MOCCA Arts Festival
Where: Society of Illustrators
128 E. 63rd St.
212-838-2560 Price: $5 per day
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The MoCCA Arts Festival is a 2-day multimedia event, Manhattan’s largest independent comics, cartoon and animation festival, drawing over 7,000 attendees each year. With 400 exhibiting artists displaying their work, award-winning honorees speaking about their careers and artistic processes and other featured artists conducting workshops, lectures and film screenings, our Festival mission accelerates the advancement of the Society’s broader mission to serve as Manhattan’s singular cultural institution promoting all genres of illustration through exhibitions, programs and art education.
Exhibitor Hall at Metropolitan West, Programming at Ink48
SATURDAY, APRIL 1 PROGRAMMING
12:30PM / Garamond Room
Reading Without Walls: Diversity in Comics
Gene Yang is the National Book Award-nominated author of graphic novels including American Born Chinese and Boxers and Saints. When he was named the fifth National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, he chose as his theme “Reading Without Walls” to promote diversity in reading. Gene will be joined by a panel including Damian Duffy (Kindred, Black Comix), Hazel Newlevant (Chain Mail Bikini), and Whit Taylor (The Nib) in a conversation about issues of diversity in comics. Moderated by Jonathan W. Gray (John Hay College- CUNY).
12:30PM / Helvetica Room
Drew Friedman: Heroes of the Comics
In Heroes of the Comics and his new follow-up volume More Heroes of the Comics, illustrator and cartoonist Drew Friedman has produced a series of affectionate, beautifully rendered portraits of important figures from the history of American comic books, accompanied by short informative biographies. Friedman will discuss selected figures from his two books with Fantagraphics publisher Gary Groth, special guest Al Jaffee, who is featured in the first volume, and Karen Green, Curator for Comics and Cartoons at Columbia University’s Rare Book & Manuscript Library, who provides the second volume’s introduction.
BREAK
2:00PM / Garamond Room
Blutch in Conversation with David Mazzucchelli
Internationally renowned artist Blutch joins us from France to celebrate the publication of his graphic novel Peplum in an English-language edition by New York Review Comics. His work marries the lush grace of an informed observational artist with a playful and sophisticated approach to form that marks him as a devoted maker of comics. In this special event, he will appear in conversation with his friend and colleague David Mazzucchelli (City of Glass, Asterios Polyp) for a conversation moderated by Bill Kartalopoulos.
2:00PM / Helvetica Room
Covering Trump: Steve Brodner Edel Rodriguez in Conversation
Illustrators Steve Brodner and Edel Rodriguez have produced some of the most striking and memorable artwork of this past year’s U.S. Presidential election. Brodner’s work has appeared widely in multiple venues, including the covers of the Village Voice and The Nation. Rodriguez’s “Meltdown” and “Total Meltdown” covers for Time captured key moments in the Presidential campaign, and his stark covers for Germany’s Der Spiegel have been among the most widely seen political images since the election. Legendary art director Steven Heller will speak with these two artists about their careers, their election coverage, and the function of art in politically fraught times.
BREAK
3:30PM / Garamond Room
Fit to Print: French Artists in The New York Times
Art director Alexandra Zsigmond searches widely for artists to commission as illustrators for The New York Times. Over the past several years, she has worked with many artists who graduated from the Haute école des arts du Rhin (HEAR), an art school in Strasbourg, France. Zsigmond’s work with more than a dozen of these artists is currently the subject of the exhibit Fit to Print, hanging at the Society of Illustrators and The New York Times Building. At MoCCA, she will speak with artists including Lucie Larousse, Mayumi Otero, Eugène Riousse, Simon Roussin, and Raphael Urwiller to discuss their unique work, the influence of Strasbourg, and how they collaborate to produce work for the Times.
3:30PM / Helvetica Room
Cliff Chiang Q+A
Comics artist and illustrator Cliff Chiang made his mark working on numerous titles published by DC Comics, including Human Target and Beware the Creeper. He achieved greater prominence with the serial Doctor 13: Architecture and Morality and a long run on Wonder Woman, both written by Brian Azzarello. He currently draws Paper Girls, written by Brian K. Vaughan and published by Image Comics. He will discuss his work and his career with writer and former President and Publisher of DC Comics Paul Levitz.
SUNDAY, APRIL 2 PROGRAMMING
12:30PM / Garamond Room
David Lloyd in the Spotlight
British comics artist David Lloyd began his career working for Marvel’s UK division and then gained international fame with his collaboration with Alan Moore, V for Vendetta. A perennial classic of ultimately hopeful dystopian fiction in the comics form, V for Vendetta has not only spawned a successful film adaptation but continues to provide resonant iconography for protest movements including the Anonymous collective. Beyond V, Lloyd’s body of work includes the graphic novel Kickback and the online comics project Aces High. Lloyd will discuss his work and his career with comics scholar Kent Worcestor in this rare conversation.
12:30PM / Helvetica Room
Teaching Comics Internationally
For much of their history, comics have been a self-taught discipline. Now students are learning how to make comics in a variety of academic environments, from dedicated schools to majors to minors to electives. This panel will bring together a group of international comics educators to discuss the programs they teach in and the different ways in which they approach teaching comics. Bill Kartalopoulos will lead a conversation with Jessica Abel (Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, US), Guillaume Dégé (Haute école des arts du Rhin, France), Ben Katchor (Parsons The New School for Design, US), and Merav Solomon (Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Israel).
BREAK
2:00PM / Garamond Room
Rutu Modan and David Polansky in Conversation
Israeli artists Rutu Modan and David Polansky are both known for the excellence of their artwork and for their provocative approach to blending historical and current events into their imaginative works. Modan is best known in North America for her graphic novels Exit Wounds and The Property and for her short story collection Jamilti. Polansky is best known in North America as the art director for the animated film Waltz With Bashir, directed by Ari Folman. He is also the illustrator of the graphic novel based upon the film. Modan and Polansky will discuss their work with comics scholar and writer Tahneer Oksman (How Come Boys Get to Keep Their Noses?).
2:00PM / Helvetica Room
RESIST!
In the weeks between the 2016 Presidential election and the 2017 inauguration, Françoise Mouly and Nadja Spiegelman edited RESIST!, a newsprint anthology of comics and cartoons, mostly by women. 58,000 copies of the newspaper were distributed for free by a grassroots network of volunteers during the Women’s Marches in Washington and across the country. RESIST! used online networks to solicit contributions and in the process became a new kind of hybrid platform: both an ongoing online forum for urgent expression by diverse voices and a print publication that has its roots in the Sixties underground press. In this special session, Mouly and Spiegelman will discuss the development — and the future — of RESIST!
BREAK
3:30PM / Garamond Room
Anthologies as Art: Kramers Ergot and Lagon
The great anthologies of comics history — Zap, Weirdo, RAW, and others — have both made an assertion of comics’ aesthetic ambition at a certain time and place while functioning as a personal expression by each series’ editors. Sammy Harkham is the editor of Kramers Ergot, the anthology which, since 2003, has generated excitement with each volume as a strong statement about contemporary art comics in North America. Alexis Beauclair is the co-editor of Lagon, which debuted in 2014 as a risographed encapsulation of French avant-garde comics, and has metamorphosed with each volume leading to the latest, Gouffre. They will discuss their work as artists and editors with Bill Kartalopoulos.
3:30PM / Helvetica Room
Becky Cloonan Q+A
A graduate of SVA, artist and writer Becky Cloonan first made her mark with her collaborations with Brian Wood, Channel Zero: Jennie One and Demo. Her first graphic novel, East Coast Rising, was published in 2006. Her self-published works include Wolves, Demeter and The Mire, which earned her an Eisner Award for Best Single Issue. In 2012 she became the first woman to draw a main Batman title. Following Batman, she did the art for The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys and later created Gotham Academy for DC Comics. She is currently writing the sci-fi horror Southern Cross for Image Comics, and The Punisher for Marvel. She will discuss her career and her work with SVA MFA in Visual Narrative Chair and illustrator Nathan Fox.