Wendy Red Star Contemporary Native

Fall/Winter 2016, Vol. 25 - Text & Image: Mining Traditions from Hogarth to Spiegelman

Cover Scan_32.tif - featuring rubbing from 3d print derived from Joseph Lupo’s, “A DRUNK.” 2016, CMYK Silkscreen, 8” x 8” 2

Morgan Price President

Jonathan McFadden VICE PRESIDENT

Tracy Templeton 2nd VICE PRESIDENT

Breanne Trammell SECRETARY

Tonja Torgerson TREASURER

Edie Overturf Member at Large

Nick Santinover Member at Large 3 16 Joseph Lupo John Peña + Daily Geology Multi-disciplinary artist John Peña of Pittsburgh, PA is author of Daily Geology, an autobiograpical comic featuring a pithy and brutally honest look at the absurdity and splendor of the lived experience.

24 Brendan Baylor Wendy Red Star Brendan Baylor reviews Wendy Red Star’s fascinating works from the exhibition Contemporary Native Photographers and the Edward Curtis Legacy at the Portland Art Museum. This collection of works commenting on colonial gaze utilizes repurposed historical documentation transformed through collage, drawing, audio sampling, and other techniques.

32 Abbey Kleinert Acts of Hope “It’s hard to know what to do with messages of violence and fear,” writes Kleinert in response to a contemporary climate of injustice and miscommunication. Called to action by the wisdom of the screenprinting Nun, Corita Kent, and the shooting of Philando Castile, Kleinert worked collaboratively with a fellow graphic design graduate student to create a visual response to violence that considers context, color, texture, and transparency.

38 Ashton Ludden “CCD”, copper engraving and aquatint with a la poupée, 9” x 7.75”, 2015 39 Rubén Villegas “The Original Sin”, Screenprint, 7”x9”, 2016 40 Ken Wood “Writ Large, I”, Relief, 44”x40”, 2016 41 Ashton Ludden “Reap the Benefts”, relief engraving and screenprint, 11”x14”, 2015

42 Amze Emmons Hacking the Archive Emmons’ eloquent musings on the graphic and photographic works of Glenn Ligon, Erica Baum, R.L. Tillman, and Nate Larson & Marni Shindelman inspire thoughtful consideration on the roles of traditional printed media and digital means of communication in contemporary culture.

50 Joseph Lupo Interview with Christopher Sperandio Guest editor Joseph Lupo’s interview with Christopher Sperandio explores Sperandio’s process for creating comics like Pinko Joe, which combines his disappointment and anger “at the subversion of democracy by out-of-control capitalism” with his “love of old comics.” Sperandio emphasizes the importance of teaching effective communication, and the vital place that comics, as a medium that combines the use of images and text, plays in not only expressing ideas but in making us more receptive to the diverse world around us.

58 Ryan Standfest Chopped-Up Figures in Boxes with Shapes Coming Out of Their Mouths: Comic Strip Poetics Learning to draw through a study of comics and his daily dedication to craft, Standfest recounts the origin-story of his love for the comic in a voice so visceral, we wish to run to the nearest stack of comics and bury our face in that glorious scent of ink and old newspaper, gilded with breathtaking “miniature worlds” created through eloquent drawings and engaging narratives. 4

Morgan Price President

Morgan Price received his BFA from the University of Denver and his MFA in Printmaking from Wichita State University. He is currently an assistant professor of art at Illinois State University and an Associate Director of Normal Editions Workshop. Prior to coming to Illinois State University he taught at the University of Denver, Metropolitan State University of Denver, and the Kendall College of Art and Design. Mr. Price displays work nationally and internationally and some of his recent activities include completing the Tamarind Institute of Lithography Summer Aluminum Plate Workshop, participating in the Jentel Artist Residency Program, and collaborating on a number of professional printing projects with Normal Editions Workshop. When not teaching or printing he can typically be found riding his bicycle, thrift shopping, or gloating over his extensive collection of vintage shirts.

The spirit of generosity infusing the printmaking community is a constant inspiration to me. Artworks are traded, technical discoveries discussed, activities organized, and resources shared in a way that breeds friendship and camaraderie. The 2016 Conference in New Albany, IN and Louisville, KY showcased this marvelous attitude as printmakers from around the world convened for an extremely successful and collegial event. With the nation reeling from the conclusion of one of the most contentious and divisive presidential elections in recent history, attitudes of inclusiveness and magnanimity are all the more valuable.

From the time E.C. Cunningham brought me to my first MAPC conference in 2002, this organization and its leadership have played significant roles in my development as an artist and educator. As I start my term as President I would like to extend special thanks to Nancy Palmeri and all the wonderful board members with whom I served over the last two years for their hard work, dedication, and generosity. I am excited to work with a new board and we will strive to continue the proud tradition of this organization. Finally, to the members, I extend my sincere appreciation for your enthusiastic involvement, commitment, and contribution to the art of printmaking. 5

Hannah March Sanders Managing Editor

Hannah March Sanders is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Art and serves as the Area Head of Printmaking at Southeast Missouri State University. She is also the Letterpress Area Coordinator of Catapult Press an arts entrepreneur- ship venture, Catapult Creative House, in Cape Girardeau, MO. Hannah and her husband, Blake, operate orangebarrelindustries.com, an artist collaborative that organizes portfolio exchanges, exhibitions and other art events. She has exhibited work in group exhibitions across the globe in Estonia, Ireland, Japan, and New York. Recent solo and duo exhibition locations include University of St. Mary in Leavenworth, KS; College of the Sequoias in Visalia, CA; and the Gadsen Museum of Art in Gadsen, AL.

This issue was an exciting start to our new Guest Editorship Program! Our inau- gural guest editor, Joseph Lupo, Associate Professor of Art and Graduate Studies Coordinator at West Virginia University, did a fantastic job of recruiting, curating, and editing submissions along with the rest of our team. We also welcomed Matt Hopson-Walker, Assistant Professor of Art and Foundations Coordinator at Uni- versity of South Alabama, on as a new Co-editor for the journal on a three-year term. We thank Kristine Joy-Mallari for her years of service as she takes a step back to focus on her many beautiful art projects!

We began the Guest Editorship Program in our hopes to access a broader audience for each issue of the MAPC Journal, as well as to have a knowledgeable accomplice specific to each theme on board to curate content into an engaging collection of thoughts and images. Joe Lupo has been an amazing addition to our team for this issue. I am a huge fan of his visual work and gained even more respect for him through observation of his thoughtful process throughout the call and culling of this issue.

Lastly, my gratitude goes to the outgoing MAPC Board, especially President Nan- cy Palmeri. No issue was too big or too small for Nancy to lend a hand, from visions of what MAPC is and could be to stuffing the tote bags the night before the recent conference in New Albany/Louisville began. I look forward to working with the next board and planning for what will be a fun conference in Wyoming 2018! Hope to see you all there! 6

Matthew hopson-walker co-Editor

Born and raised in Fresno California, Matthew Hopson-Walker (proud owner of a very large rabbit) grew up reading comic books and dystopian science fiction novels. During a formative age he was exposed to movies such as Mad Max, To- tal Recall, Escape From New York, Blade Runner, and The Omega Man and many themes with in them show up in his work. After working as a janitor for several years he matriculated to the Kansas City Art Institute and received his BFA in Print- making in1998. After several years of playing in a heavy metal band and working at various liquor stores and bars, he then received his MA in 2002 followed by his MFA in 2003 both from the University of Iowa. In 2006 He was recipient of the James Phelan Award in Printmaking for given through the KALA Institute. Mat- thew Hopson-Walker is currently teaching printmaking and drawing at University of South Alabama. He has been included in over 100 juried and group exhibitions since 2006.

I am very thankful for having been asked to co-edit the MAPC Journal. In part I agreed to do it because MAPC has always held a place dear to my heart, ever since my first conference at St. Cloud, Minnesota. I saw some amazing exhibitions, was inspired by the open portfolio, met some fantastic printmakers, and most importantly I got to hang out with many of my print heroes. The conversations that I got to be part of have stuck with me to this day. They changed who I was as a student, helped me develop as a printmaker, and informed who I am as an artist. Printmaking has such a vibrant center that the Journal both arises from and feeds back into. I couldn’t pass up the chance to get a peek at what is being thought, written, and made by my peers. The range of ideas I’ve seen in the Journal since I first joined the MAPC in 2000 has always impressed me and to finally be part of the discussion of the ever-expanding world of printmaking makes my year. 7

ANITA JUNG Co-Editor

Anita Jung is one hell’a nasty woman and a professor at the University of Iowa. She received the Bachelor of Fine Arts from Arizona State University, and the Master of Fine Arts from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Anita has taught printmaking, drawing and installation courses at Illinois State University, Ohio University and the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. Despite Americans tending not to like ambitious women with strong and loud voices, she has been involved with professional fine art print organizations such as the Mid America Print Council and SGC International for over a quarter of a century.

In the face of global annihilation, she is excited about the MAPC journals new direction and the opportunity to work with the brilliant new editorial staff, Hannah Sanders and Matthew Hopson-Walker, in addition to the latest initiative of the guest editor that will bring a plethora of new voices and contributors to the Journal. She is particularly thrilled to have this fresh direction launched by Joe Lupo, as we return to the dark ages, in dire need of a never before imagined superhero. 8

Gregory Scott cook & Adrienne lee cook Art directors

A proud native of western Kentucky, Gregory Scott Cook received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Murray State University in 2010, his Master of Fine Arts from the University of Nebraska - Lincoln in 2013, and is currently an Assistant Profes- sor of Visual Communications and coordinator of Studio CreaTec at the Univer- sity of Texas - Arlington. A nationally and internationally shown artist, Scott works in the media of Print, Drawing, Audio Recording/Performance, and Installation - specializing in the creative use of emerging technology (making robots talk, sing, shoot lasers, draw-on and grind-away at things). Adrienne Cook grew up in a quiet suburb of Salt Lake City, Utah - she spent most of those years eavesdropping on her mother’s telephone conversations and then later repeating back to her the important details she forgot. Years later she would go on to leverage these skills into two degrees - a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Utah State University in 2010, and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Nebraska - Lincoln in 2015. Language, communication, and human interaction have remained a central focus in her artwork and in her research. Her work ranges from traditional printmaking and photographic processes to more digitally translated forms of art-making and textile art. Oh, and these two are married - that whole last-name thing isn’t coincidental.

Gee-whiz! I wish I could sling words together like Stan Lee on his Bullpen Bulletin Soapbox and deliver you “a dynamic display of dizzy doings, daring delineations, and dazzling descriptions designed to dispel your despair” but I don’t think I could whip up the panache necessary to make a just run at that station. I can say (with a degree of confidence, even!) that both Adrienne and I have had a fantastic time poring over the amazingly detailed, interesting, and engaging work passed along to us by our fearless editors, and we hope you enjoy our scanned, map-pinned, shifted, scaled, and scribbled version of the source material. We’re extremely proud to be among the first named art directors in this iteration of the journal, and cannot give enough thanks to Wes and Glenn at Tocco Creative for the beautiful and sturdy foundation they’ve built. We look forward to seeing all of your shining happy faces at the next conference, until then - excelsior! 9 10

Joseph Lupo Guest Editor

I am incredibly excited to serve as a guest editor for this edition of the MAPC Journal. Printmaking’s relationship with text and image dates back to an earlier and more democratic time in history. More recently, the combination of image and text has been used as a reason to consider print as a lesser form of art. Prints, comics, advertising and children’s books were not seen as prestigious art forms like painting, sculpture or literature where image and text are isolated. Fortu- nately, many contemporary printmakers have looked past these biases and have embraced this relationship.

My interests revolve around our preconceived notions of meaning when con- fronted with a familiar presentation of text and image. Advertising, magazines, and comics have inundated us with imagery that contains text for some time. We have expectations of what this kind of work should look like or mean. My favorite artists from the last fifty years manipulate those expectations and make us ques- tion how we digest and decipher information.

There were many good submissions to choose from. Every submission was valid and engaging, choosing between them was difficult. I hope our efforts paid off and you enjoy this issue... 11 12 13

Joseph Lupo received his BFA from Bradley University and his MFA from the University of Georgia. His work has been a part of over 80 different solo and group exhibitions and has been featured at the International Print Center of New York, The Contemporary Art Workshop in Chicago, the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, the Indianapolis Art Center, and The Contemporary Art Center in Atlanta. Joseph’s work is included in various permanent collections including the Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Duke University, the Denver Art Museum, the Museum of Texas Tech University, and the Spencer Museum of Art. Joseph served on the Executive Board of SGC International from 2006-2012, and served as the president from 2008-2010. He has received multiple awards and grants for his work as an academic including the “Honorary Member of the Council” award from SGCI (2014), “BIG XII Faculty Fellowship” (2013), “WVU Senate Research Grant” (2008 and 2009), “Excellence in Teaching” (2015), “Excellence in Service” (2014) and “Excellence in Research” (2013) awards from the WVU College of Cre- ative Arts.

To see more about Joseph Lupo and his work visit: josephlupo.com 14 15

Brendan Baylor Ken Wood

Brendan Baylor is an interdisciplinary artist explor- Ken Wood’s recent solo exhibitions include Scripta ing the politics and ecology of place and landscape. Volant (Written Words Fly) at the Print Center Phila- He currently holds the Hulings Teaching Fellowship delphia and Each to Other at Beverly in St Louis. He in Drawing and Printmaking at Northland College in has shown his work at the International Print Center Ashland, Wisconsin. He received his BA in Art from New York, the Luminary in St Louis, the Sidney Lar- Portland State University and MFA in Studio Art from son Gallery in Columbia, MO, Manifest Gallery in Cin- the University of Iowa. His work has been shown na- cinnati, Big Medium Gallery in Austin, Flatbed Press tionally and internationally in many venues including and Gallery in Austin, the Leedy-Voulkos Art Center in the Madison Museum of Contemporary; the Devos Art Kansas City, and the Aqua Art Fair in Miami. His work Museum; and the CONA Institute in Ljubljana, Slove- is included in the collections of Twitter, STL Venture nia. Works, and Rice University. brendanbaylor.com kenwoodstudio.com

Abbey Kleinert Amze Emmons

Abbey Kleinert is a teaching artist who lives and works Amze Emmons is a Philadelphia-based, multi-disci- in the Twin Cities, MN. She founded an artist collec- plinary artist with a background in drawing and print- tive and print studio Recess Press with fve buddies making. He has held solo exhibitions in, Boston, Chi- from art school and spent the six years between her cago, Philadelphia, and San Francisco, among other B.A. and MFA teaching art and working on creative locations. His work has been included in group exhibi- projects around the Twin Cities. She currently studies tions all over the place. Emmons has received numer- and teaches at the University of Minnesota College of ous awards. His work has received critical attention Design, where she’s working on her MFA in Graphic in The Huffngton Post, Itsnicethat.com, Coolhunt- Design. A native of the woods of WI, her life-long ing.com, New American Paintings, as well as many interest in the natural world inspires her printmaking, other print publications. He is currently an Associ- design, and teaching. ate Professor at Tyler School of Art at Temple Uni- versity. Emmons is also a a member of the art group Printeresting.org. Ashton Ludden

Ashton Ludden is a printmaker, educator and sign art- Ryan Standfest ist. She received her MFA in Printmaking from the Uni- versity of Tennessee in 2013 and her BFA in Engraving Ryan Standfest is a Detroit-based artist. He is the ed- Arts and Printmaking from Emporia State University itor-in-chief and publisher of ROTLAND PRESS, pre- in 2009. Ludden’s prints have been exhibited in gal- senting publications of humor and despair. Standfest leries nationally and internationally as well as at ani- holds an MFA in Printmaking from The University of mal education and welfare conferences. She teaches Iowa. He is currently a lecturer for the Stamps School printmaking and bookmaking workshops regionally of Art and Design at The University of Michigan, Ann and nationally. Arbor and an instructor at The College for Creative Studies, Detroit. Currently, Ludden teaches printmaking at Knoxville’s Community School of the Arts, is an artist member of ryanstandfest.com (studio) the Vacuum Shop Studios Collaborative, and the full- rotlandpress.com (publishing) time sign artist for Trader Joe’s in Knoxville, TN.

Rubén Villegas

Ruben is an artist and stand-up comedian based in Iowa City, Iowa. If you appreciate his brand of humor, follow him on instagram @theninesisters. 16

John Peña + Daily Geology

JOSEPH LUPO 17

John Peña has been writing the daily autobiographical comic Daily Geology since 2011. He lives and works in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and received his MFA from Carnegie Mellon University in 2008. John is the quintessential 21st-century artist. Daily Geology is just one aspect of Peña’s overall artistic output and his work is not bound to any medium or image. John’s ideas and his courage to follow through are his most important artistic tools; they trump any material used to physically make his projects. When you are introduced to his work, you may meet multiple versions of the artist. It can be a little confusing at frst. Is John Peña the artist who draws an autobiographical comic every day? Or is he the artist who writes letters to the ocean? Or the artist who created a low wattage radio station that plays bird calls, or who takes videos of himself racing clouds? It may take multiple trips to his website to confrm that yes, indeed, these are all the same artist.

Peña’s discipline, sincerity and brutal honesty in Daily Geology is what makes it such a compelling comic to read. 18 Creating an autobiographical comic is not a new concept. In 1976, Harvey Pekar started American Splendor, an autobiographical comic that was written by Pekar and illustrated by R. Crumb. American Splendor helped open up ideas about what American comics could be about, how they could be made, and how comics could be published. Pekar tapped into the same independent vein that other underground comics accessed in the late 1960s and ‘70s, yet in a completely different, and more mundane way. Daily Geology pushes what Pekar started into an even more honest, commonplace, and absurd level. On the surface, Daily Geology is a standard kind of practice. It is autobiographical and resembles the kinds of daily drawing projects many artists take on. But beyond the superfcial read, Peña’s project implicitly forces us to ask questions about our own existence. Is it possible to boil down an entire day’s experiences into one moment? Does something interesting happen every day? What does the culmination of a day’s, week’s, month’s, year’s events and experiences add up to? Is life a cohesive narrative?

John’s sincerity is an important aspect of his Daily Geology comics. This sincerity and hope comes through in all of his projects actually. Many artists, like myself, were raised in an era where irony dominated art, and maybe it still does. What I appreciate about Daily Geology is that in many ways, Peña’s comics are doing the same things that made deconstructionist and postmodernist theory prevalent in art, but without the irony. Daily Geology asks questions of and critiques our basic assumptions about society, art, being, and understanding, but in a completely honest and sincere way. Take his comic from January 4, 2015 in which Peña plainly acknowledges his discomfort in being complicit in the larger capitalist system while shopping for a new bowl. Peña’s comics aren’t written at a distance, protected from the viewer with irony or sarcasm; but his work doesn’t feel overly confessional or intentionally shocking either, his drawings are intimate and true. 19 20 Pulling back the curtain on an artist’s life and work is another surprising aspect of Daily Geology. John is very open and honest about his anxieties and his struggles with certain physical ailments. Gone are the stereotypical ideas about how a successful artist thinks and works. Revealed are the insecurities, experiments, and last minute efforts that many, if not all, artists experience. Decades after multiple artists and theorists have denounced the genius myth, many artists are still reluctant to be honest about their own humanity when it comes to creation, insecurity, and failure. Some of Peña’s best comics explicitly and implicitly reveal those realities of being an artist. A series of particularly compelling moments in Daily Geology come from the middle of 2014, when John was creating a massive sculpture for the Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh. This installation featured two large scale three dimensional talk bubbles made of insulation foam. It also marked a leap forward for an already successful career, and an opportunity to work with new materials in a new way. Peña exposes all the emotions and questions that many (if not all) artists go through when creating new work. His August 6, 2014 comic honestly reveals the many emotions and doubts artists have when making something new. Even though, or maybe because, he is given the legitimacy of an installation at the Mattress Factory, Peña doubts whether his work will succeed or even get fnished. On August 14, 2014 Peña addresses his struggle with the amount of waste generated in the name of art. August 29, 2014, appropriately called “Battle Wounds”, is a very unromantic look at the toll that making this kind of labor intensive and physically repetitious work takes on one’s body. 21 22 Of all the comics and drawings by John Peña, my favorite panels are the ones which are erased. The comics where “nothing happens,” like these panels from February 7, 2015 and November 4, 2014. Obviously, “nothing” isn’t the best description of what is physically presented to the viewer, because there is evidence of something there. And the meaning and context behind these comics is completely dependent upon the viewer’s understanding of the larger project. Is what we are seeing frustration? Is this an artist running out of time? Is this laziness? Exhaustion? Is Peña content with the results of panels like these? Personally, I love Peña’s willingness to show these comics and moments in an artist’s life, and these moments are why I love artists who work in this way. It would be easy to categorize this as a failure, but it could just as easily be seen as a challenge to our traditional notions of drawing, aesthetics, and success.

You can read Daily Geology at dailygeology.com, or learn more about John Peña at www.johnpena.net 23 24 Wendy Red Star

Contemporary Native Photographers and the Edward Curtis Legacy

Wendy Red Star, “Apsáalooke Feminist” 2016, Photomural, 12’ x 18’ approx. 25

Brendan Baylor

Upon entering Contemporary Native Photographers and the Edward Curtis Legacy at the Portland Art Museum, the frst thing one sees is an immense photomural of a native woman and her daughter. Full color, crisp digital sharpness, a steady gaze returning the look of the viewer. A person in full possession of herself and her image. In many ways this photograph from the series Apsáalooke Feminist sets the tone for the work of Wendy Red Star (Apsáalooke) in the three person show which features Red Star, Zig Jackson (Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara) and Will Wilson (Dené). The work of all three artists is shown alongside the 19th and early 20th century photographs of Edward Curtis, whose photogravures were some of the most widely circulated images of Native Americans produced at the time. Many scholars have critiqued Curtis’ photographs and methods, especially the colonialist myth of Native Americans as a “vanishing race” that his photos helped to

Accompanying photos by Cody Maxwell © 2016 Portland Art Museum 26 perpetuate.1 Red Star’s self-portrait towers over Curtis’ small book in the vitrine at the center of the installation and practically asks, “Who’s vanishing now?” Viewers are met with a steady, oppositional gaze,2 immediately communicating that this and the accompanying works are unapologetically native and feminist.

In contrast with the strong visual presence of Apsáalooke Feminist is the absence inscribed by the artist in Let Them Have Their Voice. Red Star created digital reproductions of ffteen portraits of Apsáalooke men taken by Curtis. She then cut away the body of the sitters from each portrait. What remains is a blank white silhouette and the small background space of each photograph. Accompanying these prints is an audio loop of Apsáalooke Men singing composed of wax cylinder recordings also taken by Curtis. Through this combination of image and voice, she undercuts the original intent of the images, to preserve Curtis’ romanticized imaginings of native people for the gaze of predominately white viewers. A symbol of stereotypical native representation becomes a site of resistance through the withholding of the mens’ overused and commodifed likenesses. The simultaneous introduction of their voices to the work allows for a

Wendy Red Star, “Let Them Have Their Voice” 2016 27 much more complex representation of the Apsáalooke. This audio track resists a simple reading and communicates the inability of non-Apsáalooke speakers to fully understand the culture of the sitters. According to the artist, she wanted to “Give these guys a bit of a rest,”3 both because of the way their images have been circulated as a commodity, and in order to center the experiences of Apsáalooke women in the installation.

Shifting from collective voices to collective images, Map of Allotted Lands of the Crow Reservation 1907 - Montana - A Tribute to Many Good Women, features a hand traced reproduction of the original 1907 allotment map of the Crow (Apsáalooke) reservation overlaid with images the artist solicited from the women in her tribe. These images, created by and for these women and their families, were then printed on transparency and overlaid on the map. Here again we see a tool of the colonial gaze, this time in the guise of the allotment maps that brought an end to collective land ownership on the vast majority of US reservations, repurposed to depict the resilience and complexity of Apsáalooke women.

Throughout Red Star’s work in this show appropriation is used as

Hand-cut digital prints, audio loop - dimensions variable 28 29

Wendy Red Star, “Map of Allotted Lands of the Crow Reservation 1907 - Montana - A Tribute to Many Good Women” 2016 xxxxxxxxxxxxGraphite wall drawing, digital print on mylar, pins - dimensions variable 30 a strategy to repurpose, modify, and contest historical images and documents. She alters the original, colonizing intent of these materials through the addition of images and words generated by the Apsáalooke themselves. A form of visual sovereignty is enacted here on the terrain of representation. Being a “studied people”4 is transformed into a “study of the people”. Here the artist is acting more as a director or choreographer, creating a collective voice from these materials. Here Red Star’s work is but one point in an intricate network of relations, unfolding over time and space, to render a portrait of a people evolving and adapting into the future. Holding their own in a country that has sought their erasure for hundreds of years. Through these pieces we are able to see not only the terrible legacy of colonialism embedded in Curtis’ images but also the possibility for decolonization as a creative practice.

1 See Christopher Lyman The Vanishing Race and Other Illusions, and Gerald Vizenor’s essay Edward Curtis: Pictoralist and Ethnographic Adventurist in True West: Authenticity and the American West for more analysis of Curtis’ photos.

2 See bell hooks’ essay The Oppositional Gaze in Black Looks: Race and Representation for more on this term.

3 Wendy Red Star. Artist Talk. Portland Art Museum. 2016. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=QXFkvWPUU0s

4 Wendy Red Star. Ibid. 31

Wendy Red Star, “Restoring Radiance” 2016, digital prints, colored pencils - dimensions variable 32

Abbey Kleinert 33 Hippie Modernism exhibition at the Walker Art Center, and each of the four times I visited the exhibition (twice alone, twice with students), I was struck by work like Kent’s from the 1960s and 70s that addressed some of the issues my students (and all of us) navigate today - civil rights and racial injustice, violence and war, and communication media shaping cultural perceptions.

I learned about Philando Castile via an offcial email from the University of Minnesota, signed by the president and vice president of the U, while I was killing time in the computer lab at the U of MN School of Journalism, where I teach a Media Design course. It’s hard to know what to do with messages of violence and fear. It’s hard to know how to help strangers in pain, without causing more pain.

“Rule #7: The only rule is work. If you work it will lead to something. It’s the people who do all of the work all of the time who eventually catch “I’m not brave enough to on to things.” (Kent and Steward, [break a law and risk going 2008) to jail] but I can say rather freely what I want to with When faced with a problem, I often my art.” -Corita Kent respond by making things with my hands. Inspired by Kent’s screen- printed messages of hope and Corita Kent; a nun, teacher, her collaborations with students, printmaker, and non-violence activist I created a modular system of believed she could make the world drawings, textures, and pre-set wood a more peaceful place through art. type that could be mashed-up many Her screen prints were part of the ways. Kent “shaped her students 34 to see themselves as artists, world citizens, and people making ‘acts of hope.’” (Kent and Steward, 2008) So I designed a collaborative printmaking lesson for my Media Design class that I hoped would get the students thinking about their perceptions of fear and courage and about all the interesting ways text and image can be combined to shape meaning around those topics.

I collaborated with a fellow graphic design grad student and type enthusiast to set up the presses and get the type just right. The drawings I made and the words I selected were open-ended and abstract so the students could invent their own

composition and create their own Abbey Kleinert, Karl Engebretson, Claire Stephens meanings by experimenting with the different combinations of the typography and graphics.

The students experimented with composition and visual communication through layering the drawings and type. I aimed to encourage divergent thinking about the many potential relationships between the words and graphics that could lead to different interpretations of the same imagery.

Experimenting with the layering of screen printed textures and wood type printmaking taught abstract thinking, composition, and transparency. The combinatory nature of printmaking was an excellent teacher. One simple

Abbey Kleinert, Karl Engebretson, Clara Linehan 35

Abbey Kleinert, Karl Engebretson, Ashley Simonson Abbey Kleinert, Karl Engebretson, Betty Taylor

Abbey Kleinert, Karl Engebretson, Yandi Li [detail] Abbey Kleinert, Karl Engebretson, Weiying Zhu 36 brush stroke texture can hold a world of different meaning depending on how it is printed - brush strokes over the word “fear” hold a different meaning than when they are layered in a different color under the word “courage.”

Each drawing, pattern, texture, or word created different feelings and ideas for the viewer, depending on how it was placed and how it interacted with the other graphics. One mark or image didn’t always represent just one idea - in one context it meant fear, in another context it could look beautiful, in another comforting, and in another sad, and on and on.

It’s my belief that the hands-on experience of printing graphics and text taught things about context that my words could not. And that’s where Philando Castile, printmaking, and graphic design collided and became the lesson I struggled to fnd the words for. Context. Change a color, change a location, change a word, change the style, and the message is altered. Artists, makers, designers, communicators—we have the power to do that.

Bibliography

Steward, Jan and Kent, Corita. Learning by Heart, Teachings to Free the Creative Spirit. New York: Allworth Press, 2008. Hippie Modernism. Walker Art Museum. 1750 Hennepin Ave, Minneapolis, MN 55403. December 2015. Corita Art Center. www.corita.org (accessed July 28, 2016). 37

All images are part of a 12x15”, collaborative varied edition, screen and letterpress wood type. Printed at the University of MN College of Design, Falcon Heights MN, July 2016 38

Ashton Ludden, “CCD” 2015, copper engraving and aquatint with a la poupée, 9” x 7.75” 39

R.A.L. Villegas, “The Original Sin” 2016, Screenprint, 7”x9” 40

Ken Wood, “Writ Large, I” 2016, Relief, 44”x40” [detail] 41

Ashton Ludden, “Reap the Benefts” 2015, relief engraving and screenprint, 11”x14” 42

1 43

Amze Emmons

I am interested in print history and have always been drawn to artists who use text and image in a way that leverages our vast shared cultural archive of printed visual material. By starting with a printed artifact, these artists play the trickster; they make use of conventions and simultaneously disrupt expectations, making the familiar strange.

The five artists presented here (Glenn Ligon, Erica Baum, R.L. Tillman, and Nate Larson & Marni Shindelman) share an interest in text and image, found forms, and in layers of historical complexity. Ligon and Baum manage to bring historical documents out of the archive and into the living present, while Tillman and Larson & Shindelman pull artifacts out of our media streams and turn them into archival images. The artwork presented here is either graphic or photographic, not gestural; part of the magic relies on the artists hiding their hands within the mechanical signature of the print.

The prints in Ligon’s 1993 suite of lithographs, Runaways, at first appear to be 19th century broadsheets or posters, as they deftly appropriate the letterpress illustrations and typefaces from runaway slave advertisements. The text is derived from missing person-style descriptions of the artist collected from his friends. In an interview with Thelma Golden, Ligon said, “‘Runaways is broadly about how an individual’s identity is inextricable from the way one is positioned in the culture, from the ways people see you, from historical and political contexts.”1 The viewer sees Runaways in a cascading complexity, drawn first to the historical authority of the broadsheets before recognizing the atrocity that such authority is reinforcing. Then it slowly becomes clear that these prints are not historical artifacts at all and the person represented is the artist. This series leads the audience through a lesson on how racism is culturally constructed and informed by biased modes of representation, particularly within white American minds. While starting with a historic printed form, Ligon ends by drawing our attention to a thesis that is sadly as relevant today as it has ever been. 44

New York-based artist, Erica Baum, makes visible the experimental text and image combinations that were with us all along. While her background is in photography, the Dog Ear series is comprised of hi-resolution scans of dog-eared book pages that result in archival inkjet prints (these prints have also been collected and published by Ugly Duckling Presse as an artist’s book). Within this series Baum has created something that is not reliant on the conventions of reading text or image, but vibrates in an interstitial space between the two methods of understanding. The macro focus calls attention to the color and textural qualities of the age-worn pages. The pieces present the viewer with some interesting questions: are we meant to read this image as a material abstraction calling attention to the beauty of the printed word? Are we meant to wonder about the narrative of the book or its owner? Or are we being presented with an experimental poem-generating procedure? Are these works evidence of bibliomancy? I would hazard the answer is yes to all of them and more. The elegant simplicity of the work belies its radically experimental form, which troubles our expectations of medium, content and form. This leaves the viewer with the sense that they are looking upon the distilled artifact of paying attention, a vibrating idea. 45 R.L. Tillman’s artwork presents a model similar to Ligon’s, relying on strategies of noticing and shifting contexts, albeit with very different stakes. By combining wry humor with an interest in contemporary politics and print history, Tillman, mines popular media and material culture to create print-based installations that are often interactive or performative in nature. For his work C.C. and its sequel ditto, Tillman created a simple graphic poster featuring a vintage clip-art image of a duplication or ditto machine over the text, ‘We should be giving these people duplication machines.’ In the installation the crisp, black and white positive is framed leaning against the wall above a pile of screen prints, printed in a deep violet and with a beautifully degraded mono-print surface. The prints draw to mind the unpredictable print quality of old ditto machines. The pile of prints are free for the audience to take.

3 46 The text of the print comes from Bill Bennett, a conservative political pundit, and former CNN political analyst and radio talk show host. In 2009, while a guest on the Sunday morning political talk show, ‘The State of the Union by John King’, Bennett voiced his thoughts on the protests that followed the recent Iranian presidential elections: “We should be doing something. We should be giving these people phone cards and duplication machines and access to Internet that they don't have and cameras and cell phones that the government can't block. We should be on the side of freedom, and not on the side of this--supreme leader, as our president keeps referring to.”2 It’s a throw away line from a minor pundit, but Bennett’s specific reference to a fairly obscure and outdated printing technology caught Tillman’s attention. In light of the protesters’ very successful use of social media as an organizing tool, and combined with the brutal suppression of those same peaceful protests, Bennett’s faith in print technology to help leverage a revolution seems especially misplaced. In this way, the form and content of Tillman’s work circulate around ideas of nostalgic beauty and political failure, functioning as a kind of eulogy for the much lauded democratic potential of printmaking as it is outpaced in a world moving at the speed of tweets and bullets.

Nate Larson & Marni Shindelman’s on-going collaborative project, Geolocation, picks up on the questions that Tillman’s C.C. begins to ask: How do artists committed to print and visual culture navigate the internet age? Those with access to mobile computing are publishing billions of ‘posts’ and ‘updates’ on an ever growing number of corporate platforms, ranging from Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, Tumbler, Twitter, to reviews on Yelp and Amazon, etc. While there may be a visible printmakerly signature in the design, it is disembodied, only a skeuomorphic trick of the code. How can a print artist respond to the scrolling media feeds as they move past? Photographers Larson and Shindelman try to find answers by focusing specifically on Twitter feeds. The pair take advantage of Twitter’s locative properties in order to turn disembodied tweets into physical images. The two travel to tweet locations and take photographs. They essentially work backwards, finding a dislocated caption and use that to locate an image, combining the two to create a printed document of our lived world. Similar to Baum their images are finally resolved as ink jet prints and are also collected in an artist’s book. Shindelman & Larson make physical where our thoughts originate as we cast them into the digital ether, producing a body of images that prove enduringly poignant, a haunting portrait of the current social moment. 47

Beyond their historical appearances, text and image combinations are taking up an increasing amount of real estate in virtual space. The ease with which a person can publish digital content on a range of streaming media makes a strong case for the heightened cultural importance of text and image as an aesthetic and rhetorical convention. The ubiquitous and completely ephemeral nature of virtual publishing makes them harder to pay attention to. Online, no one lingers for very long on any single image. And the structures behind these new modes of publishing are also effectively unseen. Who (other than an attentive few) notices the design history or ‘materiality’ of Facebook? Who keeps track of how the algorithms control what we see? Who sees the human costs of the metal mines and manufacturing systems that deliver our glowing rectangles? I look forward to seeing a new generation of artists leveraging methods that favor complexity as a tool to make the unseen visible. This new virtual archive is ripe for artistic intervention.

Parts of this article were inspired and informed by my experience team-teaching The Trick of Proximity: Text & Image with the poet Jena Osman at Naropa University’s Summer Writing Program.

1 From Thelma Golden’s ‘Interview with Glenn Ligon, Brooklyn, NY, July 11, 1997’, Glenn Ligon, Harn Museum of Art, Gainesville, FL

2 The State of the Union by John King, June 21, 2009 http://www.cnn.comTRANSCRIPTS/0906/21/sotu.03.html 48

1 Glenn Ligon Runaways, 1993 1 of a Suite of 10 lithographs Edition of 45 Each: 16 x 12 inches © Glenn Ligon; Courtesy of the artist, Luhring Augustine, New York, Regen Projects, Los Angeles, and Thomas Dane Gallery, London

4 Nate Larson & Marni Shindelman Geolocation: Worth the Wait, 2011 Archival Pigment Print, 24” x 20” 49 50 51 52 Interview with Christopher Sperandio JoSePH Lupo

In July 2016, Christopher Sperandio took some time out between traveling to China to teach a workshop about American comics and traveling to the San Diego Comic Con to talk about his new comic “Pinko Joe”…

LUPO Tell me about the new comic you’re working that only the art remained. I then began con- on, Pinko Joe. necting these mostly 8-page stories into a single narrative, broadly at frst, and eventually SPERANDIO fne tuning it until I had a story that held to- Essentially, Pinko Joe is an expression of my gether across the arc of the book. I then wrote disappointment and anger at the subversion and re-wrote until I had a story that worked of democracy by of out-of-control capital- as a linear narrative across all these disparate ism. I’ve taken my despair and married it to stories. The book combines the genres of my love of old comics. I’ve been looking at, Science Fiction, Crime and Romance. Once I and thinking about, public domain comics for had my story, I began re-drawing the original about 15 years, but I think it was my rage that art in ink on Bristol board. I don’t really think forced a breakthrough to where I fnally real- of this as appropriation, although I guess it ized that I should just use these old comics could fall under that umbrella. The descriptor as the raw material to make a new comic. I’ve I’ve been rolling around in my head is “forced described the result as an anti-neoliberal love collaboration.” In other words, I’m collaborat- story. What sounds like something strident ing with a dozen different artists but without and dreary is really a comedic romp. I’m still their consent or permission. That sounds a bit fguring out what it all means—apart from the mean, but it’s not intended as such. I have no fact that I think it’s hilarious. At least I’ve been idea what these artists would have thought laughing a lot while I’m making this book. of what I’m doing. I imagine some would be pissed, and some would laugh at it. I know it’s JL the right thing to do because it gives me a Could you tell me about your process for mak- funny feeling in the pit of my stomach. I only ing this comic? It seems to be a combination get that feeling when I’m on to something. Of of digital technologies, traditional comic pro- course there are antecedents of appropria- cesses, with a massive amount of appropriation in comics, for instance the Dysfunctional tion of public domain comics… Family Circus, but nothing with the sustained narrative arc of a graphic novel. CS The process, in retrospect—or in half-re- JL spect—as I’m still in the inking, with color still This isn’t the frst comic you’ve made. In the to come—is, admittedly, a bit nuts. I looked late 1990’s you created a series of comics with at thousands of comic stories that are in the your collaborator Simon Grennan, and there public domain—and from all different genres— have been other single panel or comic strips just letting them wash over me. I then began over the years. What keeps bringing you back selecting stories and wiping out their texts so to the form? 53 54 JL CS Your comics, both the recent and previous Ha! I got tenure. Seriously. I haven’t made ones, have underlying social commentaries. comics in a long time—at least not in any seri- Why do you think the comic book format is ous way. However, I got tenured and after a well suited for political/social discussions? Do six-month depression (nobody talks about you worry about people not taking the content post-tenure depression, but it’s a thing) I de- seriously or overlooking it completely because cided to do what I wanted to do—which is to it is presented as a comic? go back to comics and really immerse myself in the feld. I decided that there was room CS in the feld for innovation, or at least there’s The world is changing. Art has been sub- room for me to make some things that I don’t sumed, it’s now frmly part of the Luxury Con- think has been made yet. I also recognized the sumer Goods industry—or maybe it’s always tremendous opportunity that comics creation been that way, and now it’s just explicit. Art is presents for my students. Helping them to or- where the oligarchy launders and hides their ganize their thoughts around combining words money. It’s become wildly uninteresting to me. and pictures seemed like something that I’m Socialized Art has been rewritten to serve a qualifed to do, and so it really made sense to different agenda. Creative Placemaking has try to pull it all together. become the latest tool in the gentrifcation of poor neighborhoods, the main practitioners of which are operating under a specialized form of amnesia where they think they invented the feld. Comics as a feld still seem alive to me, while everything else has become zombifed in my eyes. I’ve never let what other people think stop me from doing what I need to do. Besides, there’s a renaissance happen- ing in comics, not only in their creation, but in their engage- ment critically. My erstwhile collaborative partner, Simon Grennan even did a Phd on comics—and in addition to making comics, writes books about them. So, I’m not worried about the status of comics. I think there are a lot of smart people who are engaging the feld, from a whole host of perspectives. In fact, your own interest in comics is an example of that diversity of engage- ment. 55 reality show? Personally, I think this kind of JL mentality is extremely brave and rare, where I think it’s fair to say your work has focused a do you think this mindset in you comes from? lot around collaboration in the past, with fellow artist Simon Grennan, with factory workers CS in Chicago, with night shift workers in your “In- Haha! Others would describe it as idiocy. I visible City” comics, the ARTSTAR television blame my teachers. I had some good ones. show, Cargospace, but this seems to be a solo These folks gave me the courage to say “Yes project, is there reasoning behind that? I can” even when I should have been saying “Maybe I shouldn’t.” CS Collaboration allows me a way to escape my JL own headspace. I really do think of the Pinko You also started CATS, Comic Art Teaching Joe project as a collaborative work. Although, and Study Workshop, at Rice, could you tell in this case, I just happen to be the only one me about what happens there? involved in the project who’s still breathing. I feel so extremely alienated (both in the Marx- CS ist sense, and in the sense that I’m a North- I started a very modest resource at Rice—it’s erner who happens to live in Texas) that I like a hybrid classroom/research space/exhibition it when I can be a part of something. It’s rare, space where I can loop students and other and it only happens when I extend myself – for faculty into comics research. It’s called CATS— example, The Cargo Space project is about the Comic Art Teaching and Study Workshop. creating a home that can host other artists. Of course, I’m inspired by the story of the Billie Artstar was about engaging with younger Ireland facility at Ohio State. Since I don’t live artists. Pinko Joe is my way of speaking with anywhere near there, I’m hoping that we can artists from the past. grow our own at Rice.

JL JL How have you reacted to being cooped up all I know about your love for the Billy Ireland summer in your studio drawing behind a desk Museum at Ohio State University, why do you for 12 hours a day? think these kinds of comics based learning centers are important, and how do they ft CS within a university structure? What are you I’ve made comics digitally in the past, and hoping students learn from studying and mak- working in the old-fashioned way makes the ing comics? project real in a way that’s hard for me to describe. There’s no undo. There’s a harsh learn- CS ing curve – and I’m still working my way up These days, the arts are under fre. The Neo- that curve. Ultimately, working in an analogue liberal agenda says that everything must have manner is about communion. I think it’s crucial a use and anything that can’t immediately gen- in getting to what’s essential about these old erate a proft must be dismantled. As an artist, comics. I think the instrumentalization of art is loath- some, and in the context of a university, it’s in- JL escapable. However, effective communication You aren’t defned by an idea or medium like is a skill that is teachable, and important—as most artists are. I have to admit that I am important to the sciences as the actual scien- jealous of your ability to just start a project, tifc research itself. By teaching comics, I’m like why not buy a bus and travel across the able to help my students effectively combine country with interesting people or start an art words and pictures. While it is my spoken goal 56 to help them be better communicators, it’s things from all over the place. my secret goal—the Trojan Horse—to infect JL them—to expand their thinking to consider When will Pinko Joe be published, and how the greater world around them, to get them to can I buy a copy? understand, engage with and embrace differ- ence. But don’t tell anybody about that second CS part. Right now I’m focused on making the book. The laundry list of things to do is still too long JL for me to think about publication in all but How accommodating is Rice University with abstract terms. How the book appears is still CATS? Does your administration and fellow TBD – although we live in a golden time for faculty members and students understand comics – there are so many options! I’ve got a what you are doing? countdown clock on my wall just for the inking. After that comes the color, which will have its own countdown clock -- so ask me again CS in about six months. In the meantime, you can My department chair, John Sparagana, actu- visit Pinkojoe.com for the latest in Pinko Joe ally just completed an amazing body of works news – or you can follow me on Instagram @ that use comics as raw material. He and my catsatrice - I post about my work, but I also other colleagues are all incredibly enthusiastic post about comics in general, mainly focused about CATS. It’s a shared resource, and it’s on the comics and books that I acquire for the there primarily to support drawing education. CATS Workshop. We’re all lucky to have an interest or belief in a strong drawing education. Our department Christopher Sperandio is a Professor of Drawing and also includes flm and video, and so sequential Painting at Rice University where he founded the Comic thinking is all around us. I’m very lucky to be Art Teaching and Study Workshop. Sperandio and col- with the people that I’m with. There’s room for laborator Simon Grennan have produced 22 comics comics as a serious avenue of study. books as artworks for museums in the US and Europe. Sperandio has also produced work for museums and art JL centers in the US, Germany, Northern Ireland, Denmark, England, Scotland, Wales, Spain, and France. For more in- Is there a comics scene in Houston or are you formation, visit: thecargospace.com, arts.rice.edu/cats or hoping to start one? kartoonkings.com . CS There’s lots of comics stuff in Houston. I’m a big fan of Zinefest Houston, and I do what I can to support the young folks involved with that group. There’s an amazing young artist here named Sarah Welch, who is one of the leaders of Zinefest. CATS and our small gallery for emerging artists, The Emergency Room, will publish her newest book and present an installation that she’s developing later this fall. There are a number of really interesting folks here who have a connection to comics. Robert Pruitt is one of my favorite Houston-based artists, and he’s starting a comics club, independent of all the other things he does. Of course, comics are international, and so I’m looking at 57 58 59

Ryan Standfest

Decomposing Paper and Ink- bundles and caused the smell of newsprint Smudged Flesh to fll the space, heightened also by the age of the paper. As I loosened the twine When I was about 8 or 9 years old, during that bound each bundle, I pried forth the summer days I would climb the fence to a papers and sought out both the black neighborhood church in suburban Detroit, and white comics of the daily edition and and steal away to a small metal shed I the full color supplement of the Sunday discovered behind the parsonage. Within edition, my fngertips and palms becoming this shed were bundles of discarded covered in a powdery second skin of Detroit Free Press newspapers stacked black ink. I was in search of the Dick Tracy fve to six feet high, leaving a small comic strip1, and would carefully tear out crawlspace at the top. I would climb up the strips, trim them down with scissors into this space, closing the shed door and collect them into a binder. I have behind me, and spend hours in the near come to believe that the experience of dark seeking out those sections of the comic strip hunting in that metal shed was newspapers containing comic strips. The my frst foray into learning about print, shed was several bundles deep and the seduced by the tactility and intimacy space had become a densely packed of paper, ink, and miniature sequences. archive, page upon page, layer upon layer Since then, I have gravitated toward those of stratifed history in text and image. images that were left out of my art school The deeper I investigated, the further education. This has led to the use and back in time I went, as much as 15 years formal consideration of printed ephemera to 1968. On my archeological digs, I came that I assemble under the category of into contact with silverfsh, both dead “Vulgar Modernism”2—comic strips, and alive, and pages stuck together from novelty catalogs, tabloid newspapers, the occasional water incursion. During postcards, matchbooks, manuals, and my search I was continually halted by advertisements among other examples, front page headlines, department store as the basis of my practice. In matters sale pages, and cinema advertisements. of print, my impulse toward making I also witnessed a change in typesetting, has circled back to those industrially- a decrease in the clarity of photographs, produced objects of a smaller scale, made and a reversion from color to black and of the cheapest materials and produced as white in a de-evolution of printing quality quickly as possible. There is an interest in as I descended from the present into creating images intended for reproduction the past. All of this was being noted, not only because of the greater subconsciously. Although ventilated, the distribution afforded by reproducibility, shed was warmed by the heat of the sun but also because there is aesthetic value in on its roof. This warmth was baking the some of the formal strategies necessitated 60

by the goal of reproduction. The solid, He seemed to heighten each scene with bounding graphic line for example, an elasticizing of the physical world. ever-present in the comic strip, carries with it an economical insistence and an For me, Prohías and Ditko displayed the instantaneity of readability. essence of comic strip language. What I was observing beyond the narrative Fat White Balloons and Rubber was a choreography of signs, wrought Frames from a graphical-alchemical process of compression. These were marvelous At the time I was collecting Dick Tracy and miniature worlds contained within strips, I was an avid reader of MAD the boundary of the page, built upon a magazine and began purchasing comic method of writing with images. Speech books off the wire spinner rack at my was made physical by way of white local pharmacy, eventually graduating shapes extruded from the mouths of to used bookstores in Detroit where the characters. Some smooth and rounded, smell of newsprint mingled with cigarette some spiky and misshapen, depending smoke. Drawing has long been a daily upon the nature of what was being activity for me and by way of comics spoken. Throughout, the immaterial was I had taught myself to render through made material. There was a metaphysical mimicry. From MAD, I copied the work of quality to comic strip visual language, Antonio Prohías as I obsessed over his most notably in Ditko’s mystical visions Spy vs. Spy comic strip. I spent hours for Doctor Strange. Emotions such as drawing sample images from reprints anxiety and anger were given form as of two comic book titles originally comic strip characters could alter their published in the early 1960’s— The physical appearance in accordance, Amazing Spider-Man and Strange but also emanate lines and Tales, showcasing the character Doctor shapes that allowed a viewer Strange, by the cartoonist Steve to witness sentiment. Sound was Ditko . My interest had not been in assigned onomatopoeic language awash the text of these comics. Character in color variations. Text became another development and story arcs did not in a series of visual textures as it mingled hold my attention. To this day, I and merged with the atmosphere of the fnd superhero narratives prosaic. It image. was the images that fascinated and the formal construction of The text is an image. But the image each page resonated on a becomes text, as it must be read in a deep level. Prohías’ Spy vs. sequence, left to right, top to bottom, Spy was without text and box to box, bubble to bubble. One action functioned as a beautifully leading to and connecting with another. stripped-down high contrast schematic of There is a circuitry established. The comic cause and effect relationships, complete strip is akin to a diagram. An event has with dotted lines and been broken down into a fragmented directional arrows to sequence and then reassembled and guide events. Ditko, framed in a more condensed form. This with both Spider- new form resulting from compression, Man and Doctor heightens the reader’s awareness of the Strange, created a image’s mechanical construction. Even the very stylized and fuid application of color in the earlier comic world with unusual organic fourishes books and comic strips I had learned from, bordering on the outright expressionistic. was composed of overlapping particles 61 due to the CMYK color separation process. part of the “comic” in comic strips. This Across a sequence of panels on a is best illustrated in the pages of MAD, single page there was both a where the body was regularly taken apart folding and an unfolding and pieced back together as a new and of space as the page not-so improved mockery of its former somehow became self. Caricature becomes a tool for most larger. The comic cartoonists as a means to instantly strip compresses communicate character or a character’s time, but enlarges state of mind, bypassing slower, text- it simultaneously. based methods of contextualization. The empty spaces There are however, inherent dangers in-between panels that accompany the application of establish a rhythm, an physiognomic visualization, as seen in the elastic tension within the pages of the French satirical publication grid, that determines how Charlie Hebdo, and a critical conversation much the page can expand or concerning the boundaries and the collapse. responsible application of physical exaggeration have subsequently emerged. An Act of Mechanical Deformation Deformation can lead to dehumanization, the imposed abstraction of the body in Scattered across the comic strip panels which the physic and the psychic become comprising the ever-expanding and interchangeable. The work of Pablo contracting space of the page grid, Picasso and Willem de Kooning traffcked were fgures. Bodies. I never had the in comic deformation and illustrates the impression that these bodies were relationship between caricature and confned to the boxes they occupied, abstraction through a breaking apart but were passing through, moment to of the subject. There is a long list of moment, paradoxically animated by the contemporary artists that have continued inactivity between actions—those empty to mine this territory, among them Laylah spaces between panels. And in most Ali, George Condo, Carroll Dunham, Jim of the comic strips I studied as a boy, Nutt, Peter Saul, and Sue Williams. these bodies were deformed. Amidst a narrative sequentially assembling itself, The Archeology of Knowledge were characters in a state of disassembly, being pulled, stretched and chopped up. In the past year, I have initiated a series of prints that considers the formal Comic strips can establish psychological mechanics of the comic strip, resulting spaces wherein states of mind are in a further fragmentation and signifed by way of a visual shorthand. refashioning of its narrative devices. This lends itself to stretching the However, there is no interest in physical boundaries of the body. I attempting to construct a narrative. prized the Dick Tracy strips out of a There is only an exploitation of its love for the extensive rogues’ gallery of formal strategies as used in comic deformed villainy on display, in which strips. Titled after L’archéologie the impurity of characters such as du savoir (The Archeology of Flattop Jones, Infuence, “Little Face” Knowledge), a 1969 book by Michel Finny, and Pruneface, was measured Foucault , the series begins with physiognomically. But such deformity the notion of sequentiality and is also the stuff of visual humor. the possibility that any established Physical exaggeration forms a large structure can lend itself to a moment 62 pages sharing characteristics with that of a comic book page. The scale of each print in The Archeology of Knowledge does suggest a page from a book, and there is even a border for the purpose of reinforcing the space of a page.

Each image has a fnite structure, but that structure does not necessarily support a specifc meaning. Thus, a speech balloon is emptied of its text. Rectangles meant to contain contextual information are rendered solid black. Although text is absent, the intention is to increase one’s awareness of its absence. Narration is redacted and certain meaning is retracted. And yet, one thing seems to lead to another due to the development of tense formal relationships and a diagrammatical logic that is textual in nature. The grid comes and goes as the space of each print opens and closes. The presence of deformity and physical redaction or of slippage or become a rearranged amputation of the image, of meaning, of space for multiple meanings. Channeling the body serves as a formal gesture but Antonio Prohías and Steve Ditko, there also establishes a strong psychological is both a solidity and a fuidity to each space in which the fxed and the unfxed image, aided by the use of relief printing compete for superiority and animate the as a means to insist on bold graphic space. Perhaps the concluding gesture for structure. This is a conscious nod to the this project would be to further challenge “wordless novel” tradition from the era of the image by bundling all of the resulting German Expressionism that utilized black, pages together in twine, to place them printed relief imagery sans captions at into a miniature metal shed, and then the service of storytelling. It was a period expose them to silverfsh, moisture and when artists such as the Belgian Frans heat, to be opened back up one day, cut Masereel, the German Otto Nückel, and apart with scissors and reconstituted into the American Lynd Ward created book- a new set of sequences. Such a continued length narratives using bold, high-contrast reshuffing of the order of things, an single panel pages. For me, the carving of endless rearrangement of image panels each block is an excavation of the image, within the grid and the replacement or a sculpting of solid shapes requiring editing of text within boxes and bubbles, the appearance of absolute fxity. The is inherent in comic strip formalism. printed result is a simple black key image, Because of the elastic nature of comic with the particulate application of color strip spatiality, nothing is fxed and the act combinations in small hand-colored of dismembering meaning can always lead strokes and dots that mimic color printing to new constructions. systems. The process of hand-coloring each print, with the aid of stencils and rubber-stamping, is in direct conversation with those industrial color processes employed in 15th century prints, many of which were illuminated manuscript Footnotes for this article are located on page 64. 63 64

1 The syndicated comic strip Dick Tracy first appeared in 1931, scripted and drawn by Chester Gould until 1977. During Gould’s time on the strip, the narrative was often violent, idiosyncratically rendered in high contrast black and white vignettes that often reveled in gadgetry and grotesque villainy. Gould’s successor was Rick Fletcher who worked on the strip until 1983, then followed by Dick Locher. Dick Tracy is still in syndication, authored by Mike Curtis (writer) and Joe Staton (artist).

2 The term “Vulgar Modernism” was first introduced by the Village Voice film critic J. Hoberman in 1981. It refers to a sensibility found on the fringes of American popular culture and is identified as the “vulgar equivalent of Modernism itself,” with a self-conscious and self-reflexive sensibility developed between 1940 and 1960.

3 Cartoonist Antonio Prohías (1921-1998) was born in Cienfuegos, Cuba and emigrated to the United States in 1960 soon after being accused by Fidel Castro’s government of working for the CIA.

4 Cartoonist Steve Ditko (b. 1927) is most notable for co-creating the character of Spider-Man and creating the character of Doctor Strange for Marvel Comics. Ditko quit Marvel Comics in 1966 for unspecified reasons and went to create numerous other characters. Chief among them is Mr. A, which reflected Ditko’s increasing acceptance of Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism. Since the 1960’s, Ditko has declined to be interviewed and photographed. He continues to work in a studio located in Manhattan’s Midtown West neighborhood. In 2007 I had the good fortune to receive a letter from Mr. Ditko, handwritten in pencil, in which he further discusses the application of Objectivism to societal functioning.

5 The antecedents of the speech balloon reach as far back as 600 to 900 AD, when scroll-like forms emerged from the mouths of speaking figures in Mesoamerican art. Speech “labels” appeared in Western art in the 13th century and commonly appeared in paintings well into the 16th century often appearing as bands, flags or scrolls unravelling from mouths. In 18th century printed political broadsides that made use of caricature, in both Britain and the United States, the speech balloon took evolved into something similar to modern usage, albeit in a more elongated shape containing difficult to read handwritten script oriented vertically, diagonally, and horizontally.

6 Picasso was an avid caricaturist and his two greatest anti-war statements, Guernica and Dream and Lie of Franco, where informed by Anti-Fascist propaganda comic strips produced in France and Spain, that employed parody as a method of confronting the tragic. Picasso made use of fragmented cartoon stylization to depict a shattered world turned upside-down.

7 L’archéologie du savoir by Michel Foucault, posits the concept that systems of thought and knowledge are governed by an atmosphere of shifting subconscious rules dependent upon the conditions from which statements emerge, and the conditions of the field of discourse they enter into. 65 66 67 68 THANK YOU OCTOBER 3–6, 2018

GO WEST: THE COLLABORATIVE TURN 2018 MAPC Conference in Laramie, WY Hosted by the University of Wyoming The Mid America Print Council is a community of printmakers, papermakers, book artists, art historians, curators, collectors, and anyone who loves works on and of paper from across North America and abroad.

Membership includes: • Subscription to the The Mid America Print Council Journal. • Discount subscription rates to Contemporary Impressions: The Journal of the American Print Alliance. • Calls for participation in MAPC Members Exhibitions. • Eligibility to attend the MAPC Biennial Conferences. • MAPC Newsletters will keep you in touch with our membership and current events. • Access and use of The MAPC Blog and The MAPC Listserv. • Access to MAPC Opportunities Board, containing Calls for exhibitions, job listings, classifeds, & more. • Inclusion in MAPC Member Network & Member Directory • Online portfolio presence on midamericaprintcouncil.org

Visit midamericaprintcouncil.org to become a member today!

Regular Membership - $30/YR 12 month membership including everything listed above.

Couple Membership - $40/YR Includes full access to member benefts for two people at a discounted rate.

Student Membership - $15/YR Verifcation of enrollment required.

Curator Membership - $0/YR This limited access membership is free to curators, and allows for the viewing of member pages.

Lifetime Membership - $250 One time payment for lifetime membership with full access to member benefts.

Vendor Sponsor - $250/YR Advertising on the MAPC website in vendor sponsor links. midamericaprintcouncil.org