Comics Workbook

An online magazine for comics makers

Posted in NewsTagged caleb orecchio, conan the barbarian, ice worm

Caleb Orecchio

Posted on October 25, 2018October 25, 2018

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08/11/2016

HarrisonAugust 11, 2016NewsComics and arts news, here is that news. ————————————————————————————————— Stay Drawing MOK: There are many side and ¾ back views of you, but as usual, there aren’t really any direct views of your face. Like the withholding in the text, what does it mean to you to sort of withhold your gaze from the viewer? ODOMO: I didn’t want to draw my face a million times. And everyone is like “god, cartoonists are just so in love with their own faces and love the sound of their own voice”. Well so what? Fuck you. I’m still drawing myself and making it about ME, but like trying to keep it visually interesting and not too same-y. Backs of heads are like… allowing a little bit of intimacy between me and the reader / viewer but like… stopping them before they get too close. I’m setting the boundaries. For me, the back of the head view is like… there’s a person standing there and you want to reach out to them, but you can’t. The withholding thing… that’s fun too, haha. That’s more in my writing than my drawings. I love scratching something out and making it so no one will ever be able to read it. I started using paint, too, so there’s like sometimes an entire pages that I end up covering up and wiping out. It’s my book, I can withhold what I want. I can have blank pages if I want. I like the way it looks. Annie Mok and Mare Odomo over at TCJ. ————————————————————————————————— Still Drawing More Annie Mok, with Natalie Andrewson for Hazlitt. ————————————————————————————————— https://comicsworkbook.tumblr.com/post/148762935662/comicsworkbook-pale-sick-and-magic-414 ————————————————————————————————— https://mitografia.tumblr.com/post/148756254036/223-of-366 Kenneth Rocafort ————————————————————————————————— KING OF THE FLIP Share this page: [...]

The Spring Season

Kurt AnkenyJune 29, 2017Festivals and ShowsSo, for those of us in the indie comics circuit, the summer lull is upon us. Summer usually has very few indie-centered shows going on, even though the mainstream comicons are going full blast. The consensus is that generally, indie comics are more dependent on the college and art school crowd, and when they all go home for the summer, it’s hard to gather enough interested folks to hold a show. It seems awfully stupid to join an industry whose main customer base is one of the poorest and busiest groups of people in society, but here we are, at it again, hoping to make a buck. I enjoyed my spring season, though. First was PIX (Pittsburgh Indy Comix Expo) in Pittsburgh at the beginning of April, then I had CAKE (Chicago Alternative Comics Expo) in Chicago at the beginning of June, followed the very next weekend by the one-day MECAF (Maine Comics Arts Festival), in Portland, Maine. PIX was a lovely little show. Well, perhaps I shouldn’t call it little. It has a grand venue, and you can feel the aspirations Bill Boichel has for this show. Housed in the August Wilson Center for African American Culture, the space was beautiful and more than big enough. The crowd was steady and enthusiastic despite the quadruple-threat of: 1) a competing comics show in one of the Steel City’s immediate suburbs, 2) the Pirates’ home opener, 3) a HUGE anime/cosplay show just around the corner from PIX, and 4) the first absolutely glorious spring day, with temps in the 80s and barely a cloud in the sky. Proving that Bill and Copacetic Comics have tremendous pull, the guest list was full of heavy hitters: Anya Davidson, Jim Rugg, Ed Piskor, Lane Milburn, Connor Willumsen, Frank Santoro, Lale Westvind. Quite a line-up for a show this size. I got the chance to finally meet Connor in person, and we got to chat for a while as we drove through the rusted rat-maze that is Pittsburgh’s road system. I also got to meet the very talented Audra Stang. I crashed with the Comics Workbook crew, and it was especially nice that even though this was a one-day show, there was a bit of after partying and camaraderie. Next time I go to Pittsburgh, I need to finally arrange a couple hours of just me and Bill up in Copacetic. Bill is a comics oracle, and I need to drink from that fountain of knowledge. CAKE in Chicago is always a great time. The crowd is usually lively and in a spending mood, and the neighborhood of Boystown in north Chicago is a really lovely place. I got to meet and chat with Simon Hanselmann (though he did the vast majority of the chatting.) I was lucky enough to table with Tommi Parrish, who has had books published by Czap Books and 2D Cloud, and has a forthcoming book from Fantagraphics. They are an incredible artist, and I thoroughly enjoyed their Ley Lines volume on William Blake and Lydia Lunch. I’m very much looking forward to picking up their longer works. Also, a very lovely tablemate. Excellent at sharing snacks. Speaking of snacks, I also got to catch up with Alyssa Berg, who was tabling with the elusive Ron Rege, Jr. I met Alyssa at last year’s CXC (Cartoon Crossroads Columbus). Alyssa’s creating some really interesting works as she dives into the risograph process in an attempt to translate her mixed media comics into print forms that perhaps capture her vision a little better than scans of painted pages do. Really looking forward to what she comes up with during her SVA residency. I also got to table across the aisle from Kevin Czap and Cathy Johnson, who are two of my favorite people and a presence at nearly every show I’ve been to. Kevin, indie-comics’s self-styled Comics Mom, publishes a strong line of books that are heartfelt, thoughtful, and full of need-to-be-heard voices. Cathy is a fellow former Minnesotan living on the East Coast, making beautiful comics stories that are straight from the core of America. I caught up for a few minutes with Ben Passmore. At last year’s CAKE, Ben dropped off a black and white mini called Your Black Friend at my table. In the year since, Ben has become a household name in indie comics. He’s busy with books coming out in the fall, and suddenly has a bunch of illustration work. It makes me so happy to see that coming his way. I was very sad to see later that he, Kevin, Cathy, and others went to do their usual con karaoke on Saturday night and I missed it. I was exhausted from getting only a total of eight hours of sleep over the previous two nights, so after inviting myself along to a dinner with Kevin Huizenga, Tom Spurgeon, Rob Clough, Jenny Zervakis, Nick Drnaso, Noah Van Sciver, John Porcellino, and Dan Stafford, I headed to my friend Gene Ha’s house. Gene’s been working over the past year + on his own creator-owned book, Mae. It’s a great book, full of crazy detailed sci-fi-fantasy adventure that only Gene could pull off. It’s like he’s channeling the same spirit that moved him to produce the insane beauty of Top Ten with Alan Moore, but on his own story and possibly with more love and care. Dark Horse has been publishing it, but killed the book a couple of months ago along with a batch of other titles. While Gene has rights to everything, Dark Horse has printing rights to the first six issues, and those will be held by them until January 2019. Despite acclaim, a growing fan base, and being featured as the YA book of the summer at last week’s ALA Conference, Mae is now stuck in limbo unless someone else picks it up and continues it without rights to publish the first six issues for 18 months. Here’s hoping someone will take that chance! Sunday at CAKE was much better than Saturday, sales-wise for me. At the end of the day, I invited Alyssa to join Gene and me for dinner. Alyssa was keen to try the famous/infamous Chicago Deep Dish Pizza, so we headed over to the best spot in town. Over dinner, Gene and Alyssa and I had a great discussion about Alyssa’s work, her philosophy in creating, and how she likes to connect with readers through her books. Gene wowed Alyssa with some iPhone images of his work, and I was so pleased that these two friends of mine hit it off so well. Bravo, Chicago, and thanks for the heat wave! MECAF was the capper to my spring con season, on June 17. I saw Shelli Paroline and Dan Mazur, the brains behind Massachusetts Independent Comics Expo (MICE), and Shelli’s partner in comics and life, Braden Lamb. Shelli and Braden have just released a book with First Second called Making Scents, and they had a couple of copies at the show. The book is gorgeous from beginning to end because Shelli and Braden are top notch cartoonists. It annoys me no end that they are listed as if they were secondary partners on the cover. In fact, First Second has been annoying me in general lately. Their program of publishing everything in digest-or-smaller mini-volumes has been to the great detriment of works by great cartoonists like Paul Pope’s Battling Boy, and Christophe Blain’s Gus. Also, how are people supposed to look up the works of Christophe Blain and find Gus if he’s listed as “Chris Blain” in all the book data? I’ve had more than one CB store tell me they couldn’t find it because I’d forgotten that :01 had anglicized his name. Such weird choices by this imprint. Everyone I talk to about it is baffled by their approach. The show at MECAF was decent. A pretty good day. In fact, better than any single day of sales so far this year. Not bad for a library show which was blocked off by the Pride parade for half of the day. Coming this fall, I’ll be at CXC again, giving a talk in NYC at the New York Comics and Picture-Story Symposium at the Parsons School of Design at the invite of Ben Katchor, and also MICE, which is frequently the best show of the year for me. No dice in the SPX (Small Press Expo) lottery again this year, but I’m hoping to make an appearance at either CALA (Comic Arts Los Angeles) or CAB (Comic Arts Brooklyn) toward the end of the year. I’m continuing work on the science fiction graphic novel you may have seen thumbs for on my Instagram, and I’ll be shopping around a collection of short comics stories I’ve done over the past three years. Wish me luck on getting someone to pick that up. See you in the fall! Kurt ————————————————————————————————— Kurt Ankeny makes comics in Salem, MA – his most recent book is In Pieces: Someplace Which I Call Home. Share this page: [...]

PIX 2016 | Noah Van Sciver Interview

Juan FernándezMay 16, 2016Interviews / SketchbooksFrankie chats with Noah Van Sciver, author of the comic book series Blammo + a zillion other things. Noah’s a prolific dude //nvansciver.wordpress.com // noahvansciver.tumblr.com/] Video by Michael Pisano // michaelpisano.com Share this page: [...]

09/05/2016

Juan FernándezSeptember 5, 2016NewsJuan here. It’s Labor Day in the United States, which means no insane barrage of news for today. Just the juicy bits. Celebrate Labor History & Mourn the end of summer. If you’re still hankering for a massive dose of comics jump into this years submissions to the Comics Workbook Composition Contest. There were a record number entries this year and some real gems. Read them all HERE. ————————————————————————————————— If you haven’t caught wind already, Comics Workbook will be firing on all cylinders at SPX this year. We are excited to announce that Comics Workbook will be hosting a series of special workshops at SPX this year! A Danger Room of our own. Learn more about this year’s special Comics Workbook workshops HERE. We will be at table N8 this year – stop by and say “Hello” – check out new work by Frank and our students – buy some old comics from Frank’s mind blowingly extensive collection. More to come! We’ll be back full force tomoroow, coming at you like an SPX maelstrom. Hold on to your butts -JF Share this page: [...]

Gloria Rivera – Rowhouse Residency Report

Comics WorkbookApril 2, 2017Residency Reports / School UpdatesGloria Rivera is a comics artist from Canyon Country, CA. An alum of the Santoro Correspondence Course for Comic Book Makers, and a member of the CW Roller Derby League, she joined us in Pittsburgh for a Comics Workbook Rowhouse Residency March 23rd-29th 2017. Here are Gloria’s thoughts about her experience, in her own words. ————————————————————————————————————— The Quick List of What Happened: 22 pages completed, drawing to color w/lettering – comic 1 6 complete pages (B & W) – comic 2 Yona Harvey and Ed Piskor lecture at the Harris Theater Visit to the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh Copacetic Comics visits various nature walks, incidental birding with Sally Ingraham I had no expectations for my residency when I had arrived – only to work. I had followed Frank Santoro’s online presence for a few years prior and had taken his online correspondence course, but really couldn’t say that I had any idea of what kind of a teacher Frank was in person, or how much of a gift being in this space could be, not only referring to the Rowhouse, but to Pittsburgh – a town constantly working its bellows to support its comics scene. The first day I had arrived, I met Sally Ingraham. I was really blown away by Sally, who works as a coordinator for the Rowhouse Residency and holds various responsibilities for Comics Workbook. She is exhaustively knowledgeable, hardworking, and compassionate. She asked me what I had come to Pittsburgh to work on, and we sort of agreed that this first day I would work in solitude on my comic that I had started half a year earlier, until I felt I had gained some momentum, and then we would go from there, gauging if/when I wanted outside conversation. For the majority of my stay, the rhythm I kept to was non-stop working until a personal moment was offered (whether it be a walk, dinner with Frank and Sally, or short trips through the city), taking those moments, being present, and then continuing my work. Any time spent with other cartoonists (Frank, Sally, one of Sally’s 9-yr old students, cartoonists in a lecture, a.k.a Ed Piskor) was used to further my stride into my work. On the second day of my residency I met Frank. We had dinner at his house, where he was working on his new book. He is spirited, purposeful, mindful, and has endless passion for his work. He told a brief history of Pittsburgh, intertwined with his own of growing up, leaving and returning. It’s a story of dedication and belonging which I think not many people of MY generation are comfortable with, as many seem to be constantly striving for “better”, but without knowing, really, what “better” is. Aside from the stories Frank told about the city, he also gave me insight into the reality of living as a comics maker, which I would not have been privy to, and which until then I really was only guessing at. Some may be disheartened by these sort of conversations, but I am excited by how real it made things for me, despite it being a gauntlet. Topics for the week were: comics making process, the value of comics as a physical object/printing, the strengths of the avant-garde (non-narrative) against those of the narratively structured comic (two very different modes of storytelling), visual literacy, and comics community (inclusive of audience, publishers, comics friends, and family). The talks were long, but the time passed quickly. I tried my best to respect both Sally and Frank’s personal time to work, as they had mine. When Frank approached my work for advisement he was very objective, and I wanted his worst, so that I could do my best. Still, I think he saw my being in the work, and was courteous with his critique. Before coming to Pittsburgh I had half of my comic completed – 25 pages – and I completed the remaining 22 there. I completed as much as I did from August to November of 2016 in a week at the Rowhouse! I won’t say it was easy, but provided with the time to concentrate and motivation from the community, I was happy to put in any amount of time that my work demanded. Any formal education I had before comics was always for painting, and the more serious I allow myself to become about comics making, the more I see they are not so dissimilar. Frank is really great about sharing his knowledge and relating it to that which you came with. He was generous in his talks, while asking me to be accountable for the information I did know. One night Frank had casually presented me with some reading material; recommendations – mostly comics (Yuichi Yokoyama, Rich Buckler) – and among them two catalogues of Philip Guston paintings (it turns out that Frank is not only a comics expert, he is well versed in art history as a whole). Although in the past I have kept Guston as a sort of painting mentor (through books and image), I was surprised when I was presented with these catalogues – to be looking at his work during this comics residency. Phil Guston was a painter who understood the politics associated with images, but always kept a personal relationship with his visual library. Imagine your images are made of characters, places, things, each one a word, a letter, all making up your language. You hold this close to you. This is comics. What follows is an excerpt from a book of collected writings on Phil Guston: “Now, I think the original revolutionary impulse behind the New York School , as I felt it anyway, and I think my colleagues felt it, in the way we talked all the time, was that you felt as if you were driven into a corner against the wall, with no place to stand, just the place you occupied. And it’s as if the act of painting itself was not making a picture, because there are plenty of pictures in the world. Why make more pictures, clutter up the world with more pictures? But it’s as if you had to prove to yourself that truly the act of creation was still possible. Whether it was possible.” (Guston 58) I never expected to have felt this myself, to be able to talk to a group of people about images in such an earnest way – always internal conversation, now externalized. Frank and Sally offered their criticism, and experience, and questioning. I am working everyday to be worthy of comics as my form, and regardless, I put the pen to the paper – but over time I’ve forgotten to ask the big questions. Now I am more than willing to report that while the uninterrupted work time, the comics lectures, and accessible reading material was what whipped me into completing my goal, what I am bringing home with me – more than another book done – is a sense of what true community is, and the importance of holding your peers to standards that will benefit them in the longer run. It’s with great enthusiasm that I support the agenda of Comics Workbook, and the Residency program, and look forward to furthering my involvement with them to make better work (my own and that of others). ————————————————————————————————————— Check out more work by Gloria on her website, follow her on Instagram, and look for her new comic soon! For more information about the Comics Workbook Rowhouse Residency visit this page or email santoroschoolATgmail Share this page: [...]

10/25/2018

Posted on October 25, 2018October 25, 2018 by Caleb Orecchio

Your friendly neighborhood Caleb Orecchio here with a public service announcement.

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by Roy Thomas, Carmine Infantino and Alfredo Alcala

Hello fellow cartoonists, winter is on its way. For some, winter is practically here. Don’t be an Ice Worm this year. Don’t hole up in your lair until some wayfaring stranger comes across your cave to slay you. Get out of the house. Have coffee with a friend. Check in on a relative. Exercise. It is important to take advantage of the cold weather by staying in to work on your comics, but don’t forget that the world keeps turning outside the drawing desk.

This has been another message from your friend, Caleb, the cartoonist who cares.

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Comics Workbook

An online magazine for comics makers

Posted in NewsTagged caleb orecchio, conan the barbarian, ice worm

Caleb Orecchio

Posted on October 25, 2018October 25, 2018

Explore

04/03/2018

Aaron CockleApril 2, 2018NewsAaron here today with Keren Katz; Mounira Al Solh; Yvan Alagbé; DRT; SOIMOCCA; Generative Adversarial Networks ————————————————————————————————— Keren Katz on The Academic Hour The 213th meeting of the NY Comics & Picture-story Symposium will be held on Tuesday, April 3, 2018 at 7pm at Parsons School of Design, Kellen Auditorium (Room N101, off the lobby), Sheila C. Johnson Design Center. 66 Fifth Avenue. Free and open to the public. Keren will talk about the process of using dance, performance, props and costumes to generate the events that have inspired this book as well as her upcoming projects. She will demonstrate the techniques and references used to compose her pages and will also display a collection of contemporary Israeli Graphic Novels for viewing. Keren Katz is a Tel Aviv based illustrator, comics artist and the non fictitious half of The Katz Sisters Duo. She graduated Bezalel Academy in Jerusalem, and received an MFA from The School of Visual Arts in NYC. She has contributed stories to anthologies published by Retrofit/Big Planet Comics, Locust Moon Comics, Smoke Signal, The Brooklyn Rail, Ink Brick Rough House Comics and more, as well as self publishing mini-comics all year round. She practices performative, interactive and collaborative storytelling marathons in odd locations, and is part of The Humdrum Comics Collective and Pathos Mathos Company. Her Ignatz nominated debut graphic novel is titled The Academic Hour (Secret Acres, 2017). https://www.instagram.com/thekatzsisters/ ————————————————————————————————— Mounira Al Solh: I strongly believe in our right to be frivolous At Art Institute Chicago through April 29, 2018. While the drawings map geographies of departure, arrival, and nonarrival through storytelling, the embroideries serve as testaments to more collective histories. Weaving together the accounts that connect and divide families, friends, and other relations across the spaces and temporalities of migration, these portraits made on fabric culminate in the Sperveri, a so-called bed-tent that memorializes recent events in the Middle East and Europe within a larger history of Islamic culture. ————————————————————————————————— Shea Hennum at AV Club on Yvan Alagbé’s Yellow Negroes And Other Imaginary Creatures: The story is told elliptically, with Alagbé shifting perspective, setting, and time period without warning or explicit notation. Dialogue and exposition are collapsed into one rhetorical space, and all the text is set off from the images. The effect is a distancing, and the eye is able to focus on and fall in love with Alagbé’s images, rich black smears of ink converging and diverging from one another in passionate plays of sex, sorrow, and salvation. But while there are no white figures in the story, there are allusions to white characters, demonstrating the inescapable gravitational well that is whiteness. “Dyaa” serves as the most aesthetically pure distillation of Alagbé’s ethos, because he makes literal what was merely figurative in “Yellow Negroes”: the idea that blackness is constituted by whiteness and vice versa—infinitely complicating the questions he introduced in that first vignette, “Love.” ————————————————————————————————— Was it your intent for this book to have an air of mystery around it? RJ Casey Interviews D.R.T. The terms dodecahedrons and oblongs are used prominently in this comic and your backgrounds, even your endpapers, feature three-dimensional shapes. What is your interest in geometry? I find geometric shapes aesthetically pleasing. Also, the mathematical meaning that is inherent to geometry is equally as pleasing to me. Math is responsible for the way our universe works, from quantum mechanics to something as simple as 2+2=4. It is a universal truth that if you have two things, and add them to two other things, you will have four things. Why is that so? And why does math work so well in our universe? In the universe that Qoberious takes place in, math has the same roll and these geometric shapes symbolize that. Every time I write a scene with the Keepers, I spend days researching different mathematical concepts and when I’m all done, I think this isn’t funny, and why am I trying to prove? I end up cutting it out. ————————————————————————————————— Society of Illustrators Museum of Cartoon and Comic Art Arts Festival The MoCCA Arts Festival is a 2-day multimedia event, Manhattan’s largest independent comics, cartoon and animation festival, drawing over 7,000 attendees each year. With 400 exhibiting artists displaying their work, award-winning honorees speaking about their careers and artistic processes and other featured artists conducting workshops, lectures and film screenings, our Festival mission accelerates the advancement of the Society’s broader mission to serve as Manhattan’s singular cultural institution promoting all genres of illustration through exhibitions, programs and art education. The 2018 MoCCA Arts Festival will take place April 7-8th, 2018 at Metropolitan West in New York City with programming mere steps away at Ink48 (653 11th Ave). Here are a couple panels of note: 3:30 pm / HELVETICA ROOM The International Scene: Max de Radiguès and Anna Haifisch Every comics culture — no matter how vast only presents and perceives a fragmentary view of global comics culture, a rich field of diverse human expression that is interconnected in some ways, and disconnected in others. International festivals and publishers can be sites for global exchange, and individual artists who travel and work outside of their home countries help develop ties between comics cultures. Max de Radiguès’s graphic novel about his time at the Center for Cartoon Studies was part of the Official Selection at the Festival International de la Bande Dessinée in Angoulême in 2012, and his second English-language translation is forthcoming from Conundrum Press. He is additionally the co-publisher of the Belgian publishing house Employ du moi. Anna Haifisch is internationally known for her comics series, The Artist, and has published widely in many languages. Her book Von Spatz was recently published by Drawn and Quarterly. They will discuss their work and the international comics scene with Bill Kartalopoulos. 2:00 pm / HELVETICA ROOM Somatic Comics: Drawing the Body Comics frequently render the body — in ways both realistic and abstract — and are typically indeces of the body, made by the hands of artists who labor at desks and tablets. Kriota Willberg’s work covers all aspects of this spectrum: her new book Draw Stronger offers medically-grounded self-care instruction for cartoonists engaged in the repetitive labor of comics-making, and her larger body of work includes drawing and needlework based on anatomical and other medical imagery. She will be joined in a discussion about comics, health, and images of the body by Kate Lacour (Vivisectionary) and Lauren Weinstein (Normel Person, “Carriers”), whose work has engaged and expressed ideas about anatomy and pathology in diverse and fascinating ways. Moderated by Marsha Hurst (Columbia University, Narrative Medicine). ————————————————————————————————— “The way that it paints faces makes me uncomfortable. It always paints them as like, purple and yellow globs — that isn’t in the training set so I’m actually still not sure why it does that” AI researcher Robbie Barrat decided to see what would happen when he fed a Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) thousands of nude portraits from a dataset and then trained it to create its own bizarre artworks. Generative adversarial networks are defined as a class of artificial intelligence algorithms used in unsupervised machine learning, which uses two different neural networks, one called the “generator” and one the “discriminator.” “The generator tries to come up with paintings that fool the discriminator, and the discriminator tries to learn how to tell the difference between real paintings from the dataset and fake paintings the generator feeds it,” Barrat told me. “They both get better and better at their jobs over time, so the longer the GAN is trained, the more realistic the outputs will be.” Some additional GAN info can be found here. To understand GANs, you should know how generative algorithms work, and for that, contrasting them with discriminative algorithms is instructive. Discriminative algorithms try to classify input data; that is, given the features of a data instance, they predict a label or category to which that data belongs. ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 3-3-2018 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

09/26/2017

Aaron CockleSeptember 25, 2017NewsAaron Cockle here today with Katie Fricas; Kevin Czap; Louise Bourgeouis; CXC Events ————————————————————————————————— The 193rd meeting of the NY Comics & Picture-story Symposium will be held on Tuesday, Sept. 26, 2017 at 7pm at Parsons School of Design, 2 West 13th Street, in the Bark Room (off the lobby). Free and open to the public. Cartoon Fricassee Live! An illustrated talk on a year’s worth of non-fiction comics by Katie Fricas, including a trip to a pigeon art show at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, the scene in Cleveland outside of the Republic National Convention, forgotten milestones from past summer Olympics, and more. Katie Fricas is a cartoonist and illustrator in New York City. Her comics have appeared in The Guardian online and on Hyperallergic, Extra Crispy, and The Awl. Her first book of essays will be released in the fall of 2017. ————————————————————————————————— Fütchi Perf On Tour Kevin Czap is promoting the recent publication of their Fütchi Perf book by Uncivilized Books, please consider stopping by if you’re in geographical proximity to one of the events. ————————————————————————————————— Louise Bourgeois: An Unfolding Portrait through January 18, 2018, Museum of Modern Art The artist’s creative process is the organizing principle behind the exhibition. Over the course of her career, Bourgeois constantly revisited the themes of her art, all of which emerged from emotions she struggled with for a lifetime. Also, she said there was no “rivalry” between the mediums in which she worked, noting that “they say the same thing in different ways.” Here, her prints and illustrated books will be seen in the context of related sculptures, drawings, and paintings, and within thematic groupings that explore motifs of architecture, the body, and nature, as well as investigations of abstraction and works made from old garments and household fabrics. In addition, the evolving states and variants of her prints will be emphasized in order to reveal Bourgeois’s creative thinking as it unfolded. ————————————————————————————————— Comics Workbook Workshops at CXC Comics Workbook will be conducting a number of workshops over the course of this upcoming weekend at the Cartoon Crossroads Columbus show. These will be led by Connor Willumsen with assistance from Frank Santoro, and will run on a more-or-less hourly basis on the Saturday and Sunday of the festival, so please check the schedule and try to attend one (or several) if you can. Comics Workbook Workshop Featuring Connor Willumsen Columbus Metropolitan Library, Downtown Branch, Homework Help Room The educational workshops hosted by Pittsburgh’s Comics Workbook focus on visual theory applied in practical fashion to any kind of comics making a cartoonist can imagine and can benefit any way a student of the form might wish to improve. This year’s special host is the remarkable visual talent Connor Willumsen, with guest-star teachers dropping in and out throughout the weekend. Walk-ins welcome. ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 9-26-2017 – by Sally Ingraham ————————————————————————————————— Share this page: [...]

03/24/2016

HarrisonMarch 24, 2016News Comics news and Zyrtec packs for pollen season. Jillian Tamaki, Jeremy Sorese, K.L. Ricks, and Jen Lee creating work for Hazlitt magazine and The Comics Journal. Short abstract animation films from Japan by way of the U.S., and remembering the 5 footer. ————————————————————————————————— Hazlitt Magazine has become a prominent home for comic creators to publish various works online. Cartoonists/Illustrators Jeremy Sorese, Jillian Tamaki, and K.L. Ricks have been the past three updates in the comic sections. Check out the rest of the artists here, and if your an artist pitch to Hazlitt editors here. ————————————————————————————————— Thunder Paw creator Jen Lee has been a part of the Cartoonist’s Diary section on TCJ.com for the past few weeks. The inner question sections of these comics feel familiar, but the most striking part is how the negative space between the panels creates such a smooth reading experience. An extra block of space makes scrolling down feel natural instead of tedious. It’s also fun to see her characters drawn on top of photos and clever animaiton in some panels . One or two simple choices making comics on the web more fun to read. ————————————————————————————————— “I attended GEORAMA in tokyo this year, 2016, as a guest. I created a quick installation over the course of the festival. By using twelve separate canvases as individual frames of a sequence, i was able to create a loop of painted animation.” Caleb Wood is an independent animation filmmaker from Minnesota. Check out his other animation experiments with his film PLUMB below too. ————————————————————————————————— “Aiyyo Bo knows this (what?) and Bo knows that (what?) But Bo don’t know jack, cause Bo can’t rap Well whaddya know, the Di-Dawg, is first up to bat No batteries included, and no strings attached No holds barred, no time for move fakin Gots to get the loot so I can bring home the bacon” “Coming with more hits than the Braves and the Yankees Living mad phat like an over sized Bam-bi The wackest crews try to dis, it makes me laugh When my track record’s longer than a DC-20 aircraft So, next time that you think you want something here Make something deffer, take that garbage to St. Elsewhere” R.I.P. to a great artist. Read this and this. Share this page: [...]

PIX 2016 | Grace Ellis Interview

Juan FernándezMay 30, 2016InterviewsCWTV Interviews Grace Ellis, Lumberjanes co-creator and writer, about her time with the series. more from Grace // ohheygrace.tumblr.com/ // twitter.com/gracecellis Video by Michael Pisano and Di-ay Battad // michaelpisano.com // cargocollective.com/di-ay Share this page: [...]

05/10/2016

Aaron CockleMay 4, 2016NewsSouffles-Anfas; Roz Chast; Shapereader; Mary Wept Over the Feet of Jesus; The Prinzhorn Collection ————————————————————————————————— Souffles-Anfas: A Critical Anthology from the Moroccan Journal of Culture and Politics by Olivia C. Harrison and Teresa Villa-Ignacio: ‘A repository of seminal 1960s texts from across the colonized and postcolonial world, Souffles-Anfas provides a window onto the transnational cultural and political movements that mark the heyday of Third Worldism and anticolonial theory. The sentiments and political grievances expressed in Souffles-Anfas are precursors to contemporary progressive movements—from the pro-democracy revolts collectively termed the Arab Spring to struggles for racial justice in the West. The journal proved instrumental in establishing dialogues between writers, artists, and activists from Africa, Asia, and the Americas. It published seminal works by tricontinental writers and political activists the likes of Haitian writer René Depestre, the Syrian poet Adonis, and Amilcar Cabral, the leader of the struggle for independence from Portugal in Guinea-Bissau, as well as key revolutionary and postcolonial texts, such as the Black Panthers’ Ten-Point Program or the Argentine manifesto for a Third Cinema.’ Podcast with Olivia C. Harrison, University of Southern California and Teresa Villa-Ignacio, Tulane University ‘Souffles-Anfas: A Critical Anthology from the Moroccan Journal of Culture and Politics introduces and makes available, for the first time in English, an incandescent corpus of experimental leftist writing from North Africa. Founded in 1966 by Abdellatif Laâbi and several other avant-garde Moroccan poets and banned in 1972, Souffles-Anfas was one of the most influential literary, cultural, and political reviews to emerge in postcolonial North Africa. An early forum for tricontinental postcolonial thought and writing, the journal published texts ranging from experimental poems, literary manifestoes, and abstract art to political tracts, open letters, and interviews by some of the period’s most important artists and intellectuals, including Abdelkebir Khatibi, Tahar Ben Jelloun, Albert Memmi, Abraham Serfaty, Etel Adnan, Sembene Ousmane, Amilcar Cabral, René Depestre, and Mohamed Melehi. This talk charts the journal’s evolution from Francophone poetry review to French and Arabic tribune of the radical left and highlights its interventions into key postcolonial debates, including the uses of French and Arabic in the Maghreb, studies of the Maghrebi Jewish diaspora, and the question of Palestinian sovereignty. Reflections on the journal’s resonances with the recent pro-democracy protests across North Africa and the Middle East as well as the renewed struggle for civil rights in the United States will allow us to assess the journal’s enduring legacy in Morocco, the Maghreb, and the decolonizing world.’ ————————————————————————————————— Roz Chast at Museum of the City of New York: April 14-October 9, 2016 ————————————————————————————————— Shapereader Shapereader is a repertoire of forms and patterns that constitute an attempt to translate words and meanings into tactile formations. It was designed from scratch with the goal to transpose works of graphic literature to a blind and visually impaired readership, Shapereader advocates for new publishing grounds and challenges visual predominance of graphic storytelling. While it is mainly addressed to people with visual disabilities it can also be experienced by the acquainted regular user. Through circumvention of the visual sensorimotor stimuli, it activates the reader’s repressed tactile-sensory realm and helps foster a new diegetic experience. The creation of Shapereader has been generously funded by the Finnish Institue Koneen Säätiö in 2013 for the Art & Multilingualism grant call. Shapereader and the graphic novel Arctic Circle have both been designed by Ilan Manouach.’ ————————————————————————————————— What we talk about when we talk about Chester Brown’s Mary Wept Over the Feet of Jesus Tina Horn and Caty Simon at Tits and Sass: ‘But I think the real reason Brown didn’t include tales like Judith’s is because he seems more focused on outlining these sex work-related Biblical narratives in order to glorify sex workers’ clients. He has a convoluted thesis going about men whoremongering as a transcendent challenge to rigid religious dogma. This ascribes nonexistent significance to an activity which is really morally neutral, and it obscures all these awesome sex working Biblical women in stories which are about them. In a memoir about being a sex work client like Paying for It, centering the client perspective makes sense. But in a book like this, it feels beside the point. I’d love to see how this material would look tackled by a sex worker amateur Biblical scholar/comic book artist.’ Ng Suat Tong at The Hooded Utilitarian: ‘While most sex workers are in fact women, Brown seems less interested in recovering the central status of women in the Bible. He has a somewhat different feminist (?) mission. Is it possible to be a sex worker and still be a good Christian? Even Brown seems to admit that it is impossible to reconcile prostitution or any form of sexual immorality with Biblical laws and Jesus’ admonitions. His new comic simply charts the curious areas where the profession turns up in the Bible and where its position in that moral universe is played out most sympathetically. While Jesus commands the woman taken in adultery to go and sin no more, I know not one Christian who has not continued to sin in some shape or fashion. Shouldn’t we be exercised about our own sins before those of perfect strangers? One would have to posit that the sin of sexual immorality is greater than all other sins (including our own) for one to be primarily concerned about its deleterious effects.’ ————————————————————————————————— The Prinzhorn Collection at the Drawing Center ————————————————————————————————— Share this page: [...]

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