Sally here, reporting live from Cartoon Crossroads Columbus, OH! I drove over from Pittsburgh, PA, yesterday with my car loaded down with materials for this weekend’s Comics Workbook-hosted workshops at CXC (details on those HERE), making it to the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum on the OSU campus just in time to catch Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist Ann Telnaes in conversation with CXC festival director Tom Spurgeon.
Their conversation was interesting and entertaining, detailing the complexities of making editorial cartoons, especially as a woman in the industry. Ann spoke of the necessary sense of urgency that a good editorial cartoonist must posses, and about how the cartoons are the QUESTION, not the answer. Regarding her famous caricatures, she said it is about drawing “how a person IS, not just what they look like – them INSIDE“.
Then she drew Hilary Clinton for the audience, real quick:
Check out Ann Telnaes’ most recent animated gif HERE – this is the format she has been using lately to get her point of view across (and that is the most important thing for an editorial cartoonist to have – a point of view!)
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After meeting up with fellow Comics Workbook representatives and cartoonists Kurt Ankeny, Alyssa Berg, and Whit Taylor for dinner, I joined forces with Kurt and Caleb Orecchio to check out the Winsor McCay presentation at the Wexner Center for the Arts, put together by John Canemaker. It was a fantastic exploration of the animated films made by the famed creator of the Little Nemo in Slumberland strips.
The CXC festival program claimed that John Canemaker‘s lectures were not-to-be-missed, and I found this to be true (in case you didn’t know, he is an Academy Award-winning animator himself!) It was thrilling to watch McCay’s first animated film on “the big screen”, and then Canemaker really won the audience over by taking on McCay’s roll in the vaudeville performances he used to do using his animated character Gertie the Dinosaur.
Terrific stuff.
I sat in awe behind Lucy Caswell (founding curator of the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum) throughout this presentation and enjoyed the deference that John Canemaker showed her on any McCay details he felt iffy on (and he actually wrote THE book on Winsor McCay).
It was a good first day of Cartoon Crossroads Columbus, with plenty more to come for me and the rest of the Comics Workbook team! Here’s that complete schedule of where we will be throughout the weekend.
As you can perhaps gather, we are live-reporting all weekend via social media and especially through Instagram, so follow @comicsworkbook, @cwrollerderby, and @sally_ingraham for updates! (Also give a look to Juan Fernandez, Alyssa Berg, Whit Taylor, Caleb Orecchio, Kurt Ankeny, and Emil Friis Ernst for other CXC stories!)
Next week keep an eye out for a full CXC Festival report brought to you by Whit Taylor – stay tuned!
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Frank Santoro, Aidan Koch, and Connor Willumsen made it to the U.K., and for live reporting from The Lakes International Comic Art Festival this weekend, check out @santoro.frank on Instagram. Get tickets to Frank, Aidan, and Connor’s workshops on Saturday HERE. Hang out with the crew in the Comics Clocktower Saturday and Sunday!
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Check out the Pompeii Medallion HERE – for an interesting artistic collaboration.
Connor Willumsen has new work – this way please!
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Regular reporting will return next week – but for today, this is Sally signing off. I have to run and catch up with Sacha Mardou, get a tour of the special collections at the Billy Ireland, and check in on the state of the comics industry, before meeting Garry Trudeau, and then partying the night away with Katie Skelly – and that’s just the stuff on the CXC program schedule for today that I’ve highlighted… Cheers!