Considering Comics: Graphic Narratives in Ink

with Mark Thomas Gibson
PRINT 670 001 | 3 credits | $150 Lab Fee
July 28 - August 10, 2024

From their inception, comics have been complicated. They are often brash, have political use, and a special ability to record the civic passions of their time. In this course, we will consider this history and use it as inspiration to tell the stories of our own personal and meaningful experience. We will engage with techniques including starting a narrative, storyboarding, sketching, inking, lettering, coloring, and do-it-yourself publishing techniques including the risograph. We will consider the work of cartoonists and screenwriters including Eleanor Davis, Marjane Satrapi, Alison Bechdel, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Rodney Barnes, discuss Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics, and Will Eisner’s Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative, and screen Stan Lee’s How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way. In addition to a call and response activity where paired students explore their communication skills by completing an eight panel comic together, this class will culminate in a presentation of original artwork and self-published graphic novels to the Ox-Bow community.

Mark Thomas Gibson's (b. 1980, Miami, Florida) personal lens on American culture stems from his viewpoint as an artist, a professor, and an American history buff. These myriad and often colliding perspectives fuel his exploration of contemporary culture through the language of painting and drawing, revealing a vision of America where every viewer is implicated as a potential character within the story. Gibson has released two books: Some Monsters Loom Large, 2016, with funding from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts; and Early Retirement, 2017, with Edition Patrick Frey in Zurich. Gibson has been awarded: residencies at Yaddo; the Elizabeth Murray Artist Residency; a fellowship from the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage, Philadelphia; a Hodder Fellowship from the Lewis Center for the Arts, Princeton University; a Guggenheim Fellowship from the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, New York; and was named a 2022 Grantee by The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, New York. In 2023 Gibson had solo exhibitions at Sikkema & Jenkins Co. in New York and MOCAD in Detroit, and was included in the exhibition Rising Sun: Artists in an Uncertain America at the African American Museum in Philadelphia. Gibson is represented by M+B, (Los Angeles) and Loyal, (Stockholm, Sweden). He is currently an Assistant Professor of Painting at Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Temple University and lives and works in Philadelphia.

Field Illustration

with Josh Dihle
PAINTING & DRAWING 678 001 | 1.5 credits | $50 Lab Fee
July 28 - August 3, 2024

Inspired by the landscape and wildlife of Ox-Bow, this class invites students to develop an illustrative portfolio in pencil, ink, watercolor, and gouache. Students will build effective and inventive travel easels to explore campus and, working both outside and in the studio, will develop a personal approach to rendering and responding to the plants and animals that call Ox-Bow home. Demonstrations will cover methods for effective color mixing and composing in the field as well as techniques for recreating botanical structure, basic animal anatomy, and biological textures including bark, shell, and feathers. We will review the work of John James Audubon, Walton Ford, Evelyn Statsinger, and Kiki Smith and students will carry a naturalist pocket guide for reference. Onsite and studio drawing assignments will be accompanied by readings and discussions of naturalist poetry by Mary Oliver, Seamus Heaney, and Sharon Olds. Assignments will challenge students to notice the nuance in nature and will include a bug hunt, with invertebrates sketched in graphite, and a watercolor assignment that gives visual expression to a work of poetry or literature. Students will be encouraged to propose a final project inspired by their observations.

With a hand for detail and an eye on the natural world, Josh Dihle blends painting, carving, drawing, and sculpture to open visionary portals into the heart. He is the cofounder of experimental art/performance platforms Color Club and Barely Fair and teaches painting and drawing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Dihle has had solo exhibitions at M+B (Los Angeles, CA), Andrew Rafacz (Chicago, IL), 4th Ward Project Space (Chicago, IL), McAninch Arts Center (Chicago, IL) and Valerie Carberry Gallery (Chicago, IL). Dihle's work has been exhibited in group shows nationally and internationally, including MASSIMODECARLO Vspace (Milan, Italy), University of Maine Museum of Art (Bangor, ME), Hyde Park Art Center (Chicago, IL), Rover (Chicago, IL), Elmhurst Art Museum (Elmhurst, IL), IAM Gallery (New York, NY), Flyweight Projects (New York, NY), Essex Flowers Gallery (New York, NY), Ruschman (Mexico City, Mexico) and Annarumma Gallery (Naples, Italy). His work and curatorial projects have been written about in The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, New City, Artspace, The Washington Post, and Artsy, among others. Dihle lives and works in Chicago, IL.