Curated by Anne Drozd and Jerzy Drozd
Comics Unbound
June 10 to June 24 | 117 Gallery
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JOIN US FOR THE PUBLIC RECEPTION AT THE 117 GALLERY ON FRIDAY, JUNE 17, FROM 6:00 TO 9:00 PM
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Read Exhibition Review by K.A. Letts
[hr]It’s amazing to think about what our minds do when we read comics. When we regard a single image it may convey some meaning, but the moment we place another image next to it–even a very different one–our minds begin to construct narrative between those two images. Most of the narrative found in comics happens in the reader’s mind, prompted by deft choices made by the cartoonist author.
How might our relationship with comics change if we were more aware of the thinking we’re doing when reading them?
Comics Unbound explores how cartoonists use shape, size, line, color, and context to activate the readers’ imaginations and invite them into the partnership of comics narrative. Pages are removed from their intended context, that of the graphic novel or comic book, and re-contextualized with the materials that went into making the final pages. Sketches, notes, scripts, and tools are displayed alongside the final artwork. This new context reveals what is usually an invisible narrative in comics–the journey from artist’s vision to clear transmission of meaning.
This exhibition contains pieces by cartoonists appearing at the Ann Arbor Comic Arts Festival held at the Ann Arbor District Library June 18 and 19, 2016.
Curator Bios:
Jerzy Drozd is one of the artists of The Warren Commission Report. He leads cartooning classes for children, teens, and adults, as well as for teachers who want to bring comics to the classroom. He co-founded the Ann Arbor Comic Arts Festival and serves as the event’s programming coordinator. Drozd wrote and drew the graphic novel The Front, has worked on Antarctic Press’s Ninja High School and PPV: Pay- Per-View, and has drawn special projects for Glencoe/McGraw-Hill, Marvel Comics, VIZ Media, and others.
Anne Drozd is a librarian and artist. She and her husband Jerzy created Tiny Astronaut Press, to create many space-themed art works, including Rocketosaurus, a fanciful comic for young readers about an Apollo crew. As a librarian at the Ann Arbor District Library, she develops arts programming and has drawn instructional comics for the science tools collection. Anne and Jerzy live in Ann Arbor with their two cats.
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In partnership with
Catering for the opening reception generously provided by
Current Exhibition in the Aquarium Gallery
A050216-242 BY AJ COOKE
Location: Ashley Street, near the intersection with Liberty, in downtown Ann Arbor
The act of looking is both objective and subjective due to cognitive biology that intuitively processes visual information, as well as the personal meaning drawn from memory and experience. Yet our need to compulsively find pattern and organize information is a connection that can be exploited and epistemologically portrayed by an image. I am interested in how we organize our world with constructs that have a shared network of humanity while still remaining bound to our individual realities. On Monday, May 2, 2016 at 2:42 PM (A050216-242), photographs were taken of the white walls in the Aquarium Gallery. These images were digitally decoded from the light and shadow that fell on the [blank] walls, and reconstructed into a taxonomy of color. The series of visual information demonstrates an objective collection of data which has been subjectively altered by the viewer, the artist, the camera, and even the time of day from which the initial information was recorded. Likewise, communal interpretations of a specific hue become difficult as each viewer dons an individual meaning derived from their own perception of the world. The abstraction therefore, is personal and new significance is projected on each square of the composition. With each reinterpretation, our shared conventions that aim to create order from chaos are questioned, as our individual perspectives remain, rejecting the notion of universality.
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