In 1989, believing that a liberal arts education based upon the Catholic intellectual tradition must have a visual arts component, Dr. Anthony Cernera, President of Sacred Heart University, established an art gallery.

Two decades later, The Gallery of Contemporary Art celebrates our 20^th Anniversary with a unique exhibition of comic art that is "off the beaten track." The changes in perception regarding comic art, which can range from the French "bande dessinées" to Japanese mangas to graphic novels, is most vividly indicated by the venerable Louvre’s commission of works from young, well-known comic artists this year.

However, the majority of comic art is self-published and seldom has wide circulation, although these works ingeniously illuminate aspects of contemporary society. They are created using a wide range of media, but drawing seems to predominate. 

Drawings are the most immediate, intimate form of art making; a direct line, so to speak, from the idea to an artist’s hand to the paper. It is as old and as elemental as the impulse of the first people who made marks on cave walls.

Sophia Gevas
Director

Jean-François de la Roque de Roberval, Idiots’ Books (Robbi Behr/Matthew Swanson), pen and ink, gouache on colored paper, 8 x 11.5 in.

DERAILED: Comics Off the Beaten Track
The comics presented in this exhibition, described as "off the beaten track," reflect some of the most exciting work being done in the field today. Drawings created for comics – forged in a range of media from pen and ink to digital collage – combine the immediacy of the medium with the intimacy of an individual’s encounter with a book. Though the term “comics” tends to invoke the stereotype (men in tights, possessed of superpowers and fighting dastardly villains), comics themselves are best defined through format: images relayed in sequence, with no limitations on subject matter.

The work of self-published comic artists epitomizes this freedom. This exhibition presents five of them, including two who work as a team, whose work broadens the scope of comics by challenging the borders which define it. As these artists show, comics can transport the reader anywhere, from explorations of man’s place in worlds past and present to satirical meditations on disappointing babies. This exhibition examines both process and finished work, from conception through experimentation, final illustration and publication.

final artwork, page 13, Teatime 2, stef lenk, watercolor on board, 18 ¼" x 12 ¼"

The work of Toronto-based artist stef lenk explores mysterious and seemingly deserted places – from carnivals to broken-windowed shops – through the calm, curious eyes of a young girl. Teatime 1 & 2, which are featured in this exhibition, together comprise the fourth installment of The Details, a series which forms, as lenk states, a “loose analogy” to the systems of the human body.

A remarkable aspect of lenk’s work is her ability to activate the reader’s senses purely through manipulation of the image/text relationship.   As her protagonist peers around doorframes and into mailbox slots, lenk’s pages are almost completely wordless, and thus silent. When that silence is punctuated, it is convincingly jarring and deafening, as when a cuckoo clock and maniacal nutcracker together explode into sound (fig. 1). Lenk’s spare use of text and complete lack of dialogue emphasize the solitary and dreamlike state of her young protagonist, who – like Alice in Wonderland – falls through rabbit holes into entirely new spaces.

Robbi Behr and Matthew Swanson together comprise Idiots’Books, a publisher of what the team describes as “satirical illustrated books for adults.” Each publication is unique in both style and subject matter, and each is the end result of deliberate experimentation. 

Though they have sometimes used Behr’s illustrations as a starting point, the team has largely settled upon the reverse, with Behr choosing the ones she is most keen to illustrate from among Swanson’s latest stories. The holes Swanson tends to leave in his writing are then filled in, challenged, and occasionally subverted by Behr’s illustrations. As Swanson states, “often the thing that the story is trying to ‘say’…won’t actually appear until her illustrations are in place.” Sometimes, as with Dawn of the Fats, the final illustrations emerge out of whole cloth and require no preliminary sketches. Yet just as often the illustrations mutate, as with The Baby is Disappointing, where the earliest drawing provided the seeds for the final illustrations.

The Sons of Cain, Breakdown, page 3, Charles Fetherolf, Pencil on paper, 8 ½” x 11”

Richard Hahn’s Lumakick features the existential exploits of Professor Lee, a wan man in a bowler hat whose resemblance to both Charlie Chaplin and Magritte’s eponymous figures is not accidental. Hahn conceives each issue of Lumakick as a series of vignettes along the lines of Daniel Clowes’ Eightball; that is, as a one-artist anthology. In his stories, a solitary and contemplative Professor Lee wanders through a desolate urban environment, which Hahn renders with crisp, exquisitely fine line work. Hahn’s compositions and prose are as spare as they are powerful, often juxtaposing his character, and the intense detail of Hahn’s drawing style, against large blank areas of the page.

By telling strange and offbeat stories, the comics featured in this exhibition resist the commercial and formulaic. Existing far off the beaten track, they forge new paths, highlighting the vast narrative and artistic possibilities of the comics medium.  

Claudia Goldstein, Ph.D
Claudia Goldstein is Assistant Professor of Art History at William Patterson University, in Wayne, NJ.