Our Slate of Fall 2013 Visiting Artists

Wouldn’t ya know, this coming Fall’s Visiting Artist Seminar Series at the Center for Cartoon Studies is going to be a juicy one!

The Visiting Artist Seminar Series at the Center for Cartoon Studies invites guest artists to talk about a wide array of tools and techniques and their own approach to their work.

Have a look at who’ll be passing through White River Junction, why don’tcha?

Gene Luen Yang

Gene Luen Yang began drawing comic books in the fifth grade. In 1997, he received a Xeric Grant for Gordon Yamamoto and the King of the Geeks, his first comics work. He has since written and drawn a number of titles, including Duncan’s Kingdom, The Rosary Comic Book, Prime Baby and Animal Crackers. American Born Chinese, his first graphic novel from First Second, was a National Book Award finalist, as well as the winner of the Printz Award and an Eisner Award. He also won an Eisner for The Eternal Smile, a collaboration with Derek Kirk Kim. Recently, he has been working on the comics series Avatar: The Last Airbender. His new book  Saints (Boxers & Saints) debuts this September!

Chris Ware

Chris Ware was born in Omaha, Nebraska in 1967. He moved to San Antonio Texas at 16 and went to the University of Texas in Austin. There he began publishing a weekly strip in the local paper. Art Spiegelman saw his strip and called the sophomore and gave the unknown cartoonist 4 pages of RAW. He moved to Chicago in the early 90s and began publishing in the pages of The Chicago alt weekly New City the strip known as The Acme Novelty Library. This critically acclaimed strip, which won several comics awards during the 1990s, is where Chris honed his distinctive style. From this strip emerged the graphic novel Jimmy Corrigan – the Smartest Kid on Earth which received the Guardian First Book Award in 2001 and the American Book Award in 2000 and the prestigious French comics award “L’Alph Art” award in 2003.

Chris is also one of America’s most respected popular artists and his work has appeared in many international art exhibits, and in 2002, at home in the Whitney Art Museum of New York.

Ananth Panagariya and Yuko Ota

Ananth Panagariya is a writer, designer and reader who has produced work for Oni Press, First Second and Dark Horse Inc., including comics, t-shirt & ad design and production work. He writes constantly, and is usually putting pencil to paper, analog or otherwise.

Yuko Ota is a cartoonist and illustrator who has worked with publishers like Oni Press, Dark Horse Inc., Lerner Publishing and Red5. She draws on the subway, in coffee shops, on the living room couch and in her cozy home office somewhere in Brooklyn, NY.

Panagariya and Ota work together on their whimsical slice-of-life comic, Johnny Wander. Johnny Wander Vol. 1: Don’t Burn the House Down came out in September 2010, followed up by Johnny Wander Vol. 2: Escape to New York in December 2011. It updates twice a week and can be read online at johnnywander.com.

Lyra Hill

Lyra Hill is a filmmaker, cartoonist, performer, and organizer based in Chicago. Lyra is a member of the collaborative comics group Trubble Club, and runs a series of performative comix readings called Brain Frame. Her comics have been published in Lumpen, Chromazoid, The Land Line, Red Lightbulbs, CAKE Anthology, and Pop Serial, and her films have screened both locally and internationally.

Marshall Arisman

The paintings and drawings of Marshall Arisman have been widely exhibited, both internationally and nationally. His work may be seen in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum, at the National Museum of American Art and the Smithsonian Institution, as well as in many private and corporate collections.

Arisman’s original graphic essay, “Heaven Departed,” in which paintings and drawings describe the emotional and spiritual impact of nuclear war on society, was published in book form by Vision Publishers (Tokyo, 1988).

Chairman of the M.F.A. degree program at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, Marshall Arisman was the first American invited to exhibit his artwork in mainland China. His series, “Sacred Monkeys,” appeared at the Guang Dong Museum of Art in April 1999.

Arisman is the subject of a full-length documentary film directed by Tony Silver titled “Facing the Audience: The Arts of Marshall Arisman.” The film had its premier showing at the 2002 Santa Barbara Film Festival.

Ariel Bordeaux

Ariel Bordeaux is the author of Deep Girl, a self-published mini-comic, No Love Lost, a graphic novella published by Drawn & Quarterly, and Raisin Pie, co-authored with Rick Altergott and published by Fantagraphics.

Robyn Chapman

Robyn Chapman is  the proprietor of Paper Rocket Minicomics. She is also a cartoonist and an educator and former assistant editor at Graphic Universe, the graphic novel imprint of Lerner Publishing Group. Her cartooning workshops have brought her to classrooms at the School of Visual Arts, the New School, Wellesley College, and the University of Iowa.

She spent five years at The Center for Cartoon Studies, initially as their first fellow and later as their program coordinator and a faculty member.

Joe Quinones

Joe Quinones is the artist behind Paul Dini’s upcoming Black Canary & Zatanna graphic novel, Bloodspell. He is perhaps best known for his work on the Eisner award-winning Wednesday Comics, in which he contributed a Green Lantern tale along with writer Kurt Busiek. Joe is also known for his work on Spider-man, Star Wars, and Harley Quinn.

Kriota Willberg

Kriota Willberg has a BA in Dance: Performance and Choreography from Northeastern Illinois University, and an MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts from Goddard College. Through drawing, writing, performance, and needlework she explores the intersection of body sciences with creative practice.

Described by one of her students as “Lots of fun and freakishly knowledgeable,” Kriota Willberg teaches anatomy classes for Pilates and yoga programs in New York and nationally. She has taught anatomy in the dance departments of Marymount Manhattan College, Bard College, and NYU (Dance Education), and anatomy for cartoonists and artists at The Center For Cartoon Studies, the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Arts, and the Alliance for the Visual Arts. She also taught pathology and massage techniques at the Swedish Institute College of Health Sciences.

T. Edward Bak

T. Edward Bak was born in Denver, Colorado in 1970. He wrote and drew the comic strip “Service Industry” for three years in the Athens newspaper Flagpole. His comics have also been published by Bodega Distribution and Sparkplug Comic Books and he has contributed to anthologies like Project: Romantic (AdHouse Books), Studygroup 12, Drawn & Quarterly Showcase and Houghton-Mifflin’s Best American Comics 2008. –

Suzy Becker

An author, artist, educator, and entrepreneur, Suzy Becker began her career as an award-winning advertising copywriter, and then founded the Widget Factory, a greeting card company. She entered the world of books with what would become the internationally bestselling All I Need to Know I Learned from My Cat, now in the Double-Platinum Collector’s Edition All I Need to Know I Learned from My Cat (And Then Some). Suzy has since written and illustrated My Dog’s the World’s Best Dog, I Had Brain Surgery What’s your Excuse?, Manny’s Cows, Books Are for Reading and Kids Make It Better: A Write-in, Draw-in Journal. Her books, greeting cards and work in print and TV advertising have earned her numerous design and writing awards.