Tag: Cartoon

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Arts Culture

No blank pages

Shannon Spence will appear at SUCZ in Staunton on June 15 and at Hello Comics Uptown on June 16. Follow her work @shannonprints or visit shannonprints.com. Supplied photo.

Shannon Spence awoke to her calling as a cartoon artist while pursuing a fine arts degree focused on printmaking at University of Virginia. In her fourth year, she took a course in sequential art–and she saw her future. “I realized what incredible potential comics were as an art form, and it just clicked for me,” says Spence. “I was checking out as many graphic novels from Clem as I could get my hands on and absorbing [them] like a sponge. I haven’t looked back. I dive deeper into creating independent comics every year.”

Spence took note of the opportunities for social, cultural, and political commentary in the form … and also the responsibility. She calls her process a full-body and spirit endeavor. “You are the writer, editor, storyboard artist, liner, colorist, book assembler, salesman, and marketing specialist,” says the New Jersey-based artist. “It is a constant challenge, but I believe that’s how it becomes so addicting.” 

The June 6 release of Spence’s P*NK LAB GRL!, Burn it Down! is the second installment in her latest comic series, two years in the making. She created it while working full time in medicine, using her day job to inform her art. “There’s nothing else like creating a book about something you’re passionate about (in P*NK LAB GRL!, it’s discussing corporate corruption in the healthcare industry) and putting it out in the world, and saying, I’m so proud of this.”

Spence has a list of accomplishments to be proud of. Since entering the field of indie comics in 2019, she has published more than 10 anthologies; she’s also a medical technologist, a musician (guitar), and the founder of Comix Accountability Club, a weekly online meeting in support of working and aspiring cartoonists.

The artist also fulfills a quarterly risograph subscription. Originally intended to mass-produce worksheets and pamphlets, risographs use a type of offset printing that’s similar to what is used for traditional newspaper printing. It’s a low-cost process that has been adopted by the DIY art scene. “It produces vibrant colors, charmingly misaligned and textured prints. … The cutting of pages, assembling and stapling each book, takes the longest. Then, I package each comic with a membership card and little bonuses out to every collector … It is so satisfying to send art directly to people that want to support you. I love every minute of it.”

Tireless and joyful, Spence says she has a “self-assigned need to push myself constantly.” More recently she’s taken the stage for comic reading, comedy, and live music performances.  “It’s a ton of fun experimenting on stage and turning comics into a watchable event. The art form feels very fresh and pliable and continues to grow.”

School helped formalize Spence’s career, but art has always been an outlet in her life. “I grew up drawing dragons, and now I do it every day (well, dragon-people); most people who knew me growing up wouldn’t be surprised to find that out.”

The true surprise and delight is in the artwork, just as she intends. “My aim is for you to look at my stuff and think, ‘That’s sick.’ Then we high-five and talk about our favorite Pokémon.”

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Arts

Warren Craghead draws the campaign and presidency in Trump Trump

Signed copies of Warren Craghead’s Trump Trump, Volume 1: Nomination to Inauguration are available at Telegraph Art & Comics. Courtesy of artist

Every day since Donald J. Trump became the Republican presidential nominee on July 21, 2016, local artist Warren Craghead has drawn him, or someone in his administration. Now six months’ worth of Craghead’s daily drawings have been published in a collection titled Trump Trump, Volume 1: Nomination to Inauguration.

“I thought when I started it that I would be drawing until November of 2016,” Craghead says. “And then when he won I decided to keep going, drawing every day, pairing a grotesque portrait with quotes from him.” Now 18 months into the project, Craghead hasn’t grown weary of drawing President Trump.

“I like drawing him,” Craghead says. “There are days I feel like I can’t keep up with the stuff he says or the stuff his administration does. But I never feel like I don’t want to draw him. I know that sounds crazy.”

In his daily practice, Craghead says, the aesthetic deepens and grows. It has become a way to document not only the things Trump says but also the policy changes he makes. Craghead says he’s doing this “to preach to the choir because that’s who a preacher should preach to first.” He wants to tell those resisting Trump, “You’re right to resist. This isn’t normal.” And then there are Trump’s supporters. “I wanted to make it uncomfortable for people who were holding their noses and voting for him,” Craghead says. “You can’t look away from the racist things he says and enables. …I want to make it difficult for people to stay on the Trump train.”

Courtesy of the artist

Trained as a fine artist with an MFA in painting, Craghead says, “I really resisted being a cartoonist for a long time.” For about 20 years he drew a little-known genre called poetry comics, doing both the writing and drawing himself. But with the Arab Spring that began in 2010, Craghead was moved to “use my drawing skills to look at and talk about things that matter to me in a social way.” After Bashar al-Assad gassed a Syrian neighborhood, he looked at photographs and drew them, “making myself witness it even though I’m from very far away and in this privileged place,” says Craghead.

For the last three years he has also made it a daily practice to draw images of the Armenian genocide of 100 years ago. He says these different kinds of political drawings attempt to “elicit empathy or make people really see what’s happened.”

“It is different for me to go on the offense,” he says of drawing Trump. His focus on the president grew out of two other political cartoon projects, Ladyh8rs, which focuses on misogynist public figures, and USAh8rs, which focuses on anti-American public figures. “I started those projects because I felt like there are a lot of people who get away with stuff, especially at the state government level, and no one knows who they are and what they do, so I started drawing horrible pictures of them.”

Over the last 18 months, his feeling toward Trump has evolved. “When the year first started I really just hated what he stood for and the things he said.” Now, Craghead says, “I have a deeper kind of loathing for his politics and the people around him, but I’ve also found some sympathy.”

While the caricature genre may seem an unlikely route to discovering someone’s humanity, studying President Trump every day has done this for Craghead. “I think that he’s a very sad person in a lot of ways,” Craghead says. “I think he’s hollow inside. I think he knows that he’s hated and it bothers him. Of course we’re all along on this ride with him so it’s sad for all of us.” And Craghead is quick to add “that doesn’t excuse who he is.”

“It’s like a King Lear kind of thing except we’re all in the crosshairs of his rage,” says Craghead. “I have sympathy for him on one level, but on others I don’t because he’s actively hurting people.”

As for the future of the project, Craghead says, “I’m going to draw him until he’s not president anymore. I feel pretty committed to that now because I’ve lasted this long.” The second volume, which covers the first year of the presidency, will be released this fall.

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Arts

Ron Campbell on being a crew member of the Yellow Submarine

Ron Campbell, the artist who produced “The Beatles” cartoon series and contributed to Yellow Submarine, is visiting Charlottesville for an exhibition of his work at Graves  International Art starting on September 30. Courtesy of the artist

Ron Campbell is best-known by legions of Beatles fans for his work directing the cartoon series “The Beatles” and animating parts of Yellow Submarine, but his résumé is deeper than that. After working on various Beatles projects, he went on to animate, produce and storyboard “Scooby-Doo,” “The Flintstones” and “Rugrats.” Campbell’s creative fingerprints are all over decades of cartoon history. He also spent 10 years working on “The Smurfs.”

“Actually, I love ‘The Smurfs,’” Campbell says. “For a long while it was rather like the European comics. …Gradually [the network] would bring in new elements. Networks are always doing this kind of thing when ratings drop a bit and it always seems to ruin them. Like Scooby-Doo had Scrappy-Doo. And it didn’t work with ‘The Smurfs.’ …They brought in Baby Smurf. Lovely. But they also had a ruling from the network that everyone could carry Baby Smurf except for Smurfette. Because of women’s lib sort of stuff. In point of fact, all of the girls watching the show identified with Smurfette and would have loved to hold Baby Smurf. We were shooting ourselves in the foot.”

Beginning on Friday, September 30, Graves International Art will exhibit Campbell’s original watercolor paintings of characters from the many shows he has worked on. Campbell will be at the gallery on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, doing live painting, signing (and sometimes even doodling on) memorabilia for fans.

“He’s very personable, vital, energetic,” says John Graves Sr., owner of Graves International Art. “He loves working with the public. When you buy a signed print, he’ll usually do a little sketch for you at the same time.”

Psychedelic pop artist and former Charlottesville resident Peter Max has often claimed to have been responsible for the art and animation of Yellow Submarine, but Campbell says that isn’t true.

“Al Brodax [the producer] confronted him once and said, ‘Why do you always let people think you worked on Yellow Submarine?’” Campbell says. “And Brodax says he said that ‘It’s so complicated to tell people that I didn’t.’ Peter Max had nothing to do with it. I’ve even heard Peter Max made up a whole story about how The Beatles called him up and asked him to do it. But The Beatles were happy to give us the songs and go away. Peter felt like he owned the psychedelic look and, in a way, he did.”

“For me especially, given my generation, given the connection to The Beatles, my favorite [art by Ron Campbell] would be the Yellow Submarine work,” says Graves. “I love the head Blue Meanie. He’s a fantastic, surreal character.”

Shows such as “The Beatles” and “The Flintstones” were originally aimed at an adult audience as much as they were toward children. Over the course of Campbell’s career, cartoons became more typically designed for children, with tie-ins to toys and breakfast cereals. But when working on “Rugrats,” he and the other writers found ways of winking at any parents who were also watching. Were the frequent mentions of Dr. Lipschitz, fictional child psychologist, an attempt at getting away with something? “Damn straight!” says Campbell.

Graves believes his gallery is a natural location for this particular show. An original Andy Warhol print of a can of Campbell’s soup greets visitors as they step through the front door. And prints by pop artists Roy Lichtenstein and Jim Dine are displayed too.

Campbell’s work also has a slight connection to Art Spiegelman, the great cartoonist and author of the Pulitzer-winning graphic novel, Maus. Early in his career, Spiegelman made ends meet by creating the classic Garbage Pail Kids cards for Topps. Campbell was hired to help turn the cards into a TV show. It didn’t go well.

“I’m proud of everything except for the ‘Garbage Pail Kids,’” Campbell says. “I worked on a few episodes for CBS and I’m not sure that the show ever aired. Whatever the merits of the cards were, the show was just vulgar.”