Eugene Eyesoak continues. Upcoming Exhibition & Featured Artist Athena Naylor

Mar 24, 2023

∙ Paid

TONIGHT!

VIDEO SCREENINGS IN MARCH

EUGENE EYESOAK
Twisted mystery screening series of animation / cult film
Courtesy Beyond Video (a nonprofit video rental store in Baltimore)
Fridays in March (24th, 31st)
8pm-midnight + BLACK LIGHT viewing of current Exhibition !
Snacks provided, BYOB! $5 suggested donation.

CURRENT EXHIBITION

MEET THE MASCOT
Paintings by Trei Ramsey
BLACK LIGHT viewing every Friday night, 8pm-midnight in March !

Trei Ramsey humorously explores the fictional origin story of the 'unofficial DC Mascot,' The DC Rat, serving as a tongue-in-cheek commentary on what it’s like to be a resident in DC. Ramsey recreates pop culture in his own image and frequently combines his rat motif with various cartooning references as a way to dive into broader conversations about our feelings and experiences as city dwellers.

DWIGHTMESS
Cartooning & Comic Arts
805 Silver Spring Ave.
[entrance on Ripley St]
Silver Spring, MD 20910

Featured Artist - Athena Naylor

The Checkout Counter (cont’d)

A Chat with Athena Naylor (continued)

DWIGHTMESS: Some of your comics are about art history and you also write about art. In a 2017 article that you wrote for DirtDMV, titled "Why Art Historians Shouldn't Ignore Comics," you quoted this article:

"Published on 5 July 2017, “Why Art Historians Still Ignore Comics” recounts Katherine Roeder’s 2008 essay “Looking High and Low at Comic Art,” and catalogs the obstacles art historians encounter when attempting to discuss comics. For example, comics’ hybridity as a medium, meaning its incorporation of both text and image, “leads experts to compartmentalize comics into literature or art.”

Since then, would you say this observation still holds? And if so, where do see this compartmentalization affecting your own work? If not, what avenues for the consumption and appreciation of comics would you say are flowering most effervescently at the moment?

Athena Naylor: This is a great question! And to be honest, I don’t have a definitive answer. To start, I think we need to agree that to compartmentalize comics into either literature or art doesn’t work– comics have their own unique visual language. But for either literature or art to ignore comics is also foolish, because comics influence and draw from both traditions. In the end, all these boundaries between the arts need to be more permeable, and I have seen some of that happening.

For starters, I have seen comics being represented a lot more in art museums, which is nice and fun for someone like me who loves comics and art museums! In 2021, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago had a big exhibition focused on decades of local cartoonists, which was great and relevant considering Chicago’s reputation as an American comics hub. Last year, I also saw Ronald Wimberly’s work in the Columbus Art Museum, Columbus being another center for cartoonists with the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum. And locally, the Library of Congress has had several exhibitions and publications over the years highlighting the comics in their extensive collection.

Since 2017, I’ve also seen comics proliferate in newspapers and in magazines (both printed and online). I think there’s an increased understanding that comics can be a more accessible way for readers to learn about complex issues and current events. And in that way I think there’s a consensus that comics are worthy of critical analysis and appreciation.

But I also concede that I’m no longer embedded in an academic environment that would give me first hand access to how comics criticism is being approached. And I’m still disappointed in losses like the discontinuation of the Best American Comics anthology, which was published annually from 2006-2019. I’m curious for others to let me know how they think the general public considers comics as an art form today! I’m thoroughly in a bubble of like-minded creators who love comics for their expansive possibilities.

Next Featured Artist: Veronika Rossi

Veronika Rossi is a D.C. based printmaker and comic artist. She currently attends George Mason University and will graduate this June. There, she studies screen-printing and risograph printing, and also publishes her comics and cartoons. Her works focus on the mundane and everyday aspects of life, and finding the extraordinary in them. She enjoys exploring themes of family and relationships through both verbal and physical humor.

Upcoming Exhibition

An Exhibition + Sketch Lounge by The DC CREEPERS
April 7 - May 22nd, 2023

Opening Reception: Friday, April 7, 7-9pm. Light refreshments !
Gallery Hours: TBA each week & by appointment.

Delivering multiple styles in the forms of portraiture & storytelling, action sketching, gesture drawing, abstraction, creature-making, and re-purposed materials, the DC Creepers espouse the belief that anyone can draw anyone at anytime and without permission. This approach to creating results in standalone artworks that naturally read as comics.

Copies of “Comic Book Millionaires,” the hilarious retelling of a summer internship at Marvel Studios will also be available.

Upcoming Artist Residency

DWIGHTMESS is proud to announce
The 2023 Swekt & Drang Cartooning & Comics Arts Resident, MAX HUFFMAN !
Max is a cartoonist & illustrator based in Carrboro. NC.

Join us for Community Events, including a One-Night Exhibition, and Artist Talk + Dinner during Max's stay & follow his inking progress along here in 'The Graffo Broadsheet' and our Instagram account from April 15 - April 27 !