Last Second First

If you’re in the Providence, RI area, you should check out this show, curated by Parsons Part-time Faculty Jordin Isip and featuring a host of narrative works by other Parsons Illustration folks, including:

William Buzzell (alum)
James Gallagher (part-time faculty)
Jordin Isip (part-time faculty)
Cat Lauigan (alum)
Liz Lee (alum)
Edward del Rosario (part-time faculty)

The grand opening is tomorrow night, October 30th and the show is up through November 30th so drop in and see it if you can.  Congrats to Jordin and all the other artists and involved!

Last Second First
ISB Gallery
Rhode Island School of Design
2 Canal Walk, Providence, Rhode Island

Cartoonist Kim Deitch to Headline Two Public Events at MoCCA

The Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art (MoCCA) announced that legendary underground cartoonist and graphic novelist Kim Deitch will make two special appearances at the museum in association with MoCCA’s current exhibit, Kim Deitch: A Retrospective.

Tomorrow, on October 30, Kim Deitch will host a Cartoon Movie Night featuring rarely seen animated cartoons from the 1920s and 1930s hand-picked for the occasion from Deitch’s own personal collection.  This period of animation inspired Deitch’s signature character Waldo the Cat and is the subject of his acclaimed graphic novel The Boulevard of Broken Dreams, which is featured in the exhibit.  As a special Halloween treat, MoCCA will also display for one night only selected specimens from Deitch and spouse Pam Butler’s extensive collection of antique toy cats.  The blurring of fact, fiction and autobiography in Deitch’s work is a major focus of Kim Deitch: A Retrospective, and this display will present a rare opportunity to see the historical artifacts that motivate the fictional narrative in Deitch’s graphic novel Alias the Cat.

On November 13, Kim Deitch will appear at MoCCA for a Q & A session with exhibit curator (and Parsons Illustration Part-time Faculty) Bill Kartalopoulos.  In a unique and wide-ranging conversation, the two will discuss Deitch’s work and career to date. Deitch will present examples of recent work and will also preview images from his current works in progress.

Both events are free and open to the public, and run as part of a regularly scheduled series of “MoCCA Thursdays” events at the Museum.

Kim Deitch’s career spans the entire post-war history of avant-garde comics, from the underground to the literary mainstream. As an early contributor to the East Village Other, Deitch was a charter member of the underground comix scene that exploded with the 1968 publication of Robert Crumb’s Zap #1.  Forty years later, he stands alongside Crumb, Bill Griffith, Aline Kominsky-Crumb, and Art Spiegelman as one the most notable and prolific artists to emerge from that milieu.  Kim Deitch: A Retrospective features ninety-seven pieces spanning the artist’s entire career, including comics originals, preparatory sketches, prints, and animation cel set-ups.

The exhibit runs through December 5, 2008.

MoCCA is located at 594 Broadway, Suite 401 (between Houston & Prince)
New York, NY 10012
Phone: 212 254-3511
MoCCA is open to the public Tuesday through Saturday from 12 – 5 pm
Suggested Donation during museum hours: $5
For more information please visit: http://www.moccany.org

THUNDERVOTE!

THUNDERVOTE_HOME

New York based creative agency Thunderdog Studios, Inc.  announces www.THUNDERVOTE.com! This website has been created to highlight a series of art projects by Tristan Eaton that encourage voter turn out among our fans and friends (18 – 35 year old, savvy yet sometimes lazy art and toy collectors)!

After  exciting poster projects with the Obama campaign for VOTEFORCHANGE.com, we felt compelled to take it a little further and hammer the message home a little harder. The truth is, many of the registered voters out there register to vote but don’t actually show up on voting day. So they’d like to say: DON’T BE STUPID. SHOW UP AND VOTE NOV. 4TH!!!

You can go to THUNDERVOTE.com and download Tristan’s Obama Portrait poster with key messaging per state, download the paper Ballot Box Dude toy and customize him, get free downloads and read up on important voting information. The site will be updated every couple of days with new pics, events and products.

Also on the site: Custom Ballot Box toys by FILTH & BLOKT of Thunderdog Studios, Inc., the Obama Bike, videos, wallpapers, facebook, myspace and more…Enjoy!

Pat Cummings and the Dillons featured in The Original Art Show

Art from Illustration Part-time Faculty Pat Cummings’ book Harvey Moon Museum Boy, will be featured in The Original Art show that goes up this month at the Society of Illustrators alongside a host of other wonderful artists including Parsons alums David Ezra Stein and Julian Hector.  Here’s a preview:

Make sure to check out Pat’s amazing work as well as all the other fine artists included in the show like Leo and Diane Dillon (Parsons Illustration Alums), who are receiving a Lifetime Achievement award for their outstanding art over the years.

The Original Art Show
October 16 through November 26, 2008

Society of Illustrators
128 East 63rd Street
New York, NY

[top images by Pat Cummings; bottom image from Northern Lullabye by Leo and Diane Dillon]

From the Inbox: Illuxcon

Current student Chantal Bennett passed along information about this exciting event…

Illuxcon, in Altoona, PA, is the first and only convention dedicated exclusively to fantastic illustration art. IlluxCon is intended to be a symposium, rather than a typical convention. The primary objective is to create a space where close personal interactions can take place between artists, their fans, collectors and students of the genre. There will be an original art show as well as demonstrations, panels and artist booths.

Guests include Boris Vallejo, Julie Bell, Jon Foster, Stephen Hickman, Ruth Sanderson, Bob Eggleton, Rebecca Guay, Tiffany Prothero, Charles Vess, Eric Fortune, Omar & Sheila Rayyan, Michael Whelan, Greg Hildebrandt, and many more.

Also, the greatest part of this conference is that the student passes are FREE! The passes entitle you to go to the entire conference, not just selected days.

If you are interested in carpooling to attend the conference, get in touch with Chantal to coordinate.

From the Inbox: “Dangers of Debt” Cartoon Contest

Timothy Marvin, a grassroots organizer with the Consumers Union passed along this contest opportunity…

The Consumers Union “Dangers of Debt” Cartoon Contest site is live now! Anyone 18-25 can go upload their submissions. The deadline to submit is November 3rd. The grand prize winner gets $1,000 and whatever exposure is provided through our campaign and media outreach.

Our panel of celebrity judges is made up of:

Tom Gammill is a TV writer whose credits include Saturday Night Live, Late Night with David Letterman, Seinfeld and Monk.  He’s been a consulting producer at The Simpsons since 1998.
He also has a comic strip that runs weekly in the Pasadena Independent and other small weekly newspapers.

Jen Sorenson is the creator of the award-winning alternative political comic strip Slowpoke.

Lalo Alcaraz is a Mexican-American cartoonist and multimedia humorist now best known for his daily syndicated comic strip La Cucaracha.

Please check out the website and cartoons. Online voting to select the finalists begins November 6th.

Check out the official rules here and the official homepage for the contest here.

From the Inbox: The Real Cost of Prisons Comix

Comic artist Kevin Pyle (Blind Spot) sent us the following info recently…

With over 125,000 copies of the comic books printed and more than 100,000 sent to people who are incarcerated, their families, and to organizers and activists throughout the country, The Real Cost of Prisons Comix series is a great example of the comic as an activist and educational tool for social change.

Originally published in a comics pamphlet format, the three issues have now been collected in a perfect bound collection published by PM Press, publisher of Slingshot, the Postcards of Eric Drooker. The three chapters were written and drawn by longtime World War 3 illustrated co-editors Sabrina Jones (Isadora and Girltalk), Kevin Pyle (Blindspot and Lab U.S.A.) and Susan Willmarth (Black History for Beginners) and addresses the war on drugs, the economics of the prison boom, and the effects of incarceration on women and children.

With the U.S.A. now leading the world in incarceration, this thoroughly researched and documented collection seeks to unpack the rhetoric of punishment and expose the impact of a prison system out to control. All in the easily understood and entertaining medium of comics.

If you’re interested, you can get more information here.