman film, and in an effort to not spoil it by reading too much about it, I have found myself reading about other takes on the character – from Trina Robbins’ solidly Amazonian Diana (no fancy flying or special powers, just TRAINING) to George Perez’s vision, which brought the “wonder” back to Wonder Woman.
This article at The Fresh Toast details Trina Robbins’ adventures with Diana. Trina was the first woman to draw a Wonder Woman series, digging into The Legend of Wonder Woman in 1986 (with writer Kurt Busiek). Trina’s artwork in this 4-issue series brought back the Golden Age, and the little girl whom Wonder Woman saves looks more than a bit like Trina as a child.
George Perez’s relaunch of Wonder Woman in 1987 was admittedly a bit more exciting. There is an excellent article on Vulture about Perez and what he brought to the continuing saga of the character.
Now that a badass female director has made a Wonder Woman film that folks are pretty delighted by (despite it being a DC flick!), I can only hope that good things are in store for Diana and her creators down the road.
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And Also
- Katie Skelly joins Mike Dawson and Zach Soto for Episode 35 of Process Party.
- Dominique Goblet‘s Pretending Is Lying is reviewed on the Los Angeles Review of Books by Tahneer Oksman.
- Meredith Gran concludes her long-running web comic Octopus Pie.
- Lisa Lim writes and draws about how she went from being an “apolitical to a little more political Asian” on Mutha Magazine.
- Jillian Tamaki goes through her process for one of the stories in her new collection Boundless – at The Cut.
- Check out Madeleine Witt and Andrew White’s Kickstarter for their upcoming collection Warmer: A collection of comics about climate change for the fearful & hopeful.
- The Ladybroad Ledger, edited by Stephanie Zuppo, is campaigning for funds to print issue #2.
- Gabrielle Bell was on The Rumpus Book Club chat near the end of May – her new book Everything Is Flammable came out June 6th.
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Suzy and Cecil – 6-9-2017 – by Gabriella Tito
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Joanie and Jordie – 6-9-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio