Saturday, September 19, 2015
Friday, September 18, 2015
Did you miss the pre-SPX Little Nemo and Dylan Horrocks events?
Did you miss the pre-SPX Little Nemo and Dylan Horrocks events?
If so, not to worry. ComicsDC had people there covering them for you. We got audio recordings of both events. The Library of Congress filmed the Little Nemo presentation, and it'll eventually be on their website, but for now, you can listen to it here. Click on the title to be taken to an audio file.
DRAWING ON HISTORY - Little Nemo: Dream Another Dream
Bruce Guthrie has photographs of their presentation on his website and you can follow along by syncing his pictures and the audio.
Dylan Horrocks was last at SPX in 1999, talking about his book Hicksville and bring a traveling exhibition with him.
If so, not to worry. ComicsDC had people there covering them for you. We got audio recordings of both events. The Library of Congress filmed the Little Nemo presentation, and it'll eventually be on their website, but for now, you can listen to it here. Click on the title to be taken to an audio file.
DRAWING ON HISTORY - Little Nemo: Dream Another Dream
Bruce Guthrie has photographs of their presentation on his website and you can follow along by syncing his pictures and the audio.
Dylan Horrocks was last at SPX in 1999, talking about his book Hicksville and bring a traveling exhibition with him.
He's back and better than ever.
Comics events today
Noon at Library of Congress: Locust Moon talks about Little Nemo
6 pm at Fantom Comics: Hang Dai studioComic Riffs talks to Ted Rall
SPX 2015: Why Ted Rall felt compelled to tell 'Snowden's' cartoon tale
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/comic-riffs/wp/2015/09/17/spx-2015-why-ted-rall-felt-compelled-to-tell-snowdens-cartoon-tale/
Thursday, September 17, 2015
Jennifer Hayden, her breasts and their autobiographical comix: A pre-SPX interview
by Mike RhodeWhy will you be in Washington?
I'll be in Washington as a guest of Small Press Expo (SPX), where I'll be debuting my new graphic novel The Story of My Tits.
What type of comic work or cartooning do you do?
I write and draw autobiographical comix. My new book is a 352-page graphic memoir about my life and my experience with breast cancer. My first book Underwire (published in 2011) was a collection of short-storylength comix about my family. I post a short-form four-panel webcomic
called S'Crapbook at activatecomix.com and a webcomic diary called Rushes at thegoddessrushes.blogspot.comthegoddessrushes.blogspot.com, part of which I self-published in 2013.
How do you do it?
With my diary comic, I draw with a copic pen in a blank Clairefontaine notebook. With all my other comics, I draw on Bristol paper with a rapidograph, which has begun to hurt my hand, so I do some details with a dip pen. I now also add tones with a black watercolor pencil, which I wet for a softer, painted look. I work panel by panel, not page by page, and go straight to ink, no pencil. If I don't like the panel, I toss it out and start over. I write in a notebook at my side, where I test the words until I get them right before I start the panel. I never really know what's next--I like the surprise. When the art is done, I scan it and assemble the pages in Photoshop, cleaning things up, but always keeping the hand-drawn look.
When (within a decade is fine) and where were you born?
Oh, it's time for me to be classy about my age. I was born in 1961 in New York City.
Can you tell us a little about your new book that you'll be in town discussing?The Story of My Tits is a graphic memoir about my bout with breast cancer, but it includes a lot of other stories that ripple out from mine and resonate with it, like my mother-in-law's cancer story, my mother's cancer story, the story of how these marriages were affected by cancer, and how my own childhood, teenagehood, adulthood, marriage and motherhood influenced the way I reacted. I have to add that I think of it as a graphic novel, not a memoir, because I was less interested in being accurate and more interested in giving the reader the same ride through life that I had had, which involved some tragicomic tweaking here and there.
Breast cancer is a serious illness much discussed in the media, but it's also very personal. How did you decide to do a comic on it? Where did the amusing, but perhaps off-putting book title come from?
Cancer has been a popular subject for graphic novels, it seems to me. It's the perfect medium for this disease, because you can be almost simultaneously hilarious and desperately sad. And ironic, and informative, and real, and anything else you want. Comix are so utterly free. From the moment I was recovering from my breast cancer experience--which was when I discovered graphic novels--I knew this would be the best way for me to tell my story. I was very inspired by Marisa Marchetto's great strip Cancer Vixen in Glamour magazine, which I saw before she turned it into a book, and that helped convinced me this was the way to go.
I don't remember really considering any other title. When I wrote it down I thought, uh-oh. This isn't going to be one hundred percent popular. But then again, I'm not writing this book to tell anything but the truth. So that's the title and I stuck with it. And my publisher Top Shelf never asked me to change it.
What is your training and/or education in cartooning?
I have none. I studied a lot of literature in high school and college, where I majored in art history, so I also studied a lot of great art and loved learning how visual narratives were built into those images. I always drew, and read Archies compulsively when I was growing up, but I lost track of comics as a grownup. Then, having written a few (very bad) novels that were never published (thank the Goddess) and illustrated some children's books (which were just too rated G for me), I stumbled on
graphic novels and I just felt like I had come home. I knew exactly what to do. I gave myself a year to read all the best graphic novels I could find, then made myself sit down and start. The Story of My Tits begins with the first comix panel I ever drew.
Who are your influences?
Oh, so many. Fred Astaire, Lucille Ball, Charles Dickens, Albrecht Durer, Maurice Sendak, Hilary Knight, Goscinny and Uderzo (Asterix and Obelix are the gold standard for me; the most comedy and emotion in comics per square inch!), Garry Trudeau, Alison Bechdel, Lynda Barry, Julie Doucet, Dame Darcy, Will Eisner, and Jeffrey Brown. For a start.
If you could, what in your career would you do-over or change?
Discover comix in college, before I started losing my eyesight and getting sore hands. Go to art school and get some training in other media. But I probably would have just ruined art for myself, since I ruined everything then, being so hell-bent on "being an artist" (actually, at that time, a writer) and not on living a life that would inspire me to make art. So, I guess, actually, I would change nothing. It was all supposed to turn out this way.
What work are you best-known for?
Best-known for!? Possibly my pioneering work in conversational swearing. I'm not sure I'm known at all!! Underwire was my first webcomic and my first book, so if I'm known for anything, it would have to be that.
What work are you most proud of?
Well, I really have done great work advancing the art of conversational swearing. But I'm also very proud of The Story of My Tits. All the years I was writing, all the years I was drawing, I was trying to grasp life, hold it for a moment, trap it, get it down where someone else could see it and feel it, just like me. And I think that in this book maybe at last I have.
What would you like to do or work on in the future?
I have two more autobio projects I'd like to see in print--my diary comic and a collection of my S'Crapbook strips--but then I feel like getting my feet wet in fiction again. I have another graphic novel in mind that's a mix of family history, autobiography, and fiction. I've taken notes on index cards for a while and thrown them in a box, so I'd like to open that box and see what happens.
What do you do when you're in a rut or have writer's block?
I do not say those last two words. Ever. I had troubles as a writer I have never had as a comix creator, so I make it a point now just to keep moving forward. And never to judge my subject matter. The greatest skill I have learned is how to recognize that particular tickle of humor/sorrow/ aliveness that makes me know I have a story to tell. I go where it takes me and I do not question it. When I'm in a rut or too swamped with emotion about the subject to go on, I take a break. Hours, days, weeks. I adhere to no schedule, thanks to my publisher. I work every day, but I am the mistress of my own material.
Many more people are reading graphic novels now, especially women, than two, five, ten years ago. I believe this is a very wide-open art form right now, and it's appealing to some great verbal and visual talents. What you can do in great art and in great literature, you can do in graphic novels, only it's better, because you can use techniques from both at the same time. I think we're going to see some incredible masterpieces, which will establish the graphic novel, like jazz or rock 'n roll, as a vital new channel of expression.
You've attended the Small Press Expo previously - do you have any thoughts about your experience? Will you be attending it in the future?Oh, I absolutely love Small Press Expo! This is my sixth year, and it is the highlight of my comix calendar. The organizers are fantastic, the venue is relaxed, the exhibitors are nothing but the best. I've exhibited there, I debuted my first book Underwire there in 2011, and I never miss it. Last
year I got a chance to tell Jules Feiffer--a guest of the show--how much I adored his book Kill My Mother--and in the next moment I met a brand-new cartoonist visiting from Switzerland and had lunch with her at the bar, talking about autobiographical comix. Everyone is there for the love of
the art form, and it just seems to erase all barriers.
What's your favorite thing about DC?
I grew up in New York City, so what I love about DC is that it's such a small city, and yet there's so much in it. It also feels European to me, with all those big pretty streets and monumental, classical buildings. When I first went to the Smithsonian, I was just running along the mall, in and out of all those unbelievable museums, cackling at my husband: "It's free! It's all free!"
Least favorite?
It does seem to be a company town. Everyone seems to be either working for the government or probably a spy.
What monument or museum do like to or wish to visit when you're in town?
Our family favorite is the Spy Museum. Yeah, we like spies. But I also love the Lincoln Memorial. And all the art galleries, I couldn't even pick one.
Do you have a website or blog?
My website is jenniferhayden.com and my blog is goddesscomix.blogspot.com. I have another blog where I post my daily diary comic called thegoddessrushes.blogspot.com. And if you're on Facebook, my author page is jenniferhaydenauthor.
SPX featured in today's Express
The Small Press Expo salutes a new wave of indie comic artists in its 21st edition
By Kristen Page-KirbySeptember 17, 2015
https://www.washingtonpost.com/express/wp/2015/09/17/the-small-press-expo-salutes-a-new-wave-of-indie-comic-artists-in-its-21st-edition/
Small Press Expo exhibit at Library of Congress
The Serial & Government Publications Division of the Library of Congress has been collecting material at and from the Small Press Expo (SPX) for a few years. They've got an exhibit of some of the material in the main Jefferson building through October. Images courtesy of the LoC.
SPX opens Saturday at 11 am.
Wednesday, September 16, 2015
Compleating Cul de Sac and Art of Richard Thompson books on sale at SPX
I will have a few copies of each book for sale at the Small Press Expo. Pick me out of the crowd if you'd like to buy a copy out of my car's trunk. They'll be slightly discounted. - Mike Rhode
Comic Riffs on Kate Beaton
1st is print newspaper version, 2nd is web version.
'Step Aside, Pops': Kate Beaton's delightful sendup of history's greats
By Michael CavnaWashington Post September 16 2015
https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/step-aside-pops-kate-beatons-delightful-sendup-of-historys-greats/2015/09/15/2b855896-5b05-11e5-9757-e49273f05f65_story.html
SPX 2015: Hark! Kate Beaton steers an artfully smart new book, 'Step Aside Pops'
By Michael Cavna Washington Post Comic Riffs blog September 16 2015
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/comic-riffs/wp/2015/09/16/spx-2015-hark-kate-beatons-deftly-steers-her-new-book-step-aside-pops/
ED. NOTE: Kate Beaton will be a special guest at this weekend's Small Press Expo in North Bethesda.http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/comic-riffs/wp/2015/09/16/spx-2015-hark-kate-beatons-deftly-steers-her-new-book-step-aside-pops/
–M.C.
Tuesday, September 15, 2015
Telnaes on security at French cartoon conference
The world's cartoonists come together in France — under heavy police security
Washington Post September 14 2015
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/opinions/wp/2015/09/14/the-worlds-cartoonists-come-together-in-france-under-heavy-police-security/
Oct 20: Peter Kuper talk at Library of Congress (CORRECTED)
at noon about his new, "328 page graphic novel called Ruins that follows a fictional couple on sabbatical in Mexico and in tandem the migration of the Monarch butterfly."
Further details to come.Monday, September 14, 2015
Big Planet Comics and Retrofit Comics premieres at SPX
Check Out These SPX Previews: Butter And Blood & Ikebana From Retrofit/Big Planet Comics
September 12, 2015 by by Hannah Means Shannon
Sept 18: Dylan Horrocks of New Zealand at Politics & Prose
Friday, September 18, 2015 at 7 p.m.
Politics & Prose Bookstore
5015 Connecticut Ave NW
5015 Connecticut Ave NW
Sept 18: Little Nemo at the Library of Congress
DRAWING ON HISTORY
Little Nemo: Dream Another Dream
Josh O'Neill, Andrew Carl and Chris Stevens of Locust Moon Press tell the fascinating story of the creation of the 2015 Eisner Award winning volume, Little Nemo: Dream Another Dream. In 2014, Locust Moon Press started a Kickstarter campaign to fund the printing of the volume, a tribute to master cartoonist Winsor McCay. Many of the world's finest cartoonists celebrated his masterpiece, the comic strip Little Nemo in Slumberland, by creating 118 new Little Nemo strips, each in their own unique style. The resulting work, published on the same giant, broadsheet newspaper-sized canvas as McCay's creation, is both a stunning homage to McCay and a publishing work of art.
This is the fourth annual SPX festival program sponsored by the Serial & Government Publications Division.
Friday, September 18th, 12 noon -1pm
West Dining Room
6th Floor, Madison Building
Library of Congress
Little Nemo: Dream Another Dream
Josh O'Neill, Andrew Carl and Chris Stevens of Locust Moon Press tell the fascinating story of the creation of the 2015 Eisner Award winning volume, Little Nemo: Dream Another Dream. In 2014, Locust Moon Press started a Kickstarter campaign to fund the printing of the volume, a tribute to master cartoonist Winsor McCay. Many of the world's finest cartoonists celebrated his masterpiece, the comic strip Little Nemo in Slumberland, by creating 118 new Little Nemo strips, each in their own unique style. The resulting work, published on the same giant, broadsheet newspaper-sized canvas as McCay's creation, is both a stunning homage to McCay and a publishing work of art.
This is the fourth annual SPX festival program sponsored by the Serial & Government Publications Division.
Friday, September 18th, 12 noon -1pm
West Dining Room
6th Floor, Madison Building
Library of Congress
Meet a Local Cartoonist: A Chat with Adam Griffiths
by Mike Rhode Adam Griffiths sent an announcement of a cartooning class he's teaching in to us, so I leaped at the chance to get the thoughts of another local cartoonist on record.
What type of comic work or cartooning do you do?
Right now, I have been working on my first graphic novel, Washington White, a satirical right-wing beltway insider treatise concerning white America, translated from the narrative center of a fictional African-American right-wing viewpoint. For a naturally purple-minded African-American raised in Wilmington Delaware, simulating both this viewpoint and this narrative is incredibly taxing. It’s taken me 2 years to finalize a script that’s engineered solely to deprogram aspirant douches from their entitled sense of necessity in western society. The final work will be published in 2 parts, each about 300 pages long. In the meantime, I post one fully-realized full-color non-sequitur cartoon online each week to my Facebook and Tumblr pages.
How do you do it? Traditional pen and ink, computer or a combination?
I use cheap ballpoint pens to make many of my drawings and cartoons. I color them digitally.When (within a decade is fine) and where were you born?
I was born in 1982, at Takoma Park’s Washington Adventist Hospital, and it’s very weird that I live just around the corner from there now, considering I am the only member of my immediate member of family to move back to the DMV area. My parents were both police officers working in Southwest DC, and met on the police force.
Why are you in Washington now? What neighborhood or area do you live in?
I came back to Washington because, probably, like many cartoonists, there is part of me that is largely invested in nostalgia. I got a Bachelor’s Degree in General Fine Arts with a concentration in Video Art at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in Baltimore, then went into an administrator position with Provisions Learning Project in Washington D.C., a nonprofit devoted to arts and social change before Busboys and Poets even existed. I worked as a fine arts administrator for many years, sometimes for private galleries, also for Washington Project for the Arts. While in school, I was skeptical of students who mocked the practices of popular New York fine artists, so much so, that I declaratively NEVER wanted to be in New York. I worked in the fine arts world here for almost a decade before realizing that it was not the place for the kind of work that I wanted to make. My art is very much a reflection of that experience. I make drawings that are sometimes abstract, I make drawings that are sometimes symbolic within the realm of editorial cartoons, I make drawings that are sometimes on the fringe of mainstream comics. So I see myself as a cartoonist who inhabits a number of roles, but currently, I attempt to feed the fine arts world of DC while seeking to address cartoonists’ and comics concerns.What is your training and/or education in cartooning?
I am mostly self-taught, I started drawing when I was four years old, and started art education formally through weekend classes at the Delaware Art Museum at age nine. Later when I was in college, I thought I was going to work with communities in Baltimore to make publicly-engaged murals and video art; I considered this kind of work to be of the utmost decency in its political intent, the least condescending. Lucy Lippard and Jane Jacobs were my heroines, but the graduate program for Community Arts did not exist yet, I moved on. Independently, I do my own research and reading. I reach out to cartoonists whose work interests me. Because the university system offers safe entrance to artistic validation, I’ve simultaneously embraced it because of the talented artists there, but also rejected it, because I abhor elitism. The university system is not successful at reorganizing society, our democracy, as it should. I am ambivalent about my own capacity to sustain cartooning as a career, but I recognize that education can bestow an individual with the necessary embers of autodidactism.
Who are your influences?I read non-exclusively. I am at home with popular comics writers and artists, editorial cartoonists, graphic novelists, zine cartoonists, small press publishers and creators, and mainstream publishers, philosophers and I suspect that many other creators read the same way. It’s disingenuous for me to give you a list because I continue to read, allowing myself to be inspired, superseded, and bought into admiration by accomplishments in contemporary art, art history, comics history, and current comics being made world-wide.
To be influenced is to accept the presence of others. I’m very non-competitve because I think artists, above other professions, recognize that they generate peace through an active engagement with their respective societies. I look to creative people for community, whether living or dead, because something they’ve generated strikes me. My list for now: Barry Windsor-Smith, Stephen Bissette, Whit Taylor, Simon DeBeauvoir, John Chad, Josh Bayer, Sabin Cauldron, Phillip Zimbardo, Adam Polina, Chris Bachalo, Joseph Silver, Garth Ennis, Ashley Woods, Marshall McLulan, Howard Cruse, Victor Hodge, Charles Burns, Adrian Tomine, Dan Nadel, Alison Bechdel, Elizabeth Beier, Lee Lai, Kara Walker, Danny Simmons, Jessica Abel, Italo Calvino, Jim Mahfood, Jessica Abel, Mimi Pond. Also, there are some very interesting minicomics being made in New Zealand right now. When I am working, I ignore other creative people, it’s a mistake to look to them for ideas.
If you could, what in your career would you do-over or change?
When I wasn’t even in high school, I remember sending an inquiry to the Joe Kubert School of Cartooning in Newark, New Jersey for more information. I presented the brochure that I received back to my father, who told me that this school wasn’t ‘good enough’ for me. I ended up in fine arts school which was nice, but I didn’t belong, art-wise -- even the illustration department was too fancy. I’ve always been very interested in the popular arts but unfortunately my life experience has mutated me beyond that ever being a possible destination for my work. I’ve confronted the reality that there is nothing I can change about these experiences, and I am content with making it up from here on.What work are you best-known for?
My first major gallery show was about drinking and adulthood, and happened in DC. I made a series of paintings, a sculpture, and a video about the life of Candice “Candy” Lightner, the founder of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD). This was really a journalistic endeavor. I spent months talking with Candy over the phone so that I could create paintings that would define the era and time in which the anti-drunk-driving movement was formed, and how it came to be a typical Washington non-profit special interest institution in all its surreality. It was an odd show that I enjoyed thinking about and conceiving, and I only sold one painting, ha! Otherwise, I’m increasingly known for posting noticeably sick, yet compassionate cartoons online.
What work are you most proud of?
This question is beyond my personal self-awareness. Is dignity worth a lifetime of appearances?
What would you like to do or work on in the future?
I would like to have a daily comic somewhere, which I am already developing. There are also several other shorter graphic novels I’m trying to complete in addition to Washington White, but of course those aren’t real until I’ve executed them.
What do you do when you're in a rut or have writer's block?
I sing loudly and dance, probably because I’m so queer. This is a lesson that I learned from cartoonist Alec Longstreth’s very useful manual “Your Comics Will Love You Back.” He is an instructor at the Center for Cartooning Studies in White River Junction, Vermont who is very dynamic, who gives it all away. Not an inch of Miles Davis within him.
What do you think will be the future of your field?Electronic media has been directing the future of comics so far. I think comics artists embrace their medium as interactive media already, and will likely figure out how to ingratiate their creative practice into the administrative structure, which ultimately, is where all art needs to go. Being in the fine arts world, I couldn’t focus on what was important because fine arts criticism is very palace intrigue, meditating about what decisions people in museums are making, which doesn’t help working artists at all. Constantly artists are accused of being useless because executives in private enterprise are close-minded, and historically, editorial cartoonists have largely been employed by newspapers in order to help their audiences and covertly, their own journalists quantify information about current events. However, they will soon realize that employing cartoonists as consultant creators will help them to make better decisions.
What local cons do you attend? The Small Press Expo, Intervention, or others? Any comments about attending them?
I have attended the Small Press Expo in Bethesda religiously for years, meeting many interesting artists and zinesters, reading their work. I am looking forward to two cons in Ohio: the Sõl-Con: Brown/Black Comix Expo and Cartoon Crossroads Columbus, which is hosted by Ohio State University, home of the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum. I went up there recently with John Kinhart, a filmmaker who dedicates himself to making films about indie comics legends, to help record interviews with cartoonist Carol Tyler and minicomics godfather Justin Green. I can honestly say that Ohio feels like a place where the mid-western independent and mainstream audience for comics can convene without any tricky media-engineered divisive politics intervening. It’s that ecclesiastic spirit and enthusiasm for comics that I am always seeking, which begins with people.
 |
| self-portrait |
DC comics artists are uncommonly mainstream, even if their comics are not considered so, and even though there is no mainstream comics studio based in DC (we need one). When it comes to subject matter in DC, everything is welcome, and educating through comics is revered, in addition to humor and drama, and weirdness. I admire webcomics artists like Carolyn Belefski, dynamic comics shop managers like Esther Kim, organizers like Andrew Cohen and Matt Dembicki, and obsessive makers like JT Wilkins and Rafer Roberts, who are going to do what they will, regardless of whether an audience exists for their work or not. Comics remain relevant because of the risk-takers, not because of comfortable virtuosos.
Least favorite?
The comics community of DC doesn’t seem to interface with many other facets of the creative community here, and especially so with the editorial cartoonists, who only seem to want to run with other journalists and professionals within major news-worthy publications or at awards banquets (though, the Library of Congress rocks). As someone who worked in the non-profit art world of DC for many years, I want to say that uniqueness, flavor, and funkiness should be a DESIRED standard because of that cross-pollination, because, CULTURE. I wish I knew more actors. I wish I knew more writers, I wish I knew more in-house economists, graphic designers. What is the point of being in a city if all these worlds are frozen, incestuous?
What monument or museum do like to take visitors to?
The World War I Memorial. It’s quiet and you can have a conversation with one or two good friends on a swampy summer DC weekend afternoon.How about a favorite local restaurant?
It’s very expensive to eat out in DC. My husband and I eat at home because fabulousness eludes us. Obviously, we are shameful homosexuals.
In a rare instance of consistency in restaurant-going on my part, I’ll be hosting a SKETCH SHARE event every Thursday at 6:30pm, from October 19th to November 12th at Petworth Citizen , as part of 4-session class that I’m teaching at Upshur Street Books next door (http://www.eventbrite.com/e/
Do you have a website or blog?
http://www.adamgriffithsart.com
Sunday, September 13, 2015
The Disney gas mask featured in The Post
Did you know Walt Disney designed the world's weirdest gas mask?
By John Kelly Washington Post September 13 2015
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/did-you-know-walt-disney-designed-the-worlds-weirdest-gas-mask/2015/09/12/885be808-57d8-11e5-8bb1-b488d231bba2_story.html
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