Thursday, March 12, 2009 at 7 pm:
Brooklyn Independents: Graphic New York
Graphic novelists Ben Katchor, Dan Goldman and Youme Landowne explore New York City through their work. They will discuss their work and their artistic processes.
Brooklyn Public Library
Central Library
Dweck Center
Grand Army Plaza
Brooklyn, NY
tel. 718.230.2100
[illustration by Ben Katchor]
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
Illustration Alum Brian Wood (’97) was recently interviewed for an article in the Village Voice. He talked about why San Francisco just isn’t as good as New York (to him), how his artwork has developed, and the critical and social reaction to his art. Here’s an excerpt:
Comic-book fame is a funny thing: Even as Hollywood pushes the medium further into the mainstream, a sense of geek solidarity remains. Writers and artists feel compelled to stay in touch with their fans; the fans, in turn, continue to treat creators like best friends. “I’m hesitant to compare him to an emo band, but I feel like Brian has that sort of connection to the audience,” says James Lucas Jones, an editor at Oni Press who worked with Wood on Local. “People feel emotionally invested in him.”
Wood’s own fame was cemented in the late ’90s, after the publication of the William Gibson–esque Channel Zero. He now calls it something of “an art student’s rant”—a ” ‘zine where everybody talks about what pisses them off.” But Zero led to a writing stint at Marvel’s Generation X and paved the way for the series Couriers, Couscous Express, and Pounded, about a rock band in New York. Eventually, Wood transitioned from occasionally drawing into writing full-time, mostly because he “had so many ideas, and not enough time to put them to paper.”
Make sure you read the rest of the article here. Brian also has a list of other articles about his work here on his official website. You can pick up a copy of his latest book, The New York Four here.
Congrats on your continuing success, Brian!
24 street artists will converge in Beacon, NY from May 17th to May 18th to create live artwork and have their work installed on the exterior of a 19th century factory building. Electric Windows draws its name from the former electric blanket factory at the foot of Mount Beacon that will act as the backdrop for the event. E.W. turns the idea of a gallery inside out using the large industrial windows as frames for each artists work. Usually street art is not so easily contained in a rectangle but this installation ingeniously bridges the gap between indoor and outdoor art both inverting and subverting the concept of the art gallery. Each of the 24 pieces will be approximately 8 ft x 12 ft. The installation will be on display for 12 months.
Electric Windows coincides with the fifth anniversary of DIA:Beacon and Sitelines, a Hudson Valley arts fair. The project will be documented from the beginning of the weekend through completion of the installation for possible future publication.
There will be a companion show of Electric Windows artists at the Open Space gallery (owned by Adjunct Illustration Faculty Dan Weise!). Featured artists include Ron English (NYC), Above (San Francisco), Ripo (Barcelona), Lady Pink (NYC), Michael De Feo (NYC), Jim Darling/Tina Andersen (Los Angeles), Rick Price (Beacon), Peripheral Media Projects (Brooklyn) and Dan Funderburgh (Brooklyn) and many more…
Organizers will also be flying in DJs for the latest version of Next Step, a live art and dance party that has been gaining ground as the place for locals and expats from Brooklyn and Manhattan alike.
This weekend should be an unprecedented convergence of the arts from live street art to high end museum pieces that will have heads turning to Beacon.
Electric Windows Beacon
1 East Main Street
Beacon, New York
May 17th-18th
24 street artists will converge in Beacon, NY from May 17th to May 18th to create live artwork and have their work installed on the exterior of a 19th century factory building. Electric Windows draws its name from the former electric blanket factory at the foot of Mount Beacon that will act as the backdrop for the event. E.W. turns the idea of a gallery inside out using the large industrial windows as frames for each artists work. Usually street art is not so easily contained in a rectangle but this installation ingeniously bridges the gap between indoor and outdoor art both inverting and subverting the concept of the art gallery. Each of the 24 pieces will be approximately 8 ft x 12 ft. The installation will be on display for 12 months.
Electric Windows coincides with the fifth anniversary of DIA:Beacon and Sitelines, a Hudson Valley arts fair. The project will be documented from the beginning of the weekend through completion of the installation for possible future publication.
There will be a companion show of Electric Windows artists at the Open Space gallery (owned by Adjunct Illustration Faculty Dan Weise!). Featured artists include Ron English (NYC), Above (San Francisco), Ripo (Barcelona), Lady Pink (NYC), Michael De Feo (NYC), Jim Darling/Tina Andersen (Los Angeles), Rick Price (Beacon), Peripheral Media Projects (Brooklyn) and Dan Funderburgh (Brooklyn) and many more…
Organizers will also be flying in DJs for the latest version of Next Step, a live art and dance party that has been gaining ground as the place for locals and expats from Brooklyn and Manhattan alike.
If you are interested in volunteering to help out with various odd jobs, please contact Dan Weise as soon as possible! Beacon is easily accessible by train from New York City, so don’t let the commute frighten you off. This is a great opportunity to be involved in a dynamic project.
This weekend should be an unprecedented convergence of the arts from live street art to high end museum pieces that will have heads turning to Beacon.
Electric Windows Beacon
1 East Main Street
Beacon, New York
May 17th-18th
“Dreamers Night”
From The Team Of:
Christine Young, Myeong Jae Lee And Martin Isenberg
Animation students from Parsons The New School for Design and composers from The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music will take the stage on Sunday, May 4, to present “visual music works,” which bring music and animation together in new and compelling ways. The event marks the culmination of the university’s first studio course in jazz and animation, in which students from the two schools worked together at a high level of collaboration to create original work.
The class, called Jazz and Animation, is taught by Parsons faculty member Ben Katchor, an award-winning and widely published illustrator, and Parsons and Jazz faculty member Ernesto Klar, a media and sound artist whose work was recently featured at the PULSE Contemporary Art Fair in New York. Among the works to be presented are an animated ecosystem that changes and grows in response to a musical score; a piece that brings to life children’s dreams, with the music and animation depicting the movement from consciousness to unconsciousness; and a performance in which the musicians are transformed into on-screen avatars who act out virtual stories through the music played onstage.
“From Wassily Kandinsky to Oskar Fischinger, artists have long been exploring the relationship between image and sound,” said Klar. “Today’s technology brings the work of visual artists and musicians to a whole new level, and over the past several months our students have experimented with a variety of analog and digital technologies to create innovative audiovisual works.”
The course harks back to founding decades of The New School, when it was a major center for modernist visual and performing arts. Artists such as Martha Graham and John Cage resided at the school and worked in egalitarian, collaborative ways, challenging traditional divisions between the arts. Jazz and Animation reflects the direction of the university today as it strives to weave together arts disciplines.
The performance will take place at 4:00 p.m. in the Theresa Lang Community and Student Center, Arnhold Hall, 55 West 13th Street, 2nd floor. It is free and open to the public.
Baby Tattoo Books is proud to present an exclusive book signing
with award winning artist Viktor Koen at NYC Comicon 2008.
Saturday, April 19, 1-2pm, booth# 1851, Jacob Javits Center.
“When they caused the great cataclysm, the Forces of Dread metamorphosed. From each other’s heads they sprang forth in all their glorious deformity, terrorizing all.” So relates Plug, the narrator of this tale, which is neither graphic novel nor science fiction, but a disturbing, strangely familiar, and unusually evocative portrayal of a future “Landscape” that looks eerily like a dystopian conclusion to the evolving twenty-first century.
At the tender age of 4, Plug is already an international celebrity. Since making his debut at the Vavel Comic Book Festival in Athens, this Koen brainchild has been the subject of profiles in Communication Arts and the Los Angeles Times, and has received numerous accolades, including the coveted Photosynkyria Award in Greece, induction into the Digital Hall of Fame and a series of skateboards and snowboards for Fun4U in Europe. His book, authored by Melanie Wallace – Plug in the Guest for Mug – is presented for the first time in the US as part of the Baby Tattoo Books arsenal in NYC Comicon 2008.
Viktor Koen holds a BFA from the Bezalel Academy of Arts & Design in Jerusalem, Israel and an MFA with honors from the School of Visual Arts. Mr. Koen serves on the faculty of Parsons School of Design and the MFA program at SVA. His images are regularly published in The NYTimes, Time, Newsweek and Esquire. His client list includes Penguin, Random House, Doubleday, Harper Collins, Rizzoli, Houghton Miflin, National Geographic, Rolling Stone, Wired, Sports Illustrated, Man’s Journal, Bloomberg, Fortune, Money, Forbes, Nation, Mother Jones, BusinessWeek. His award winning prints are exhibited in galleries and museums in the United States, Europe, Japan and Australia.
Make sure to stop by and see Viktor if you’re at Comicon this weekend!
Over 170 people–alumni, as well as current faculty and students–have RSVP’d for the Parsons’ Illustration Alumni Event tonight at the Society of Illustrators. Not only will this be a wonderful gathering of artists, friends, and colleagues, but also an opportunity to view the 50th Annual Exhibition, organized by Peter DeSeve (Illustration, ’80) and featuring a host of works including gold medal winning pieces by Illustration Faculty Nora Krug and Jillian Tamaki.
It’s also an excellent way to remind people of how valuable the Society of Illustrators is as a resource and artistic institution. Illustrator Ronnie del Carmen recently blogged, “I walk into the the building on 128 East 63rd street and up to the second floor where I encountered the pantheon to classic illustration in America. I had to hold my jaw up.” And that’s the truth. Read the rest of Ronnie’s entry here and make sure that even if you can’t attend the event tonight, take the time to visit the Society sometime soon.
[lettering and illustration done by Julian Hector (Illustration ’07 ) ]
