Category Archives: comics

Early Notice: Printed Matter Art Book Fair in November

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Printed Matter presents the fifth annual NY Art Book Fair, November 5–7 at MoMA PS1, Long Island City, Queens. Free and open to the public, the Fair hosts over 200 international presses, booksellers, antiquarian dealers, artists and publishers from twenty countries, offering the best in contemporary art-book publishing.

Philip Aarons, Chairman of the Board for Printed Matter, said: “The NY Art Book Fair is the premiere venue to find what’s new in art publishing. While it has spawned the next generation of independent art book fairs world-wide,  it remains the biggest, the best, and by far the most fun.”

The NY Art Book Fair includes special project rooms, screenings, book signings, and performances, throughout the weekend. Other events include the third annual Contemporary Artists’ Books Conference and The Classroom, a curated series of informal conversations between artists, together with readings, workshops and other artist-led events.

A list of exhibitors, event schedule, and more information is available at www.nyartbookfair.com.

HOURS AND LOCATION

Printed Matter, Inc. presents The NY Art Book Fair
November 5–7, 2010
Preview: November 4, 6-9 p.m.
MoMA PS1
22-25 Jackson Ave at the intersection of 46th Avenue
Long Island City, NY

Free and open to the public:
Thursday, November 4, 6-9 p.m.
Friday, November 5 and Saturday, November 6, 11 a.m.-7 p.m.
Sunday, November 7, 11 a.m.-5 p.m.

SPECIAL PROGRAMMING

Artist’s Project
Leidy Churchman takes over the lobby with a large set of facsimile book paintings on wood. Drawing upon the stacks at the Museum of Modern Art Library Library with friend and librarian David Senior, Churchman traces a unique and fetching portrait of artists’ publications from the last hundred years.

Special Project Rooms
Select exhibitors take over entire galleries: AA Bookstore with Bedford Books (London), Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI; New York), Fillip and A.AAAARG.ORG (Vancouver; Los Angeles), and Picturebox (Brooklyn). Andrew Roth (New York) exhibits a retrospective of PPP Publishing. Goteblüd (San Francisco) presents an exhibition of more than six hundred Riot Grrrl zines, with a working photocopy station. Werkplaats Typografie (Arnhem), the Dutch super-school, brings its entire student body to design, produce, and sell books while you watch.

The Classroom
The Classroom is a curated series of informal conversations between artists, workshops, readings and other artist-led events, with continuous enrollment for all fair-goers throughout the weekend. Participants include: Casco (Utrecht),  f.ART magazine (New York), Golden Age (Chicago), J&L Books with Jason Fulford (Atlanta), Kodoji Press with Erik Steinbrecher (Zurich), Little Joe (London), The New Dreamz with Rose Luardo and Andrew Jeffrey Wright (Philadelphia), Onomatopee (Eindhoven), Roma Publications with Jo Baer (Amsterdam), Seems (San Francisco), Sumi Ink Club (Los Angeles), Swill Children (Brooklyn), Triple Canopy (New York and Los Angeles) and Alexis Zavialoff of Motto (Berlin), among others. The Classroom is organized by David Senior, the Museum of Modern Art Library.

Contemporary Artists’ Books Conference
The  Contemporary Artists’ Books Conference is a dynamic, two-day event focused on emerging practices and debates within art-book culture. This year’s sessions address a wide array of subjects, including: experimental libraries, the so-called zine renaissance, fusion of art and design in typography, contemporary criticism, and new pedagogical approaches to the ever-expanding field of artists’ books. The first day of the conference ends with a lively pecha kucha, a rapid-fire event in which invited speakers have just five minutes to comment on an artwork. Full-conference registrants receive a specially commissioned book by Emily Roysdon, an interdisciplinary artist and writer who examines the intersections of choreography and politics. Roysdon’s book is a meditation on vintage photographs of the New York piers by queer photographer Alvin Baltrop.

HIGHLIGHTS

Featured Countries
This year, the NY Art Book Fair celebrates eighteen cutting-edge publishers from The Netherlands, including a project room by Kunstverein Amsterdam (Amsterdam) and Witte de With (Rotterdam), together with a variety of book launches and informal presentations in the Dutch Pavilion. Other countries represented include: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, Norway, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and United States.

Antiquarian Dealers
Exhibitors present collections of rare Conceptual Art, Minimalism, Fluxus, and the avant-garde from Japan, Europe, and North America. Exhibitors include: John McWhinnie @ Glenn Horowitz (East Hampton), Harper’s Books (East Hampton), Marcus Campbell(London), Steven Leiber (San Francisco), Sims Reed (London), Stefan Schuelke (Cologne) and others.

Artists & Activists
This diverse group of politically minded artists and collectives focus on the intersection of art and activism. Exhibitors include: Journal of Aesthetics and Protest (Los Angeles), GuerrillaGirlsBroadBand (New York), The Yes Men (New York), Bread and Puppet (Glover, Vermont), Center for Urban Pedagogy (Brooklyn), and Temporary Services (Chicago), among others.

Zines by Artists
A lively selection of international zinesters will represent independent publishing at its most innovative and affordable. Exhibitors include: The Holster (Brooklyn), Nieves (Zurich), Ooga Booga (Los Angeles), and ZINE’S MATE (Tokyo), among others. A special section of queer zines includes our favorites, from Original Plumbing (San Francisco) and Girls Like Us (Amsterdam) to PINUPS (Brooklyn).

EDITIONS

Printed Matter presents new limited editions by artists Rachel Harrison, Christian Holstad and Misaki Kawai, published on the occasion of the NY Art Book Fair 2010. Purchase of these editions supports the Fair, ensuring the event remains free and open to the public.

Nora Krug featured in Spring Magazin exhibition in Berlin

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Full-Time faculty member Nora Krug is a member of SPRING, a comic magazine created by a group of women illustrators from Berlin and Hamburg. SPRING is exhibiting original art work from their most recent, 300-page, issue, entitled “Happy Ending”, this Saturday in Berlin, Germany. For those visitors who check in from overseas, please join the group for the opening at:

Gallery Neurotitan
Rosenthalerstraße 39
Berlin, Germany
8 p.m.

Congrats, Nora!

Lisa Lugrin and Clement Xavier at Parsons on September 8

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A SLIDESHOW LECTURE BY LISA LUGRIN & CLÉMENT XAVIER ON “L’EPISODE”
Time:  September 8–7:30pm – 10:00pm
Location:  The Bark Room, 2 W. 13th, Lobby, New York, NY

LISA LUGRIN & CLÉMENT XAVIER along with a group of other recent graduates of the l’École européenne supérieure de l’image in Angoulême, France have formed a comic-strip association called “NA.” For the past two years, they have published “L’Episode,” an international comics-review printed on the rotary press of a local newspaper. The review features the work of young authors from around the world and is aimed at readers outside of the comics world. It is distributed in bookshops, cinemas, theaters and other alternative spaces.

The association conducts workshops for children through various social service organizations and published books of their work. Lisa and Clément have also produced a 42-page comic for a local French newspaper, and a screenplay and illustrations for a short cartoon produced by French TV Canal +.

Free and Open to the Public!

Alumni Update Week: Jonathan Jay Lee in Marvel Comics and Peninsula Magazine

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Parsons Illustration Alum Jonathan Jay Lee dropped us an email recently with some REALLY exciting news.  Straight from his email, here are the details:

Just wanted to drop a note and mention that Strange Tales MAX hardcover book came out!  It’s the short 4 page story I did while in my senior year (2007) for the anthology and should be available in Forbidden Planet or Jim Hanley’s.

Also, I’ve got a 3 spread article in the latest Peninsula Magazine, the issues focuses on Beijing Shanghai and HK, and they also specifically mention me graduating from Parsons in the article. It’s available from all the Peninsula Hotels…

Jonathan is right on the money that Strange Tales is available at Forbidden Planet and you can read the feature on him in Peninsula Magazine online (a screenshot is below)—it starts on page 40!  Of course, it goes without saying that you should check out Jonathan’s work on his website.

Congratulations, Jonathan!  Keep up the amazing work.  And Illustration Alumni, keep us in the loop so we can feature your accomplishments on the blog.  Stay in touch!

[top image: courtesy of Jonathan Jay Lee and Marvel Comics; bottom image: from Peninsula Magazine]

2009 Harvey Awards Nominees Announced!

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The 2009 Harvey Awards Nominees have been announced with the release of the final ballot, presented by the Executive Committees of the Harvey Awards and the Baltimore Comic-Con. Named in honor of the late Harvey Kurtzman, one of the industry’s most innovative talents, the Harvey Awards recognize outstanding work in comics and sequential art. They will be presented August 28, 2010 in Baltimore, MD, in conjunction with the Baltimore Comic-Con.

Parsons Illustration Alum and Faculty member R. Sikoryak has been nominated for “Best Previously Published Graphic Album” for his book Masterpiece Comics.

Congrats to Bob on his continuing success with this fantastic piece of work!

R. Sikoryak at MoCCA: How Classics and Cartoons Collide

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R. Sikoryak
How Classics and Cartoons Collide
June 15 – August 29, 2010

Original drawings from the book “Masterpiece Comics,” which adapts literary classics in the styles of famous cartoons.

Curated by Bill Kartalopoulos

Sikoryak and Kartalopoulos in Conversation
Thursday, July 15, 7pm

Comics chameleon R. Sikoryak inventively adapts canonical Western literature using the visual styles and characters of historical American comic books and comic strips. Among his many works produced over the past twenty years, Sikoryak has adapted Kafka’s The Metamorphosis in the style of Charles Schulz’s Peanuts, Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights in the style of Tales From the Crypt, and the Book of Genesis in the style of Chic Young’s Blondie. “More than a gag or a parody,” said exhibit curator Bill Kartalopoulos, “these thoughtful and intricately constructed dual adaptations suggest resonances that reflect upon each story’s pair of sources.”

R. Sikoryak: How Classics and Cartoons Collide: examines the artist’s intensive process by showcasing a selection of notes, sketches, and reference material from one of his longest and most ambitious narratives, 2000’s “Dostoyevsky Comics,” which adapts Crime and Punishment in the style of a mid-century Batman comic book. The exhibit also includes all ten original art boards for the final story, recently collected alongside Sikoryak’s other adaptations in his book Masterpiece Comics, published in 2009 by Drawn and Quarterly.

There will be a conversation between Sikoryak and Kartalopoulos on July 15 at 7PM. Admission for this event is $5, free for members of MoCCA.

About R. Sikoryak
R. Sikoryak is the author of Masterpiece Comics (Drawn & Quarterly).  His cartoons and illustrations have appeared in The Onion, The New Yorker, Nickelodeon Magazine, Mad, Fortune, and many other publications; he’s drawn for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and Ugly Americans. Sikoryak teaches in the illustration department at Parsons The New School for Design and is an alum of the program. Since 1997, he has presented his cartoon slide show series, Carousel, around the United States and Canada.

About Bill Kartalopoulos
Bill Kartalopoulos teaches classes about comics and illustration at Parsons The New School for Design. He is a frequent public speaker and is the programming coordinator for SPX: The Small Press Expo and the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival. He writes about comics for Print Magazine, where he is a contributing editor, and reviews comics forPublishers Weekly. He is a member of the Executive Committee for the International Comic Arts Forum (ICAF), an annual academic conference devoted to comics. In 2008 he curated Kim Deitch: A Retrospective at the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art in New York, NY. He lives in Brooklyn.

About Masterpiece Comics
Masterpiece Comics adapts a variety of classic literary works with the most iconic visual idioms of twentieth-century comics. Dense with exclamation marks and lurid colors, R. Sikoryak’s parodies remind us of the sensational excesses of the canon, or, if you prefer, of the economical expressiveness of classic comics from Batman to Garfield. In “Blond Eve,” Dagwood and Blondie are ejected from the Garden of Eden into their archetypal suburban home; Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray is reimagined as a foppish Little Nemo; and Camus’s Stranger becomes a brooding, chain-smoking Golden Age Superman. Other source material includes Dante, Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky, bubblegum wrappers, superhero comics, kid cartoons, and more.

Silent Witnesses: Graphic Novels Without Words exhibition in England

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Silent Witnesses: Graphic Novels Without Words
Curated by Darren Diss

Venue: Danes Terrace
Lincoln
Lincolnshire
LN2 1LP

29 May 2010 to 30 Aug 2010
Admission price: free

Artists include: Lars Arrhenius, Hendrik Dorgathen, Eric Drooker, Max Ernst, Matt Forsythe, Alexandra Higlett, Laurence Hyde, Jason, Andrzej Klimowski, Peter Kuper, Chris Lanier, Frans Masereel, Otto Nuckel, Shaun Tan, Zoe Taylor, Lynd Ward, Sara Varon and Jim Woodring.

This exhibition brings together the work of internationally recognised artists and illustrators from around the world working in Graphic Novel form. Spanning publications from the early twentieth century to the present day, the works contained in the exhibition are distinct in that all use the capacity of images alone to communicate narrative, functioning entirely without the use of text.

The exhibition celebrates the book form and in particular the Graphic Novel as an increasingly popular medium for artists and explores its enduring appeal to readers of all ages. By focussing on works without text it examines the underlying structure and mechanics of developing a Graphic Novel, exposing it as a unique art form. It looks at the Novel in the true sense, as an extended sequence conveying a narrative. The show includes preparation and working drawings, writings, flat plans, sketch books and character studies and associated works alongside complete book-works to reveal the various developmental stages in creating a Graphic Novel.

The exhibition combines works from a wide range of cultural contexts, from modern popular Graphic Novels, with scratchboard images by Eric Drooker produced for his novel ‘Flood’, to woodcuts by Frans Masereel for his his 1925 work ‘Die Stadt’, to original drawings by Sara Varon for her well loved books, ‘Sweater Weather’, ‘Robo and Hund’ and ‘Chicken and Cat’. Also in the show will be a large scale flat-print version of ‘A-Z’ by Lars Arrhenius, a novel produced on the iconic A-Z map of London. Shown in print form it allows the viewer to scan the intersecting narratives sewn through the map in a single image, creating ever new readings.

Works for the exhibition have been loaned to The Collection from the British Museum, Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Klinspor Museum, Offenbach, Scott Eder Gallery, New York, and from the exhibiting artists.

The show’s curator, Darren Diss, is an established illustrator and Senior Lecturer in Illustration at The University of Lincoln. He has a specialist academic research interest in Textless Narratives.

Ed Koren at Columbia University: The Capricious Line

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The artist’s name may ring a bell: Koren has contributed close to a thousand cartoons to the New Yorker since 1962, featuring a lovably shaggy cast of characters, which one wag described as “Muppets on Rogaine.” This five-decade survey features original drawings for Koren’s cartoons and illustrated books, and also débuts a quartet of panoramic drawings, inspired by the dioramas at the American Museum of Natural History. A public reception, from 5 to 7, celebrates the show’s opening. (A related exhibition is installed at the Luise Ross gallery, in Chelsea, where a reception will be held on May 1, from 3 to 5.) Opens April 27.

Date: April 27 – June 12

Wallach Art Gallery at Columbia University
 Venue Address: Schermerhorn Hall, 116th Street and Broadway, New York, N.Y.
Venue Phone: 212-854-7288

Tonight: Peter Blegvad’s “A Brief History of Amateur Enterprises”

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Peter Blegvad
A Brief History of Amateur Enterprises
April 16th, 7-9 p.m.
2 W. 13th, Bark Room (in Lobby)
Free and Open to the Public!

Peter Blegvad is a writer, illustrator, songwriter, broadcaster, and teacher.

Since 1975 his drawings have been published in magazines, books, on record covers and websites internationally.

He wrote and drew “Leviathan”, a weekly comic strip (starring a faceless tot of philosophical propensity), for the Independent on Sunday Review, from 1991 to 1999.

As a musician Peter has been involved in the making of more than 20 albums and has performed extensively. He was active in the avant-garde music scene of the 1970’s & 1980’s, in Germany and England with Faust; in England with Slapp Happy, Henry Cow, the Art Bears, Andy Partridge of XTC; and in the States with The Golden Palominos, John Zorn, Arto Lindsay, Jack Bruce and Carla Bley.

Peter Blegvad’s work contains some of the most oblique and poetic wordplay to ever make its way to song. It’s a testament to his hard work and clear vision that, though his references can sometimes be too arcane, literary or personal to be widely recognized, the completed form of his work is generally downright friendly and inviting. (The Trouser Press Rock Guide)

Since 2002 he has written, performed and produced ‘eartoons’ (audio cartoons) for “The Verb” on BBC Radio 3. His series “Static in the Attic” featured a “singular double act” — the two halves of his divided self in conversation.

He was awarded the Ordre de la Grande Gidouille by the Collège de ‘Pataphysique, Paris, in 2000, and won a Sony award in 2003 for “Eartoons for the Verb.”