Category Archives: Faculty News

Illustration Professor, Nora Krug, releases book: Belonging/Heimat

Belonging (US title) / Heimat (foreign title)

A 280-page illustrated and hand-lettered visual memoir on a German family’s memory of WWII.

Belonging wrestles with the idea of Heimat, the German word for the place that first forms us, where the sensibilities and identity of one generation pass on to the next. In this highly inventive visual memoir—equal parts graphic novel, family scrapbook, and investigative narrative—Nora Krug draws on letters, archival material, flea market finds, and photographs to attempt to understand what it means to belong. A wholly original record of a German woman’s struggle with the weight of catastrophic history, Belonging is also a reflection on the responsibility that we all have as inheritors of our countries’ pasts.

Fall 2018 release in the following countries: USA (Scribner), UK (Particular Books), Germany (Penguin Hardcover), Holland (Balans), France (Gallimard). 2019 and 2020 release in the following countries: Norway (Spartacus), Sweden (Norstedts), Spain (Salamandra), Brazil (Companhia das Letras), Italy (Stile Libero), and Denmark (Gads).

 

Illustration Faculty Lauren Redniss is Named a MacArthur Fellow!

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We are pleased to announce that Illustration faculty Lauren Redniss has been named a MacArthur Fellow. Recognizing 23 exceptionally creative individuals with a track record of achievement and the potential for significant contributions in the future, the Foundation named the 2016 MacArthur Fellows. Fellows will each receive a no-strings-attached stipend, allowing recipients maximum freedom to follow their own creative visions.

“While our communities, our nation, and our world face both historic and emerging challenges, these 23 extraordinary individuals give us ample reason for hope,” said MacArthur President Julia Stasch. “They are breaking new ground in areas of public concern, in the arts, and in the sciences, often in unexpected ways. Their creativity, dedication, and impact inspire us all.”

Launch screening & discussion: The Phantasmagoria of Offense: the male version

AMT faculty Jess Irish will debut her animated film lyric, The Phantasmagoria of Offense: the male version this Thursday, July 7th at 7pm at The Center (208 W. 13th St Room 310 New York, NY 10011​)​.

Open to the public.

The Phantasmagoria of Offense is an animated film lyric by Jess Irish on the danger of image suppression. In this “male version” these images are limited to the male body and the cultural anxiety around expressions of vulnerability, homosexual desire or questioning the dominant paradigm. The political ramifications of image suppression during the AIDS crisis in the 1980s is questioned alongside the well-intended requests for “trigger warnings.” If there is a take away message, it is that censorship is not an abstraction. It has a body count.

Carousel at Dixon Place, Wed. March 9

Dixon Place presents
CAROUSEL
Comics Performances and Picture Shows
Hosted by R. Sikoryakcarousel March 2016 RGB BEST
Live drawings, gag cartoons, and graphic novels as created, performed, and read by:

Sam Gross

Ellen Lindner

Doug Skinner with Anne Shapiro

Connie Sun

Meghan Turbitt

Jess Worby

and more!

Wednesday, March 9, 2016 at 7:30 pm

Dixon Place, 161A Chrystie Street (btwn Rivington & Delancey), NYC

Tickets: $15 (advance), $18 (at the door), $12 (students/seniors/idNYC))

Advance tickets & info: www.dixonplace.org  (212) 219-0736

(The Dixon Place Lounge is open before, during, and after the show.  All proceeds directly support DP’s mission and artists.)

Parsons Illustration Faculty R. Sikoryak’s Illustrated “iTunes Terms and Conditions”

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Parsons Illustration Faculty R. Sikoryak has adapted the complete text of the “iTunes Terms and Conditions” into a 94 page graphic novel, incorporating a different comics style for every page.  It’s a new reading experience: the pictorial legal agreement!

The graphic novel has garnered a lot of press, notably from the Observer, Huffington Post, Variety, and The New Yorker.

For more awesome excerpts and interviews check out these links below:

Canadian (CBC) Radio Interview

NPR

Billboard

GQ

And if you want to follow the novel as it’s serialized check it out on Tumblr, where it’s uploaded one page per day!

More great press for Parsons Illustration Faculty, Lauren Redniss

Lauren Redniss is featured in Elle Magazine for her new book, Thunder & Lightning.

“My anxiety is about time…that time is slipping away too quickly,” says Lauren Redniss, who is, in no particular order: a reporter, a painter, a social historian, a biographer, and a feminist who creates stories and tableaux that are published as books, which are at once sexual and prim, grotesque and romantic, scientific and soft. “I always felt like I needed to hold on to things because they might slip away, and that impulse was stronger than any other fear,” she says. “So I made sure I was always drawing and writing and recording things, and it became natural to put them together in some way.”

Read the full article here.

laur.

Parsons Illustration Faculty Lauren Redniss in the NY Times!

Lauren Redniss, faculty in the Illustration Department at Parsons, was recently featured on the front page of the Arts Section of the New York Times (not to mention the front page of the paper, thumbnail for the Arts section). Her interview focused on her new book “Thunder & Lightning: Weather Past, Present, Future”, which explores weather and certain relationships many individuals have with it. Lauren Redniss mentions:

“I’m interested in things we take for granted, the fact we can look out of our windows every day and see this spectacular, unpredictable panorama.”

Much of her process shows in her books as she spends much of her time interviewing, sketching , and even experiencing what she is writing about. She tears down the walls of what a graphic novel is and showcases an immense amount of experimentation that challenges the conventional medium of books.

“Her books are totally composed in both words and images, but they aren’t quite graphic novels,” Ms. Chute said. “Every time you turn the page, you don’t know what you’re going to get.”

Click here if you’d like to read more from the interview.