A quick heads-up that hand-in-glove with this year's Pop-Con at UAF,
where I'll be manning a suite of tables again promoting the art department + the Cartoon & Comic Arts course again. But the cherry
on top will be an invitational show of mostly current comics class students + some from last year + a few alumni - approximately 46 pieces in all by a couple dozen folks. It'll be hanging in the Arctic Java coffeeshop located in the Wood Center, and will be up until December 4th, with the opening reception on this upcoming 1st Friday, November 6th, from 6-7pm, hosted by UAF Student Activities. The juror's official statement is pasted below.
“CREATIVE JUICES”
After earning an MFA in Sequential Art from the Savannah College of Art & Design (GA), I returned to my home here in the Interior to develop a hybrid course that combined those graduate school studies with workshops from other institutions like the Center for Cartoon Studies (VT), and my experiences as the creator of Alaska’s longest-running cartoon feature “Nuggets” (Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, Sunday edition).
Cartoon & Comic Arts was a successful Special Topics
class offered at UAF during the second 6-week summer sessions for a dozen
years. Now in the course catalog as an official part of the curriculum of the
Department of Art, it’s in its third year of being taught in the spring
semester. Sequential art in one form or another is taught across most of my art
classes at all levels, from Beginning Drawing to Pen & Ink.
Along with attracting students and boosting enrollment with a popular and commercially + critically viable medium, comics can enrich and compliment a multi-media curriculum and foment cross-disciplinary studies.
Comics can afford students with the opportunity to incorporate their own narratives and personal interests with their art. It inspires them tell their own stories, bring passion to the pages and classroom, making it a powerful tool for teaching. Comics can also inspire a lifelong love of literature and learning. As a legitimate and dynamic artform, the changing and inclusive demographics of diversity and gender are now a crucial component in the evolving field of comics.
This invitational draws mostly from current students in ART 220 + ART 420 and features a few alumni as well. It covers single-panel gag cartoons, editorial cartoons, comic strips, collaborative pages, single-pagers, comic poems, and excerpts from longer works.
Special thanks to UAF Student Activities for hosting this opportunity along with another year of Pop-Con, and to all the awesome students who submitted these pieces, and continue to create outstanding and inspiring work while sharing their stories.
All of which reminded me to look for a backlink to previous Pop-Cons, like the one way back in 2014, and another one in 2024, but looks like I totally spaced out posting anything about last year's gig, so here's a coupla snapshots highlighting what was another good time hanging out with others of my tribe, reconnecting with old friends, and meeting new fans.
We had about four tables in a makeshift "artist's alley" with a table full of samples, another for folks hanging out drawing, and a couple to promote the comics class and art department. The backdrop had scores of original art pinned up all drawn by former students showing the breadth & depth of sequential art.
So I recently teased out a couple posts ago how there are seeds being planted for 2028 being the 40-year anniversary of my cartoon feature as appearing in the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. Rumor is maybe a two-page spread, possibly even a special issue of the paper, and I'm already working up a new Nuggets book, especially since it's been quite a while since any compilation has been published (like over thirty years now). So I also went ahead and applied for a solo show at the Fairbanks Arts Association's Bear Gallery, which it's been over a decade since I last put on a gig there (Cartoon North II). Up above is posted the ten recent works selected and submitted that I felt best represented my best work from the past few years. We'll see how it goes with the portfolio review committee, but failing that I got a couple backup venues in the queue just in case.
*PS: I did also just get a comic poem accepted into the 2026 64th Parallel juried exhibition at the Bear Gallery: "Seasons" which also appeared at the fall semester's faculty show too.
“And I'm lost behind
The words I'll never find
And I'm left behind
As seasons roll on by”
- Chris Cornell
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