mindpollution.org

Jessica and I trekked up to Stockbridge, MA, two weekends ago for an exhibit at the Norman Rockwell Museum titled “LitGraphic: The Art of the Graphic Novel.” Good times all around, and we were able to have dinner with John Ostrander and a host of other great writers and artists after checking out the museum. Most of the post-exhibit dinner was spent talking about Chicago, IL, where Jessica and I hope to end up at some point in the near future. John and Mike Gold, the ComicMix Editor-in-Chief, are both from the Chicago area, so they played storyteller for us, including one tale about a street neighborhood that was named after a drunken, bootlegging boat captain during the prohibition era who crashed into the river bank one night and decided to settle there.

Here’s an excerpt from my report on the exhibit that I posted over at ComicMix:

This weekend I had the pleasure of heading up to Stockbridge, MA, for the Comic Arts Festival and “LitGraphic: The Art of the Graphic Novel” exhibit at the Norman Rockwell Museum.

It was my first trip to the museum, and as I mentioned in my previous tease for the event, I’ve been kicking myself for not making the trip years ago, when I lived a much shorter distance from Stockbridge. The area surrounding the museum is a beautiful, rural landscape that was a breath of fresh air (literally) from the New York City madness.

The “LitGraphic” exhibit consisted of several rooms filled with various pieces of art from both well-known creators and some who I’ll admit I had never heard of prior to seeing their work on display in Stockbridge. On the day we attended, the museum was also playing host to some of the creators whose work was featured in the exhibit, and had scheduled several signings and other events as part of a “Comic Arts Festival.”

One of the first pieces of art I encountered was a series of Niko Henrichon’s original, inked pages from Pride of Baghdad, including the impressive two-page “Baghdad Cityscape” spread. My less comics-savvy partner, who accompanied me on the trip, was amazed at the linework on the pages, and on several occasions when I wandered off to view other elements of the exhibit I returned to find her admiring this piece again.

Several pages of Terry Moore’s Strangers in Paradise also found their way into the exhibit, with one piece in particular catching my eye. Titled “The Point Is, She Found Me,” the inked two-page spread included a sequence of progressively smaller square frames within a larger scene. The frames directed the reader’s eyes to a figure hidden in the bushes — something that might have been overlooked entirely without the frames zeroing in on the small face in the scenery. It was a nice, unconventional layout that added to the story instead of distracting from it.

In a corner of the exhibit were also some sketchbooks from artist Barron Storey, showcasing his jumbled, mixed-media style of work that appeared in Neil Gaiman’s Sandman: Endless Nights anthology. The display also featured a variety of dog-eared pages from his sketchbooks, including among other things, a set of small, incredibly detailed drawings of Saddam Hussein and Yassir Arafat on opposing pages. The former sketch was captioned with a single sentence: “Hussein, looking a bit like Stalin.”

Read the full report on “LitGraphic” over at ComicMix - because it’s healthier that way. The exhibit runs through May 26, so be sure to check it out if you have the opportunity.