Thomas Woodruff, Chair of the BFA Illustration and Cartooning Department, presents a series of new paintings called “The Four Temperament Variations,” inspired by the ancient belief that the body and mind are controlled by four mysterious, colored fluids. In addition to exploring the humors, Woodruff’s work also investigates genre painting such as still-life, portrait, and landscape. On view at P.P.O.W., 535 West 22 Street, 3rd Fl, through February 4.
Sarah Sze (MFA 2007 Fine Arts) explores the potential and possibilities of drawing as a medium in her current exhibition “Infinite Line.” Through a series of lithographs, silkscreens, graphite, ink, and collaged drawings that focus on memory and personal experience, and new drawings that highlight the complexity, intricacy, and painstakingly detailed character of her sculptural practice, Sze creates rich compositions that blossom, morph, and bloom again and again through a single line. On view at Asia Society, 725 Park Avenue, through March 25.
Inspired by Classical European portraiture, the paintings in Stan Narten’s (MFA 2008 Fine Arts) “Three Pound Universe” are at once abstract and literal. The exhibition takes its name from a concept in philosophy and neuroscience that imagines the known universe existing as a sole construct of the brain and culminating in all feeling, perception, distortion and illusion. On view at Kravets Wehbly, 512 West 21 Street, through February 18.
The Golden Ass of Lucius Apuleius (David R. Godine, Inc. 2011), story by M.D. Usher and illustrations by BFA Illustration and Cartooning faculty member Tom Motley: Adapted for children by Usher, this classic tale centers on the misadventures of a young man obsessed with magic who mistakenly turns himself into a donkey. According to the publisher, “Motley’s lively, thoroughly contemporary drawings capture the boisterous, see-sawing plot, while wittily quoting any number of graphic predecessors.”
Orcs: Forged for War (First Second 2011), story by Stan Nicholls and illustrations by Joe Flood (BFA 2002 Illustration and Cartooning): Through highly detailed drawings, Flood brings to life the brutal warrior orcs that inhabit the fantasy landscape of Nicholls’ graphic novel, which has drawn comparisons to Frank Miller’s 300.
Life Dressing: The Idiosyncratic Fashionistas (self published, 2011) by current MFA Illustration as Visual Essay student Joana Avillez: As part of a semester-long project at SVA, Avillez focused her attention and cartooning skills on style icons The Idiosyncratic Fashionistas, whose motto is “Growing Old with Verve.” The result is Life Dressing, an illustrated book that chronicles the adventures of the art-loving duo.
With numerous satellite fairs going strong in Miami during Art Basel Miami Beach this year, SVA alumni were much in evidence throughout the city. At NADA, held at the landmark Deauville Hotel on the beach, a small canvas by alumnus and BFA Illustration and Cartooning Department faculty member Keith Mayersonat Derek Eller’s booth stood out from geometric abstraction and gesturalism on view nearby. The Invisible Exports booth had heads turning with Lisa Kirk’s (BFA 1991 Fine Arts) twin floor “speakers” and Paul Gabrielli’s (BFA 2005 Fine Arts) hair-dryer-meets-hand-dryer.
The Wynwood design district was bustling again with enough pop-up galleries and special events to make New Yorkers and Los Angelenos envious. At Scope, Artists Wanted exhibited Yuhi Hasegawa (MFA 2009 Fine Arts) as the winner of Art Takes London 2011 Prize. Yuhi was first introduced to Miami art audiences in SVA’s booth at Aqua Art Miami in 2009. New York’s Like A Spice Gallery showed Matt Stone (MFA 2010 Fine Arts) and Jason Bard Yarmosky (BFA 2010 Illustration), both of whom had their Miami debut last year at SVA’s booth at Aqua Art Miami, along with alumni Jenny Morgan (MFA 2008 Fine Arts) and Reuben Negron (MFA 2004 Illustration as Visual Essay).
This year also saw the return of Seven, a standout satellite fair in Wynwood that is produced through a collaboration by 7 New York galleries. SVA was represented by George Boorujy(MFA 2002 Illustration as Visual Essay), BFA Visual and Critical Studies Department faculty member and alumnus Amy Wilson (BFA 1995 Fine Arts) and Michelle Matson(BFA 2005 Fine Arts)–fresh off her appearance on Bravo TV’s Work of Art.
At Pulse, which was held at Miami’s historic Ice Palace, Michael Combs (MFA 1996 Illustration) was exhibited at Jonathan Ferrari, Simen Johan (BFA 1996 Photography) at Yossi Milo, Joe Fig (MFA 2002 Fine Arts) was at Christin Tierney, Donna Sharrett (BFA 1984 Fine Arts) at Pavel Zabouk, Jason Bard Yarmosky (BFA 2010 Illustration) and Martin Witfooth (MFA 2008 Illustration as Visual Essay) at Lyons Wier; and Jaime Ferreyros (BFA 1985 Media Arts) showed iPhone photography at Miami’s Independent Thinkers, a satellite fair held at Awarehouse.
SVA also exhibited a selection of work by 8 recent alumni at Aqua Art Miami; click here for details. To read other Briefs reports from Miami, click here.
For more images from Art Basel Miami Beach and beyond, or to post photos of your Miami art experience, visit SVA’s Facebook page.
Images: Works by alumni Paul Gabrielli (left) and Lisa Kirk (right) at Invisible Exports’ booth at NADA, photo Michael Grant; alumnus Yuhi Hasegawa at SCOPE, photo courtesy Artists Wanted.
SVA and the BFA Illustration and Cartooning Department have forged into pioneering new territory with the launch of INK, the world’s first 100% student-run, exclusively digital comics publication, available as a free iPad app at iTunes. INK aims to focus primarily on showcasing the work of students from across SVA’s comics community alongside alumni and faculty, but also hopes to provide students with the real-world experience of publishing their work professionally.
The inaugural Fall issue of INK (now available), edited by Amedeo Turturro and Trent Thompson, features faculty members Joey Cavalieri, Klaus Jansen, and Nick Bertozzi, as well as student contributions from Eric Arroyo, Ian Bertram, Pablo Castro, Kat Fajardo, Jose Feliciano, Pierce Hargan, Lucretia Hoagland and Mike Luckas.
For more information, visit www.sva-ink.com; To download the current issue for free, visit iTunes.
SVA Launches INK, the World’s First Student-Run Digital Comics Magazine
SVA and the BFA Cartooning department have forged into pioneering new territory with the launch of INK, the world’s first 100% student-run, exclusively digital comics publication, available as a free iPad app at iTunes. INK aims to focus primarily on showcasing the work of students from across SVA’s comics community alongside alumni and faculty, and also hopes to provide students with the real-world experience of publishing their work professionally.
The inaugural Fall issue of INK (available now) was edited by Amedeo Turturro and Trent Thompon and features current faculty members Joey Cavalieri, Klaus Jansen, and Nick Bertozzi, as well as student contributions from Eric Arroyo, Ian Bertram, Pablo Castro, Kat Fajardo, Jose Feliciano, Pierce Hargan, Lucretia Hoagland, and Mike Luckas.
In addition to being faculty members of the BFA Illustration and Cartooning Department, Jessica Abel and Matt Madden are also the editors of The Best American Comics series. Comic Book Resources recently caught up with the real life couple to discuss what kind of work grabs their attention, trends in the world of comics, students at SVA, and much more. Here’s an excerpt from the interview:
CBR News: How did you both first become involved in the Best American Comics series and what exactly is your role as series editors?
Jessica Abel: I was approached by the then-house editor from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt who asked me to take over the series editor job. I said I would do it if I could get help from Matt. What that means is that we are responsible for collecting and reviewing as many comics published by North Americans as possible and choosing the short list, basically, to send to a guest editor. And then we do a lot of administrative work and other stuff that’s not worth getting into, but that’s the main gist of the job.
CBR News: Having done this for a few years, is there anything that stands out as far as larger trends you’ve seen in recent years?
Matt Madden: Michael DeForge. He’s a new trend. We’d never heard of them two years ago. He’s in his early twenties and is one of these rare talents who I’m sure has been working at it since he was very young, but he seemed to spring fully formed two years ago. It seems like every week there’s an amazing innovative new comic from him appearing in some anthology or website, on his blog. It’s bewildering to keep up with. That’s the big new trend in comics.
Abel: We’ve done it for a while and there was definitely a major trend a few years ago for everything to be cute. Even things you wouldn’t really expect to be cute were done nice and cute. That’s fading a little bit. There’s not as much cute for cute’s sake stuff. And now there’s definitely a lot of people who were very influenced by the successors of the Fort Thunder movement. There’s a lot of that stuff coming down now. You see these told very straight kind of space stories—
Madden: —With Dungeons and Dragons elements thrown in. Video games, role playing, stoner humor thrown in with some hip hop references. That [description] would be a parody of it—
Abel: —And a really simple drawing style. Almost childish—
Madden: —Which is clearly directly influenced by Brian Chippendale and Mat Brinkman and CF, Christopher Forgues.
BFA Fine Arts Department faculty member TM Davy (BFA 2002 Illustration) presents his latest series of paintings, “Epithalamium,” on view at Exile Gallery in Berlin through November 12. Each painting in this collection of private scenes provides glimpses into the personal life of both the subjects and the artist.
Joanna Wezyk (MFA 2008 Fine Arts) also has a new solo exhibition, “In Wonderland,” at La Galerie Pfriem in Paris through November 25. In these paintings, Wezyk juxtaposes characters from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland against the backdrop of Yellowstone National Park.
“It’s a Poor Sort of Memory that Only Works Backwards,” a new show by Johan Grimonprez (MFA 1992 Fine Arts), is on display at S.M.A.K. Ghent in Belgium through August 2012. Lying on the boundary between art and cinema, Grimonprez’s exhibition features several of his films, including dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y (1997) and Double Take (2009), and marks the premiere of his latest film, …because superglue is forever.
BFA Illustration and Cartooning Department faculty member Keith Mayerson has organized an exhibition at the Maruani & Noirhomme Gallery in Brussels called “8 Americans,” featuring work by Hilary Berseth, Joe Bradley, Ann Craven, Francesca DiMattio, Wade Guyton, Jacob Kassay, Dana Schutz, as well as himself. On view through October 29. Additionally, Mayerson will be exhibiting cover art and pages from the graphic novel Horror Hospital Unplugged, which he created with author Dennis Cooper. Through November 12 at the Derek Eller Gallery, 615 West 27 Street in New York City.
Image: TM Davy, Familiar, oil on canvas, 40.6 x 35,5 cm, 2011. Courtesy of the artist.
The Wall Street Journal recently profiled SVA alumnus Ray Villafane (BFA 1992 Illustration), who by day sculpts toy action-figures for companies like DC Comics, but by night—during the month or so leading up to Halloween—turns his sculpting knife to pumpkins. Headlined “The Picasso of Pumpkin Carving,” the article highlights Villafane’s ability to create elaborately detailed Jack-o’-Lanterns, a skill that has earned him an invitation to the White House, victories on two separate Food Network pumpkin-carving shows, and $2,500-per-day for carving gigs around the country.
Since the pumpkin season is short—and since the pumpkins themselves will shrivel quickly if left alone once cut into—Villafane often works through the night, sometimes for up to 12 hours on a single carving. “I cannot stop until I feel like I’ve conquered it,” he told the Wall Street Journal.
To read the full article, visit The Wall Street Journal. Watch a video about Villafane and his pumpkin carving process below.
Arts and culture blog Flavorwire recently compiled their list of “10 Disturbingly Brilliant Graphic Novels,” and the authors of three of those books are members of the SVA community: Art Spiegelman (faculty 1979 – 1986), Dash Shaw (BFA 2005 Illustration), and current BFA Illustration and Cartooning Department faculty member David Mazzucchelli. Here’s what Flavorwire’s Emily Temple had to say about their work.
Maus by Art Spiegelman: Based on the life of Art Spiegelman’s father, Vladek Spiegelman (who was a Polish Jew), the Pulitzer Prize-winning Maus is an unforgettable tale of one family’s survival of the Holocaust. Vladek Spiegelman’s “harrowing story is made both more accessible and more frightening” by his son’s illustrations, “which figure the Jews as mice and the Germans as Cats, a way of illuminating the absurdity of cut and dry racial distinctions. The book is deeply touching, deeply scary, and a must-read.”
BodyWorld by Dash Shaw: This futuristic story about a seemingly perfect suburban town with a serious drug problem bubbling beneath its surface unfolds when a smokable plant is discovered that allows users to inhabit each other’s minds and bodies. “But trust us, however weird that sounds to you, BodyWorld is weirder. Shaw’s pared-down style, white characters walking through a colored world, supports his crazy storytelling style, and we only hope we keep seeing more from him.”
Asterios Polyp by David Mazzucchelli: This “modernist opus” proves that “Mazzucchelli’s brilliance is in the deftness in which he exploits style as content, manipulating his beautiful blue, pink, and purple illustrations to show what they mean.” Case in point: The “staunchly unemotional Asterios,” who holds firm to the opinion that anything lacking function is merely decorative, “boasts a 2-D head when talking to his fully formed (and emotionally complex) ex-wife.”
Two separate New York Times articles recently focused on SVA alumni that were participating in the 2011 New York Comic Con. “Drawn Together by a Love of Cartooning” by Vincent M. Mallozi spotlighted Raina Telgemeier (BFA 2002 Illustration) and Dave Roman (BFA 1999 Cartooning), who met at SVA over 10 years ago and are now married. Telgemeier, who creates books aimed at young girls and is the author of Smile, was at Comic Con to sign copies of Nursery Rhyme Comics, which she contributed to. While Roman, who writes fantasy and adventure books aimed at young boys, was at the convention to sign copies of his latest book, Astronaut academy: Zero Gravity. “As kids, Raina and I loved to draw and tell stories, and now we’re trying to inspire that passion in other kids,” Roman told the Times. “What we’re doing now is just a continuation of the one thing from our childhood that we loved most.”
In his article “More Than Just Comic Books, but Plenty of Those, Too,” George Gene Gustines caught up with cartoonist Sara Varon (MFA 2002 Illustration as Visual Essay), who was at Comic Con to sign copies of her new book Bake Sale. Gustines called Varon “an emerging talent in the independent-comics scene” and Bake Sale—about the odd friendship between a cupcake, an eggplant, a brown egg and an avocado—“trippy.” When asked if she thinks about her audience much when creating her work, Varon said, “I just want to make what I make.”
Feeding the Dragon: A Culinary Travelogue Through China with Recipes (Andrews McMeel Publishing 2011) by Nate Tate (BFA 2006 Graphic Design) and Mary Kate Tate: With little more than two backpacks, a camera, and a tarp, Mandarin-speaking American brother and sister Nate and Mary Kate Tate traveled more than 9,700 miles throughout China to create a visual narrative of food and culture, all in the name of discovering the country’s best recipes. To learn more about the book and the trip, visit the Feeding the Dragon Web site.
GREY (Loaded Barrel Studios) by Jared Barel (MFA Design 2005), Jordan Barel and Alex Goz: This “live action” graphic novel weaves a twisted tale of horror, science fiction, drama and intrigue. GREY follows the story of John Mack, a former New York City cop who moves to the country in hopes of living a more quiet life. To his surprise, he soon discovers that small town life isn’t always what it seems when an alien arrives and disrupts things. Watch a trailer for GREY below.
Thomas Woodruff, Chair of the BFA Illustration and Cartooning Department, presents a series of new paintings called “The Four Temperament Variations,” inspired by the ancient belief that the body and mind are controlled by four mysterious, colored fluids. In addition to exploring the humors, Woodruff’s work also investigates genre painting such as still-life, portrait, and landscape. On view at P.P.O.W., 535 West 22 Street, 3rd Fl, through February 4.
