Alliance for the Visual Arts FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE! August 22, 2011 Margaret Jacobs, Exhibition Coordinator: 603.448.3117 AVA Gallery and Art Center: Artists from The Center for Cartoon Studies — Drawings and Cartoons Jon Chad, Alexis Frederick-Frost, Alec Longstreth, Jen Vaughn September 9 – October 7, 2011 Opening Reception: Friday, September 9, 5-7pm AVA Gallery and Art Center is pleased to present an exhibition of recent work by four artists affiliated with The Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction, VT: Jon Chad, Alexis Frederick-Frost, Alec Longstreth, and Jen Vaughn. The exhibition, which is free and open to the public, will be on display from September 9 – October 7, 2011 in the E.N. Wennberg Gallery, with a reception on Friday, September 9, from 5 to 7pm. Jon Chad, originally from Essex Junction, VT, completed his BFA in the Sequential Art program at the Savannah College of Art and Design in 2008. He has been producing handmade minicomics and zines since 2006. His comics Leo Geo Acquires Ancient Knowledge and Shortstack were both nominated for the Kukoc Award for Comics Inspiration in 2008. Chad now lives in White River Junction, VT, where he works at The Center for Cartoon Studies (CCS), teaching screen printing and book making and offering weekly production lab intensives. Alexis Frederick-Frost is a graduate of the inaugural class at CCS. He is the author of the Xeric grant-winning book La Primavera. He recently completed a collaborative book, Adventures in Cartooning: How to Turn Your Doodles Into Comics, written with James Sturm and CCS graduate Andrew Arnold. The book has won numerous awards, including Booklist’s Top Ten Art Books for Kids, School Library Journal’s Best Book of the Year, and the Library Media Connection’s “Best of the Best.” Alec Longstreth has been self-publishing his minicomic Phase 7 since 2002. In 2005, it won the Ignatz Award for Outstanding Minicomic. Longstreth’s gag cartoons have been featured in Nickelodeon Magazine and National Geographic Kids, and he has illustrated promotional items for Weezer and Harry and the Potters. Longstreth also colored Aaron Renier’s graphic novel The Unsinkable Walker Bean for First Second Books. In 2008, he moved to Vermont for a fellowship at CCS, where he has been teaching ever since. Jen Vaughn is a recent graduate of CCS. She is a freelance cartoonist and librarian at the Schulz Graphic Novel Library in White River Junction, VT. In January 2011, Vaughn, along with several CCS affiliates and Dartmouth College students, created a winter mural in the former Thayer Dining Hall at Dartmouth. She is currently working on her “weekly underwater webcomic, Mermaid Hostel. AVA Gallery and Art Center/Alliance for the Visual Arts is a non-profit organization representing Vermont and New Hampshire artists. Located at 11 Bank Street right off Colburn Park in Lebanon, NH, the gallery is open Tuesday through Saturday from 11AM to 5PM, Thursdays from 11AM to 7PM and by appointment; closed on Sundays and Mondays. Admission is free, and the gallery is accessible to the handicapped. AVA is supported in part by the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts and a grant from Leveraging Investments in Creativity (LINC) in partnership with the MetLife Foundation. .