Thursday, March 24, 2016

Read this Westword piece  about Woodring's lecture. Westword also recommended this event as a great thing to do the week of March 21st. Read more on that, here. 

About the Lecture
Woodring is an instinctive artist who seldom analyzes his methods, but in this lecture he shined light on processes and principles that have heretofore operated in the shadows. Woodring’s vivid imagery contains a wealth of historic and contemporary references enabling him to discover rich visual languages in his wordless comics. In this lecture he shared many of his obscure influences and inspirational touchstones and explored what makes his works so inexplicably, and often darkly, humorous.

About the Lecturer
Jim Woodring is a cartoonist whose works - comics, drawings, and paintings - traffic heavily in intermingled humor and horror. Based just outside of Seattle, WA Woodring depicts worlds from his unique vision fueled by hallucinations and surrealistic absurdity. These strange and immersive images have been published in multiple books including The Book of Jim and Weathercraft. The New York Times describes Woodring's work as “half unshakable nightmare, half Chuck Jones cartoon filtered through the Bhagavad Gita.”

Woodring was awarded the Artist Trust GAP Award, a United States Artist Fellowship (with Bill Frisell), and an Inkpot Award at the 2008 Comic-Con International in San Diego. Seattle’s The Stranger presented Wooding with their Literature Genius award in 2010. 

Additional Events
The artist also participated in the following events with the RMCAD community during his visit:

Next Day Q+A Luncheon
RMCAD faculty, staff, and students joined the VASD Program and guest Jim Woodring for a casual Q+A session over lunch. This intimate gathering provided an opportunity to further discuss the ideas presented in the previous night's lecture and a place to further engage with our special guest.

Drawing Session with Jim Woodring
A small group of students had the opportunity to step into Jim Woodring's world as the artist shared his process and technique. From ideation to final ink, Woodring presented a live, interactive drawing demo and commentary illuminating his conceptual and technical skill.

Reading List
Additional research materials suggested by Woodring can be found here.