Sparkplug Books: January 2011

Lisa Mangum and I are co-teaching a class called World Comics at the Independent Publishing Resource Center. Annie Murphy and Clio Reese Sady will be teaching Elements of Graphic Narrative. The classes are beginning on January 17th. We've got some room left in the classes and the IPRC has opened it up to anyone interested. Our class will be from 6-9pm on Mondays and Annie/Clios will run from 6-9pm on Wednesdays. We'd like to fill it up if possible so please pass this on as much as you can (tweet away). Here is a basic write up of the class but I'd love to answer any and all questions. To register for the class write iprcworkshops@gmail.comt.

The classes are $635 each. This includes thirteen 3-hour workshop/classes, a membership to the IPRC and a membership to Em-Space, plus a few field trips and other out-of-class activities. It'll be great!

Sign up at: http://www.iprc.org/certificates/certificate-program-2#more-750
(scroll down to the bottom for application)

World Comics – Winter/Spring 2011- IPRC Comics Program, Semester II: Development

Instructors: Lisa Mangum and Dylan Williams

Manga, Manhua, Manhwa, Bande Dessinee, BD, Bilderstreifen, Historietas, Benzi Desenate, Quadrinhos, Torietas, Tebos, Fumetti, Komiks, Comix, Stripovi, Graphic Novels, & Comic Books

Class Description: This is a discussion based workshop covering narrative art and comics traditions throughout the world. During the course, you will come across different approaches to storytelling and image-making and become familiar with comics scenes across the globe. Additionally, our class will make contact with comics artists in other communities and facilitate cross-border networks. The study of this work will correspond with the further development and understanding of your own style and the creation of a completed comic to be published the following semester.

Goals:

To develop awareness, appreciation, and historical understanding for narrative art and comics traditions from around the world
To draw inspiration from the work we study in class and discover new approaches for your own work
To identify and better understand your own style and be able to situate it within the diversity of comics and narrative art at large
To make contact with artists abroad and initiate cross-border collaborations & sharing

Sample of Weekly Topics:

Graphic narratives (ikons, frescoes, Egyptian/Sumerian reliefs, SE Asian temple art)
Comics and community: The Balkans
Comics as sub-culture: relationship to street art, protest art, activism
Reflecting ourselves: US comics through eyes of the world
Comics and colonialism: Franco-Belgian, North Africa, Dutch, Indonesian
Comics as resistance: Argentina and South America
The “Other:” Orientalism and Middle Eastern Comics
The Market, Comics and the State: Scandinavia, Canada and Germany
Exchange and New Engineering: Post-War Japanese and American Comics

Expectations:

Post to the class blog each week
Finished comic by the end of 13 weeks
Finished report and zine on comics scene or artist of your choice, due week 10
Reading and art homework most weeks

A Note about Teaching Method/Classroom Dynamic: Lisa and Dylan believe in an open, non-hierarchical, collaborative, and cooperative approach to learning. We are committed to sharing, discussing and exploring areas that are of interest to both artists and facilitators. In this class, we will be discussing challenging, unfamiliar work that may contain offensive imagery and language. When discussing work that is difficult to get a grasp on and pushes us out of our comfort, it is of the greatest importance that we create a classroom which affords each of us the space to explore and try-out new ideas, while respecting each other’s experiences and opinions. We will encourage a classroom environment that is based on these principles and in keeping with the IPRC’s goals and expectations.

Elements of Graphic Narrative

Instructors: Annie Murphy and Clio Reese Sady

Wednesday nights, 6:00pm-9:00 pm, starting January 17th at the IPRCmurphylawless@gmail.com, cliosady@gmail.com

For one reason or another, we are all intrigued by comics—or at least drawn to create them. In this class we will investigate the motivation behind our and other's creation of graphic narrative.Often we are told that comics is a uniquely American art form, something that developed in the last120 years or so. In the Elements of Graphic narrative class, we will dispel this myth by tracing the history of the art form back hundreds and thousands of years.

Another myth that predominates among many comics historians is that only straight white men created comics up till just recently. Our class will dispel that myth by highlighting the graphic narrative work of women, people of color, and queers, examining lesser-known graphic novels and narratives of the last hundred years. We will study comics and graphic novels that have been well-received by audiences in recent years, directing our attention to the themes that these seminal works have in common. Then we will follow those themes like bread crumbs back through the entire history of graphic narrative.

In Elements of Graphic Narrative you will be asked to discuss and define what it is that drew you to comics as an art form in the first place. We will be asking what it is about your own perspective that makes your version of storytelling unique—and what traditions of graphic narrative your comics hearken to and build off of. While keeping a sense of humor, we will recognize the serious power inherent in the creation of art and discuss the social responsibility of each of us as artists.The class will be structured by subject groups, focusing on one group for one or two weeks at a time:

(Week One) Intro class

(Week Two) Focus: Autobio

(Week Three) Focus: Women's Autobio

(Week Four) Focus: Biographical

(Week Five) Focus: Fictionalography

(Week Six) Focus: Reportage/propaganda

(Week Seven) Focus: Propaganda/reportage

(Week Eight) Focus: Collective memory/documentation

(Week Nine) Focus: Dreams/Madness

(Week Ten) Focus: Mythology/Sacred Images

(Weeks 11-13) Seminar

There will 3 weeks at the end of the semester where we can devote class time to critique/feedback seminars. These will be customized to the needs of the class at that time.The class will be discussion-based: participation in class and engagement with visiting artists is essential, as is any required reading or out-of-class research.

Comics assignments and/or long-term projects will be arranged with students on an individual basis.We will have several visitors coming to discuss their work coinciding with the themes for that week.There will be one or two mandatory field trips.Visitors thus far include Lillian Pitt, Joe Sacco, T. Edward Bak, Dana Ullman and a couple more. Additional visiting artists TBA

Recurring discussion themes: graphic narrative as survival and/or resistance. Graphic narrative as documentation, recorded history and proof of existence. Oral history in graphic narrative. Subjective narrative in comics and history in general. The legitimacy of subjective reality as 'history'. The power of images. The individual motivation behind the creation of comics and other graphic narratives. We will see and discuss how often graphic narratives fall under more than one of the subject groupings.The significance of comics as an art form and communication device.

The following is a list of comics, artists and art forms that will be referenced in class: Maus, the Golem's Mighty Swing, From Hell, Berlin, Love and Rockets, Alison Bechdel, Marjane Satrapi, Phoebe Gloeckner, Aline Kominsky-Crumb, Charlotte Salamon, Mine Okubo, JoanSfar, Frida Khalo, Jose Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera, Posada, Retablos, European iconography, theTarot, William Blake, Illuminated manuscripts, the Bayeaux Tapestry, cave paintings, 'rock art', LillianPitt, Pablita Velarde, Yoshitaka Kiyama, Lynda Barry, Zotom, Making Medicine, ledger art, year counts, Kyle Baker, Trina Robbins, Baba Wague Jiakite, Joe Sacco, Sabrina Jones, Broadsides, history of street literature, Real Cost of Prisons Project, use of comics in the military, Mark Trail, Grandma Moses, Fort Thunder, Paper Rad, Max Ernst, Maurice Sendak, David B, Max Klinger, Windsor McKay, Jackie Ormes, and many more.

Bios: Annie Murphy was born and raised in Portland, Oregon. After writing zines about ghosts and mental health for years, she turned to comics. Annie won a Xeric Grant in 2008 for her comic I Still Live:Biography of a Spiritualist, has been co-working for the past three years on the Collective Tarot (now in its second printing), and contributed a comic to When Words Run Dry: a zine for people with chronic pain and their allies. Annie is currently editing the comics anthology Gay Genius (out this Spring from Sparkplug and Gay Genius).

Clio Reese Sady is an illustrator and tattooer living and working in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her comics have been published in Maximum RocknRoll and her posters have been wheat pasted on the streets of the Bay Area. Sady collaborated in the creation of the Collective Tarot (Eberhardt: 2008,2010) and she is currently drafting a comic about squatter’s rights in a dystopian Californian cityscape.