Image: Daniel Clowes, Exhibition poster, 1999

Dive deeper into the world of Daniel Clowes through these curator-led gallery talks of the exhibitions Modern Cartoonist: The Art of Daniel Clowes and Eye of the Cartoonist: Daniel Clowes’s Selections from Comics History, on view at the Wexner Center for the Arts from May 17 – August 3, 2014.

Wexner Center Director of Film/Video David Filipi, in-house curator of both exhibitions, and Caitlin McGurk from the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum, will share their insights.  Please meet at the gallery entrance. Stay afterward for the 7:00 pm screening of Art School Confidential, an adaptation of a Clowes comic.

David Filipi is the Wexner Center’s Director of Film/Video. In addition to his extensive work organizing film series and retrospectives of established and emerging filmmakers, Filipi has taught animation history for Ohio State’s Film Studies Program since 2004 and is a member of Ohio State’s Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum advisory board. In the summer of 2008, Filipi co-curated Jeff Smith: Bone and Beyond—the first exhibition devoted to the famed comic book artist—which received national acclaim and coverage by such media outlets as PBS’s NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. In 2013, he curated Fantastic! The Comic Art of Sandy Plunkett for Ohio University’s Kennedy Museum of Art in Athens, OH. He received his master’s degree in film studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Caitlin McGurk is the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum’s Engagement Coordinator and works to cultivate and raise awareness of the library’s collection among students, comics communities, and the greater public. It is a mission she tackles with pleasure, sharing the treasures of the collection through social networking, classroom instruction and workshops, building relationships with contemporary cartoonists, and giving presentations at conferences and conventions. McGurk has also worked for the Center for Cartoon Studies’ Schulz Library, the Bulliet Comics Collection of Columbia University, and Marvel Comics. She has also written for Diamond Comics’Bookshelf magazine for educators and librarians, published her own comics, and remains active in the comics community at large.

Image: Daniel Clowes, Self-Portrait, 2010

Join Daniel Clowes and comics scholar Hillary Chute for a lively conversation about Clowes’s career – which includes such comics and graphic novels as Ghost World (1997), The Death-Ray (2011), and Wilson (2010) – and his role as a curator of Eye of the Cartoonist, on view at the Wexner Center for the Arts. Chute is a Neubauer Family Assistant Professor in the Department of English at the University of Chicago and author of Graphic Women:  Life Narrative and Contemporary Comics (2010) and Outside the Box:  Interviews with Contemporary Cartoonists (2014).

Clowes is the subject of Modern Cartoonist:  The Art of Daniel Clowes, a career-spanning survey, and of Eye of the Cartoonist:  Daniel Clowes’ Selections from Comics History, an exhibition of his influences, both on view at the Wexner Center from May 17 – August 3, 2014. Come before the talk and see them for free as part of Art Museum Day, a nationwide initiative of the Association of Art Museum Directors.

Veteran comics artist, writer, editor, publisher, and Center for Cartoon Studies instructor Stephen R. Bissette is perhaps best known for his landmark collaboration with writer Alan Moore and artists John Totleben and Rick Veitch on DC Comics’ Saga of the Swamp Thing (1983–87). Many credit that run as a catalyst to the demise of the Comics Code Authority (1954–2011), the mainstream comics industry’s self-regulatory institution formed in response to social, commercial, and Congressional pressure after the spring 1954 publication of Seduction of the Innocent by psychologist Dr. Fredric Wertham. On this 60th anniversary of Wertham’s book and the Comics Code’s initiation, Bissette reflects upon the controversy, launch, and impact of the Code and its eventual dismantling.

Additionally, we are thrilled to be making this announcement during the ongoing Will Eisner celebration this March, held annually in association with the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, the fighters of free speech in comics.

This event is FREE for all audiences.

Co-sponsored by the Wexner Center for the Arts and The Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum

Add this event to your calendar.

Images courtesy of the artist.

The Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum will be hosting a public opening reception for our new exhibitions featuring the work of Bill Watterson and Richard Thompson on Friday, March 21 from 6:00- 8:00 pm. While the artists will not be in attendance, it’s your chance to get a first glimpse at their extraordinary work. Light refreshments will be served. Please RSVP to cartoonevents@osu.edu and specify the March 21 event with the number of guests attending.

This event is free and open to the public.

As an added bonus, the Wexner Center for the Arts will be screening the documentary Dear Mr. Watterson at 4pm on Saturday, March 22, followed at 7pm by John Hubley at 100, a viewing of the incredible animation by the creator of Mr. Magoo.

Pittsburgh-based cartoonist Frank Santoro will deliver a lecture about his recent book Pompeii, focusing on the role of composition and layout in this modern tale of art, love, and rivalry set during the destruction of the ancient Roman city of Pompeii in 79CE. In this intimate presentation of his working methods, Santoro will expand on his approach to stretching the grid to the two-page spread and explain how his compositional method is inspired by modal jazz and timing – and how he is able to compose visually with harmonics.

Frank Santoro:  From Grid to Spread is an event organized by the Humanities Institute Pilot Working Group Rough Draft, led by Dani Leventhal (OSU Art) and Richard Fletcher (OSU Classics) and co-sponsored by the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum.

This event is FREE and OPEN TO THE PUBLIC. To ensure the availability of space, please RSVP to cartoonevents@osu.edu if you plan to attend and mention the “Frank Santoro event.”