Update 12/1/04 Comics in the Chicago Reader.... and a College Textbook So it looks like I'll have a full page comic in the Chicago Reader's 2004 "Year in Comics" edition, which comes out in mid-December. Keep an eye out, Chicagoans! Not only that, but my "Mysterious Illness" comic from last year's Reader was selected for publication in the new edition of "America Now: Short Readings from Recent Periodicals," a current-issues reader used in college English courses across the country. That comes out sometime in January, or so I hear. Animation at the University of Michigan Those of you in Michigan will get the chance to see the FIRST EVER public screening of one of my new video pieces, along with a new drawing or two in Delinquent Systems, a group show featuring several kick-ass artists who all got their BFAs from the Cleveland Institute of Art some years back, including Chris Landau, Andrea Landau, Robert Goodman, and Jason Yoh. My video projection involves an animated chandelier and some archival footage from early Coney Island attractions, among other things. I am still pretty clumsy with the software, so it might suck - but who knows, maybe this will one day be considered a classic among my "early works." Whatever. Go check it out if you're in town. The show will be up from Dec 19th - February 5th... call the school for details! More Press! Supposedly Jane Magazine's doing a fancy little blurb on my zines in their February issue! For those of you who haven't seen me in a while, there'll be a cute photo of me in the Ladyfriend Zine offices for you to clip and save. Update 10/15/04 Web Update! Yes, it's true - there's finally a few samples of the new stuff I've been working on since my move to Chicago. I know, it's been a long time... the computer situation here has been a little problematic for web updates, which is why my amazing designer friend Allen Harrison is helpin' me out by doin?g a complete website overhaul. So soon the site will look much better and will be updated with lots of new stuff. Upcoming Exhibitions and Projects Well, I've been a little slow to post info on my latest exhibitions, so you might've already missed my show at Chicago's Lisa Boyle Gallery. There's still a little time left to see my brand new wall drawing at the Firelands Association for the Visual Arts in Oberlin, OH... but if you miss it you can see a photo here. I was also commissioned by NY's awesome public art organization Creative Time to create a permanent sign for a booth in Coney Island, as a part of the Dreamland Artists Club. Looking into the near future, it looks like I'll be showing some work in Los Angeles this November, in a group show at the fantastically cool Junc Gallery. I've also been learning animation and video editing here at UIC, so you can expect to see a pretty wild video installation somewhere by the end of the year. Zine Touring In case you missed it, I went on a lil' Zine Tour of the East coast this summer with my two zine projects, Free Advice and Ladyfriend, which was totally incredible. So incredible in fact, that I'm hitting the road again this January, this time to the West coast, via Jim Munroe's amazing Perpetual Motion Roadshow. Look out! If you want more info about the dates and tour stops, or about my co-tourers More or Les and Stephen Notley, drop me an e-mail and I'll give you the lowdown. Update 2/16/04 Upcoming Exhibitions and Projects Well, I'm pretty excited to be preparing for my first solo NY show right now... Christa Donner: New Works on Paper will be on view at Kravets-Wehby Gallery in Chelsea from April 3 - May 8, 2004. If any of y'all know of good arts writers to give the show some press, I'd be much obliged. I'll also have a drawing in this year's Armory Show, again with Kravets-Wehby. Hey hey Clevelanders, it looks like my Art/Action/AIDS billboard will be up somewhere around downtown Cleveland sometime this February(!!!) Geez, that was fast. If anyone can get good slides or digital photos of it, please let me know. There'll apparently also be some postcards to go with. Workshops, Lectures, and maybe even a Zine Tour! For those of you living in Washington state, you can catch up with me at the College Art Association's Annual Conference, this February in downtown Seattle. I'll be presenting a paper (and lots of cool slides) on the topic of teaching comics in an art school setting, along with four other knowledgeable comix scholars. Once I get back into town, I'll be presenting a talk on small-press publications (i.e. zines) for grad students at Columbia College's Center for Book and Paper Arts the next week. This June is shaping up to be a good one for travelin' interactivity, as I'll be doing a week's worth of workshops on zines and body image for several branches of the Allen County Public Library in my hometown of Fort Wayne. I'm still figuring out the logistics, but this might spin off into an informal zine tour to Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and a few other places. Want me to come to your town? Drop me an e-mail and let me know of a good venue (and offer me food and a spare bed). Update 10/23/03 Exhibitions and other Projects Thanks to a Printmaking Residency at Zygote Press (Cleveland,OH), there's a whole new edition of 3-color silkscreened prints in the works, as well as a cool xeroxed coloring-book-zine thing with a silkscreened cover. I've got extremely limited editions of both, so if you're interested, drop me an e-mail. I should have images online sometime soon. If you're anywhere near Troy, NY (right next door to Albany), you should stop by the Hudson Valley Community College, where you'll find my permanent wall installation, included as part of their Open(ed) Spaces exhibition, celebrating the school's 50th anniversary. Also, I've just been invited to participate in this year's Art/Action/AIDS project, which promotes public AIDS awareness with eye-catching postcards and billboards pairing cutting edge graphic design (by Mobius Grey) with the work of emerging visual artists. My billboard will be up in downtown Cleveland sometime this year... I'll keep you posted on that. Update 4/24/03 New Home Base Well, it's now official: I'll be relocating to Chicago in August 2003, thanks to a major fellowship from the University of Illinois at Chicago, where I'll be pursuing graduate studies with some of my favorite artists (Kerry James Marshall, Inigo Manglano Ovalle, etc.) this fall! This means I'll finally have more time and facilities to focus on my artwork full time. Of course I'll miss Cleveland (and specific Clevelanders) a lot, but will be coming back for visits fairly regularly, thanks to a loyal boyfriend who can't relocate for another year, and some really great friends, and SPACES Gallery, and cheap independent movie theatres! Projects in Print Ladyfriend Zine, my self-publishing project, has gotten some nice recognition this year. Excerpts from the most recent issue will be included in this year's Zine Yearbook, an annually curated national anthology of writings from the year's best zines (aww, shucks). Volume 7, the one I'm in, will be available this July, published by Soft Skull Press. Ladyfriend Zine has also been selected to be included in this year's Projet Mobilivre/Bookmobile Project Tour -- an amazing travelin' gallery of artists books and self-published works now in its third year), which will stop at SPACES Gallery in Cleveland May 21 - 22 en route to Canada. So check out the Zine Yearbook and Bookmobile Project, and get ready, get set to order the new issue of Ladyfriend, which comes out this summer. E-mail me if you want more info on that. I plan to continue my zine and comics work in conjunction with my studio art studies in Chicago, city of a trillion self-publishers! Speaking of self publishing and, by extension, comics, I'm working on a new experimental comics project called SHINER with some great local and national artists including John Greiner, Raina Telgemeier, Kevin Fagan, Ben Dewey and Jake Kelly. It'll be a nicely produced series of books, published tri-annually, with full-color covers and a website and all that. Since I'm co-editor/publisher/comics artist, I will be sure to let you know how things develop. We are researching funding sources to get the project professionally printed and distributed, so if anyone out there is interested in sponsorship or has tips on grant/other forms of support for such things, let me know. Upcoming Exhibitions For those of you in or near New York, you can see one of my drawings featured in Media Mix, a multimedia event organized by Emerging Arts to benefit the arts and to highlight "emerging talent" this Saturday, April 26th ONLY. The big shebang will take place at the Altman building in New York's gallery-centric Chelsea neighborhood, and features live music by the likes of DJ Saskai and Kendra Ross, plus readings, performances and much more. It should be tons of fun, and benefits all sorts of cool projects and organizations. Other Stuff For those of you who live in Cleveland, I'll be speaking on a panel organized by Action Without Borders on Supporting Yourself in the Arts While Working for a Nonprofit Organization It'll take place downtown on June 11th -- if you're interested, let me know and I will give you more info. Update 2 /11 / 03 Upcoming Art Exhibitions: You can find my work in two Seattle shows this March: Isms at the Pound Gallery, and the one-night Girlie Fun Show at Consolidated Works. Both exhibitions are presented in conjunction with Ladyfest Seattle. West Coast friends, check it out! It looks like I'll also be exhibiting work in South America this fall: the group exhibition Body Politic, curated by Collette Copeland, is traveling from the Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts to the Centro Colomb Americano in Medellin, Columbia this September! Other Cool Stuff: In case anyone missed it, I just curated my first major exhibition: Page Me: the art of zines, comix and other artist-made books will be on view at SPACES Gallery in Cleveland through February 21st. With tons of public events, an "add your own " section for self-publishers, and original comix pages by Dame Darcy, Jeffrey Brown, Anders Nilsen, Debbie Drechsler and more, the show has gotten a lot of great press and drawn visitors from all over the country. I'm so proud! Check it out online (or, if that link doesn't work, just go here and look at previous exhibitions). Thanks to my raging obsession with the topic of zines and alternative comics, I've been invited to give lectures on the subject at both Case Western Reserve University and the Cleveland Institute of Art in conjunction with the Page Me show, and I'll be giving a talk and workshop on zine-making to a group of middle-school girls next week. Update 9 / 16 / 02 Upcoming Art Exhibitions: I'll be exhibiting some drawings, speaking on a panel about art and activism, and presenting one of my body image art workshops in the Dirty Girls exhibition at Ladyfest East in New York, September 19 - 22, located at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. I can't wait to create glitter-covered body-lovin' artwork with the teenagers from the Lower East Side Girl's Club! I also can't wait to help support the many great bands and performers that'll be playing at Ladyfest. I'm also doing the cover art for the Ladyfest East program, so snag one while you're there. I just found out that I'll be exhibiting 4-5 drawings in a group show at Post in Los Angeles, California, opening Sept 21st. I will not be able to attend the opening (due to Ladyfest) but I hope that those of you who live in California will be able to make it out to see the work. It's the first time I've shown in LA! My work will also be featured in the upcoming group exhibition "Body Politic," curated by Collette Copeland at the Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts in Wilmington, Delaware this October. Some of you know about this one already but for those who don't, a very large new drawing and all of my zines in the traveling exhibition "Comic Release," originating at Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) in January. It's basically my dream show: an international survey of contemporary art based on comic book and cartoon imagery, dealing with identity, language and politics. The show will include painting and sculpture, video, high and low-tech animation, zines, fashion designs and lots of great alternative comics. From Pittsburgh, the show will travel to New Orleans, Louisiana; Denton, Texas and the Polk Museum in Gainesville, Florida. This will be the first time my drawings and my zines will be exhibited in the same venue and I'll be in good company, showing with some of my very favorite artists (Kara Walker, Chris Ware, Kerry James Marshall, the Hernandez Brothers, etc. etc.). I'm excited just to see this show! Other Projects: The iris prints are finally here!!! I have been working intensively with Jacob Lang of Pangaea Press to produce an edition of high quality digital iris prints, since so many of the people who've expressed an interest in my work are also on a tight budget. Due to popular demand, there are now 100, 11" x 17" prints of "Imaginary Friend #3" on high quality Arches paper, available for $55 each, signed and numbered. You can find out more about the prints and other new stuff on the website. If anybody has questions about the iris-printing process or about Pangaea Press, I'll be happy to give you more info. If you like the idea of cheap artwork and good music, I'll be working with the very lovely instrumental band the Six Parts Seven to create a cover drawing and limited-edition vinyl etching (a whole new process!) for their upcoming one-sided LP (one side is music, the other side'll have my drawing etched into it) produced by Burnt Toast Vinyl, distributed by Secretly Canadian Records this Fall. I'm working away at the fourth issue of my zine, "Ladyfriend," and if all goes well it should be printed and distributed in the next couple of weeks. I know, I've been saying that for months now, but I really mean it this time. I've scheduled computer time and everything. This one is the "age" issue, and features some really great, sad, funny, weird stuff by ladies ranging from 5 to 102 years old. Copies will be available for $2 plus postage in early October. I'm now teaching Creative Drawing to advanced drawing and painting majors this fall (thanks to some last-minute class changes they were able to let me teach without an MFA!). I've taught kids and night classes, but this will be the first time I'll get to teach advanced college art students, and I'm pretty psyched! For those of you who don't know this already, I've been doing lots of research and obsessive hoarding of alternative comics over the past few years (check out www.damedarcy.com, www.paulpope.com, or www.geocities.com/tepidcomic if you want to look at work by some really interesting contemporary comics artists). I've recently gotten the chance to write indie comix reviews for Friction magazine, and I'll be doing a 2500-word feature article on independent comics in the region, for the new and revamped Dialogue magazine my first paid writing gig! Any unknown comics artists out there should send me their stuff. I'll fill you in with more info in September / November, when this project goes to press. Media coverage: A very nice 1-page text/image thing about my work can be found in the latest issue of the excellent magazine "Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture," (Mom's going to love that one) on the shelves of your local independent bookstore (and at Borders) this week or next. It's on page 62, I think. There was a blurb about my artwork in the May issue of Jane magazine, which allowed lots of new people to find out about my work. There's a really cool little spread in the new 160-page Friction Magazine Issue 1, featuring the best of Frictionmagazine.com and more. I also got to speak recently on a radio panel of working artists (including an actor, a musician, an architect, a writer, a choreographer/dancer, ... and me!) for WCPN's "Quiet Crisis" programming on the arts and the economy. It was mildly terrifying, but turned out to be a pretty interesting discussion. |
Christa Donner |
Update 12/1/04 Comics in the Chicago Reader.... and a College Textbook So it looks like I'll have a full page comic in the Chicago Reader's 2004 "Year in Comics" edition, which comes out in mid-December. Keep an eye out, Chicagoans! Not only that, but my "Mysterious Illness" comic from last year's Reader was selected for publication in the new edition of "America Now: Short Readings from Recent Periodicals," a current-issues reader used in college English courses across the country. That comes out sometime in January, or so I hear. Animation at the University of Michigan Those of you in Michigan will get the chance to see the FIRST EVER public screening of one of my new video pieces, along with a new drawing or two in Delinquent Systems, a group show featuring several kick-ass artists who all got their BFAs from the Cleveland Institute of Art some years back, including Chris Landau, Andrea Landau, Robert Goodman, and Jason Yoh. My video projection involves an animated chandelier and some archival footage from early Coney Island attractions, among other things. I am still pretty clumsy with the software, so it might suck - but who knows, maybe this will one day be considered a classic among my "early works." Whatever. Go check it out if you're in town. The show will be up from Dec 19th - February 5th... call the school for details! More Press! Supposedly Jane Magazine's doing a fancy little blurb on my zines in their February issue! For those of you who haven't seen me in a while, there'll be a cute photo of me in the Ladyfriend Zine offices for you to clip and save. Update 10/15/04 Web Update! Yes, it's true - there's finally a few samples of the new stuff I've been working on since my move to Chicago. I know, it's been a long time... the computer situation here has been a little problematic for web updates, which is why my amazing designer friend Allen Harrison is helpin' me out by doin?g a complete website overhaul. So soon the site will look much better and will be updated with lots of new stuff. Upcoming Exhibitions and Projects Well, I've been a little slow to post info on my latest exhibitions, so you might've already missed my show at Chicago's Lisa Boyle Gallery. There's still a little time left to see my brand new wall drawing at the Firelands Association for the Visual Arts in Oberlin, OH... but if you miss it you can see a photo here. I was also commissioned by NY's awesome public art organization Creative Time to create a permanent sign for a booth in Coney Island, as a part of the Dreamland Artists Club. Looking into the near future, it looks like I'll be showing some work in Los Angeles this November, in a group show at the fantastically cool Junc Gallery. I've also been learning animation and video editing here at UIC, so you can expect to see a pretty wild video installation somewhere by the end of the year. Zine Touring In case you missed it, I went on a lil' Zine Tour of the East coast this summer with my two zine projects, Free Advice and Ladyfriend, which was totally incredible. So incredible in fact, that I'm hitting the road again this January, this time to the West coast, via Jim Munroe's amazing Perpetual Motion Roadshow. Look out! If you want more info about the dates and tour stops, or about my co-tourers More or Les and Stephen Notley, drop me an e-mail and I'll give you the lowdown. Update 2/16/04 Upcoming Exhibitions and Projects Well, I'm pretty excited to be preparing for my first solo NY show right now... Christa Donner: New Works on Paper will be on view at Kravets-Wehby Gallery in Chelsea from April 3 - May 8, 2004. If any of y'all know of good arts writers to give the show some press, I'd be much obliged. I'll also have a drawing in this year's Armory Show, again with Kravets-Wehby. Hey hey Clevelanders, it looks like my Art/Action/AIDS billboard will be up somewhere around downtown Cleveland sometime this February(!!!) Geez, that was fast. If anyone can get good slides or digital photos of it, please let me know. There'll apparently also be some postcards to go with. Workshops, Lectures, and maybe even a Zine Tour! For those of you living in Washington state, you can catch up with me at the College Art Association's Annual Conference, this February in downtown Seattle. I'll be presenting a paper (and lots of cool slides) on the topic of teaching comics in an art school setting, along with four other knowledgeable comix scholars. Once I get back into town, I'll be presenting a talk on small-press publications (i.e. zines) for grad students at Columbia College's Center for Book and Paper Arts the next week. This June is shaping up to be a good one for travelin' interactivity, as I'll be doing a week's worth of workshops on zines and body image for several branches of the Allen County Public Library in my hometown of Fort Wayne. I'm still figuring out the logistics, but this might spin off into an informal zine tour to Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and a few other places. Want me to come to your town? Drop me an e-mail and let me know of a good venue (and offer me food and a spare bed). Update 10/23/03 Exhibitions and other Projects Thanks to a Printmaking Residency at Zygote Press (Cleveland,OH), there's a whole new edition of 3-color silkscreened prints in the works, as well as a cool xeroxed coloring-book-zine thing with a silkscreened cover. I've got extremely limited editions of both, so if you're interested, drop me an e-mail. I should have images online sometime soon. If you're anywhere near Troy, NY (right next door to Albany), you should stop by the Hudson Valley Community College, where you'll find my permanent wall installation, included as part of their Open(ed) Spaces exhibition, celebrating the school's 50th anniversary. Also, I've just been invited to participate in this year's Art/Action/AIDS project, which promotes public AIDS awareness with eye-catching postcards and billboards pairing cutting edge graphic design (by Mobius Grey) with the work of emerging visual artists. My billboard will be up in downtown Cleveland sometime this year... I'll keep you posted on that. Update 4/24/03 New Home Base Well, it's now official: I'll be relocating to Chicago in August 2003, thanks to a major fellowship from the University of Illinois at Chicago, where I'll be pursuing graduate studies with some of my favorite artists (Kerry James Marshall, Inigo Manglano Ovalle, etc.) this fall! This means I'll finally have more time and facilities to focus on my artwork full time. Of course I'll miss Cleveland (and specific Clevelanders) a lot, but will be coming back for visits fairly regularly, thanks to a loyal boyfriend who can't relocate for another year, and some really great friends, and SPACES Gallery, and cheap independent movie theatres! Projects in Print Ladyfriend Zine, my self-publishing project, has gotten some nice recognition this year. Excerpts from the most recent issue will be included in this year's Zine Yearbook, an annually curated national anthology of writings from the year's best zines (aww, shucks). Volume 7, the one I'm in, will be available this July, published by Soft Skull Press. Ladyfriend Zine has also been selected to be included in this year's Projet Mobilivre/Bookmobile Project Tour -- an amazing travelin' gallery of artists books and self-published works now in its third year), which will stop at SPACES Gallery in Cleveland May 21 - 22 en route to Canada. So check out the Zine Yearbook and Bookmobile Project, and get ready, get set to order the new issue of Ladyfriend, which comes out this summer. E-mail me if you want more info on that. I plan to continue my zine and comics work in conjunction with my studio art studies in Chicago, city of a trillion self-publishers! Speaking of self publishing and, by extension, comics, I'm working on a new experimental comics project called SHINER with some great local and national artists including John Greiner, Raina Telgemeier, Kevin Fagan, Ben Dewey and Jake Kelly. It'll be a nicely produced series of books, published tri-annually, with full-color covers and a website and all that. Since I'm co-editor/publisher/comics artist, I will be sure to let you know how things develop. We are researching funding sources to get the project professionally printed and distributed, so if anyone out there is interested in sponsorship or has tips on grant/other forms of support for such things, let me know. Upcoming Exhibitions For those of you in or near New York, you can see one of my drawings featured in Media Mix, a multimedia event organized by Emerging Arts to benefit the arts and to highlight "emerging talent" this Saturday, April 26th ONLY. The big shebang will take place at the Altman building in New York's gallery-centric Chelsea neighborhood, and features live music by the likes of DJ Saskai and Kendra Ross, plus readings, performances and much more. It should be tons of fun, and benefits all sorts of cool projects and organizations. Other Stuff For those of you who live in Cleveland, I'll be speaking on a panel organized by Action Without Borders on Supporting Yourself in the Arts While Working for a Nonprofit Organization It'll take place downtown on June 11th -- if you're interested, let me know and I will give you more info. Update 2 /11 / 03 Upcoming Art Exhibitions: You can find my work in two Seattle shows this March: Isms at the Pound Gallery, and the one-night Girlie Fun Show at Consolidated Works. Both exhibitions are presented in conjunction with Ladyfest Seattle. West Coast friends, check it out! It looks like I'll also be exhibiting work in South America this fall: the group exhibition Body Politic, curated by Collette Copeland, is traveling from the Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts to the Centro Colomb Americano in Medellin, Columbia this September! Other Cool Stuff: In case anyone missed it, I just curated my first major exhibition: Page Me: the art of zines, comix and other artist-made books will be on view at SPACES Gallery in Cleveland through February 21st. With tons of public events, an "add your own " section for self-publishers, and original comix pages by Dame Darcy, Jeffrey Brown, Anders Nilsen, Debbie Drechsler and more, the show has gotten a lot of great press and drawn visitors from all over the country. I'm so proud! Check it out online (or, if that link doesn't work, just go here and look at previous exhibitions). Thanks to my raging obsession with the topic of zines and alternative comics, I've been invited to give lectures on the subject at both Case Western Reserve University and the Cleveland Institute of Art in conjunction with the Page Me show, and I'll be giving a talk and workshop on zine-making to a group of middle-school girls next week. Update 9 / 16 / 02 Upcoming Art Exhibitions: I'll be exhibiting some drawings, speaking on a panel about art and activism, and presenting one of my body image art workshops in the Dirty Girls exhibition at Ladyfest East in New York, September 19 - 22, located at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. I can't wait to create glitter-covered body-lovin' artwork with the teenagers from the Lower East Side Girl's Club! I also can't wait to help support the many great bands and performers that'll be playing at Ladyfest. I'm also doing the cover art for the Ladyfest East program, so snag one while you're there. I just found out that I'll be exhibiting 4-5 drawings in a group show at Post in Los Angeles, California, opening Sept 21st. I will not be able to attend the opening (due to Ladyfest) but I hope that those of you who live in California will be able to make it out to see the work. It's the first time I've shown in LA! My work will also be featured in the upcoming group exhibition "Body Politic," curated by Collette Copeland at the Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts in Wilmington, Delaware this October. Some of you know about this one already but for those who don't, a very large new drawing and all of my zines in the traveling exhibition "Comic Release," originating at Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) in January. It's basically my dream show: an international survey of contemporary art based on comic book and cartoon imagery, dealing with identity, language and politics. The show will include painting and sculpture, video, high and low-tech animation, zines, fashion designs and lots of great alternative comics. From Pittsburgh, the show will travel to New Orleans, Louisiana; Denton, Texas and the Polk Museum in Gainesville, Florida. This will be the first time my drawings and my zines will be exhibited in the same venue and I'll be in good company, showing with some of my very favorite artists (Kara Walker, Chris Ware, Kerry James Marshall, the Hernandez Brothers, etc. etc.). I'm excited just to see this show! Other Projects: The iris prints are finally here!!! I have been working intensively with Jacob Lang of Pangaea Press to produce an edition of high quality digital iris prints, since so many of the people who've expressed an interest in my work are also on a tight budget. Due to popular demand, there are now 100, 11" x 17" prints of "Imaginary Friend #3" on high quality Arches paper, available for $55 each, signed and numbered. You can find out more about the prints and other new stuff on the website. If anybody has questions about the iris-printing process or about Pangaea Press, I'll be happy to give you more info. If you like the idea of cheap artwork and good music, I'll be working with the very lovely instrumental band the Six Parts Seven to create a cover drawing and limited-edition vinyl etching (a whole new process!) for their upcoming one-sided LP (one side is music, the other side'll have my drawing etched into it) produced by Burnt Toast Vinyl, distributed by Secretly Canadian Records this Fall. I'm working away at the fourth issue of my zine, "Ladyfriend," and if all goes well it should be printed and distributed in the next couple of weeks. I know, I've been saying that for months now, but I really mean it this time. I've scheduled computer time and everything. This one is the "age" issue, and features some really great, sad, funny, weird stuff by ladies ranging from 5 to 102 years old. Copies will be available for $2 plus postage in early October. I'm now teaching Creative Drawing to advanced drawing and painting majors this fall (thanks to some last-minute class changes they were able to let me teach without an MFA!). I've taught kids and night classes, but this will be the first time I'll get to teach advanced college art students, and I'm pretty psyched! For those of you who don't know this already, I've been doing lots of research and obsessive hoarding of alternative comics over the past few years (check out www.damedarcy.com, www.paulpope.com, or www.geocities.com/tepidcomic if you want to look at work by some really interesting contemporary comics artists). I've recently gotten the chance to write indie comix reviews for Friction magazine, and I'll be doing a 2500-word feature article on independent comics in the region, for the new and revamped Dialogue magazine my first paid writing gig! Any unknown comics artists out there should send me their stuff. I'll fill you in with more info in September / November, when this project goes to press. Media coverage: A very nice 1-page text/image thing about my work can be found in the latest issue of the excellent magazine "Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture," (Mom's going to love that one) on the shelves of your local independent bookstore (and at Borders) this week or next. It's on page 62, I think. There was a blurb about my artwork in the May issue of Jane magazine, which allowed lots of new people to find out about my work. There's a really cool little spread in the new 160-page Friction Magazine Issue 1, featuring the best of Frictionmagazine.com and more. I also got to speak recently on a radio panel of working artists (including an actor, a musician, an architect, a writer, a choreographer/dancer, ... and me!) for WCPN's "Quiet Crisis" programming on the arts and the economy. It was mildly terrifying, but turned out to be a pretty interesting discussion. |
