my-server
← Wiki

Festival of Cartoon Art

The Festival of Cartoon Art was a triennial conference on the art of comics held at Ohio State University from 1983 to 2013. The conference was produced by what is now known as the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum.

Featuring two to three days of lectures, panel discussions, exhibitions, and receptions, the Festival attracted cartoonists, comics scholars, fans, collectors, and students. Leading cartoonists spoke at the festival, including Lynda Barry, Milton Caniff, Will Eisner, Jules Feiffer, Ben Katchor, Patrick Oliphant, Jeff Smith, Art Spiegelman, Garry Trudeau, and Bill Watterson. Exhibitions were generally shown at what is now known as the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum as well as other venues around Columbus, Ohio.

History

The inaugural Festival was held on October 14, 1983, and was augmented by three related exhibitions organized by Lucy Shelton Caswell of the school's Library for Communication and Graphic Arts.

In late 1994, Universal Press Syndicate donated $50,000 to underwrite the 1995 Festival of Cartoon Art, which was dedicated to celebrating the centennial of the American comic strip. The featured exhibition was "See You in the Funny Papers: American Life as Reflected in the Newspaper Comic Strip," curated by Caswell.

The theme of the 2001 festival was "Historic Virtuoso Cartoonists": an exhibit of the same name was shown Aug. 26-Sept. 30 at the Columbus Recreation and Parks Department Cultural Arts Center; and the exhibit "Calvin and Hobbes, Sunday Pages 1985-1995" was shown at OSU's Cartoon Research Library Reading Room Gallery.

The theme of the 2004 festival was "Deletions, Omissions and Erasures". The theme of the 2007 festival was "Graphic Storytelling" — exhibitions associated with the festival celebrated the centennial of Milton Caniff's birth.

The 2010 Festival featured a one-day symposium titled Humor, Play and Identity in Comics: Academic Perspectives. In addition to the usual panels and presentations, Art Spiegelman gave a presentation as part of his residency at OSU's Wexner Center for the Arts. Other events included a tribute to Jay Kennedy, the late editor-in-chief of King Features Syndicate (who had bequeathed his collection of underground comix to OSU's Cartoon Library & Museum); and celebrations of the 100th anniversary of George Herriman's Krazy Kat.

The final Festival, held mid-November 2013, was titled "Grand Opening Festival of Cartoon Art," as it celebrated the opening of the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum's new home in the renovated Sullivant Hall. Exhibitions on view during the festival were "Treasures from the Collections of the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum" and "Substance and Shadow: The Art of the Cartoon".

Later developments

In mid-November 2014, the International Comic Arts Forum (ICAF) held its (mostly yearly) conference at OSU's Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum. The Comics Studies Society, the first U.S. association dedicated to supporting the study of graphic narrative and sequential art, was launched at that year's ICAF. Guests and speakers included John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, Nate Powell, Phoebe Gloeckner, Hanneriina Moisseinen, Jeff Smith, Justin Green, Carol Tyler, Dash Shaw, and Tom Spurgeon.

The Festival of Cartoon Art was succeeded in 2015 by the annual comics festival Cartoon Crossroads Columbus.

Event history

Festival exhibitions

1983
1986
1989
1992
  • "Political Satire by Oliver Harrington" (Sept. 13–Nov. 7: Martin Luther King Jr. Complex for Performing and Cultural Arts) — Examples of Harrington's comic strip character Bootsie, as well as his magazine cartoons
  • "'Illusions: Ethnicity in American Cartoon Art" (Oct. 26–Dec. 11: OSU Main Library, Philip Sills Exhibition Hall) — Examination of racial and ethnic stereotypes in cartoons from the past 150 years
1995
  • "Anything Can Happen in a Comic Strip: Centennial Reflections on an American Art Form" (July 30–Aug. 27: Columbus Recreation and Parks Department Cultural Arts Center)
  • "The Face Behind the Laugh: Cartoonists' Self-Caricatures from the Collections of Mark J. Cohen" (July 30-Aug. 27: Columbus Recreation and Parks Department Cultural Arts Center) — Originally shown at the Cartoon Art Museum (San Francisco) Nov. 25, 1988–Mar. 4, 1989
  • "See You in the Funny Papers: American Life as Reflected in the Newspaper Comic Strip" (Aug. 1–Oct. 27: Cartoon, Graphic, and Photographic Arts Research Library — Curated by Lucy Shelton Caswell
  • "Sequential Art: The Next Step" (Aug. 24–Oct. 14: Martin Luther King Jr. Complex for Performing and Cultural Arts) — The work of young, mostly African American, cartoonists Darrell Gates, Grey, Hannibal King, Louis Small, Jr., Jeff Smith, and Robert Stull; curated by Stull. Later traveled to the National Center of Afro-American Artists in Boston; the Words & Pictures Museum in Northampton, MA; the Afro-American Cultural Center in Charlotte, NC; and the Tubman Museum in Macon, GA.
1998
2001
2004
  • "Gillray's Legacy" (Sept. 15–Dec. 10: Philip Sills Gallery, William Oxley Thompson Library) — Curated by Lucy Shelton Caswell; the art of James Gillray
  • "Drawing Fire: Controversial Comics by Milton Caniff" (Oct. 1, 2004–Jan. 14, 2005: Cartoon Research Library reading room gallery)
2007
  • "Rarities: Unusual Works from the Caniff Collection" (Sept. 4, 2007–Jan. 19, 2008: Cartoon Research Library)
  • "Spotlight on Milton Caniff" (Oct. 23, 2007–Mar. 23, 2008: Ohio Historical Society)
2010
2013
  • "Treasures from the Collections of the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum" (Nov. 14–Nov. 17: Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum Treasures Gallery) — Original artwork for Dick Tracy, Peanuts, Calvin and Hobbes, Bone, and more
  • "Substance and Shadow: The Art of the Cartoon" (Nov. 14–Nov. 17: Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum) — "Original art ... which dramatically reveals the various elements, methods, tools and techniques that cartoonists utilize, including caricature, character design, sequential panels, speech balloons, page layout, animation and storytelling."

See also

References

External links